Beethoven was often extremely violent. One day we were eating our noonday meal at the Swan inn; the waiter brought him the wrong dish. Scarcely had Beethoven spoken a few words about the matter, which the waiter answered in a manner not altogether modest, when Beethoven seized the dish (it was a mess of lungs with plenty of gravy) and threw it at the waiter’s head. The poor fellow had an armful of other dishes (an adeptness which Viennese waiters possess in a high degree) and could not help himself; the gravy ran down his face. He and Beethoven screamed and vituperated while all the other guests roared with laughter. Finally, Beethoven himself was overcome with the comicalness of the situation, as the waiter who wanted to scold could not, because he was kept busy licking from his chops the gravy that ran down his face, making the most ridiculous grimaces the while. It was a picture worthy of Hogarth. (“Notizen,” p. 121.)
Beethoven knew scarcely anything about money, because of which he had frequent quarrels; since he was always mistrustful, and frequently thought himself cheated when it was not the case. Easily excited, he called people cheats, for which in the case of waiters he had to make good with tips. At length his peculiarities and absentmindedness became known in the inns which he frequented most often and he was permitted to go his way, even when he went without paying his bill. (“Notizen,” p. 122.)
Beethoven had taken lessons on the violin even after he reached Vienna from Krumpholz and frequently when I was there we played his Sonatas for Pianoforte and Violin together. But it was really a horrible music; for in his enthusiastic zeal he never heard when he began a passage with bad fingering.
In his behavior Beethoven was awkward and helpless; his uncouth movements were often destitute of all grace. He seldom took anything into his hands without dropping and breaking it. Thus he frequently knocked his ink-well into the pianoforte which stood near by the side of his writing-table. No piece of furniture was safe from him, least of all a costly piece. Everything was overturned, soiled and destroyed. It is hard to comprehend how he accomplished so much as to be able to shave himself, even leaving out of consideration the number of cuts on his cheeks. He could never learn to dance in time. (“Notizen,” p. 119.)
Beethoven attached no value to his manuscripts; after they were printed they lay for the greater part in an anteroom or on the floor among other pieces of music. I often put his music to rights; but whenever he hunted something, everything was thrown into confusion again. I might at that time have carried away the original manuscripts of all his printed pieces; and if I had asked him for them he would unquestionably have given them to me without a thought. (“Notizen,” p. 113.)
Beethoven felt the loss of Ries very sensibly; but it was in part supplied by young Röckel, to whom he took a great liking. Inviting him to call, he told him he would give special orders to his servant to admit him at all times, even in the morning when busy. It was agreed that, when Röckel was admitted, if he found Beethoven very much occupied he should pass through the room into the bed-chamber beyond—both rooms overlooked the Glacis from the fourth story of the Pasqualati house on the Mölker Bastei—and there await him a reasonable time; if the composer came not, Röckel should quietly pass out again. It happened one morning upon his first visit, that Röckel found at the street door a carriage with a lady in it; and, on reaching the fourth storey, there, at Beethoven’s door, was Prince Lichnowsky in a dispute with the servant about being admitted. The man declared he dared not admit anybody, as his master was busy and had given express orders not to admit any person whatever. Röckel, however, having the entrée, informed Beethoven that Lichnowsky was outside. Though in ill humor, he could no longer refuse to see him. The Prince and his wife had come to take Beethoven out for an airing; and he finally consented, but, as he entered the carriage, Röckel noticed that his face was still cloudy.
That Beethoven and Ignatz von Seyfried were brought much together in these years, the reader already knows. Their acquaintance during thirty years—which, for at least half of the time, was really the “friendly relationship” which Seyfried names it—was, he says, “never weakened, never disturbed by even the smallest quarrel—not that we were both always of a mind, or could be, but we always spoke freely and frankly to each other, without reserve, according to our convictions, without conceitedly trying to force upon one another our opinions as infallible.”
Besides, Beethoven was much too straightforward, open and tolerant to give offence to another by disapprobation, or contradiction; he was wont to laugh heartily at what did not please him and I confidently believe that I may safely say that in all his life he never, at least not consciously, made an enemy; only those to whom his peculiarities were unknown were unable quite to understand how to get along with him; I am speaking here of an earlier time, before the misfortune of deafness had come upon him; if, on the contrary, Beethoven sometimes carried things to an extreme in his rude honesty in the case of many, mostly those who had imposed themselves upon him as protectors, the fault lay only in this, that the honest German always carried his heart on his tongue and understood everything better than how to flatter; also because, conscious of his own merit, he would never permit himself to be made the plaything of the vain whims of the Mæcenases who were eager to boast of their association with the name and fame of the celebrated master. And so he was misunderstood only by those who had not the patience to get acquainted with the apparent eccentric. When he composed “Fidelio,” the oratorio “Christus am Ölberg,” the symphonies in E-flat, C minor and F, the Pianoforte Concertos in C minor and G major, and the Violin Concerto in D, we were living in the same house[44] and (since we were each carrying on a bachelor’s apartment) we dined at the same restaurant and chatted away many an unforgettable hour in the confidential intimacy of colleagues, for Beethoven was then merry, ready for any jest, happy, full of life, witty and not seldom satirical. No physical ill had then afflicted him [?]; no loss of the sense which is peculiarly indispensable to the musician had darkened his life; only weak eyes had remained with him as the results of the smallpox with which he had been afflicted in his childhood, and these compelled him even in his early youth to resort to concave, very strong (highly magnifying) spectacles.[45]
He had me play the pieces mentioned, recognized throughout the musical world as masterpieces, and, without giving me time to think, demanded to know my opinion of them; I was permitted to give it without restraint, without fearing that I should offend any artistic conceit—a fault which was utterly foreign to his nature.
The above is from “Cäcilia,” Vol. IX, 218, 219. In the so-called “Studien” (appendix) are other reminiscences, which form an admirable supplement to it. Those which belong to the years 1800-1805 follow: