Chapter 16

VON WEBER--THE RAKE REFORMED

"Though thou hast now offended like a man. Do not persever in it like a devil; Yet, yet, thou hast an amiable soul, If sin by custom grow not into nature."

Christopher Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus"

Few novels are so brilliantly written, or so variously absorbing, as the life of Von Weber, written by his son, the Baron Max Maria von Weber. For years the son had resisted the urgence of his mother to undertake the work, fearing that partiality would warp, and indelicacy stain, any such memorial of a father who had lived so lively a life. When at last the work was begun and done, it was a miracle of impartiality, of frankness which seems complete, of sins confessed and expiated in their confession, and of trenchant characterisation, which one will hardly find surpassed outside of Dickens.

The Von Webers are the most numerous musical dynasty after the Bachs. We have already seen something of the fortunes of the family into which Mozart married. The father of Mozart's wife was the older brother of Franz Anton von Weber, father of Carl Maria. This Franz Anton was a strange mixture of stalwart and shiftless qualities. He gave up his orchestral position to fight against Frederick the Great, and brought home a red badge of courage. It is wonderful, by the way, how many musicians have earned distinction as soldiers--what, indeed, would the soldiers do without music?

Later Franz Anton entered civil service, and succeeded to the position of Court Financial-Councillor Fumetti, and married his beautiful daughter, Maria Anna. But Franz Anton was so rabid a fiddler that he used to be seen playing his violin in public places, followed by his large family of children, or even sawing away in the open fields, to the neglect of his work and finally the loss of his position. Thereupon he decided that his large family should help in its own support, and dragged them one and all upon the stage. The proud mother saw her fortune squandered, and her pride massacred. She died some years later. Franz Anton's heart was too industrious to remain idle long, and, though he was now fifty years of age, he somehow won the hand of Genofeva von Brenner, who was only sixteen years old. It is gratuitous to say that the young girl was not happy. In 1786 she bore him the child who was to realise the father's one great and vicarious ambition: to bring a musical genius into the world.

While Carl Maria von Weber was still a babe, Franz Anton started once more after the will-o'-the-wisp of theatrical fame, with his "Weber's Company of Comedians." Genofeva, sickly and melancholy, dragged herself about with the troupe until Carl Maria was ten years old, when her health gave way, and the travel was discontinued. Poverty and consumption ended her days two years later. Within a year Franz Anton was betrothed to a widow, whom, strange to say, he never married.

Again Franz Anton, the Bedouin that he was, dragged his son back into the nomad life. The boy seemed astonishingly stupid in learning music, though the father encouraged him with intemperate zeal. Meanwhile Carl's character was forming, and he was becoming as brilliant as the mercurial life he was leading, and at the same time as irresponsible. Like his relative, Mozart, he was precocious at falling in love. Perhaps his first flame was Elise Vigitill, in whose autograph album he wrote:

"Dearest Elise, always love your sincere friend, Carl von Weber; in the sixth year of his age; Nüremberg, the 10th of September, 1792." We hear of no more sweethearts for eleven long years. When Carl Maria was seventeen, Franz Anton left him in Vienna, where he plunged into dissipation at a tempo presto appassionato. As his son writes, "through carolling, kissing, drinking Vienna, he wandered with a troop of choice spirits, drinking, kissing, carolling." The intoxicating draught of pleasure quaffed in the lively capital fevered the lad's blood, and the ardent imaginative temperament burst forth in that adoration of female beauty which strewed his life's path with roses, not without thorns. His teacher, Abbé Vogler, however, secured him a position as conductor at the Breslau opera, and he was compelled to tear himself away from a sweetheart of rank, who was somewhat older than he. His father went with him, and by his bumptiousness brought the boy many enemies, and, through his speculations, many debts in addition to those he acquired for himself. Here another entanglement awaited him. His son tells it thus:

"Many a female heart, no doubt, both within the theatre and without its walls, was allured by the sweet smile and seductive manners of the pale, slender, languishing, but passionately ardent young conductor; whilst his own heart seems to have been more seriously involved in an unfortunate and misplaced attachment for a singer in the theatre. This woman was married to a rough drunkard who mishandled her. The couple were daily falling more and more into an abject state of poverty. Young Carl Maria pitied the woman; and pity was soon transformed in the feeling next akin."

"That she was an unworthy object of either pity or affection is very clear: she misused his goodness of heart, gnawed incessantly at his slender purse, and quickly plunged him into a slough of difficulties nigh equal to her own."

Various misfortunes and indiscretions brought Von Weber to the loss of his post. But a woman intervened to save him from disaster. This was a Fräulein von Belonda, maid of honour to the Duchess of Würtemberg, who took a deep interest in Carl, and persuaded the duke to make him musical director. The continual successes of the French armies overrunning Europe forbade the duke to keep up his retinue of artists. But he secured Weber a post at Stuttgart as private secretary to his brother, Ludwig, another younger brother of the King of Würtemberg, a monster of corpulence, who had to have his dining-table made crescent-wise that he might get near enough to eat. Into the circle of these two unlovable figures and their ugly court Weber was thrust.

"Thus then the fiery young artist, his wild oats not yet fully sown, plunged into a new world, where no true sense of right or wrong was known; where virtue and morality were laughed to scorn; where, in the chaotic whirlpool of a reckless court, money and influence at any price were the sole ends and aims of life; where, in the confusion of the times, the insecurity of conditions, and the ruthless despotism of the government, the sole watchword of existence, from high to low, was 'Après moi, le deluge!'" The Prince Ludwig was a great spendthrift, and was continually appealing to his brother for funds. It was poor Weber's pleasant task to be the go-between, and to receive on his head the rage of Behemoth. Again to quote the vivid language of the Baron Max:

"The stammering, stuttering, shrieking rage of the hideously corpulent king, who, on account of his unwieldy obesity, was unable to let his arms hang by his side, and who thus gesticulated wildly, and perspired incessantly, and had the habit, moreover, of continually addressing his favourite, generally present on these occasions, with the appeal, 'Pas vrai, Dillen?' after each broken sentence,--would have been inexpressibly droll, had not the low-comedy actor of the scene been an autocrat who might, at a wink, have transformed laughter into tears. But there was a demoniacal comicality about the performance, which, if it did not convulse the spectator, made him shudder to his heart's core.

