We owe much of our knowledge of the relations between Beethoven and Holz to Schindler’s statements as they appear in his biography,[128] two articles which appeared in the “Kölnische Zeitung” in 1845, and among the glosses on the Conversation Book. But many of his utterances show ill-feeling, which it is not unfair to trace to a jealousy dating back to the time when Holz crowded Beethoven’s “Secretary sans salary” out of Beethoven’s service and good graces. There was no open rupture between Beethoven and Schindler, but a feeling of coolness and indifference which grew with the advancement of the younger man in the favor of the composer. There is considerably more to be read between Schindler’s lines than on their surface, and because of their personal equation they ought to be received with caution. True, he does not deny that Holz was possessed of excellent artistic capacities, that he was well educated and entirely respectable as a man. He describes him as a prime specimen of the Viennese “Phæacians” of whom Beethoven was wont to speak with supreme contempt; and there is ample evidence that Holz was indeed given to the pleasures which Beethoven attributed to the denizens of Scheria. But the results of Beethoven’s fellowship with a cheery companion were certainly not so great as Schindler says, nor so evil and grievous as he intimates. His earlier insinuation, that in order to exhibit his influence to the public Holz led Beethoven into company and practices which he would otherwise have avoided, among them to the frequenting of taverns and to excessive wine-bibbing, were subsequently developed into an accusation that Holz had spread a report that the composer had contracted dropsy from vinous indulgence. Beethoven was accustomed to drink wine from youth up, and also to the companionship which he found in the inns and coffee houses of Vienna, which are not to be confounded with the groggeries with which straitlaced Americans and Englishmen are prone to associate the words. It was, moreover, undoubtedly a charitable act to drag him out of his isolation into cheerful company. We know that he was so accustomed to take wine at his meals that his physicians found it difficult to make him obey their prohibition of wine and heating spices when he was ill; but that he was more given to wine-drinking in 1825 and 1826 than at any other period, we learn only from Schindler, whose credibility as a witness on this point is impeached by the fact that, as he himself confesses, he seldom saw Beethoven between March 1825 and August 1826. Nor is it true, as Schindler asserts, that Beethoven’s habits now cost him the loss of old friendships. On the contrary, it was in this period that the cordial relations between him and Stephan von Breuning, which had been interrupted many years before, were restored and became peculiarly warm. Czerny told Jahn that Beethoven’s hypochondria led to many estrangements; but when he was ill, Count Lichnowsky, Haslinger and Piringer were visitors at his bedside, and not even Schindler seems to have been able to name a man whose sympathy the composer had sacrificed. His life was solitary; but not more than it had been for years.[129] In Gerhard von Breuning’s recollections, as recorded in “Aus dem Schwarzspanierhause,” there is scarcely a mention of Holz and none at all of the dangers into which Beethoven is alleged to have been led by him.
Beethoven’s letters bear witness to the fond regard in which he held him. His name, which in German signifies wood and in the literature of the church also cross, provided Beethoven with a welcome chance to indulge his extravagant fondness for punning. Thus in the composer’s jovial address-book, not distinguished by reverence for anything sacred or profane, Holz becomes “Best Mahoghany,” “Best Splinter from the Cross of Christ,” “Best lignum crucis.” The tone of the letters is always respectful, and once he begs his friend to forget an undescribed happening. Holz had his entire confidence, and when the great catastrophe of 1826 came, Holz was the strongest prop upon which he leaned. Schindler says that Beethoven was godfather to Holz’s child, but that is plainly an error; Holz was married in the early winter of 1826, only three or four months before Beethoven’s death. The extent to which he had won Beethoven’s confidence and Beethoven’s high opinion of his character and ability are attested by the following document, which was signed only a short time after the intimacy began:
Holz Authorized to Write a Biography
With pleasure I give my friend, Karl Holz, the assurance which has been asked of me, that I consider him competent to write my eventual biography, assuming that such a thing should be desired, and I repose in him the fullest confidence that he will give to the world without distortion all that I have communicated to him for this purpose.
Ludwig van Beethoven.
Vienna, August 30, 1826.
