It is much to be regretted that the nobility of nature which was really and truly Beethoven's attribute should have been so constantly overshadowed and dominated by something else which, without being a superior force, seemed by a strange perversity to be always to the fore. Whilst, however, we would wish to give to every instance of his goodness of heart its fullest weight, it would be useless, as well as wrong, to endeavour to hide the fact that his conduct, even towards those who desired to be his friends, and to whom he owed obligations for acts of sympathy and kindness, frequently admitted of no excuse. His anger, though sharp, was short, and left no sting behind; but his unjust suspicions and scornful treatment of men whose confidence he had won by his genius and force of character, were the cause of sorrow and suffering to those whom he attacked, as well as of remorse to himself, whereby his whole life was embittered, and his better nature warped to ignoble ends.
The good people of Vienna must, indeed, have been somewhat at a loss how to take the genius who had thus burst into their midst and laid them under captivity. Attempts at conciliation were more often than not frustrated by his variable temperament; for though none was apter than Beethoven to take offence, there was no one quicker to resent any effort at mediation by a third party, on whose unfortunate head it was only too likely that the irate composer would empty the vials of his wrath. Nevertheless, his erratic behaviour did not sensibly lessen the circle of his admirers or diminish the popularity which his fame had brought him. Many of the fashionable ladies of Vienna came to him for lessons instead of requiring his attendance at their houses; but such condescension made no difference to the man who held that mind and character alone were the qualifications by which men and women were to be weighed in the social balance. If, therefore, the young ladies talked or showed inattention during their lessons, he became furious, and would tear up the music and scatter it over the floor. His rage, indeed, seems to have been quite ungovernable at times. On one occasion he was playing a duet with his pupil Ries when his ear caught some fragments of a conversation which a young nobleman was carrying on with a lady at the further end of the room. Instantly he jumped up from the piano in a rage, and, taking Ries's hands off the keyboard, he bellowed, 'I play no longer for such hogs!' nor could either apologies or entreaties induce him to resume the performance.
It was often a matter of some difficulty to get him to play, especially when he was not in the humour. On such occasions he would preface the performance by striking the keys with the palm of his hand, or draw his finger along the keyboard from end to end, roaring with laughter, and in other ways behave like a spoiled child. He would not bear being pressed beyond a certain point. Once, it is related, he was asked to play before strangers at the country-house of one of his rich patrons, and flatly refused to comply; whereupon the host jokingly threatened that, if he would not play, he should be confined as a prisoner in the house. Beethoven on this jumped up and ran out of the mansion, and though it was night, he walked three miles to the next town, and thence posted to Vienna. The next day a bust of this patron which stood on Beethoven's bookcase fell to the ground, and was shattered to pieces![18]
His views as to the superiority of mind and character over everything else were certainly borne out by his actions. One day, when he was walking with the poet Goethe near Uplitz, the Imperial family were observed to be approaching. Goethe at once stood aside and removed his hat, at the same time plucking his friend by the sleeve, to remind him that they were in the presence of royalty. Beethoven, however, seemed to regard this as a fitting opportunity for illustrating his views on the independence of art, for, shaking off the hand that detained him, he buttoned up his coat in a determined manner, planted his hat firmly on his head, and, folding his arms behind him, marched straight into the ranks of the Imperial party! If Goethe felt dismayed at his friend's lack of respect, he must have been astonished to note the result; for the Archduke Rodolph not only made way for Beethoven to pass, but removed his hat, whilst the Empress was the first to bow to him.
In appearance Beethoven was short, broad, and strong-looking. His face was not prepossessing. 'He was meanly dressed, and very ugly to look at,' wrote a lady who knew and admired him, 'but full of nobility and fine feeling, and highly cultivated.' It must have been difficult to describe a face which was subject to such frequent changes of expression, but its forcefulness must have been apparent to every beholder. The eyes were black and bright, and they had a way of dilating when the composer was buried in thought so as to impart to his face an expression of being inspired. Gloomily abstracted as he would be at times, when possessed by some absorbing train of ideas, nothing could have been more cordial or more winning than the smile which lighted up his face at the sight of a friend. With a mass of dark hair surmounting a high and broad forehead, and the quick, penetrative glance which shot from beneath the large overhanging eyebrows, Beethoven's face must have struck the observer with a sense of its strong individuality. Nevertheless, only a few of the portraits have succeeded in conveying a true likeness of the man who was so unlike every one else. His hands were hairy, and the fingers 'strong and short, and pressed out with long practising.' He was very particular about the position of his hands when playing, and as a rule he kept his body quite still. When conducting, however, his movements were constant and curious. At a pianissimo passage 'he would crouch down so as to be hidden by the desk, and then, as the crescendo increased, would gradually rise, beating all the time, until at the fortissimo he would spring into the air with his arms extended, as if wishing to float on the clouds.'[19]
It was one of the most striking of Beethoven's characteristics that he dearly loved a joke. Ever since the time when he played off the rather unkind joke on the singer Heller the passion for joking had grown upon him to such an extent that evidence of its ruling force appears in every chapter of his life. He occasionally introduced a joke into his compositions. Thus, in the 'Pastoral Symphony,' we come across a trio between a nightingale, a quail, and a cuckoo. Again, in other works, such as the No. 8 Symphony, the bassoons are brought in unexpectedly, in such a manner as to produce a humorous effect. He never missed an opportunity of playing off a joke upon any of his friends, both in season and out of season, and he always showed his appreciation of the victim's discomfiture by roars of laughter. His letters are full of puns, and he bestows uncomplimentary nicknames upon his intimates. One day his brother Johann, who had acquired a small property in the neighbourhood of Vienna, called upon him in his absence, and left his card, bearing the inscription, 'Johann van Beethoven, Gutsbesitzer' (Land proprietor). Beethoven was so tickled with the conceit of this designation that he could not resist returning the card to his brother with the following inscription scrawled upon the back: 'L. van Beethoven, Hirnbesitzer' (Brain proprietor). Some of his jokes, however, were in extremely bad taste. On one occasion a lady admirer preferred a request for a lock of his hair as a keepsake, and he sent her instead a wisp cut from the beard of a goat! With his inordinate love of joking, however, he was a poor hand at bearing a joke that told against himself. It is related that, having once been rude enough to interrupt a player named Himmel in the midst of the latter's improvisation by asking when he was going to begin, Himmel afterwards wrote to him that 'the latest invention in Berlin was a lantern for the blind'—a joke which Beethoven not only failed to see, but 'when it was pointed out to him he was furious, and would have nothing more to do with his correspondent.'