"Weber hated the king, of whose wild caprice and vices he witnessed daily scenes, before whose palace-gates he was obliged to slink bareheaded, and who treated him with unmerited ignominy. He was wont, in thoughtless levity of youth, to forget the dangers he ran, and to answer the king with a freedom of tone which the autocrat was all unused to hear. In turn he was detested by the monarch.

"The royal treatment roused young Carl Maria's indignation to the utmost; and his irritation led him one day to a mad prank, which was nigh resulting in some years' imprisonment in the fortress of Hohenasberg, or of Hohenhaufen. Smarting under some foul indignity, he had just left the private apartment of the king, when an old woman met him in the passage, and asked him where she could find the room of the court washerwoman. 'There!' said the reckless youth, pointing to the door of the royal cabinet. The old woman entered, and was violently assailed by the king, who had a horror of old women; in her terror, she stammered out that a young gentleman who had just come out had informed her that there she would find the 'royal washerwoman,' The infuriated monarch guessed who was the culprit, and despatched an officer on the spot to arrest his brother's secretary, and throw him into prison.

"To those who have any idea how foul a den was then a royal prison, it must appear almost marvellous that Carl Maria should have possessed sufficient equanimity to have occupied himself with his beloved art during his arrest. But so it was. He managed to procure a dilapidated old piano, put it in tune with consummate patience, by means of a common door-key, and actually, then and there, on the 14th of October, 1808, composed his well-known beautiful song, 'Ein steter Kampf ist unser Leben.'

"The storm passed over. Prince Ludwig's influence obtained the young man's pardon and release. But the insult was never forgotten by the king: he took care to remember it at his own right time. Nor had prison cured Carl Maria of his boyish desire to play tricks upon the hated monarch, when he conceived that he could do so without danger to himself."

Carl proceeded to make himself an appropriate graduate of such a university of morals, and devoted himself to wine, women, and debts, with a small proportion of song. He belonged to a society of young men, who called themselves by the gentle name of "Faust's Ride to Hell." He now began also the composition of an opera, "Sylvana." This brought him into acquaintance with operatic people, and he fell under the charm of that "coquettish little serpent Margarethe Lang."

"To stem such a passion, or even to have given it a legal form, would have been merely ridiculous and absurd in the eyes of the demoralised circle by which he was surrounded. Gretchen possessed a little plump seductive form, was about twenty years of age, and, in addition to her undoubted musical talent, was endowed with a fund of gay, sprightly humour, wholly in sympathy with the youth's own joyous nature. She became the central point of all his life and aspirations."

Thus the biographer describes the new dissipation, which carried Carl away from his old riots; the new magnet that dragged from him all the money he could earn, and more than he could borrow. It was a wild and reckless crew and addicted to such entertainments as the travesty on Marc Antony, with music by Carl, who played Cleopatra, while Gretchen played Antony.

The last straw upon Carl's breaking back was the arrival of his father, who descended upon him with a bass viol, an enormous basket-bed for his beloved poodles, and a large bundle of debts, as well as an increased luggage of eccentricities. While Weber was trying to secure loans to pay off one of his father's debts, he was innocently implicated in a scandal of bribery, by which it was made to seem that he had offered a post in the prince's household, in return for an advance of money. The king had been driven to despair by the disasters of the German army, and the increase of discontent of the German people, and desired to gain a reputation for virtue by the comfortable step of reforming his brother's household. Learning of the proffered bribe, in which Weber seemed to be concerned, but of which he was perfectly innocent, the king had him arrested during a rehearsal of his opera "Sylvana," and had him thrown into prison for sixteen days. When at last he was examined, there was nothing found to justify the accusation of dishonesty, he was released from the prison for criminals, and transferred to the prison for debt, and then a little later he and his father were placed into a carriage and driven across the border to exile.

This sudden plunge from the froth of dissipation to the dregs of disgrace was a fall that Weber could never thereafter think or speak of, and every mention of it was forbidden.

Almost from this moment Weber's life is one of seriousness, with an occasional relapse into some of his old qualities, but never a complete laying aside of earnestness. He gained friends elsewhere, and finally settled in Darmstadt, where he still found women's hearts susceptible, in spite of his small, weak frame, his great long neck, and his calfless legs, of which he writes: "And, oh, my calves, they might have done honour to a poodle!"

Eight months after his banishment, his opera "Sylvana" was produced at Frankfort, the first soprano being Gretchen Lang, and the part of Sylvana being taken by Caroline Brandt, of whom much more later. At Munich the next year, he found himself in high favour with two singers. They were vying with each other for him, while two society beauties exerted their rival charms. Weber was kept busy with his quadruple flirtation. He was driven into cynicism, and his motto became "All women are good for nothing" ("_Alle Weiber taugen nichts_"), which he used so often that he abbreviated it to "A.W.T.N." In the columns of his account-book he was provoked to write: "A. coquettes with me, though she knows I am making love to her friend. B. abuses N., tells me horrid stories of her, and says I must not go home with her." He took a journey to Switzerland, where the beautiful Frau Peyermann occupied his heart long enough to inspire him to the scene in "Athalie," and to his song, "The Artist's Declaration of Love." He wandered here and there, for about three years, and his biographer, Spitta, thus portrays him:

"Roving restlessly from place to place, winning all hearts by his sweet, insinuating, lively melodies, his eccentricities making him an imposing figure to the young of both sexes, and an annoyance to the old, exciting the attention of everybody, and then suddenly disappearing, his person uniting in the most seductive manner aristocratic bearing and tone with indolent dissipation, his moods alternating between uproarious spirits and deep depression,--in all ways he resembled a figure from some romantic poem, wholly unlike anything seen before in the history of German art."