There can be no question as to the sincerity of the desire which finds utterance in this declaration. It was made in the midst of a period when Holz was of incalculable service to him, and he had every reason to believe that Holz had both the ability and the disposition to write the truthful, unvarnished account of his life which he wanted the world to have. Schindler says that he subsequently changed his mind, said that the document was the result of a surprise sprung upon him in the confusion of occurrences, and asked von Breuning to request Holz to return it. Breuning declined to do so, says Schindler, and Beethoven, not having courage himself to make the request, contented himself with doubting the validity of a paper which was written only in pencil. On his deathbed, Schindler continues,[130] Beethoven, in answer to a question directly put to him by Breuning, unhesitatingly declared that Rochlitz was his choice as biographer; and at a later date, realizing that death was approaching, he requested Breuning and Schindler to gather up his papers, make such use of them as could be done in strict truth, and to write to Rochlitz. Two months after Beethoven had passed away Breuning followed him, and Schindler was left alone to fulfil the composer’s wish. He wrote to Rochlitz, who regretfully declined the pious task on the ground that the state of his health did not permit him to undertake so large a work. Thereupon Schindler let the matter rest, waiting for time and circumstances to determine the course which he should follow.
Stephan von Breuning had informed his brother-in-law, Dr. Wegeler, of Beethoven’s charge with reference to the papers, and Wegeler had sent Schindler notes on Beethoven’s boyhood years and his life in Bonn. In 1833 Schindler visited Wegeler in Coblenz and consulted with him about the biography which, as Wegeler knew, Rochlitz had been asked, but declined, to write. Wegeler thereupon suggested that Schindler, he and Ferdinand Ries collaborate in the writing. Ries was consulted and agreed, but work had scarcely been begun before differences arose between Schindler and Ries as to the propriety of giving to the world matters which Schindler (who insisted that Ries was paying a grudge which he owed his erstwhile teacher) thought of no interest or too offensive for publication. Ries contended that to tell the whole truth about great men was right and could do them no injury. Schindler says he then persuaded Wegeler to continue the collaboration without Ries, but, delays resulting from correspondence with persons in Vienna, Wegeler became impatient and in October, 1844,[131] announced that his notes were about to be published. They did not appear, however, and Schindler tried again to work in company with Ries; but the latter persisted in his purpose, and the project fell through a second time. This was in 1837, and the next year, shortly after Ries’s sudden death, appeared the “Biographische Notizen über Ludwig van Beethoven” by Wegeler and Ries. In the remarks with which the men prefaced their reminiscences there is no reference to the projected collaboration described by Schindler, nor can it truthfully be said that anything in Ries’s observations bears out Schindler’s charge that he felt a grudge against Beethoven and sought to feed it by telling unpleasant truths about him.
To continue the story of these early biographies: Schindler now asked counsel of Dr. Bach, who advised him to betake himself to the task of writing the life of Beethoven alone. He did so, and his book appeared in 1840. Holz never made use of the imprimatur which he had received from Beethoven, but in 1843 formally relinquished his authorization to Dr. Gassner, of Carlsruhe, promising to deliver all the material which he held into his hands and to use his influence in the procurement of dates from authentic sources, “so that the errors in the faulty biographies which have appeared up to the present time may be corrected.” That this was a fling at Schindler’s book is evident from a document[132] in which, on November 1, 1845, Holz, at that time director of the Concerts spirituels in Vienna, declares that the forthcoming biography (by Gassner) would “not derive its dates from fictitious or stolen conversation books, and unsophisticated evidence will also give more intimate information about Mr. Schindler.” Twice did Schindler attack Holz in the “Kölnische Zeitung” in 1845 and once, it would appear, Holz answered him, but anonymously. The subject need not be continued here, however; it has a bearing only on the credibility of the two men in the discussion of each other. Gassner’s biography never appeared.
Perhaps it was characteristic of Beethoven, and also of the friends who came to his help in need, that though Schindler had been written down in his bad books before Holz established himself in his confidence, and though there was never a serious estrangement between Beethoven and Holz, it was Schindler upon whom Beethoven leaned most strongly for help when the days of physical dissolution arrived—Schindler, not Holz. The latter’s devotion had either undergone a cooling process or been interfered with by his newly assumed domestic obligations. But Schindler’s statement that he was “dismissed” in December, 1826, is an exaggeration, to say the least; Beethoven wrote him a letter a month before he died, asking his help in collecting money from the Archduke. Holz died on November 9, 1858. He had been helpful to Otto Jahn when the latter was gathering material for a life of Beethoven.[133]