Ill-advised and full of evil consequences as was Beethoven’s step in taking personal charge of his nephew, it was yet creditable to his heart and bears strong witness to his high sense of duty. His purpose was pure and lofty, and his action prompted by both love and an ideal sense of moral obligation. It was a woeful mistake, however; Beethoven sadly misjudged his fitness to fill the delicate and difficult rôle of guardian and parent. In all his life he had never had occasion to give a thought to the duties which such an office involved. In the conduct of his own affairs he had always permitted himself to be swayed by momentary impulses, emotions and sometimes violent passions, and he could not suddenly develop the habits of calm reflection, unimpassioned judgment and consistent behavior essential to the training of a careless and wayward boy. In his treatment of him he flew from one extreme to the other—from almost cruel severity to almost limitless indulgence, and, for this reason, failed to inspire either respect for his authority or deep affection for his person, to develop the lad’s self-control or a desire for virtuous living. Very questionable, too, if not utterly unpardonable, were the measures which Beethoven took to separate the boy from his mother in spite of the dying wishes of his father. We have seen his protestations at times of his unwillingness to give her pain. When he was cruel in his own confession it was because he imagined himself constrained to be so by a high obligation of duty. There can be no doubt that the woman whom Beethoven called “The Queen of Night” was wicked and vicious, and that his detestation of her was as well founded as his wish to save his nephew from evil communications and influences. But there were times when he seemed willing to give filial instincts their due. “Karl did wrong,” he writes to Madame Streicher from Mödling in June 1818, “but—mother—mother—even a bad one remains a mother. To this extent he is to be excused, especially by me, who know his intriguing, passionate mother too well.” Why did he not follow this thought to its ultimate conclusion? Why did he permit, if indeed, he did not encourage, the lad to speak disrespectfully of his mother? A memorandum in the Tagebuch after February 20th reads: “Karl’s mother has not seen him since August 10”—a period of more than six months. How often she was allowed to see him during the following months is not of record; we only know from Beethoven himself, in his letters to Madame Streicher, that the mother’s instinct—if, because she was a bad woman, the word “love” be not allowed—drove her to employ the only means by which she could know the condition of her son during the summer in Mödling—i. e., bribing or feeing the servants. That at least is Beethoven’s accusation, and exceedingly wroth he was.[186]
The London Visit Postponed
After taking Karl from Giannatasio’s institute to his own home Beethoven engaged a tutor to prepare him for matriculation at the gymnasium. This tutor, whose name has not been learned, was a professor at the Vienna University and had evidently agreed not only to look after all of the lad’s intellectual needs but also to have an eye on some of the domestic affairs and to that end to become a member of the Beethoven household. On this point, Beethoven enjoined secrecy upon Madame Streicher. How long the service of his “steward,” as he playfully called him to Madame Streicher, continued is not known, nor how satisfactory it was. He does not become a subject of Beethoven’s correspondence beyond a single reference to the fact that once he staid out all night. Beethoven’s London trip had been abandoned without notice or explanation to the Philharmonic Society, apparently; but Ries must have written to him, renewing the offer previously accepted, for on March 25, Beethoven writes to his old pupil as follows:
In spite of my desire, it was impossible for me to come to London this Winter; I beg of you to say to the Philharmonic Society that my poor state of health hindered me, but I hope that I may be entirely well this Spring and then take advantage of the renewed offers of the Society towards the end of the year and fulfil all its conditions. Please ask Neate in my name not to make use, at least not in public, of the many compositions of mine which he has until my arrival in person; no matter what the condition of his affairs may be I have cause of complaint against him.
Botter [Cipriani Potter] visited me several times, he seems to be a good man and has talent for composition—I hope and wish that your prosperity may grow daily; unfortunately I cannot say that of myself. My unlucky connection with the Archduke has brought me to the verge of beggary. I cannot endure the sight of want—I must give; you can imagine how present conditions increase my sufferings. I beg of you soon to write to me again. If it is at all possible I shall get away from here sooner in order to escape total ruin and will then arrive in London in the Winter at the latest.
I know that you will stand by an unfortunate friend; had it only been in my power, and had I not been fettered by circumstances here I would surely have done much more for you. Fare you very well, give my greetings to Neate, Smart, Cramer—although I hear that he is a counter-subject to you and me, yet I already know something of the art of treating such and we shall produce an agreeable harmony in London.
Ries’s reverence for royalty, apparently, led him to omit Beethoven’s unkind allusion to his august patron and pupil, Archduke Rudolph; Schindler, writing much later, prints it and admits, very properly, as we know from other instances of the same kind, that Beethoven sometimes used his friends as whipping-boys and that his words and deeds were not always consistent with each other. Beethoven removed to Mödling on May 19, taking with him his nephew and the two servants whose treachery aroused the storm of passion which he loosed in the long letter to Madame Streicher, written in June. He found lodgings in the so-called Hafner House in the Hauptstrasse, now ornamented by a memorial tablet. He began taking the baths two days after his arrival and the desire and capacity for work soon returning, he took up energetically the Pianoforte Sonata in B-flat. Karl was placed in a class of boys taught by the village priest, named Fröhlich, who dismissed him a month later for reasons which became a matter of judicial record before the end of the year.[187] In a document filed as an appendix to Madame van Beethoven’s application for guardianship over her son, Fröhlich sets forth that Beethoven had encouraged his nephew to revile his mother, applauding him when he applied vile epithets to her either in writing or by shrieking them into his ear, “thus violating the fourth divine commandment”; that the boy had confessed to him that while he knew that he was doing wrong he yet defamed his mother to curry favor with his uncle and dared not tell him the truth because he would only believe lies. “This he once told his mother and would have said more had he not feared being found out and maltreated by his uncle.” Once, too, Beethoven came to him (the priest) and in a tone of malicious joy told him that his nephew had that day called his mother a “Ravenmother” (Rabenmutter—meaning a wicked and unnatural mother). Karl’s training being thus contrary to all moral principles, he having also displayed indifference to religious instruction, been guilty of unruly conduct in church and in the streets, so that many of the inhabitants of the village had come to him with complaints, and, therefore, admonitions to the boy and appeals to the uncle having borne no fruit, he had been constrained for the sake of his twelve other pupils, who had said “they did not want to study with the unruly Karl van Beethoven,” to dismiss him.
An Oratorio for the Friends of Music