[89] Thayer copies the entry found in the Conversation Book, but doubts if the handwriting is that of Liszt fils. It is as follows: “I have often expressed the wish to Herr von Schindler to make your high acquaintance and am rejoiced to be able now to do so. As I shall give a concert on Sunday the 13th I most humbly beg you to give me your high presence.” The courtly language suggests the thought that the father may have written the words for the boy.
[90] “Beethoven, Liszt und Wagner,” p. 199.
[91] In view of the fact that Beethoven would not have been able to hear a note of the music had he been present and that, unless deeply moved, he would not have made a public exhibition of his feelings, and that even Schindler does not seem to have heard of the story of the kiss, it is very likely, in the opinion of the present editor, that the whole story is a canard invented for advertising purposes. Thayer’s note on the copy which he made of the conversation at the time of the presentation of the lad is: “B. does not appear to have attended the concert, as some one reports to him that he ‘improvised on a Hungarian-German theme.’” But there are several versions of the story (see Frimmel, “Bausteine, etc.,” p 91) and Beethoven may at another time have kissed the boy.
[92] Nohl is mistaken in saying that the canon was written in Schloesser’s album. It is printed in the B. and H. “Ges. Ausg.,” Series XXIII, No. 256.
[93] A Schusterfleck, that is a cobble, or cobbler’s patch, like Vetter Michel and Rosalia in the musical terminology of Germany, is a tune largely made up of repetitions on different degrees of the scale of a single figure or motive.
[94] See the conversation, Vol. I, p. 321.
[95] Here are a few extracts from a letter written to Beethoven on July 3, 1823: “As I have been visiting him (Johann) three to four times a day ever since he took to his bed, and have entertained him by the hour, I have had an opportunity carefully to observe these two persons; hence I can assure you on my honor that, despite your venerable name, they deserve to be shut up, the old one in prison, the young one in the house of correction.... This illness came opportunely for both of them, to enable them to go their ways without trammel. These beasts would have let him rot if others had not taken pity on him. He might have died a hundred times without the one in the Prater or at Nussdorf the other at the baker’s deigning to give him a look.... He often wept over the conduct of his family and once he gave way completely to his grief and begged me to let you know how he is being treated so that you might come and give the two the beating they deserve.... It is most unnatural and more than barbarous if that woman, while her husband is lying ill, introduces her lover into his room, prinks herself like a sleigh-horse in his presence and then goes driving with him, leaving the sick husband languishing at home. She did this very often. Your brother himself called my attention to it, and is a fool for tolerating it so long.”
[96] Meaning Johann’s wife and step-daughter. Very incomprehensibly Kalischer thinks the Lump was Schindler!
[97] Schindler quotes Beethoven as remarking of “Euryanthe” that it was “an accumulation of diminished seventh-chords—all little backdoors!”
[98] The Quartet which Benedict heard was that in E-flat major, Op. 127, which had its performance on March 6, 1825, the year in which Benedict left Vienna with Barbaja. His letter to Thayer, therefore, carries us far beyond the period now under discussion. The conversation about the libretto of “Euryanthe” is said by Max Maria von Weber to have taken place at the dinner in Baden; but Benedict’s is the likelier story.