Part 2

This habit of suddenly rushing out into the open air he practised at all seasons, as the fancy took him: cold or heat, rain or sunshine, made no difference to him whatever. He had found that only among the silent solitudes of the hills and valleys could he fully release that throng of insurgent ideas which for ever clamoured in his brain for an outlet. Melodies, subjects, suggestions for their development and execution, flocked continuously through his mind; and to set them down in feverish haste--to imprison their "first fine careless rapture" in his note-book, for subsequent improvement and enlargement, was the occupation of all these country walks. But, consciously or unconsciously, his restless mind was soothed, and his sensitive nerves strengthened by the tranquil influences of the winds and skies.

Beethoven pursued his usual course on the present occasion, pulling out his note-book every few minutes, his lips moving rapidly, his eyes riveted on some mysterious distance. But he made an obvious effort at entertaining his young companion; and presently, Neate, encouraged by an unwonted stretch of conversation, or rather monologue, ventured to remark upon the master's great power in creating tone-pictures, and of the landscape-drawing, so to speak, of the Pastoral Symphony, wherein the green fields of Paradise seem to expand before earth's weary eyes, and there is

"Shed On spirits that had long been dead, Spirits dried up and closely furled, The freshness of the early world."

"Know'st thou the house, its roof on columns white? .... O there, O there, might I with thee, Beloved, go!"

Beethoven testified that, when composing, he always had a vision of natural beauty before his eyes, and that it enabled him to work. He had never been out of his native land: the lovely Austrian villages which he frequented, Hetzendorf, Dobling, or Heiligenstadt, sufficed him for beauty and for healthiness. But now and then, he allowed, he had a momentary longing for other scenes: the ice-blue mysteries of the Alps, or the warm and fragrant air of Italy. And he quoted--singing in a harsh, crude voice--those words of Goethe's which he had linked with such enchanting music,--the words of Mignon, yearning towards the homeland of her heart.

"Know'st thou the land, where sweet the citron blows, Where deep in shade the golden orange glows? A tender breeze from bluest heav'n doth stray O'er myrtle bough and lofty laurel spray. Know'st thou it well? that land dost know? O there, O there, might I with thee, Beloved, go!

Know'st thou the house, its roof on columns white? Fair gleams the hall, the hearth is glimmering bright; And marble statues ask, with glances mild, 'What have they done to thee? O say, poor child!' Know'st thou it well? that house dost know? O there, O there, might I with thee, Beloved, go!

Know'st thou the crag, and all its cloudy grey, Where scarce the muleteer may grope the way? In caverns lurk the dragon's ancient brood, Sheer falls the rock, and over it the flood. Know'st thou it well? the way we know-- O there, O there, my father, let us go!" Göethe--_Wilhelm Meister_.

The composer at last turned homeward once more, and on arrival at his rooms, without a word of preparation, took young Neate by the shoulders and placed him upon the three-legged chair before the pianoforte. The chair promptly broke; but, nothing disconcerted, the master replaced it with another almost equally crippled, and bade the young man play.

It may be imagined with what diffidence, what nervousness, and what sinking of heart, the Englishman essayed the _Sonata Pathétique_. He paused, breathless, at the conclusion, and awaited the verdict with anxiety.

"My son," said Beethoven, clapping him on the shoulder, "you will have to play a very long time before you discover that you know nothing. But cheer up! for the young there are infinities of hope." And he proceeded, with inconceivably kind care and patience, to give the youth such teaching as he had never imagined possible. That 'bitter, sarcastic' tongue of which folk complained, that irritable temper which often alarmed the master's young lady pupils--were now conspicuously absent. For he had a peculiar sympathy with young people at the outset of their career; and no trouble was too great for him to take on their behalf.

When at length, with cordial words of encouragement, he dismissed the Englishman, Beethoven for a moment was tempted to look back upon his own early days; when, always working very hard, either as a performer or a teacher, surrounded by unloving relations and uncongenial circumstances, he struggled upward, ever upward, impelled by some irresistible wind of destiny. Then he dwelt, involuntarily, upon the gathering clouds of his manhood--the secret dread of his encroaching deafness--the hidden sorrows of unrequited love.

