CHAPTER II.

In the luxurious house Marjorie and Sadie did not miss their mother as Ada did; indeed it was a delightful change for them to have so much of their sister’s society. She was more amusing than their mother, and understood their games better. When they heard that their mother had gone away to a hospital to be taken care of and made well again they said they were “dreadfully sorry,” but that was partly because sister Ada looked so sad, and partly because it was polite to say so. About a week after her mother had left her home Ada was startled one evening by the old butler, an Englishman, coming up to her while she was waiting for her father to come down to dinner, and saying in a hushed voice, “Will you wait any longer, miss? I don’t think the master will come home to dinner.”

“Then serve it at once,” Ada said; “but why do you think he will not return?”

“He left the house last night, miss, after you had gone to bed, and he has not been seen since.”

Ada’s heart stood still. “Not been seen since! What do you mean? Has he not been at his office? Perhaps he is with my mother?”

“I don’t think so, miss. Have you not seen the evening papers?” The man held a copy behind his back, Ada heard it rustle.

“Give it me,” she cried, as she put one hand on the handsomely carved pedestal which held a statue of the dancing fawn to steady herself.

“I’m sorry, miss, to be the one to hand it to you, but the whole city knows it by this time. It can’t be hid from you much longer.”

The girl looked at him with a kindly pity in her eyes. She was sorrier for him at that moment than for herself. He was a faithful old servant who had been with them since she was a baby. He handed her the paper and went softly from the room, having the delicacy to feel that it was not the place even of an old servant to see his young mistress’s sorrow.

“He’s a low skunking hound,” he said to himself, “if he is my master, to leave the pretty bit of a creature like that with those two children on her hands. Whatever will happen to them, I don’t know. There’s about enough money in the house to pay off all these miserable servants, and not much more. It’s the dirtiest trick I ever saw played. It was the disgrace and shock that sent his poor wife off her head, him living like a prince while he’s been defrauding poor widows and children.”

* * * * *

About a month from that day pretty Ada Nicoli, who had been brought up to look upon herself as an heiress, started out through the city of New York to try and find some means of livelihood for herself and her two little sisters. Her mother’s little fortune brought in just enough money to pay for her residence in the comfortable asylum to which she had gone before the terrible exposure of Mr. Nicoli’s failure had been made public, and to pay the weekly board for Ada and her two sisters at a plain middle-class boarding-house in East Thirty-second Street.

Ada had tried offering herself as a music teacher, for she played well and liked music, but wherever she went she was asked whom she had studied under, and if she had been taught in Germany. So to-day she was bent on another mission. She had put her pride still further down in her pocket, but unconsciously her pretty chin was tilted a little higher. She had to walk now—her tender feet were tired and weary—where she had once dashed along in a smart carriage. When she arrived at a part of the town which was little occupied by shops her steps slackened. She was thinking what she would say when she reached Madame Maude’s, the fashionable milliner from whom she had been accustomed to buy her hats. Madame Maude had only one window to her shop, which was curtained and lined with red velvet. The simple sailor hat, one black toque, and a white feather boa displayed in it gave the ignorant public little idea of the fact that almost every time the door bell rang to admit a customer, it meant that Madame Maude was fifty dollars the richer. Ada stopped a moment and looked at the window. How often she had gone with her mother to the shop and come away with some pretty flowery hat without even asking the price of it. And now she sighed, for the price of one of those hats would pay for a term of Marjorie’s lessons at school. They must be educated, the girl cried in her heart, and they must be brought up as her mother’s children ought to be, even if they had to work afterwards. She would not let them grow up as shop-girls from childhood. She opened the door and found herself inside the shop with no words ready to meet the question of the young girl who came forward.

“Can I see Madame Maude?” she asked nervously. “I wish to speak to her alone.”

The girl stared at Ada’s perfectly-fitting dress, robbed of all its luxurious trimmings, as being unsuitable for her present position. Madame Maude came forward and told the girl to retire.