In 1813 he found himself at Prague, with the post of musical director to the opera. In the company were two women who took hold of his heart; one, a spirit of evil, the other an angel of good. The former was Theresa Brunetti, wife of a ballet-dancer, and mother of several children, the acquisition of which had robbed her of neither her fine, plump figure, nor her devotion to the arts of coquetry. There is no improving upon the description of Max von Weber as given of this entanglement, so here it is at length, with all its frankness of exposure and its writhing humiliation:

"He soon conceived for the handsome seductive woman a passion, which seemed to have deprived his otherwise clear mind of all common sense and reason, and which neither the flood of administrative affairs nor the cold breath of duty could extinguish. Vain were all his efforts to conceal it. In a very short time it became the topic of general remark; excited the ridicule or grave anxieties of his friends; involved him in a thousand disagreeable positions; lowered his character, without the slightest compensating advantage to his artistic career; and nigh dragged him down into an abyss beyond hope of rescue.

"The new opera-director was soon lodged in the house of the careless husband of the light woman. She herself may have had some inclination for the man. But as soon as she felt her true power over him, she held out her fair hand only to lead him into a life of torment.

"The woman's power over her poor victim was immense. He was dragged in her train, against his better reason, to country excursions, suppers, balls, at which, whilst he watched her every look, her every breath, to discover her slightest wish, although nigh dead with fatigue, she would be bestowing her attention on other men, wholly regardless of her slave. Now again he would scour the town, in scorching heat or drenching rain, frequently sacrificing the only moments he could snatch from business for his dinner, to procure a ribbon, a ring, or some dainty, which she desired, and which was difficult to obtain; and on his return she would receive him perhaps with coldness and toss the prize aside. Sometimes, when the proof became too evident that she had duped, deceived, betrayed him, the scenes between the two were fearful; and then she would cleverly find means of asserting that it was she who had the best right to be jealous, and thus turn the tables on him. By every thought, in every action, in every moment of his life, there was but one feeling ever present--'How will she receive me?'

"Even in his account-book, now so often neglected, are to be found the lamentations of his despairing heart over her unworthiness; and again, but a few hours later, expressions of delight that she had smiled on him. There is something terrible in the bitter slavery to which his better nature was condemned by this wild passion. One day he writes: 'A fearful scene.... The sweetest dream of my life is over. Confidence is lost for ever. The chain is broken,' On the next: 'A painful explanation. I shed the first tears my grief has wrung from me.... This reconciliation has cleared the thunder from the air. Both of us felt better,' And then again: 'My dream is over! I shall never know the happiness of being loved. I must for ever be alone! ... She can sit near me, hours long, and never say one word; and when some other man is mentioned, burst out in ecstasy. I will do all I can to please her; but I must withdraw within myself, bury all my bitter feelings in my own heart, and work--work--work!'" It was in the fall of 1813--_prosit omen!_--that Von Weber met the Brunetti. In the next year he was still clinging to her whom the biographer calls "the rotten plant," and wrote in a note-book: "I found Calina with Thérèse, and I could scarcely conceal the fearful rage that burned in me." Or an elegy like this: "No joy without her, and yet with her only sorrow."

Cupid has always been jealous of the cook. On Thérèse's birthday, Carl presented her with a double gift, first a gold watch with a cluster of trinkets, each of them a symbol of love; with this cluster of trinkets, something very rare and costly in Prague--oysters. Thérèse glanced--merely glanced--at the jewelry; she fairly gobbled the oysters. Carl's love had survived his jealousy of Calina, but he could not endure a rivalry with mollusks. As his son explains: "On a sudden the scales fell from his eyes." Ought he not rather have said, the shells?

Lacking even this ogress for an idol, poor Carl was lonely indeed. Even music turned unresponsive, and success was only ashes on his tongue. Then faith gave him, unsought, ability to revenge himself on the Brunetti. She had despised him as a mere genius toddling after the frou-frou of her skirts, but she began to prize him when she saw him casting interested looks in another direction. Now it was her turn to writhe with jealousy, and to writhe in vain. Her storms and tirades had more effect upon him than his pleas had had upon her. But whereas she had formerly been _insouciante_ and amused at his pain, her pain hurt him to distraction, broke down his health, and drove him to ask for a leave of absence, that he might recover his strength. When he went away, he carried with him in his heart a new regret, sweetened, or perhaps embittered, by a tinge of new hope. But he could not know that he had reached the end of the worthless pages of his life, and that the new leaf was to be inscribed with a story of happiness, which was by no means untroubled, but yet was constructive happiness, worth-while happiness.

In the year 1810 his opera "Sylvana" had been sung, as I have said, with Caroline Brandt in the title rôle. When, in 1813, he was given the direction of the opera at Prague, though he fell into the clutches of the Brunetti, he had unconsciously prepared himself a better, cleaner experience by engaging for the very first member of his new company this same Caroline Brandt, who happened to write him that she happened to be "at liberty," as they say.

Like Carl himself, she had known stage-life from childhood, being the daughter of a tenor, and appearing on the stage at the age of eight. She is described as "small and plump in figure, with beautiful, expressive gray eyes and fair wavy hair, and a peculiar liveliness in her movements." She was a woman of large and tender heart, electrified with a temper incisive and immediate. She was an actress of genuine skill, "her sense of grace and beauty in all things infallible." She did not appear at the theatre in Prague until the first day of January, 1814. She bore a curious resemblance to Thérèse Brunetti in a fresher edition, and was not long in giving that lady a sense of uneasiness. The oysters, as we have seen, had given the Brunetti the _coup de disgrâce_.

