Authenticity of the Bettina Letters
The present writer had the honor of an interview or two with Mme. von Arnim in 1849-50, and heard the story from her lips; in 1854-5, it was his good fortune to meet her often in two charming family circles—her own and that of the brothers Grimm. Thus at an interval of five years he had the opportunity of comparing her statements, of questioning her freely and of convincing himself, up to this point, of her simple honesty and truth.
But the rock of offense does not lie here; it is in the long discourse of Beethoven which will presently be given in these pages. Schindler objects to this, both in its matter and form, on the ground that he had never heard “the master” talk in this manner. But the Beethoven whom Schindler knew in his last years was not the Beethoven of 1810, and Anton Schindler certainly was not an Elizabeth Brentano. There happens to be proof that just in the former period the composer could talk freely and eloquently. Jahn says: “Beethoven’s personality and nature, moreover, were calculated to make a significant but winning impression upon women,” and cites Mme. Hummel (Elizabeth Röckel) in proof. “As a matron advanced in years,” says he, “and still winning because of her charming graciousness, she spoke with ingratiating warmth of the good fortune of having been observed by Beethoven and to have been on friendly relations with him. ‘Whoever saw him in good humor, intellectually animated, when he gave utterance to his thoughts in such a mood,’ said she with glowing eyes, ‘can never forget the impression which he made.’”
There are two hypotheses as to the genesis of this letter to Goethe. The one: that Mme. von Arnim in preparing the “Briefwechsel” for publication wrote out her own crude and nebulous thoughts and gave them to the public in the form of a fictitious report of a conversation of Beethoven. The other: that she found Beethoven fresh from the composition of the “Egmont” music, full of enthusiasm for Goethe and vehemently desirous that his, the great composer’s, views upon music should be known and comprehended by the great poet; that he, happening to get upon this topic at their first interview, imparted those views to her with that express purpose; and that she, so far as she was able to follow and understand the speaker, and so far as her memory could recall his words a few hours after, correctly records and reports them.
The first hypothesis rests now on precisely the same foundation as when Schindler wrote, namely, on the presumption that Beethoven could not have spoken thus; but a discourse uttered under such circumstances and with such a purpose, poured into the willing ear of a beautiful, highly cultivated and remarkably fascinating young woman, one who possessed the higher artistic and intellectual qualities of character in an extraordinary degree—such a discourse might well abound in thoughts and expressions which the prosaic Schindler in the most prosaic period of his master’s life never drew from him.
Two significant minor points may be noted: there was a Latin word in use by the Breuning family in the old Bonn days with a meaning not given in the dictionaries. This we learn from Wegeler’s “Notizen,” and only there. Yet Mme. v. Arnim puts this word, raptus, in precisely this local sense into Beethoven’s mouth several years before the publication of the “Notizen”! Again: when the discoveries of Galvani and Volta were still a novel topic of general interest, when, through them, physiologists, as Dubois-Raymond expressed it, “believed that at length they should realize their visions of a vital power”; and when the semi-scientific world was full of the theories of Mesmer and his disciples—at that time, the first years of the nineteenth century, custom gave the word elektrisch (electrical) a significance long since lost, which well conveyed the thought Beethoven is made to express. But in 1834-5, to introduce this word in that sense, retrospectively, into a fictitious conversation purporting to be of the year 1810, shows, no less than the raptus, an exquisite tact so rare, that it might well be termed a most felicitous stroke of genius, one of which any writer of romance might be vain.
Julius Merz, in his “Athenæum für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Leben” (Nuremberg, January, 1839), printed for the opening article “Drei Briefe von Beethoven an Bettina.” The third of these letters was copied the next July into Schilling’s ephemeral musical periodical the “Jahrbücher” (Carlsruhe), with remarks by the editor expressing doubts of its authenticity. But Schindler, whose book was just then going to press, copied a large portion of it as genuine; and in his second edition (1845) reprinted all three entire, without adding a word of doubt or misgiving. They had appeared in English in 1841, from a copy given to Mr. Henry F. Chorley by Mme. von Arnim; and since then have been reprinted in various languages probably more frequently, and become more universally known, than any other chapter in Beethoven literature. Here and there a reader shared in Schilling’s doubts; but twenty years elapsed before these doubts were put into such form, and by an author of such position, that a reasonable self-respect could allow Mme. von Arnim to take notice of them; and then it was too late—she lay upon her death-bed. Her silence under the attacks made upon her veracity is therefore no evidence against her.
A. B. Marx, the author here referred to, produces but one argument which demands notice here, and this is the occurrence of certain “repetitions”: “liebe, liebste,” “liebe, gute,” “bald, bald” which he declared to be “very womanish and very un-Beethovenian.” Now, on the contrary, in the text of this volume there is abundant proof that just these expressions are very Beethovenian and characteristic of his letters to favorite women at the precise period in question.
It is true, as he says, that when Marx wrote, nothing of the kind had ever been published; a fortiori, nothing twenty years before; but this fact, on which he laid such stress, instead of supporting really demolishes his argument. It was in the autumn of 1838 that Mr. Merz received the letters. At that time specimens of Beethoven’s correspondence had been published by Seyfried in the pseudo-“Studien,” by Schumann in the “Neue Zeitschrift,” by Gottfried Weber in the “Cäcilia,” by Wegeler in the “Notizen”; and a few others were scattered in books and periodicals. Imitators, counterfeiters, fabricators of false documents, must have samples, patterns, models; but all the Beethoven letters then in print were so far from being the patterns or models of the Bettina letters that the contrast between them was the main argument against the authenticity of the latter. If, then, Mme. von Arnim introduced so many expressions which we know (but she could not) are not “very womanish and very un-Beethovenian” into a fictitious correspondence, she did so not only without a pattern or model, but against all patterns and models. Credat Judæeus Apella, non ego.