“What can I do for you?” she said kindly; she knew that the large bill still standing in Mrs. Nicoli’s name would never be paid, but Mrs. Nicoli had been a good customer in the days gone by, and for once a woman was grateful for favours past.

“You have heard of our sad trouble,” Ada began, “the world has painted it even blacker than it is, so there is no need for me to tell you what a terrible position I am in. I must make money somehow. I have tried in so many ways and failed. I came to ask you if you knew of any position in a business house that I could fill. I would not mind how hard I worked.” She looked so unlike hard work that Madame Maude’s heart was touched by her appeal which was so pathetically ignorant.

“What can you do?” she said, wondering what the girl called “hard work.”

“I don’t know,” Ada replied in a shamefaced way, “for I have never tried, but I think I could learn millinery very quickly.”

“My dear child,” the elder woman said, “you don’t know what you are saying. Do you know that my best hand was apprenticed for three years before she received a dollar; the next year she got a little more than a dollar a week, the fifth year she went to Paris and studied for a year and a half. She is not only a milliner but an artist; it takes years to acquire the knowledge, and I pay her accordingly. My hats are not made by girls who have trimmed up their old hats at home.”

Ada looked crestfallen. “I never thought of all that; I only know that your hats are always in perfect taste.”

Madame Maude had been looking at her while she spoke. “If you won’t be offended, I’ll make you an offer,” she said.

Ada bent her head in answer. She was willing to sweep the floors if she had been asked. She had spent her last dollar, and the washing-bill was not paid for last week, and Sadie had started a bad cough which demanded a tonic, and tonics have to be paid for.

“If you will come here and act as saleswoman,” Madame Maude said, “I will pay you well.”

“Oh, how kind of you!” the girl cried. “Of course I can’t be offended.” It was such a nice, quiet little shop, quite a private house; there was nothing to shock her in the suggestion.

“Stop a bit,” Madame Maude said, “till you hear what that means. I won’t pay you fifteen dollars a week for merely handing a customer a hat, and telling her the price—you’ve got to make her buy it.”

“How can I?” Ada said, in a mystified voice.

“I’ll tell you,” Madame Maude explained; and she took a lovely hat from a drawer, and put it on her own head. Her face was broad and homely, and the hat did not suit her either well or badly.

“Look at me in this hat,” she said, “and imagine I am the customer.”

Ada looked.

“Now look at yourself in it,” and she placed the hat on Ada’s head of shining hair.

Ada smiled, a half-pleased, half-bashful smile.

“Now when the customer says she does not think the hat will do—she is afraid it does not suit her—and you have seen that it is _the_ hat she is hankering after, say quite casually, ‘I’m sorry, madam, you don’t like it,’ and put it on your own head. Move about the room in it, and let her see how charming it is. In a few moments she will have forgotten how she herself looked in it, and will fondly imagine that she will look like you, and the hat is sold.”

Ada’s face had fallen.

“Will you do it?” Madame Maude said. “It will be money easily earned; my saleswoman is leaving next week.”

“I am to make money by my face,” Ada cried, with a choking voice; “it’s so horrible.” But something was saying to her, “You must have money; you have spent your last dollar, except what will pay for your bare board. The children must go to school, and Sadie wants a tonic. She has a cough because she has been denied the luxuries she has been used to, and has had to walk to school in all sorts of weather.”

“Yes, I will come,” she said; “but what if I do not sell them as you expect?”

“I will risk that,” the woman said kindly, “for I know the value of a pretty face below a forty-dollar hat.”

When Ada found herself once again on Fifth Avenue, she could scarcely believe she was the same girl who had lived in the magnificent mansion at the other end of the town a few months ago, and had spent all her days in light-hearted amusement. She felt tired and depressed, and afraid of the position she had undertaken to fill.

When she reached home she found that Sadie and Marjorie had not yet come back from school. She was anxious about their delay, and stood on the doorstep looking up the street to try and catch a sight of them.