Caroline won the poor director's gratitude first by being quick to adopt suggestions, and to rescue him from the embarrassments buzzing about the head of an operatic manager. She was glad to undertake tasks, and slow to show professional jealousy. She lived in seclusion with her mother, and received no visits. Even the young noblemen could not woo her at the stage door, though the Brunetti advised her to accept the advances of a certain banker, saying: "He is worth the trouble, for he is rich."

Having failed to drag Caroline into her own game, the Brunetti tried to keep Von Weber from breathing the better air of her presence. As we have seen, she drove him almost to distraction, and sent him a wreck to the baths in Friedland.

Caroline's mother had permitted Von Weber to pay his court to her, and her father and brother had found his intentions worthy. Caroline had not hesitated to confess that her affection was growing with Carl's. But what she had seen of his life with the Brunetti, and what she must have heard of his magnificent dissipations, gave her pause. Therefore, when Carl went away for his health, he took with him a riddle, and left behind "a sweet, beloved being who might--who may--make me happy." "The absence of three months shall test our love." They wrote each other long and daily letters; his were all of yearning, while hers were mingled with fear, lest he be, as she wrote him, "a sweet poison harmful to the soul."

After taking the baths, he went on to Berlin, arriving there August 3d in the very ferment of rapture over the downfall of Napoleon at Prague. He was moved to write a number of patriotic songs from Koerner's "Leier und Schwert." These choruses for men were sung throughout the Fatherland, as they still are sung.

But from the height of glory to which he was now borne, as the living voice of the nation, he was dragged back to the depths by the little hand and the little finger-nails of Caroline, who could be jealous enough to suspect that not all the adoration Von Weber was receiving from the women of Berlin was pure and impersonal patriotism.

Von Weber had from the first insisted that no marriage of theirs could have hope of success, unless she left the stage. This sacrifice of herself and her career and her large following among the public was a deal to ask, and a deal to grant. Her combined reluctance to sacrifice her all, and her jealous fears that he would not find her all in all, at last led her to write him that they would better give up their dream, and break their troth.

In his first bitterness at this inopportune humiliation, coming like a drop of vinegar in the honey of royal favour, he wrote furiously to Gansbacher, "I see now that her views of high art are not above the usual pitiful standard--namely, that art is but a means of procuring soup, meat, and shirts." To another friend, Lichtenstein, he wrote more solemnly:

"All my fondest hopes are vanishing day by day. I live like a drunken man who dances on a thin coating of ice, and spite of his better reason would persuade himself that he is on solid ground. I love with all my heart and soul; and if there be no truth in her affection, the last chord of my whole life has been struck. I shall still live on,--marry perhaps some day,--who knows? But love and trust again, never more."

In September he returned to Prague with an anxious heart, and took up in person a new battle for Caroline's hand. They were agreed upon the subject of affection, but wrangled upon the clauses in the treaty of marriage. While this debate was waging, Weber took care of her money and her mother's. A benefit being given her, he announced that he himself would sell the tickets at the box-office, and he spent a whole day bartering his quick wit and his social influence, for increased prices. Such public devotion brought scandal buzzing about the ears of the two. But still Caroline would not give up her career, nor Weber his opinion of stage marriages.

Even his patriotic songs, "The Lyre and the Sword," were a cause of disagreement, for Caroline, like so many women, deified Napoleon, and her lover's lyric assaults upon him were so much sacrilege; while to him her adoration of that personified prairie-fire, who had devastated the Fatherland, was treason. The Brunetti, being well out of the running, Caroline found new cause of jealousy in the newly engaged actress, Christine Bohler. Indeed, Carl and Caroline did little but fight and make up for months, until even Caroline was convinced that one of the two must leave Prague, at least for a period of probation. It was Carl who left, and in a condition of almost complete spiritual collapse.

How little music has to do with one's state of mind, may be seen from the fact that in his weak and complaining despair, he composed one of his sturdiest works, "Kampf und Sieg." He settled in Munich, and continued to correspond with Caroline, writing her the most minute descriptions of his life and his lodgings, and begging her to write him with equal fulness. His loneliness, however, at length told upon his spirits, and gradually stifled his creativeness.

At length it became time for him to return to Prague again, and on the eve of his home-going he received a letter from Caroline, which she said she had been for weeks trying in vain to write. She was now convinced that they must absolutely give up all thought of love and marriage. This blow smote him to the ground. He had no strength even for wrath; he could only write in abject meekness, as if thanking her for delaying the blow so long:

"Be not angry, my beloved one, that I repeat my words of love and sorrow again and again. They flow from a pure heart, that knows no other wish than your happiness. When time shall have gone by, and you can look back in peace and quiet on the broken tie between us, you will then acknowledge that never was a truer heart than mine. Thanks, my dearest life, my never-to-be-forgotten love, for the many sweet flowers you have woven into the garland of my life, for all your love, for all your care. Forgive me for my excess of love--forgive the passion that may have torn many a wound, when it should have soothed and healed--forgive me all the sorrow I have caused you, though Heaven knows it was through no will of mine--forgive me for having stolen one whole sweet year of your precious life, for which I would willingly give ten of my own, could I but buy it back for you.... Farewell--farewell."

On the 7th of September he arrived in Prague. His first view of Caroline was as she sang the Cinderella on the stage. The sight of her was too much; he broke down and ran home. But still, as director, he must frequently meet her in more or less familiar situations. And as for her, she later confessed that she was suffering even more than Carl.

Her every strength and resolution melted away one afternoon in the autumn, at a reception, where the lovers met face to face. Their gaze blended; their hands blended; the war was over.

