Beethoven was below the middle height, not more than five feet five inches; he was broad-shouldered, sturdy, with legs like columns. He had hairy hands, short fingers, with square ends as though they had been chopped. His movements were without grace but they were marked by their quickness. He was awkward in holding playing cards; he dropped everything that he took in his hands. When he first went about in Vienna he dressed in the fashion, with silken stockings, a peruke, long boots and a sword. In later years he wore a blue or dark green coat with copper buttons, a white waistcoat and a white cravat; and he carried an eyeglass. His felt hat was on the back of his head so that it touched his coat collar, as in the sketch of him by Lyser. His hat was often shabby and it excited the attention of loungers as he amused himself by strolling aimlessly in the streets, and by peering into the shop windows. The skirts of the coat were heavy laden; there would be within them an ear-trumpet, a carpenter's pencil, a stitched-book for use in his written conversation, a thick blank-book in quarto form, in which he jotted down vagrant thoughts and musical ideas. A pocket handkerchief would hang down to the calves of his legs, and the pockets bulged until they showed the lining. He would walk in deep meditation; talk with himself; at times make extravagant gestures.
He was simple in certain ways, easily gulled; so absent-minded that he once forgot he was the owner of a horse. He could appreciate wit, although he preferred rough jokes and horse play. He enjoyed pranks at the expense of others. He threw eggs at his cook and poured the contents of dishes over the heads of waiters. He was often brutal and rude in his speech to unoffending friends and strangers. The reproach of his being absurdly suspicious may be laid perhaps to his deafness. The son of a drunkard, he was on the whole abstemious; at the tavern he would sit apart with a glass of beer and a long pipe, and there he would brood. Of restless nature, he shifted constantly his lodgings, often with a whimsical excuse. He was fond of washing himself. He ate greedily badly cooked food whenever it occurred to him that he was hungry; and his digestion suffered thereby. He was fond of a panada with fresh eggs, macaroni sprinkled thickly with cheese of Parma, and fish. His favorite drinks were cool and pure water, and coffee which he prepared in a glass machine with extreme care, with sixty beans in a cup. It is said that in later years his table manners were beyond endurance. When he tried housekeeping for the sake of his nephew he was in continual trouble with his servants. He had little or no sense of order.
LIFE MASK OF BEETHOVEN
Taken in 1812 by Franz Klein, Beethoven being then in his forty-second year. This mask and the bust made after it by the same artist (see page [341]) are of the first importance in forming a correct judgment of the value of all portraits of Beethoven.
But the life of Beethoven, the man, was not merely a chronicle of small-beer, a record of shifting of lodgings, quarrels, rude sayings and personal discomforts. His character was a strange compound of greatness and triviality. The influence of heredity, the early unfortunate surroundings, the physical infirmity that was probably due to the sins of his fathers, the natural impatience of a man whose head was in the clouds with the petty cares of daily life:—all these unfitted him for social intercourse with the gallant world in which he was, however, a welcomed guest. He was afraid of elegance or he disdained it. Frankness, that was often another name for brutality, was dear to him, and he saw no wrong in calling men and women who talked when he played "hogs." He was proud, and his pride was offended easily. He was sure of his own work, he would therefore brook no contradiction; irritable, he was inclined to quarrel. He preferred nature to man, and was never so happy as when walking and composing in the open. In fields and woods he meditated his great compositions. Winter and summer he rose at the breaking of day and began to write, but in heat or cold, rain or sunshine, he would rush out suddenly for air. Yet dear as light and air were to him, the twilight was his favorite hour for improvising.
DEATH MASK OF BEETHOVEN
Taken by Dannhauser, March 28, 1827, two days after Beethoven's death.