“Why do you fret yourself about those two children, bless your dear heart. They’re a deal better able to look after themselves than you are.”

One of the boarders was addressing Ada from the hall.

“They’re so young to be out alone,” Ada said. “They’ve always had someone to bring and take them from school.”

“Time they learnt to come and go alone, I guess. How long do you suppose you can go on working yourself to pieces, anyhow? If you want to do the best you can for these two young ’uns, bring them up to look after themselves. You were brought up like a sugar-plum, and you’re feeling it mighty bad now, I reckon, to be treated like pig-iron.”

“I know you mean kindly,” Ada said, “but at least I have had the benefit of refined surroundings in my youth. I can’t let little Sadie knock about like a street child.”

“Much like a street child she is, with her white starched petticoats, and dainty pinafores. It’s just killing you, child, that’s what it is, and coloured things are just as comfortable.”

“But we have only white things,” Ada said apologetically, “and I’m afraid I can’t buy any more just yet.”

“To be sure. I never thought of that,” the fat, good-natured boarder said laughingly. “What’s going to happen to you, child, when these fine things wear out. It does me good to look at your pretty figure in these well-cut gowns. But they won’t stand rough wear.”

Then Ada told her she was going to earn fifteen dollars a week at Madame Maude’s.

“You’ll have all the young men in the town coming to choose their sisters’ hats,” the boarder said, “and men are a deal more easily taken in than women folk. Madame Maude is a clever woman.”

(_To be continued._)

THINGS IN SEASON, IN MARKET AND KITCHEN.

OCTOBER.

BY LA MÉNAGÈRE.

Venison and pork are the “novelties” that we note in the markets this month, and also a splendid show of brocoli. It is also a grand time for cheeses, as many old-fashioned country fairs testify. This month dairy farmers will be busy bringing their cheeses into the right markets ready for the Christmas sales, and where cheeses are shown we usually see sausages and pork pies, also gingerbread. All these things are toothsome in October—the month of mellow days and frosty nights. We begin to get ready walnuts and chestnuts for Hallowe’en festivities, and we sort out our apples, some for cider, some for “biffins,” and some for preserving. We must now pickle our red cabbages, too, also onions, and see that potatoes are stored. Those who have good keeping places, even in town, may now invest in sacks of potatoes, and bushels of apples, as this is the time for getting these at a cheaper rate than will be possible later on. Housewives in the country who have piggies to dispose of for bacon will be thinking of turning the poor animals into that useful commodity.

There is also the harvesting of the flower-seeds and roots, and much work is done in the flower garden preparatory for the next spring. Indeed, this is altogether one of the busiest months of all the year. Nature has not yet gone to sleep, although she is preparing for her winter’s rest.

We may now begin to bring into use some of our dishes of heat-giving foods such as we keep for winter days, not as a regular thing, perhaps, but occasionally. For instance, we may commence having porridge for breakfast, warm puddings, good vegetable soups, honey and treacle to our bread. Roast goose and apple sauce will be a favourite dish with many now, and, indeed, geese are better at this time than later, as they are neither so rich nor so fat.

So will also game pie be. Indeed, ever since Friar Tuck feasted the disguised Cœur de Lion upon this dish (which then was called game pasty) in the heart of Sherwood Forest, it has been a dish beloved of all Englishmen. Perhaps it may not be amiss to give it here in detail.

_Game Pie._—A very good short or raised crust is used to line the bottom and sides of the mould. For the upper crust it is usual to use puff pastry, although the raised crust is quite good enough. Place first a layer of small pieces of rump steak, then of venison steaks, trimmed and rubbed with spice, salt and pepper. Next some joints of hare, partridge, or other game, and fill up all spaces with highly-flavoured forcemeat. Add a little gravy, and cover the dish closely, but not with the crust; this should be put on when the pie is rather more than half cooked. Glaze this and ornament it when nearly finished cooking.

A very good imitation of a game pie may be made entirely without game, by using veal and steak together, and adding plenty of well-made forcemeat. As the gaminess will depend on this forcemeat, it will be well to show what this is composed of.