Instantly, with the resumption of his love-life, his interest in music began again. Caroline, apparently alarmed at the condition of his health, never robust, persuaded her mother to let him board at her house. New health and old-time gaiety began again. But he was tired of Prague, and determined to find a larger field elsewhere. While he was hunting for a place for himself, he secured a starring engagement for Caroline at the then high salary of ten gold louis, per performance. Before he left Prague, he announced his engagement publicly. By a curious coincidence, the engagement was announced at a reception, just after a total eclipse of the sun. When the daylight came out of the darkness, Carl rose and proclaimed his conquest.

On Christmas morning he received a costly ring from the King of Hanover, a splendid snuff-box from the King of Bavaria, and an appointment as Kapellmeister to the King of Saxony.

At Dresden there were honours enough and jealousies more. But Carl assailed them with new strength. And now, he took up an opera on a subject he had thought of but discarded, fortunately for himself and the world. He wrote Caroline that a friend of his was writing a libretto based on the old national legend, "Der Freischütz." Kind, the librettist, wrote night and day for ten days, and Carl, in great enthusiasm, forwarded the libretto for Caroline's opinion. She sent it back with violent criticisms, based upon her long stage experience and her intuition of stage effects. We can never thank her sufficiently for cutting out endless pages of songs and recitative by the melancholious old Hermit who, in the original version, was to commence the opera, and wander in and out of it incessantly. Caroline wrote, like Horace:

"Away, with all these scenes.... Plunge at once into the popular element. Begin with the scene before the tavern." This seemed outrageous mutilation at first to the composer, and the librettist took it with still more violence; threatening for a time to withdraw his book completely. But often, thereafter, did Carl express his gratitude to her, whom he called his "Public with two eyes." Would to heaven, that there had been some Caroline Brandt to give similar advice to Wagner concerning his Wotan and his King Mark!

Meanwhile, during the composition of "Der Freischütz," which was to mean so much for the happiness of Germany and the betterment of opera generally, Carl, the genius who struck out the magnificent work, was spending almost less time upon the details of composition and scoring than upon the purchase of articles for the home he was making for his bride-to-be. He wrote her long letters, describing his purchases of "chairs, crockery, curtains, knives, forks, spoons, pails, brooms, and mustard-pot."

She had ceased to be in his mind the brilliant and fascinating soubrette, and had become in the silly lover's-Latin, his "pug, his duck, his bird." He answered a letter she wrote him describing her success in the "Magic Flute:"

"I was amused with your account of the 'Zauberflöte,' but you know I hope soon to see you lay by all your pretty Papagena feathers. All your satins and ermines must give place to a coarse apron then. You will be only applauded by my hungry stomach, called out before the cook-wench, and saluted with 'da capo' when you kiss your Carl. It is very shocking, I know. What will my own pearl say to be dissolved in the sour vinegar of domestic life, and swallowed by a bear of a husband?"

In March, 1817, Weber was called to Prague, on business connected with his opera company; he was overjoyed at the thought of seeing Caroline, who was still singing there. Just as he was stepping into the travelling-carriage, a letter was handed him, saying that the firm in Prague, with which he had deposited all his savings and those of Caroline, was about to go into bankruptcy. There was indeed, of his long and careful hoardings only as much left as Caroline had deposited on his advice. Her savings were quite swept away.

But, without saying a word to her, he transferred the last penny he had in the world to her name, and left himself, except for his strength and fame, a pauper. It was many years after, and then only by chance, that Caroline learned the beautiful sacrifice he had made from his great love for her. When he reached Prague, he concealed from her all the distress he had suffered, and there was nothing but happiness in their reunion.

Returning to Dresden, he took up more seriously the composition of "Der Freischütz." The first note of it that he wrote was the second act duet between Agathe and Aennchen; he took Caroline as his ideal. Indeed, through the whole composition of the work, he declared that he saw Caroline always presiding. He seemed to hear her voice singing every note, and saw her fingers playing it on the piano; now smiling, over what she liked; now shaking her head over what displeased her. This spirit he took as the critic and judge of the whole work. There have rarely been such instances of actual personal inspiration in any work of art, and certainly none which do more credit to the absorption of the artist-mind in the worship of its idol. Furthermore, much of the composition was done at the home preparing for Caroline's actual presence, and he wrote those suave and optimistic pages of music to an accompaniment of hammers and saws, the wrangling of carpenters, painters, upholsterers, and scrub-women; sleeping at nights in the kitchen, and glad to find a kitchen-table to compose upon. The longed-for marriage could not take place until a court wedding for which he was writing music. This was postponed and postponed, until he was driven to distraction. But at last, when the royal bridegroom was sent on his way the composer fled toward Prague. Caroline surprised him by coming part way to meet him. On November 4, 1817, they were married. Carl gave Caroline's mother a pension of nine hundred thalers, though her husband and son were living. The honeymoon was paid for by concerts here and there, in which both took part, and by a benevolent royal commission to hunt for artists. Caroline, though her matrimonial treaty forbade her singing on the stage, was allowed to sing at concerts, and at some of them she sang duets, with Carl at the piano, while she played the guitar.

Carl had often told Caroline that she must expect a chaos in her new home in Dresden. When she arrived, and found everything beautiful and in perfect order, she wept with rapture. Late on the last night of the year 1817, Carl wrote in a diary these words; they show what depths there were in the soul and what heights in the ambition of one whose youth and training and early recklessness had promised so little of solidity and solemnity.

"The great important year has closed. May God still grant me the blessing He has hitherto so graciously accorded me; that I may have the power to make the dear one happy; and, as a brave artist, bring honour and advantage to my Fatherland! Amen!"

As for Caroline, who had been so volatile a soubrette and so happy in the footlight glitter, she turned out to be even a greater success as a _Haus-frau._ She began to win a more limited, but an equally profound, reputation for her perfect dinners and receptions, and for the minute care with which she kept all her "account-books, housekeeping-books, cellar-books." Finally, she even learned to cook, and the household became a dove-cote!

