No doubt all this shows culpable weakness on Mozart's part—weakness incompatible with his duty to himself and his family. His household burdens were increased by many misfortunes, especially by the repeated and long-continued illnesses of his wife, necessitating an expensive sojourn in Baden for many successive summers. Her delicacy doubtless prevented such personal supervision of the household as was essential to its economical management. She failed also to acquire such an intellectual influence over her husband as to strengthen his capacity for the proper conduct of his affairs, and she had not strength of mind or energy to take the management of the household entirely into her own hands. She felt the discomfort keenly, saw the causes of it, but could not strive against them for any length of time. Without wishing to reproach her, we may say at least that had Constanze been as good a housekeeper as Mozart was a composer, things would have gone well with him.
It must not be supposed that Mozart was blind to the advantages of good household management or wanting in the will to effect it; from time to time he made earnest endeavours after economic reform. In February, 1784, he began an exact catalogue of his compositions, in which he carefully entered every one of his works, until a short time before his death, with suggestions of the theme;[ 112 ] at the same time he began to keep an account book of his income and expenditure. André observes as to this account, which unhappily I have not been able to see, that Mozart entered his receipts—which included the profits on some concerts, on lessons to different persons of rank, and on a few of his compositions—on a long piece of paper. His expenditure he noted in a little quarto book, which he afterwards used MOZART'S ACCOUNT-KEEPING. for writing English exercises and translations. His entries, while they lasted, were exact and minute. For instance, on one page we find:—
May 1, 1784. Two lilies of the valley... 1 kreutzer.
May 27, 1784. A starling.........34 kreutzers.
Then comes the following melody—[See Page Image]
with the remark, "Das war schön!" It is easy to discover what so delighted him. On April 12 he had composed his pianoforte concerto in G major (453 K.), and soon after played it in public. The subject of the rondo is:—[See Page Image]
The pleasure he felt at hearing it piped so comically altered induced him to buy the bird. He grew very much attached to his "Vogel Stahrl," as indeed he was to all animals, especially birds, and when it died he erected a gravestone to its memory in his garden, with an epitaph in verse.[ 113 ]
The excessive neatness of the account-books leads us to fear that they were not persevered with for any very long time, and indeed it is almost surprising that Mozart should have kept them for a whole year, from March, 1784, to February, 1785. After that he handed them over to his wife, and the entries soon cease.
Certainly Niemetschek is right in saying that "even if the same indulgence be granted to Mozart that we must all wish to see extended to ourselves, he cannot be put forward as an example of carefulness and economy." Whoever, like Mozart, begins his housekeeping with nothing at all, or even with debts, and is dependent upon an uncertain and fluctuating income, has need of the strictest economy and regularity, amounting even to parsimony, if he is to extricate himself from his difficulties or attain to competence; otherwise occasional strokes of good fortune are seldom of use—indeed are sometimes positive hindrances." Regularity and economy were, as we have seen, qualities not in Mozart's nature, and he never acquired them. Their absence sufficiently accounts for his constant financial embarrassments. He atoned for his errors and weakness by poverty and want, by sorrow and care, by shame and humiliation; he was spared none of the punishment which life ruthlessly inflicts on those who do not conform to the laws of her iron necessity. But death has wiped out the stain, and the misrepresentations of envious detractors and petty fault-finders have no power to touch that which is immortal.