Half-a-pound of calf’s liver and as much good ham should be baked in the oven in a covered vessel until perfectly tender. Pound these together in a mortar to a smooth paste. Add a large tablespoonful of finely-powdered herbs—thyme, marjoram, sage, savoury, and tarragon—all these, or as many of them as possible. Add also cayenne pepper, salt, and a few chopped mushrooms. Mix very thoroughly, and place little balls of this and quarters of hard-boiled eggs at intervals with the meat, then put in a little strong gravy, place the top crust on, and bake the pie in a baker’s oven until of a good deep brown. When eaten cold this is uncommonly good.

A breakfast dish met with in Yorkshire, but not, I believe, elsewhere, is a _Covered Apple Tart_, and very good it is, either hot or cold. The crust would be ordinary short or flaky paste rolled out to about a quarter of an inch thick. On the lower crust a thick layer of stewed, sweetened, and spiced apple is placed, the top crust put on, the edges crimped together, and melted butter brushed over all, then well baked.

Hominy cakes with honey, and oatmeal batter-cakes, are delicious for breakfast also.

We should not omit also to have plenty of roasted apples at all times while they are so good, and the smaller pears and apples will be very good eating indeed if they are baked in a stone jar in a baker’s oven.

A good dinner menu for October would be the following:—

Potato Soup, with Grated Cheese. Gurnet, Baked and Stuffed. Roast Loin of Pork. Apple Sauce. Brocoli and Baked Potatoes. Wild Duck. Orange Salad. Cranberry Jelly. Cabinet Pudding. Cheese. Biscuits. Butter.

_Potato Soup._—Peel, boil and mash half-a-dozen potatoes, and slice up a small Spanish onion into a little butter, which should cook while the potatoes are boiling. Put all together, and add a pint of boiling milk, a spoonful of flour mixed smooth with milk, and boil together. Season with pepper and salt, and if not already too thick add a little cream. Serve very hot with grated cheese in a separate dish.

The _Gurnet_ are stuffed with a mixture of chopped shallot, parsley, herbs, breadcrumbs, butter, seasoning, and an egg. Grate breadcrumbs over, and pour on them a little oiled butter, and bake in a fairly quick oven for about twenty minutes or half an hour. Serve in the same dish if it is a nice one.

_Wild Duck_ require very quick roasting and frequent basting. Garnish them with a lemon cut in quarters, and serve any gravy that may have run from them in a tureen.

_Orange Salad_ is made by slicing peeled oranges, freeing them from pips, and covering the slices with a little sugar.

_Cabinet Pudding._—Put a pint of new milk on to boil with two spoonfuls of sugar and the rind of a fresh lemon; then add it to three well-beaten eggs. Butter a mould, and decorate the bottom and sides with strips of candied peel, stoned raisins, etc. Fill with alternate layers of sliced sponge cake and raisins. Pour the custard over, and let it soak for an hour or so, then cover with buttered paper, and steam the pudding gently for an hour and a half.

If this pudding were for eating cold (and it is quite as good so), a little dissolved gelatine should be added to the custard before pouring it over the cake. A few macaroons give a nice flavour to a cold pudding.

THE ROMANTICISM OF BEETHOVEN.

BY ELEONORE D’ESTERRE-KEELING.

The title of this paper will probably surprise many of my readers who have been accustomed to regard Beethoven solely as the king of classic music.

I have not set myself so foolish a task as the attempt to prove that this is not his true position. Undoubtedly Beethoven is king of classic music, but—how much more than that he is!

It must have struck everyone that there is a certain quality in Beethoven’s music which is absent from that of every other classic composer, a quality which appeals to each one of us personally, and which does not appeal in vain.

If we play consecutively three or four Sonates by Haydn or by Mozart, what is almost invariably the result?

