We have also two Adagios for the Violin with complete instrumental accompaniment, which will cost 135 florins, and two little easy Sonatas, each with two movements, which are at your service for 280 florins. In addition I beg you to present our compliments to our friend Koch.
Your obedient,
K. v. Beethoven.
R.I. Treasury official.
This ludicrous display of the young man’s self-importance as “Royal Imperial Treasury Official” and Ludwig van Beethoven’s factotum is certainly very absurd; but hardly affords adequate grounds for the exceeding scorn of Schindler’s remarks upon it. It is in itself sufficiently provocative of prejudice against its writer. But a display of vanity and self-esteem is ridiculous, not criminal.
The general charge brought by Ries against Kaspar and Johann van Beethoven is this:
His brothers sought in particular to keep all his intimate friends away from him, and no matter what wrongs they did him, of which he was convinced, they cost him only a few tears and all was immediately forgotten. On such occasions he was in the habit of saying: “But they are my brothers, nevertheless,” and the friend received a rebuke for his good-nature and frankness. The brothers attained their purpose in causing the withdrawal from him of many friends, especially when, because of his hard hearing, it became more difficult to converse with him.
Two years after the “Notizen” left the press Schindler published his “Biography.” In it, although he first knew Beethoven in 1814, Johann some years later and Kaspar probably never, and therefore personally could know nothing of the facts of this period, yet he made the picture still darker. The special charge against Kaspar is that “about this time (in 1800) he began to rule Beethoven and made him suspicious of his most sincere friends and devotees by means of false representations and even jealousy.”
There is a class of writers in Germany, whom no regard for the feelings of the living, no veneration for the memories of the great dead, no scruples on the score of truth, and even, in some cases, not respect and admiration for the greatest living genius, talent, and literary or scientific fame, restrain from using, or moderate their use of, whatever can add piquancy to their appeals to the prurient imaginations of certain classes of readers. Delicacy of feeling and nicety of conscience are not to be expected of such heartless traducers of the living and the dead; but that even the most contemptible of the tribe, regardless of the pain which such a slander of her husband’s father must have caused to a widowed mother and her amiable children, could venture to represent Karl Kaspar van Beethoven as the seller of his wife’s virtue and a sharer in the wages of her shame, is as inconceivable, as that his book should be received with praise by critics and applause by the public; that it should gain its author pecuniary profit instead of a prison. The story is utterly without foundation; a pure invention and a falsehood, and is told, moreover, of poor Kaspar, at a time when as yet he had no wife! Unfortunately, this treatment of Beethoven’s brothers is not confined to writers of novels and feuilletonists. They, who profess to write history, no sooner strike upon this topic, than fancy seems to usurp the seat of reason and imagination to take the place of judgment. The lines of Ries expand into paragraphs; the sentences of Schindler into chapters. But the picture, thus overdrawn and exaggerated, in some degree corrects itself; for if the brothers were really as represented, what is to be thought of Beethoven if he in fact was so led, controlled and held in subjection by them as described?
Characters of Karl Kaspar and Johann
Now, what is really known of Karl Kaspar and Johann, though it sufficiently confutes much of the calumnious nonsense which has been printed about them, is not fitted to convey any very exalted idea of their characters. The same Frau Karth, who remembered Ludwig in his youth as always “gentle and lovable,” related that Kaspar was less kindly in his disposition, “proud and presumptuous,” and that Johann “was a bit stupid, yet very good-natured.” And such they were in manhood. Kaspar, like Ludwig, was very passionate, but more violent in his sudden wrath; Johann, slow to wrath and placable. Notwithstanding the poverty of his youth and early manhood, it is not known that Kaspar was avaricious; but Johann had felt too bitterly the misery of want and dependence, and became penurious. After he had accumulated a moderate fortune, the contests between his avarice and the desire to display his wealth led to very ludicrous exhibitions. In a word, Beethoven was not a phenomenon of goodness, nor were his brothers monsters of iniquity. That both Ries and Schindler wrote honestly has not been doubted; but common justice demands the reminder that they wrote under the bias of strong personal dislike to one or both brothers. Ries wrote impressions received at a very early time of life, and records opinions formed upon incomplete data. Schindler wrote entirely upon hearsay. Ries had not completed his twenty-first year when he departed from Vienna (1805). Howsoever strong were Beethoven’s gratitude to Franz Ries and affection for Ferdinand, fourteen years was too great a disparity in age to allow that trustful and familiar intercourse between master and pupil which could enable the latter to speak with full knowledge; nor does a man of Beethoven’s age and position turn from old and valued friends, like the Lichnowskys, Breuning, Zmeskall and others of whatever names, to make a youth of from 18 to 20 years, a new-comer and previously a stranger, even though a favorite pupil, his confidential adviser. Facts confirm the proposition in this case. We know that Beethoven in 1801 imparted grave matters to Wegeler and Amenda, of which Ries a year later had only received intimation from Breuning; and other circumstances of which he knew nothing are recorded in the testament of 1802. The charges against the brothers, both of Ries and Schindler, are general in terms; Ries only giving specifications or instances in proof. Schindler may be passed by as but repeating the “Notizen.” Now, the onus of Ries’s charges is this:
First: that Kaspar thrust himself impertinently into his brother’s business; second: that both brothers intrigued to isolate Beethoven from his intimate friends and that their machinations were in many cases successful.