We are your most damnably
devoted
Beethoven.
My dearest Baron Muckcartdriver.
Je vous suis bien obligé pour votre faiblesse de vos yeux. Moreover I forbid you henceforth to rob me of the good humor into which I occasionally fall, for yesterday your Zmeskall-damanovitzian chatter made me melancholy. The devil take you; I want none of your moral (precepts) for Power is the morality of men who loom above the others, and it is also mine; and if you begin again to-day I’ll torment you till you agree that everything that I do is good and praiseworthy (for I am going to the Swan—the Ox would be preferable, yet this rests with your Zmeskallian Domanovezian decision (résponse).
Adieu Baron Ba...ron, ron / nor / orn / rno / onr /
(voilà quelque chose from the old pawnshop.)
Mechanical skill was never so developed in Beethoven that he could make good pens from goose quills—and the days of other pens were not yet. When, therefore, he had no one with him to aid him in this, he usually sent to Zmeskall for a supply. Of the large number of such applications preserved by his friend and now scattered in all civilized lands as autographs, here are two specimens.
Best of Music Counts! I beg of you to send me one or a few pens of which I am really in great need. As soon as I learn where real good, and admirable pens are to be found I will buy some of them. I hope to see you at the Swan today.
Adieu, most precious
Music Count
yours etc
His Highness von Z. is commanded to hasten a bit with the plucking out of a few of his quills (among them, no doubt, some not his own). It is hoped that they may not be too tightly grown. As soon as you have done all that we shall ask we shall be, with excellent esteem your
F——
Beethoven.
Had Zmeskall not carefully treasured these notes, they would never have met any eye but his own; it is evident, therefore, that he entered fully into their humor, and that it was the same to him, whether he found himself addressed as “Baron,” “Count,” “Cheapest Baron,” “Music Count,” “Baron Muckcartdriver,” “His Zmeskallian Zmeskallity,” or simply “Dear Z.”—which last is the more usual. He knew his man, and loved him; and these “quips and quiddities” were received in the spirit which begat them. The whole tenor of the correspondence between the two shows that Zmeskall had more influence for good upon Beethoven than any other of his friends; he could reprove him for faults, and check him when in the wrong, without producing a quarrel more serious than the one indicated in the protest, above given, against interrupting his “good humor.”