The instinct of jealousy is one that is not easily uprooted, and Caroline did not permit Carl's life to grow too monotonous. His high favour at court kept her in subjects for uneasiness. He finally attempted a violent cure. He began to absent himself from the house with unusual frequence, but would not explain where he had been, even though Caroline wept and wailed. At length he wrought her to the pitch of desperation by his heartless indifference; then, one day, he brought home a portrait bust which a sculptor friend had made and with it a signed record of every hour and minute of his absence. This, if not a permanent cure, was at least a partial remedy.

Weber's home became a proverb of hospitality and good cheer. The two sang duets, or Caroline recited poems, while Carl improvised accompaniments; excursions to the fields, and water parties, and hilarious reunions of the opera-troupe kept life busy. Later, he took a country home, where he surrounded himself with the dumb animals whose society he so enjoyed; these included a large hound, a raven, a starling, an Angora cat, and an ape.

On December 22, 1818, the first child, a girl, was born. Caroline was dangerously ill; the child was not strong, and Carl's own health, always at the brink of wreckage, broke down. Caroline, hardly able to be about, nursed her husband and concealed from him the serious condition of the child. Just as he was beginning to recover, in April, his firstborn died. The news could not be kept from him, and he was sent into delirium. Caroline's health gave way completely, and "the unhappy couple lay in neighbouring rooms, where they could only cry 'Comfort!' to each other through the wall; and where, in the still hours of night, each smothered the sobs of grief in the pillows, that the other might not hear."

Caroline was the first to recover. Carl's health and strength were on the final ebb--the long, slow ebb that made of his last years one dismal tragedy, which only his superb devotion to his wife and his immitigable optimism could brighten. In July, 1820, they decided to take a tour. They met with great success, but he found his weakness almost unbearable. At Hanover, he and Caroline were both prostrated, and could not join in the concert planned. On the road to Bremen, the postilion fell asleep and the coach was overturned into the ditch. The driver was stunned and the sick Carl had himself to revive the man, untie the baggage from the roof, unharness the horses, put everything in place again, and drive the postilion to the next station. At Hamburg, Caroline was too ill to continue the tour; she was about to become a mother, and Carl was compelled to go on without her, but he wrote her daily letters full of devotion. It was the first separation of their married life.

Later she rejoined him, and at Hamburg, the oyster entered once more into Weber's domestic career. The Brunetti had cured him of his love for her by her inordinate fondness for bivalves. Caroline, on the other hand, hated them. But Weber said:

"There can be no true sympathy between us while you detest a food I relish. For the love of me, swallow this oyster."

The first three were a severe trial, but, as the French might say, "Ce n'est pas que la première huitre qui coute." Afterward Weber would groan, "Alas, why did I ever teach you the trick?"

In 1821, there rose a famous operatic war between Spontini and Weber at Berlin. Caroline was prostrated with terror. Spontini's "Olympic" was given first with enormous success, and "Der Freischütz," in which Caroline had had so large a share, and which meant so much to the two, was forced into a dramatic comparison. In spite of a somewhat dubious beginning, the first night was one of the greatest ovations a musician has ever lived to see. In the midst of the tempestuous applause, every one looked for the composer, who was "sitting in a dark corner of his wife's box and kissing away her tears of joy."

When they returned to Dresden in July, Caroline's health was undermined by the emotions of the Berlin triumph, and it was necessary for her to be taken to Switzerland, where Carl was compelled to leave her. An accident in crossing the Elbe led him to write his will, leaving Caroline everything without reserve, and his dying curse upon any one who should disturb his wishes.

Now consumption began to fasten its claws more deeply on him, and when his wife returned she found him constantly racked with cough and fever. One day he saw the first fatal spot of blood upon his handkerchief; he turned pale and sighed: "God's will be done."

From that moment neither his conviction that he was doomed to an early death, nor his courage to die pluckily, ever left him. When "Der Freischütz" was given in Dresden, Caroline was ill at home. Carl arranged a courier service by which he received, after every scene, news of his wife. In February of the next year, he was compelled to leave Dresden; he placed in his wife's hands a sealed letter only to be opened in case of his death. This letter gave a complete account of all his affairs, and a last expression of his immense love for her. On his many tours, he met almost uninterrupted triumph, but as he wrote to Caroline:

"I would rather be in my still chamber with you, my beloved life. Without you all pride is shorn of its splendour; my only real joy can be in that which gives you joy too."

From now on he spent a large part of his time away from her, always tormented to the last degree by homesickness, always harrowed by the fear that he might die out of the reach of his adored wife and two children, and never feeling that he had laid by money enough to leave them free of the danger of want, after he should have drifted into the grave that yawned just before his weary feet.

It is hard to find in story or history a more pitiful struggle against fate and the frustration of every deep desire than the last days of Carl Maria von Weber, hurrying from triumph to triumph, and dying as he jolted along his way, or stood bowing with hollow heart before uproarious multitudes. Homesickness grew to be a positive frenzy with him.

"They carry me in triumph," he wrote to Caroline: "they watch for every wink to do me kindnesses. But I feel I can only be happy there, where I can hear my lambs bleat, and their mother low, and can beat my dog, or turn away my maids, if they are at all too troublesome."

In 1825, Christmas found him at a distance, and he could not reach home. "I shall think of you all on Christmas-eve," he wrote, "But that I never cease to do. All my labours are for you--all my joy is with you." "Can I but be with you on New Year's eve," he wrote again, with that tinge of superstition which always more or less pervaded his character, "I shall be with you all the year."

Now London beckoned to him, as she had to so many German musicians, to whom she always has stood for the city of gold and of rescue from pauperdom. Ghastly as Von Weber looked in the clutches of his disease; hungry as his heart and body were for a long, an eternal rest, he felt that he must not shrink from this final goal. As his son writes with aching heart in the biography:

"To Gublitz, who doubted of his ability to undertake the journey to London, he replied, in a tone of melancholy irony: 'Whether I can or no, I must. Money must be made for my family--money, man. I am going to London to die there. Not a word! I know it as well as you.' The bright, cheery, lively Weber, who revelled in the triumph of his 'Freischütz,' was already dead and gone.