In each case we like the first one and probably the second one; at the third we begin to feel bored, and at the fourth we shut up the book. And yet how lovely they all are! Haydn takes us to play with the children; Mozart introduces us to the ballroom. But Haydn did not spend his life’s days on a merry-go-round, and Mozart was not perpetually paying compliments. Quite the contrary. Haydn, as we know, never had any children, and that disagreeable wife of his left little happiness for his home. As for Mozart—well, Mozart had a charming wife, but he was so pitifully poor that one winter’s morning, when the snow lay thick on the ground outside, a friendly neighbour, calling in to see how the young couple were getting on, found them dancing a waltz on the bare boards of their scantily furnished room. They had no fire, and this was the only means that they could devise for keeping themselves warm.

When Mozart went on a journey, he wrote the prettiest love-letters to his Stanzerl. Here is a bit of one of them:—“Dear little wife! If I only had a letter from you! If I were to tell you all that I do with your dear likeness, how you would laugh! For instance, when I take it out of its case, I say ‘God greet thee, Stanzerl, God greet thee, thou rascal, shuttlecock, pointy-nose, nick-nack, bit and sup!’ And when I put it back, I let it slip in very slowly, saying, with each little push, ‘Now—now—now!’ and at the last, quickly—‘Good night, little mouse, sleep well!’” There is nothing in all Mozart’s music the least little bit like that. And why?

Mozart’s music is strictly classical and anti-romantic. His character is stamped upon it, as the character of Haydn is stamped upon his music, but his circumstances, the events of his daily life, have no part in it, and whether he had been rich or poor, successful or despairing, his music would have been exactly the same.

With Beethoven quite the reverse is the case. If it were possible to play the whole volume of Beethoven’s Sonates at one sitting, the last thing player or listener could complain of would be the monotony which culminates in boredom.

There would be Beethoven tender, Beethoven sublime, Beethoven ferocious, Beethoven serene, and as many more Beethovens as there are adjectives in the dictionary. And this is the secret of Beethoven’s popularity.

For the musician there is the perfect form, the exquisite mode of expression; for the amateur there is the man, with all the hopes and fears and aspirations which he shares with his fellow man.

Beethoven wrote the most meagre of letters, but every emotion that swayed him found utterance in his music, and this it is which gives to his music the quality known as Romanticism.

Many definitions have been given of the terms classical and romantic, but the clearest and cleverest definition that I have met is that given by the French writer, Monsieur Brunetière,—“Classicism makes the impersonality of a work of art one of the conditions of its perfection, while Romanticism means Individualism.” In other words, classicism confines itself to the thing done; romanticism is more interested in the doer of that thing.

Beethoven’s earliest works in each branch of his art are purely classical. During their composition he was leaning on Haydn and Mozart. Life had not yet become to him a matter of absorbing interest, for he still regarded it from the standpoint of the student.

The Fantasie Sonate, Op. 27, No. 2 (ignorantly called the “Moonlight Sonata”), opens to us the first page of the tone-poet’s life. It was written in 1801, when Beethoven was thirty-one.

Thirty-one! At this age a man feels life at its best; it is then that his pulse beats strongest, that, his powers being fully developed, he sees the years stretch smiling before him, like the vision of a promised land. All this Beethoven felt, and he was fully conscious of his power. “The Eroica,” the great ‘C Minor,’ “The Choral Symphony,” “Fidelio,” locked within that mighty brain, awaited only the master’s bidding to come forth and delight a world.

But between him and this glorious future there fell a shadow which was destined to rob life of all that made life dear. He plainly saw that shadow.

In a letter to a friend, written at this time, he says, “How sadly must I live! All that I love I must avoid. The years will pass without bringing that which my talent and my art had promised. Mournful resignation, in which alone I can find refuge!”

Already the gates of his ears were closing, and deafness was shutting him out from the world which he had just begun to love.

Then he met the beautiful Countess Julie Guicciardi. She was sixteen, she was poor, and he gave her music lessons without payment, accepting only in return linen which her pretty fingers had stitched.