"Such things," he thought, "have often brought me to the border of despair, and I have come very near to putting an end to my own life.... Yet it seemed impossible to quit this world for ever before I had done all that I felt I was destined to accomplish ... and how much of that is still before me! Ah! hard struggle to accomplish all which remains to be done, from the daily drudgery of necessity-work to the farthest journey, the highest flight! ... All this must be hewn out of thyself ... for thyself there is no further happiness than that which thou findest in thyself--thy art!" (_Beethoven's Diary_).

But now, with the coming of the evening hours, the composer might relax the tension of his thoughts, and find pleasure, so far as his infirmity allowed, in the society of his friends, and in talking over the newspapers. He was a well-read man, and took an eager interest in all the passing events of the day; moreover, when not in his 'serious working humour', he was a humorous, cheerful companion, full of fun and not averse from practical joking; a very different man from that 'savage personality, at loggerheads with mankind,' which he had appeared to the unsympathetic Goethe. For 'friends,' however, we had better substitute 'acquaintances'; because Beethoven declared: "I have only found two friends in the world with whom I have never had a misunderstanding. One is dead; the other still lives. Although we have heard nothing of each other for six years, I know that I still hold the place in his affections that he holds in mine."

A decided irascibility and uncertainty of temper, common to all deaf people, was apt to create rifts and coolnesses between Beethoven and those with whom he might be closely intimate. His whole warmth and abundance of affection was squandered upon his nephew Carl, the worthless son of a worthless father; an affection by no means reciprocated, which was fated only to cause fresh pangs to his much-enduring heart.

But, be that as it may, the Viennese were proud of their Beethoven--proud to be numbered among his associates. They bore him a species of personal attachment. He was part and parcel of themselves; though he moved in their midst, doubly remote from them, alike by his affliction and by his open distaste for 'the dissipations of a great and voluptuous city.' He would sit apart at a table, brooding over a long pipe and a glass of lager, his eyes half-closed; but if anyone spoke to him, or rather attempted to do so, he would always reply with ready courtesy and kindness. For, as he had written from the very depths of his heart:--

"O ye who think or say that I am rancorous, obstinate or misanthropical, what an injustice you do me! You little know the hidden cause of my appearing so. From childhood my heart and mind have been devoted to benevolent feelings, and to the thoughts of great deeds to be achieved in the future.... Born with an ardent, lively temperament, fond of social pleasures, I was early compelled to withdraw myself, and live a life of isolation from all men. At times, when I made an effort to overcome the difficulty, oh, how cruelly was I frustrated by the doubly painful experience of my defective hearing! ... Forgive me, then, if you see me turn away when I would gladly mix with you. Doubly painful is my misfortune, seeing that it is the cause of my being misunderstood. For me there can be no recreation in human intercourse, no conversation, no exchange of thoughts with my fellow-men. In solitary exile I am compelled to live."

Sometimes, however, his naturally vivacious spirits prevailed, and he became witty, satirical, 'a fellow of infinite jest.' Anything in the way of bad music was apt to send him into shouts of laughter; but "of Handel, Bach and Mozart he always spoke with the greatest reverence, and, although he would not allow his own great works to be depreciated, he himself made fun of his lesser productions. If greatly roused, he would let loose a perfect flood of hard-hitting witticisms, droll paradoxes and ideas." (_Rochlitz._)

Still, albeit generous to a fault, and ready to give away his last thaler even to an enemy, his dislikes were so violent that he would actually take to his heels at the sight of some special object of aversion.

With particularly favoured friends, in the privacy of their own homes, Beethoven was less reticent than usual. He would discuss with them his two great regrets--that he had never visited England and had never married; which were his favourite topics of conversation. It is true that at forty-five--his present age--these regrets might still have time to be obliterated. But he felt himself the very Simeon Stylites of music, set apart to suffer in ascetic endurance upon a pillar of aloofness and despair.

And it was in this melancholy frame of mind--a reaction from the transient mirth of the evening--that the master buttoned his old grey coat about him and trudged gloomily homeward as the evening star first lighted itself. "O God, Thou lookest downward on my inward soul!" he murmured, "Thou knowest, Thou seest that love for my fellow-men, and all kindly feelings have their abode there! ... But I have no real friends; I must live alone. But I know that God is nearer to me than to many others in my art, and I commune with Him fearlessly."

