In the autumn of 1815, died his elder brother Carl, who held the office of cashier in the national bank of Austria. With the death of this brother commenced a new epoch for our Beethoven, an epoch of incidents and facts difficult to relate; and, could I here lay down my pen and leave the continuation of my work to another, I should feel myself truly happy. Here begins a most painful situation for the biographer who adopts this motto: "Do justice to the dead, and spare the living: with the former fulfil the desire of the deceased; with the latter, do the duty of the Christian, and leave Him who is above to judge."
To evade this dilemma is utterly impossible: it would be the same thing as to close here at once the biography of Beethoven, which the whole musical world desires to have as complete as possible, and which from this time acquires a higher interest; for not only is Beethoven brought, for the first time, by a conflict of circumstances, into closer contact with civil life, and binds up the rod for scourging his own back, but, through these new conflicts, the moral man Beethoven first gains occasion to show himself in all his energy, and even momentarily to outweigh the creative genius.
The value of that brother Carl, while living, to Beethoven we have several times had occasion to show. Whether it might not have been desirable for his creative genius, as well as for his peace with the world, that this brother had died many years earlier, I will not pretend to decide, but shall merely assert, that he ought not, on many accounts, to have died before Beethoven, as he left him burdens that could not fail to crush him but too speedily. In his will, dated November 14, 1815, Carl van Beethoven begged his brother Ludwig to take upon himself the guardianship of the son whom he left behind. How our Beethoven fulfilled this request will be shown in the sequel.
In a letter of the 22nd of November, 1815,[49] to M. Ries, Beethoven himself mentions the death of this brother, adding, "And I cannot estimate what I have given him to render his life more comfortable at less than 10,000 florins" (10,000 francs)—by which Beethoven cannot possibly mean all that he had given to his brother during his whole life, for that he was himself least capable of calculating. In the same letter he says, "He"—namely, his deceased brother,—"had a bad wife;" and if he had added, "both had a son who is now to be my son," he would have comprehended in one sentence the sources of the severest affliction of his future life.
At the death of his father, Beethoven's nephew was about eight years old, a handsome boy, the quality of whose mind also authorised great hopes. Perceiving this, and considering, on the other hand, what would become of him if he continued with his mother, he resolved to adopt him as his son.[50] But, as the boy's mother protested against this, while Beethoven persevered in his resolution, supporting himself upon the last will of his brother, the matter led to a lawsuit, the proceedings in which were commenced by the widow.
Before I continue the narrative of this unhappy transaction, it is necessary to mention another unpleasant circumstance relating to our master. Precisely at the time when Beethoven's young nephew became the bone of contention between his mother and his uncle, the interests of music in Vienna suffered severely through the failure of Prince Lobkowitz. This nobleman, who had become lessee of the Imperial Court Theatre—not for the sake of lucre, but out of genuine love to the arts—carried his zeal for all that is sublime and beautiful too far, and was obliged suddenly to stop. Owing to this circumstance, Beethoven lost the portion contributed by the prince to the pension settled upon him in 1809; and, as for any restitution, that was wholly out the question. Thus we see that the amount of that pension, reduced to one-fifth by the finance-patent in 1811, was now still further diminished.
At the time when the suit in question commenced (1816) Beethoven was engaged in setting up a household establishment of his own, which appeared to him to be indispensably necessary if he meant to keep his nephew, unassailed by the world, under his own care. Upon this prosaic business, so incongruous with all his habits, he fell to work, as he did upon everything else, earnestly and zealously. By way of intermezzo, I shall just introduce a little specimen of the manner in which he set about it. He seems to have made his first inquiries of a person conversant with housekeeping: a paper, containing on the left Beethoven's questions, and on the right the answers to them, written in masculine hand, is an interesting document of his spirit of enterprise. He asks, for instance:—
"1. What is a proper allowance for two servants for dinner and supper, both as to quality and quantity?"
On the right-hand side is given the answer, in most minute detail.
"2. How often should one give them meat?—Ought they to have it both at dinner and supper?