After his recovery, Karl was released by the police on the express condition that he would remain in Vienna only one day more. His scar, however, prevented his entering the service. Where, then, could he go, now that the fall was just beginning? His brother, Johann, invited him to his Wasserhof estate near Gneixendorf. He could no longer answer as he had once: non possibile per me—impossible for me. But his sojourn in a country house not constructed so as to guard against the cold and dampness, a want of attention to his growing infirmity, misunderstandings with his brother’s wife, a violent quarrel with the brother himself, who, after it, refused him the use of his close carriage, and, lastly, his departure in the cold of winter in the “devil’s own worst conveyance.” All these causes conspired to send our patient back to Vienna, the subject of a violent fit of sickness. In addition to all this, his nephew delayed to call a physician, and none visited his sick bed until the third day after his return. The doctor who came was not Beethoven’s customary physician, and totally misunderstood the nature of the disease. Other shocks succeeded, and the consequence was a violent attack of dropsy, the symptoms of which had first shown themselves in Gneixendorf.
His long, painfully long end was now beginning. His constitution, powerful as that of a giant, “blocked the gates against death” for nearly three months. As labor of any kind was out of the question, the arrival of Handel’s works from London, which came to him as a present, supplied him with the distraction he wished for, in his own sphere. It was not long before attacks of suffocation at night distressed him and it became necessary to perform the operation paracentesis. When he saw the stream of water gush forth, he remarked, with that sublimity of humor so peculiarly his own, that the surgeon reminded him of Moses, who struck the rock with his rod; but, in the same humorous vein, he added: “Better water from the stomach than from the pen.” With this he consoled himself. But he grew worse, and a medical consultation seemed necessary to his friends. His own heart forebode him no good, and he again made his will on the 3rd of January, 1827. He made his beloved nephew “sole heir to all he possessed.” The nephew had gone to join his regiment the day before, and this had a good and quieting effect on Beethoven. He knew that the young man would be best provided for there, and testified his gratitude to General von Stutterheim, who had received him, by dedicating to that officer his quartet in C sharp minor—his “greatest” quartet. He urged that Dr. Malfatti should be called. But he had had a falling out years before with him, and the celebrated physician did not now want to excite the displeasure of his colleagues. Schindler tells us: “Beethoven wept bitterly when I told him the doctor’s decision.”
But Malfatti came at last, and, after they had exchanged a few words, the old friends lay weeping in each other’s arms. The doctor prescribed iced punch to “quicken the organs of digestion, enervated by too much medicine.” The first physician who was called to attend him tells us: “The effect of the prescription was soon perceptible. He grew cheerful, was full of witty sallies at times, and even dreamt that he might be able to finish his oratorio Saul and David.” From his written conversations, we see that a great many of his friends had gathered about his bed. He thought of finishing the Bach overture for one of Schindler’s concerts, and even began to busy himself with the Tenth Symphony once more. He had again to experience the feeling of pecuniary embarrassment while in this condition—an embarrassment now more painful than ever—brought about more especially by the necessity of procuring a military outfit for Karl. Gallitizin had, indeed, expressly promised a short time before to send him money, but he proved a “princely boaster;” and there was no prospect of an income from any other source. All his completed works had been sold, and the little fortune he had laid aside at the time of the Congress of Vienna was irrevocably pledged to Karl by his will.
His thoughts now turned to the “magnanimous” English, who had already promised him a “benefit.” His disease lasted a long time. The third operation had been performed. His long-continued solitude had alienated men from him in Vienna; and, especially after his experiences with the Akademie in 1824, he had no confidence in the devotion and enthusiasm for art of his second home. This induced Schindler to write to England: “But what afflicts him very much is, that no one here concerns himself in the least about him; and, indeed, this total absence of interest in him is very surprising.” After this, we find only his most intimate friends at his bedside. Among these was Gleichenstein, who happened to be in Vienna on a short visit. He writes: “Thou must bless my boy as Voltaire blessed Franklin’s son.” Hummel, who was traveling and giving concerts, also saw him, and at the sight of his suffering—he had just undergone the fourth operation—burst into tears. Beethoven had, at the moment of Hummel’s visit, received a little picture as a present, and he showed it to him, saying: “See, my dear Hummel, the house in which Haydn was born—the miserable peasant hut, in which so great a man was born!”