"Before his departure, Weber regulated all his affairs in the most punctilious manner. The presentiment of the fast-approaching end rendered him doubly careful that all should be in order; and, in his last conferences with his legal friends, he was always anxious to insure the presence of his wife, whose strong practical good sense he knew. During these painful duties his personal appearance became so fearfully changed, that most of his friends began to fear he would no longer find strength sufficient for his journey. His form sank together: his voice was almost totally gone: his cough was incessant.

"In the circle of intimates who still visited him at that tea-table, of which his wit, and pleasantry, and genial humour had so long made the charm, he would often murmur, with a faint smile, 'Don't take it ill, good people, if I drop asleep: indeed I cannot help it.'

"And his head would fall upon his breast. His poor wife suffered cruel agonies: she could not but feel that he was really spending the small remaining breath of life for the sake of her and the children. She manoeuvred in secret to induce friends to persuade him that he ought to renounce his fearful journey, when all her own affectionate efforts to this intent had failed. But the response was ever the same sad one.

"'Whether I undertake this journey, or no, it is all one! Within a year I am a dead man. But if I go, my children will have bread, when their father is gone: if I do not, want may stare them in the face. What is to be done?' On one occasion he added, 'I should like to come back once more and see my dear ones' faces again: and then, in God's name, let God's will be done! But to die there, it would be hard, very hard!'

"The morning of the 7th of February had not yet dawned, after a night of bitter tears, when Weber's travelling-carriage drove up to his door. The time was come for the separation of the husband, who scarcely hoped to see his home again, from the loving wife, who felt that he was a dying man. Another tear upon the forehead of his sleeping children--another long lingering kiss--the suffering man dragged his swollen feet into the carriage, huddled feverishly in his furs--the door was closed--and he rolled away from home, on that cold winter's morning, sobbing till the shattered chest might almost burst at once.

"Caroline rushed back to her room, and sank on her knees, with the cry: 'It is his coffin I have closed upon him!'

"At the first post, Weber parted with his own coachman and his own horses. It was the last wrench from home and its remembrances. His voluminous correspondence with his wife was the only tie left to Weber; and nothing can be more touching than these letters, amounting in all to fifty-three, in which the sufferer was always trying to conceal, as far as he could, his sufferings; the anxious woman left behind, always repressing her own bitter anguish lest it should increase the other's sorrow."

Carl had been lured to London by reports of the enormous craze of the whole people over his work. It was his fate to reach there just after the tide of enthusiasm had turned, and was lapsing into the ebb of weariness and impatience. After the first rapturous curiosity of personal greeting, he found that the public would take little of him but "Der Freischütz," and of this opera he had grown weary, as composers always grow of their spoiled children of fortune.

His health, too, was in tragic state. Frightful spasms and hemorrhages seemed to tear him asunder. At a dinner given him, two of the guests had to carry him up the stairs. He was hardly strong enough to stand during the cheers that greeted him when he came before his audience. But the worst disease of all, the one that would not cease gnawing at his heart, was his homesickness. To a doctor who offered him a new remedy, he cried:

"Go! go! no doctor's tinkering can help me now. The machine is shattered. But, ah, would but God in His mercy grant that it might hold together till I could embrace my Lina and my boys once more!" His effort to keep Caroline from knowing his illness was kept up. When she wrote him that the children were begging to know why he remained so long away, he answered:

"Yes, the father is long, long away; ah, and how long is the time to him! how every day is counted! Patience! patience! Day crawls after day."

"God bless you, my deeply beloved ones!" he wrote once more. "I count days, hours, minutes, until we meet again. We have often been parted before, and loved each other dearly, God knows. But this terrible yearning I have never known before."

At last he grew so desperately sad that he broke his rule and wrote his wife full details of his suffering; he had given up hope of ever seeing his home again.

At this time, a singer wished to bring out a new song of his, and furnished him with words. His once alert fancy groped long for a melody, but, as his son writes:

"At last on the morning of the 18th of May, the great artist's flitting genius came back to him, and for the last time gave him a farewell kiss upon that noble forehead now bedewed with the cold sweat of death--for the last time! But the trembling hands were unable to write down more than the notes for the voice."

Fate had still reserved a bitter blow for him. He had fastened his hopes upon a farewell concert, and grew morbid upon the importance of it to his future.

"This day week is my concert," he wrote on the 19th of May. "How my poor heart beats when I think of it! What will be the result? The last chances left me are this concert and my benefit. When I think on all they cost me, should they not turn out so as to meet my modest expectations, it were hard indeed. But I must not let my courage fail me. I will rely on Him, who has already been so infinitely merciful to us. You will think, my beloved life, that I lay far too much stress on this. But remember that my hope of fortune for us was the only purpose of this weary journey. Can you not comprehend, then, why I now hold for so important that which has always played but a subordinate part in my life? Pray, dearest heart, pray that poor old papa's wishes, which are all for your dear sakes, may yet be fulfilled."

To complete the mockery of his last days, fashion declined to interest itself in his concert, and, to keep even the common public away, the skies poured down floods of rain. The house was almost empty. The enthusiasm of the few good hearts there were Job's consolation. At the end of the concert he was led to his room, where he sank down, a complete wreck in mind and hope, muttering:

"What do you say to that? That, that is 'Weber in London'!"