Drawing a scrap of paper towards him, he scrawled a few heartfelt words upon it by the last rays of twilight:--

"I must praise Thy goodness that Thou hast left nothing undone to draw me to Thyself. It pleased Thee, early, to make me feel the heavy hand of Thy wrath, and by many chastisements to bring my proud heart low. Sickness and other misfortunes hast Thou caused to hang over me, to bring my straying from Thee to my remembrance.... But one thing I ask of Thee, my God--not to cease Thy work in my improvement ... Let me tend towards Thee, no matter by what means--and be fruitful in good works...."

And Ludwig van Beethoven had a means of "communing fearlessly" with his Creator, which, for him, was perhaps, as direct a road as prayer, if _laborare est orare_. For music, "although in its glorious fulness and power at that time unknown, was associated intimately by the early Christian writers with Christianity--with immortality." As Wagner has declared, music is of the "essential nature of things, and its kingdom is not of this world... Its spirit, like that of Christianity, is love." And by this medium, and in this divine language, the man whose outward senses were being darkened, now held, in the rapture of the "inward light," his intercourse with celestial things.

Baulked and baffled by circumstances--dragged at the chariot-wheels of relentless Fate--shut up and shut off from all sweet human amenities, the tone-artist sat down at his piano, and "after preluding softly with one hand ... poured out his soul in a very flood of harmony." At first the strains were mournful, sombre, disconnected, his own sad thoughts bearing a perpetual burden to him.

"O Providence," so he prayed, "let one more day of pure joy be vouchsafed to me! The echo of true happiness has so long been a stranger to my heart! When, when, O God! shall I again be able to feel it in the temple of nature and of man? Never? No! O, that were too hard!"

But presently he became buried in a deeper abstraction; a sphinx-like calm settled on, and smoothed out, his harsh, rough features. With the ease and firmness of a brilliant executant--with the intense feeling of an inspired artist, he continued to improvise the most glorious music which had issued that day from either his brain or his fingers. It was, like the _Allegro Finale_ of the C sharp minor Quartet, "the dance of the world itself: wild delight, the lamentation of anguish, ecstasy of love, highest rapture, misery, rage, voluptuousness and sorrow." This great gift of extemporising, (which was only paralleled by his equal skill in sight-reading) was at once the solace and the snare of Beethoven. Hours upon hours could thus be dreamed away; yet who shall say that they were wasted? For gradually, out of the shifting panorama of rhythm and sound, a supreme and marvellous melody evolved itself.

"The _Allegro Finale_ of the C-sharp-minor Quartet ... wild delight, the lamentation of anguish, ecstasy of love, highest rapture, misery, rage, voluptuousness and sorrow."

For a long time--months, if not years--he had been pursuing, as it were, some beautiful, elusive phantom--the idea contained in Schiller's stirring lines commencing:--"_Freude, schöner Götterfunken_," ("_Joy, thou heavenly spark of Godhead_"). He was consumed with the desire to give these lines a worthy setting; he had filled a multitude of note-books with rough sketches; but the authentic, the indubitable melody which should be recognised at first hearing as the only one, had still evaded him until now--now, when he filled the twilight with a cry of success.

"I have it! I have it!" he exclaimed, as those magnificent phrases which were to be the crown and consummation of the great Ninth Symphony, at last were crystallised into shape upon his brain. And at that moment he entered, as it were, upon a new world of light, "in the soil of which bloomed before his sight the long-sought, divinely-sweet, innocently pure melody of humanity."

"_Joy, thou heavenly spark of Godhead!_" Was it the irony of Fate that made this thought the highest pinnacle of Beethoven's marvellous achievements? Was it not rather one of those divine compensations by which Heaven bestows, with both hands lavishly, "above all that we can desire or deserve?"

Scintillations of that "heavenly spark," multiplied a million-fold, flashed across the mental vision of the inspired composer; incessant majesties of sound piled themselves in splendid strata upon his intellectual ear; until, "blinded with excess of light," and outwearied with the exuberance of a joy beyond all that earth could yield, Ludwig van Beethoven sought his meagre straw mattress and thin quilt, and--while the clocks struck ten in the city--fell asleep as softly as a child.

Printed by The Bushey Colour Press (André & Sleigh, Ltd.), Bushey, Herts.

End of Project Gutenberg's A Day with Ludwig Beethoven, by May Byron