He asks his Rhenish publisher, Schott, who had purchased his Mass and his Ninth Symphony, and who was destined one day to become the owner of the Niebelungen, for some old wine to strengthen him. Malfatti recommended an aromatic bath; and such a bath, it seemed to him, would surely save him. But it had the very opposite effect, and he was soon taken with violent pains. He wrote to London: “I only ask God that I may be preserved from want as long as I must here endure a living death.” The response was one thousand guldens from the Philharmonic Society of that city “on account of the concert in preparation.” “It was heart-rending to see how he folded his hands and almost dissolved in tears of joy and gratitude” when he received them. This was his last joy, and the excitement it caused accelerated his end. His wound broke open again and did not close any more. He felt this at first a wonderful relief, and while he felt so he dictated some letters for London, which are among the most beautiful he has written. He promised to finish the Tenth Symphony for the Society, and had other “gigantic” plans, especially as regards his Faust music. “That will be something worth hearing,” he frequently exclaimed. The overflow of his fancy was “indescribable, and his imagination showed an elasticity which his friends had noticed but seldom when he was in health.” At the same time, the most beautiful pictures of dramatic poetry floated before his mind, and in conversation he always represented his own works as filled with such “poetic ideas.” But his sufferings soon became “indescribably great. His dissolution was approaching” with giant steps, and even his friends could only wish for his end. Schindler wrote to London on the 24th March: “He feels that his end is near, for yesterday he said to Breuning and me: ‘Clap your hands, friends; the play is over.’” And further: “He advances towards death with really Socratic wisdom and unexampled equanimity.” He could well be calm of heart and soul. He had done his duty as an artist and as a man. This same day he wrote a codicil to his will in favor of his nephew; and now his friends had only one deep concern—to reconcile him with heaven. The physician approved, and Beethoven calmly but resolutely answered: “I will.”
The clergyman came and Beethoven devoutly performed his last religious duties. Madame Johann van Beethoven heard him say, after he had received the sacrament: “Reverend sir, I thank you. You have brought me consolation.”
He then reminded Schindler of the letter to London, “May God bless them,” he said. The wine he had asked for came. “Too bad! too bad! it’s too late!” These were his very last words. He fell immediately after into such an agony that he was not able to utter a single syllable more. On the 24th and 25th of March, the people came in crowds to see him again. Even the faijaks, Hoslinger and Holz, as well as the poet Castelli, were among them. “All three of us knelt before his bed,” said Holz, subsequently, to Frau Linzbaur, who, in relating the incident, added that when Holz told it “his voice forsook him, and he covered his face and wept. ‘He blessed us,’ he said, with an effort; ‘we kissed his hand, but never saw him again.’” This was the last act of his life.
“On the 26th, the little pyramidal clock, which he had received as a present from Princess Christiane Lichnowsky, stopped, as it still does when a storm is approaching. Schindler and Breuning had gone to the churchyard, to select a grave for him. A storm of loud thunder and hail came raging on about five o’clock. No one but Frau van Beethoven and the young composer, Anselm Huettenbrenner, who had hurried hither from Graz to look upon his revered master once more, were present in the room of the dying man. A stroke of lightning illuminated it with a lurid flash. The moribund opened his eyes, raised his right hand, and looked up with a fixed gaze for several seconds: the soul of the hero would not out. But when his uplifted hand fell back on the bed, his eyes half closed. Not another breath! Not another heart-beat! It was I that closed the half-open eyes of the sleeper.” So says Huettenbrenner, an eye-witness of our artist’s last moment. This was the 28th of March, 1827.
“No mourning wife, no son, no daughter, wept at his grave, but a world wept at it.” These are the words of the orator of the day on the occasion of the unveiling of the first monument to Beethoven in 1845, in Bonn. But his funeral on that beautiful day in spring was a very brilliant one. A sea of twenty thousand human beings surged over the street where now the votive church stands; for in the Schwarzspanierhaus behind it, Beethoven had lived during the last years of his life. The leading capellmeisters of the city carried the pall, and writers and musicians the torches.
“The news of his death had violently shaken the people out of their indifference,” says Dr. G. von Breuning. And, indeed, it was, as a poor old huxtress exclaimed when she saw the funeral procession, “the general of musicians” whom men were carrying to the grave! The poet, Grillparzer, delivered the funeral oration. He took for his text the words: “He was an artist, and he was what he was only through his art.” Our very being and our sublimest feelings are touched when we hear the name of