She was flattered by his homage (what girl would not be flattered by the homage of a Beethoven!) and she encouraged his attentions. Perhaps even she really loved him.

Again he wrote to a friend: “Somewhat more agreeably I live now, going more among people. This change has been wrought by a dear, bewitching girl, who loves me and whom I love. At last after two years’ misery, some happy moments have come, and I feel for the first time that marriage could make me happy.”

Poor Beethoven! Countess Julie’s father had other plans for his young daughter, and her music master was scornfully dismissed.

The mental conflict of this period found expression in the “Fantasie Sonate.” The mournful resignation of the first movement contrasts vividly with the thunder of the finale.

In a letter to his friend Wegeler, Beethoven now wrote:—“If nothing else is possible I will defy my fate, though moments will always come in which I shall be the wretchedest of men.”

He spoke so much more eloquently in music than he did in words, that I should like to take my readers to the piano and tell his story there. But let us beware of playing the Sonate _romantically_. In interpreting an emotional work this is a danger which must always be carefully avoided. We should not repeat the poet’s story as it affects us, but as it affected him.

The resignation of the first movement must be the resignation of a strong nature—there is fire beneath it. A Beethoven does not shed tears.

In the second movement the poet conjures up before his mind the memory of happy hours, gone for ever. His child-love appears before him in all her grace and witchery. There must be something phantom-like about it, something very tender, almost intangible.

The last movement is a song of anguish and despair. The proud spirit “defies its fate,” but there are moments in which we recognise “the wretchedest of men.”

Thus ended Beethoven’s first love-story. There was no tender parting between him and Julie; the “Fantasie-Sonate,” dedicated to her, was his last love-letter, and with it he dismissed her from his mind. “Strength,” he said proudly, “is the characteristic of men who distinguish themselves above others, and it is mine!” It was his.

All Europe was now ringing with the fame of Napoleon, the only person on earth—except Goethe—whom Beethoven regarded as his equal, while of him, even, he said, when, in 1806, news of Napoleon’s victory at Jena was brought, “What a pity that I don’t understand war as I understand music. _I_ would conquer him!”

In this mood the Eroica Symphony was written. It is a chapter of history.

But I have not space to follow the great Romanticist through all his moods and their outpourings. I must confine myself to a few of them.

In October 1802 Beethoven was sent by his doctors to Heiligenstadt, a quiet village not far from Vienna. He was in a state of the deepest despondency. The shadows were closing round him, and the voices of the world reached him but faintly.

In the stillness of the country he found peace, the exquisite Sonate in D minor, op. 31, no. 2, was written there. Let us take it to the piano too, and listen to its tragic story.

The long drawn out arpeggios with which it opens are the longings of his heart. (He was still only thirty-two!) Joy dances fantastically round him and vanishes. Another sigh, another vision of joy, and then heaven opens and he looks in.

I do not think that even Beethoven ever wrote anything more wonderful, more full of the ecstasy of being, than that glorious first movement.

The second part of the Sonate is very slow, and at first it seems to promise peace for the troubled soul. It is in B flat major, which should and does suggest rest. But after such a struggle as the first movement indicated, peace does not come at once; listen to the throbbing, shuddering triplets in the bass; they begin at the seventeenth bar, and every time that they occur they are followed by a lament in the minor. They accompany that lament. Further on, we find a lovely song-like passage in F major (bar 31), and now see how beautifully Beethoven arrives at that song. Laying a gentle hand on his triplets (bar 27) he smoothes them into even notes, changes the sad C minor for C major, and then brings in his song. But that song is only a rift in the clouds; the storm comes on again, always heralded by the triplets, and note the curious accompaniment given later on to the left hand. Right up at the top of the key-board it begins and slowly it creeps down, always down. Hope would ascend—that passage marks despair. Once again comes the song of comfort, this time in B flat major, and the movement closes calmly in the same key.

