Beethoven learns that Karl goes to the theatre, has been seen in the company of lewd women, frequents dancing places, plays billiards and borrows money. Holz, who once suggests the advisability of assuming the co-guardianship, thinks it might be a good thing could he attach the young man to himself by becoming his often companion. He invites him to a beerhouse to learn his drinking habits and reports favorably upon them. He talks with Karl about the theatre and advises him to go less to the Josephstadt playhouse and oftener to the Burg, where classical pieces are played; and learning that Karl attends the former because it costs him nothing, ventures the statement that his uncle will allow him money for the theatre if he will but go to the better place. Beethoven’s views on the subject are expressed in a letter: “Let the theatre alone for the present.” After the wicked deed, Holz reminded Beethoven that Johann van Beethoven had said that Karl knew every strumpet in Vienna and that investigation had disclosed that he was right. Karl goes to dances; Beethoven is so solicitous as to their character that he expressed a desire to go to some of them with Holz so as to learn what they are like, and Holz dissuades him on the ground that he would be stared at and it would cause public comment; but he offers to take him to a hall “of the reformed” in the Apollo Room, where he would be less observed. Beethoven fears that Karl’s passion for billiards will lead him astray, and Holz says he will sometime go with the lad to see how well he plays and thus learn whether or not he plays much.[160] Karl is now nearly 20 years old, but Beethoven does not, or will not, know that he is no longer to be disciplined as a child. He commands Schlemmer that he is not to be permitted to go out at night except on written permission signed by him. He exhausts Dr. Reisser’s patience with his frequent calls to learn of the young man’s habits and conduct. He takes upon himself the task of the ancient pedagogue and waits for him upon the steps of the Institute to accompany him home. His illness and melancholy, due to his solitary life in Baden, increase and he is haunted by premonitions of death. In a Conversation Book he once writes what seems to be the title of an imaginary composition “On the Death of Beethoven.” On June 9, 1825, he writes to Karl: “You know how I live here. To this is added the cold weather. This solitude weakens me still more, for my weakness really often borders on a swoon. O, do not pain me more! The man with the scythe will not give me much more time.” In the same summer: “God will set me free from them. Libera me domine de illis etc.” and “God be with you and me. It will soon be all over with your faithful father.” His loneliness oppresses him more and more as fears for his nephew’s fate and recognition of his own impotency to avert it pursue him. “God has never deserted me. Somebody will be found who will close my eyes,” he writes on September 14. Tenderness and reproach alternate in the letters written from Baden in the summer of 1825. With the young man’s habits of extravagance he has no patience whatever. He insists on a strict accounting for every florin which he allows him and is enraged when he hears that Karl has not forgotten his boyish trick of borrowing from the servants. He contrasts his own habits of thrift with the prodigence of his ward: “I should have gotten along two years with the walking-coat. True, I have the bad habit of always wearing an old coat at home, but Mr. Karl—O, what a shame! And why? The money-bag Mr. L. v. B-n is here only for this purpose.”
The thought of laying down the guardianship occupies his mind over and over again and his friends without exception urge him to do it; but he clings to the office, hoping against hope for his nephew’s reclamation. Crises of apprehension and foreboding produce tender appeals and piteous expostulations like these:
If you find me violent, ascribe it to my great concern for yourself, beset as you are by many dangers.
I hope at least to receive a letter from you to-morrow. Do not make me fear. O, think of my sufferings! By good right I ought to have no cares of this kind; but what have I not experienced!
Reflect that I am sitting here and might easily fall ill.
God is my witness, I dreamed only of being rid of you and of this miserable brother and the hideous family which he foisted upon me. God hear my prayer for I can never trust you again. Unfortunately your father—or rather, not your father.
In the beginning of October, 1825, Karl absented himself from his lodgings for several days. Where he went and what he did is a secret held by the dead; but repentance of some sort, or consideration of the fact that he was dependent upon his uncle, seems to have persuaded him to write to Beethoven and beg his forgiveness. On the 5th of the month Beethoven wrote from Baden:
Precious, dear son!
I have just received your letter. Already filled with anxiety I had to-day determined to hurry to Vienna. God be thanked, it is not necessary. Do but obey me and love and happiness of the soul paired with human happiness will be at our side and you will consort an intensive existence with the external, but it were better that the former dominate the latter.—il fait trop froid—I am to see you on Saturday, then, write whether you are coming in the morning or evening so that I may hasten to meet you.—I embrace you and kiss you a thousand times not my lost (prodigal) but my new-born son. I wrote to Schlemmer—do not think harshly on that account—I am still so full of fear.
The letter has been mutilated and the remainder is unintelligible, all but a request in bad French for matches. But his impatience to see the returned prodigal was stronger than his purpose to wait for him in Baden. He went to Vienna and evidently sent the following letter from Karl’s lodgings: