“So—a Moor, I should judge by his dark complexion.”[6]
The composer bowed in some embarrassment.
“And you write such music? You look not like it, by my faith! Haydn—I recollect the name; and I remember hearing, too, that you were not well paid for your labors, eh?”
“I have not been fortunate, your highness——”
“Why have you not applied to me before?”
“Your highness, I could not presume to think——”
“Eh? Well, you shall have no reason to complain in my service. My secretary shall fix your appointments; and name whatever else you desire. Understand me, for all of your profession find me liberal. Now then, sir Moor, you may go; and let it be your first care to provide yourself with a new coat, a wig and buckles, and heels to your shoes. I will have you respectable in appearance as well as in talents; so let me have no more of shabby professors. And do your best, my little duskey, to recruit in flesh—’twill add to the stature; and to relieve your olive with a shade of the ruddy. Such spindle masters would be a walking discredit to our larder, which is truly a spendthrift one.”
So saying, with a laugh, the haughty nobleman dismissed his new dependent. The artist chafed not at the imperious tone of patronage, for he felt not yet the superiority of his own vocation. It was the bondage-time of genius; the wings were not yet grown which were to bear his spirit up, when it brooded over a new world.
The life which Haydn led in the service of Prince Esterhazy, to which service he was permanently attached by Nicolas, the successor of Antoine, in the quality of chapel-master, was one so easy, that, says his biographer, it might have proved fatal to an artist more inclined to luxury and pleasure, or less devoted to his art and the love of glory. Now, for the first time relieved from care for the future, he was enabled to yield to the impulse of his genius, and create works worthy of the name—works not only pleasing to himself and his patron, but which gradually extended his fame over all the countries of Europe.