The last part of the Sonate had a curious origin. Seated in his silent room, which looked out upon the little-frequented high road leading to the village, the composer became conscious of the trab-trab of a horse whose rider was passing by. The rhythmic movements of the animal’s hoofs, heard as they were but faintly by the half deaf musician, resolved themselves into a phrase in his mind which he jotted down mechanically, and this phrase persistently reiterated, formed the conclusion to the Sonate which was then filling heart and brain.

Only Beethoven would have conceived psychology so good as that. How often in the most crucial moments some trifling, quite irrelevant detail forces itself upon our notice, and absorbs attention which we should be unwilling to acknowledge.

The portrait of the great composer’s soul, which he painted for us in the D minor Sonate, would have been less perfect had he withheld the trivial circumstance which awoke him from his dreams, and gave him again to the world.

At this country retreat the famous Heiligenstadt will was also written.

It shows us another side of Beethoven’s character, and leads to another phase of his Romanticism.

The will begins thus: “Oh, you men, you who have thought of me as defiant, stubborn, misanthropic, what wrong you have done me! Bethink you that for six years an incurable condition has befallen me, made worse by foolish doctors who from year to year deceived me with hopes of improvement. Though born with a fiery temperament, and even susceptible to the charms of society, I have had to separate myself from everyone, and pass my years in loneliness.

“What mortification when someone, standing beside me, caught from afar the sound of a flute and I heard nothing!

“Such incidents brought me to the verge of madness, and little more was wanted to make me put an end to my existence.

“Only my art held me back. Ah, I felt that it was impossible to leave the world before I had accomplished my mission!

“Great God, Thou who lookest down upon me, Thou seest my heart and Thou knowest that love and goodwill abide there.”

Immediately after this will, the six sacred songs, to words by Gellert (op. 48), were composed.

There is something infinitely pathetic in the thought of this great, lonely man, so profoundly ashamed of his bodily infirmity, and so conscious that he was misunderstood by all his fellow-men, turning thus in the hour of his sorest need to the One whom he could trust. The first of the six songs is a Prayer, the last a Song of Repentance. They are all very simple, as such songs should be, and through them the strong, personal note is unmistakable.

The quiet life at Heiligenstadt had another beneficial effect upon Beethoven. Both the Pastoral Symphony and the Pastoral Sonate trace the source of their inspiration to the pine forests, the rustic surroundings and Sabbath stillness of this picturesque village. The Symphony of course was a later work, but it was also composed at this, Beethoven’s favourite holiday resort.

But ardent lover of Nature though he was, he was not the sort of man who could pass his days in sylvan solitude. He was extremely sociable, even, in his way, extremely domestic.

Probably if he had secured the happy home life for which he so often longed, we should have been the losers, for he might truly have said, with Heine—

“Out of my great sorrows I make the little songs.”

When he made his will at Heiligenstadt he believed himself to be dying. At the close of it came this prayer—

“O Providence, let once a day of pure happiness shine upon me!”

That prayer was granted, and he found many days of pure happiness by the side of the Countess Therese of Brunswick, the aunt of the faithless Julie.

Countess Therese was the right woman for him, and nobody knows why their marriage did not take place. They were certainly betrothed, and Therese’s brother Franz was Beethoven’s most intimate friend. To him the Sonate Appassionata was dedicated, surely the grandest tribute that could be paid to any friendship. It was written during the composer’s visit to the Brunswicks’ estate in Hungary in the summer of 1806, and probably was intended as a message for Therese, which her lover could not trust himself to deliver.

Soon after leaving the Brunswicks Beethoven wrote to the Count—

“Dear, dear Franz! Only a line to tell you that I have made good terms with Clementi. Two hundred pounds I am to get, and over and above I can sell the same works again in Germany and France. Further, he has given me other orders, so that I may reasonably hope to attain the dignity of a true artist in early years. Kiss thy sister Therese, and tell her that I am afraid I shall become famous before she has erected a monument to me.”

At the same time, July, 1806, the much-discussed love-letter was written. This letter was found, after his death, among Beethoven’s papers, with the portrait of the Countess Therese, which is reproduced in this number of THE GIRL’S OWN PAPER. The original is an oil-painting, and on the back of it is written (in German of course):—

“To the rare genius, the great artist, the good man, from T. B.”

