4) Inasmuch as I shall go to work on the symphonies at once, the Society is to advance me (on the acceptance of this offer) 150 guineas here so that I may provide myself with a carriage and other necessaries for my journey without delay.
5) The conditions respecting my non-appearance with another orchestra in public and my non-conducting, and preferring the Society under equal conditions are accepted by me and in view of my sense of honor would have been understood as a matter of course.
6) I shall rely upon the support of the Society in the projection and promotion of one, or, if circumstances justify, more benefit concerts. The particular friendship of some of the directors of your worthy Reunion as well as the kind interest of all artists in my works are a guarantee for this and will increase my zeal to fulfil all their expectations.
7) In conclusion I beg that the acquiescence in or confirmation of the above be written out in English and sent to me with the signatures of three directors of the Society.
You can imagine that I heartily rejoice at the prospect of becoming acquainted with the estimable Sir George Smart and of meeting you and Mr. Neate again. Would that I might fly to you instead of this letter!
To this Beethoven appended an autograph postscript as follows:
I embrace you with all my heart; I purposely employed the hand of another in the above so that you might the more easily read it to the Society. I am convinced of your kind feelings toward me and hope that the Philharmonic Society will approve of my proposition, and you may rest assured that I shall exert all my powers worthily to fulfil the honorable commission of so select a body of artists. How numerous is your orchestra? How many violins, etc., etc., single or double wind-instruments? Is the room large, acoustically good?
These letters, as well as those which passed between Beethoven and Ries subsequently, ought to serve to indicate that the relationship between them at this time was, and remained, one of cordial friendship, Schindler’s statements to the contrary notwithstanding. That biographer’s list of grievances between the men may have had a small shadow of foundation, but after all it would be better to take them with a few grains of salt. It is very possible, as Czerny told Jahn, that Beethoven once complained to him that Ries imitated his style more than was agreeable to him; but this is far from saying, as Schindler says, that Ries, following a bent for brilliant technique, gradually lost his understanding of Beethoven’s works, took it upon himself to find fault with some of his daring innovations and made arbitrary changes in performing them. Nor does it seem likely that Ries should have been so indifferent to the success of Beethoven’s compositions in London as to withhold his help while reporting their great popularity to the composer in such enthusiastic words; yet Schindler intimates that it was this fact which, coming to the ears of Beethoven, provoked the latter to expressions of anger which in turn were reported to Ries. There is in all this, we fear, an undercurrent of prejudice which is not difficult of explanation; at any rate, if Ries cherished a feeling of ill-will against his master it found no expression in the “Notizen.”
Discipline for Karl and His Mother