His carelessness in matters of dress was very noticeable. Czerny, his pupil, has described how he found him at home on his first visit, with his shock of black hair and his unshaven chin, and his ears stuffed with cotton-wool, whilst his clothes seemed to be made of so rough a material, and were so ill-fitting that he resembled nothing so much as a Robinson Crusoe. It is related that once, when he was engaging a servant, the man stated as a reason for leaving his last situation that he failed to dress his master's hair to the latter's satisfaction. 'It is no object to me to have my hair dressed,' remarked Beethoven, as he signified his approval of the engagement. He always described himself as 'a disorderly creature,' and he certainly merited the designation. He was clumsy and awkward in his movements; he could not shave without cutting himself, or handle delicate things without breaking them; and whilst composing he invariably spilt the ink over the pianoforte. His handwriting was so illegible as to call forth objurgations from himself whenever he was called upon to decipher it. 'Yesterday,' he writes to a friend, 'I took a letter myself to the post office, and was asked where it was meant to go to; from which I see that my writing is as often misunderstood as I am myself,' Nevertheless, he was very fond of letter-writing, as the collections which have been preserved abundantly testify.
The letters of great men are often valued for the opinions they contain on persons and subjects of the day, as well as for the insight they afford into the private thoughts and feelings of the writers. Beethoven's letters contain no word-pictures of scenery or events; nor do they express his views on questions or matters in which the world at large might be supposed to take an interest. But they are none the less valuable on that account; for they reflect the openness and simplicity of his character, and lay bare his wishes, his hopes and his disappointments, his joys and his sorrows—and especially his love of fun—just as one or another of these feelings or aspirations was uppermost at the moment.
As a teacher Beethoven exhibited none of the carelessness or impatience that characterised his personal habits. If the rendering of a passage was not in accordance with his own ideas of what it should be, he insisted upon the pupil playing it over and over again until he was satisfied. He was comparatively indifferent to the playing of wrong notes, but failure on the part of a pupil to give the right shade of expression, or to grasp the true character of a piece, never failed to arouse his anger. The one, he would say, might be an accident, but the other showed a want of knowledge, or feeling, or attention.
Beethoven was by nature exceedingly unpunctual, and frequently kept his pupils waiting for their lessons. Even Madame von Breuning, for whom he had a strong affection, and who was one of the few people who could be said to have managed him, often failed in persuading him to be in time. 'Ah! I may not disturb him—he is in his raptus,' she would exclaim despairingly, in allusion to his habit of relapsing into gloomy reverie. And not even his dearest friend dared to intrude upon him at such moments. His absent-mindedness was the subject of many a joke. He often forgot to come home to dinner—a fact which, seeing that he was a man, deserves to be recorded; and it is even said that, on one occasion, he insisted on tendering money for a meal which he had not ordered, under the belief that he had dined. At another time he composed a set of variations on a Russian dance for the wife of an officer in the Russian service—a compliment which was acknowledged by the gift of a horse. Straightway Beethoven forgot all about the horse until he was reminded of its existence by a long bill presented for its keep. He persisted in shaving himself at his bedroom window, without a blind, and exposed to the view of passers-by; and when he discovered that this habit caused a crowd of jeering idlers to collect in front of the house, he flew into a rage, and exchanged his lodgings for others situated in a more retired spot, rather than discontinue the practice. His explosive temper has furnished many amusing anecdotes. One day his cook, who, in consideration of her master's incurable unpunctuality, must be regarded as an aggrieved personage, served up some eggs which were not to his taste, and he emphasised his displeasure by throwing the entire batch at the head of the unfortunate domestic. On another occasion a waiter who mistook his order was rewarded by having the contents of a dish of stew poured over his head. Even where his temper was not concerned his manners were directly opposed to those prevailing in polite society—though, in a large measure, this may have been due to his perfect simplicity and his ignorance of what was expected of him. Thus, it is told that, returning from one of his long walks in the pouring rain, he would make straight for the sitting-room of the house in which he happened to be staying and calmly proceed to shake the water from his hat over the carpet and chairs, after the fashion of a retriever just emerged from a pond, humming to himself the while some theme which had been occupying his thoughts during his walk. One of his pleasanter habits, to which he was greatly attached, was washing. He would pour the water backwards and forwards over his hands with childish delight, and if, as frequently happened, a musical idea suggested itself to him during the operation, he became oblivious to everything else, and would continue to send the water to and fro, spilling it in huge quantities, until the floor resembled a miniature lake.