Every biographer of Beethoven has had a different theory as to the love-letter, but it is now generally granted that it must have been addressed to the Countess Therese, whom Beethoven in it calls “_meine unsterbliche Geliebte_.” (My immortal love). The letter begins:[1] “_Mein Leben, mein Alles, mein ich_” (My life, my all, my self), and the exquisite Sonate in F sharp, op. 78, which is so seldom played, translates those words into music. This Sonate was written in the autumn of 1809, when Beethoven was again with the Brunswicks in Hungary, and it is dedicated to the Countess Therese.

Rather an amusing incident in connection with it is related in a conversation between Beethoven and his pupil Czerny, at the end of which the composer exclaimed irritably—

“People always talk of the C sharp minor Sonate as if I hadn’t composed much better things. The F sharp Sonate is something very different!”

The C sharp minor Sonate was Julie Guicciardi’s, and it did not please Therese Brunswick’s lover to be reminded so often of that old love-story.

But he was quite right. The F sharp Sonate undoubtedly is a very different thing. It is less passionate, but it is much more finished. There is a sweet serenity about it which suits the noble face of the gracious lady who inspired it. My readers will need no guidance through it; one glance at Therese’s portrait will help them more than anything I could say. “Mein Leben, mein Alles, mein besseres ich” sings the little prelude, and then the piece glides along like a boat on a sunny sea. Lucky Beethoven and lucky Therese, the day of pure happiness has come!

There is one more phase of Beethoven’s character upon which I want briefly to touch. Everyone knows that during his last years he was often in great straits for want of money. Perhaps you, my readers, will not think that money troubles are a feature of Romanticism, but money troubles, like others, may be the cause of anxiety, heart-burning or disappointment, and when these feelings are expressed in any work, the personal element, with them introduced, is the source of Romanticism.

Amongst Beethoven’s MSS. there was found after his death a Rondo inscribed in his own handwriting—

“The rage over a lost penny, worked off in a Rondo.”

That Rondo is one of the prettiest and the wittiest things in music.

The average Englishman will scarcely be able to realise that a man like Beethoven, a genius, could make such a fuss over a lost penny, but those who know Germans will be less incredulous.

Perhaps, too, it was not just the penny; it may have been the principle!

At all times Beethoven was suspicious, and he always thought that he was being cheated. He very often was cheated, and when we remember that by this time he was stone-deaf, and that he had no sympathetic friend to whom he could confide his troubles, we shall begin to understand why he put his rage over a lost penny into his music, with all his other emotions.

The piece (op. 129) is not easy to play, for it requires a reckless self-abandonment which is only possible to those players to whom it offers no technical difficulties. Bülow’s edition of it, published by Cotta, is the best. In one of his notes the editor says, “You can see the papers fly from the table, while the furious hunt proceeds,” and he declares that the man who wrote this brilliant Rondo could have written an _opera bouffe_ if he had tried.

Much more might be said about Beethoven’s Romanticism. I have not touched at all upon his more exalted phases of feeling, the patriotism which was so wonderfully expressed in the seventh Symphony, the philosophy of life which culminated in the Choral Symphony with its impossible “Ode to Joy,” telling in tones what Goethe tried to tell in words at the end of the second part of _Faust_.

My object had been to show that musical form, or perfect classicism, was the beautiful vessel which Beethoven made use of to carry his own human thoughts and emotions, and that, as Maurice Hewlett says in his book, _Pan and the Young Shepherd_—

“Life goes to a tune, according as a man is tuneful, hath music.”

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The letter and its history are given in Thayer’s delightful _Life of Beethoven_.

SHEILA’S COUSIN EFFIE.

A STORY FOR GIRLS

BY EVELYN EVERETT-GREEN, Author of “Greyfriars,” “Half-a-Dozen Sisters,” etc.