His hand trembled so that he could hardly write any more to his wife; still, in a quivering scrawl, he bade her address her answer not to London, but to a city on the way home, for he is starting homeward--homeward at last! But he is not coming home through Paris, as he had planned. He writes:

"What should I do there? I cannot walk--I cannot speak. I will have nothing more to do with business for years to come. So it is far better I should take the straight way home by Calais, through Brussels, Cologne, Coblenz, and thus by the Rhine to Frankfort. What a charming journey! I must travel very slowly, however, and probably rest for half a day now and then. I shall gain a good fortnight thus; and by the end of June I hope to be in your arms.

"How will you receive me? In Heaven's name, alone. Let no one disturb my joy of looking again upon my wife and my children, my dearest and my best... Thank God! the end of all is fast approaching."

The end of all was fast approaching. He sent his friends out to purchase souvenirs of unhappy London, as gifts for his family. He was so impatient to be off that he would listen to no advice to postpone his starting.

"I must go back to my own, I must!" he sobbed incessantly. "Let me see them once more--and then God's will be done." The attempt appeared impossible to all. With great unwillingness he yielded to his friend's request to have a consultation of physicians. "Be it so," he answered. "But come of it what may, I go!"

His only thought, his only word, was "Home!" On the 2d of June he wrote his last letter to his beloved,--the last lines his hand ever traced. "What a joy, my own dear darling, your letter gave me! What a happiness to me to know that you are well! ... As this letter requires no answer, it will be but a short one. What a comfort it is not to have to answer... God bless you all and keep you well! Oh, were I but amongst you all again! I kiss you with all my heart and soul, my dearest one! Preserve all your love for me, and think with pleasure on him who loves you above all, your Carl."

He was to leave London on the 6th of June; on the night of the 4th he could talk to his friends only of their kindness and of his eagerness to be home. To a friend, who stayed to help him through the painful ordeal of undressing, he murmured his thanks and said, "Now let me sleep."

The next morning, when they came to his room, he had been dead for hours. London was full of words of regret for the man whose music had added so much to the beauty and cheerfulness of the world. A great benefit for his family was arranged, but fate would not cease mocking him in his grave,--the receipts hardly equalled the expenses!

A committee petitioned the Dean of Westminster to allow the funeral to be held in the Abbey. The courteous answer of regret reminded the committee that Von Weber was a Roman Catholic! The musicians volunteered, however, to give him a splendid funeral, and at least music was not wanting when his body was lowered into the grave in an alien land. Von Weber's son, Max, describes how the news was sent to Caroline by Von Weber's devoted friend, Fürstenau:

"It was the death-warrant of the purest wedded bliss that had ever made two mortals happy; it was nigh a fatal cup of poison to one of the noblest hearts of womankind: it told two little blooming boys that they were orphaned. No wonder that Fürstenau had not the courage to address Caroline von Weber herself: his letter had been sent to her dearest friend, Fräulein von Hanmann. The sad messenger of death went down to Kosterwitz, the letter in hand.

"But she, too, had not the courage to break the fearful news to the impulsive little woman, unaided and alone. She stopped her carriage at a little distance from the house, to beg the support of Roth, who lived close by. But Caroline had heard the carriage-wheels--had looked out--had seen her friend descend on that unaccustomed spot, and disappear into Roth's house. A fearful presentiment seized her--she rushed toward the spot--she saw the two standing in the little garden, wringing their hands and weeping--she knew all--and she lay senseless at their feet. Her little boy Max had followed her in childish alarm. Nigh forty years have gone by since then; but he has never forgotten the sound of that terrible cry, when his mother, slowly recovering from her swoon, clasped him convulsively in her arms, and wetted his face with a flood of tears."

Nearly twenty years later it was before Von Weber's body at last reached the Fatherland. The agonies of homesickness he had endured seemed to haunt even the cold clay. In 1841, a writer made an ardent appeal for the restoration of this glory of German song, to the German soil. The idea became a crusade. But it was not until 1844, and then chiefly by the aid of Wagner, then conductor in Dresden, and a close friend of Caroline and her children, that success was attained. The younger son, Alexander, had already been buried; on December 14, 1844, the father's body was placed by his side. It had been carried through the streets of Dresden behind a black banner, on which were inscribed words which once would have meant so much: "Weber in Dresden."

"In the richly decorated chapel of the cemetery, all the ladies of the theatre, with Schröder-Devrient at their head, awaited the body, and covered the coffin with their laurels. The ceremony was at an end. The torches were extinguished; the crowd dispersed. But, by the light of two candles still burning on the altar, might be seen the form of a small, now middle-aged woman who had flung herself upon the bier, whilst a pale young man knelt praying by her side."

This pale young man was the Baron Max Maria von Weber, to whose pen we owe a wonderful portrait of a wonderful man. It was the son's love, strangely tempered with wisdom, that showed us all the phases of this character, which, by revealing its worser side, made the better side convincing, complete, alive.

Weber had lived hardly more than half of the allotted three score and ten, but he had lived life in all its phases, from riotous dissipation amid royal splendour and insolence to a brave and whole-souled battle for the welfare of his home. It is futile to attempt judging the effect of music upon life, and of life upon music. Too many sorts of man have written too many sorts of music and lived too many sorts of life. But, if you wish to use Von Weber's life as an example of the influence of music, surely, you would write Von Weber's name on the credit side of the ledger, for he reached his best music when his life was best managed. He took a musician for his wife, and her high ideals of art and life made him a man and a soldier against Fate.

Home they brought his body, a pride to his Fatherland, and the greater Wagner who owed the great Weber so much, spoke over his grave these words:

"Here rest thee, then! ... Wherever thy genius bore thee, to whatsoever distant lands, it stayed for ever linked by a thousand tendrils to the German people's heart; that heart with which it wept and laughed, a child believing in the tales and legends of his country. And though the Briton may yield thee justice; the Frenchman, admiration; yet, the German alone can love thee. His thou art; a beautiful day in his life, a warm drop of his own blood, a morsel of his heart--and who shall blame us that we wished thy ashes, too, to mingle with this earth, to form a part of our dear German soil."