Mother and son undertook a voyage to Holland in the beginning of the winter of 1781. The widow Karth, one of the Hertel family, born in 1780 and still living in Bonn in 1861, passed her childhood in the house No. 462 Wenzelgasse in the upper story of which the Beethovens then lived. One of her reminiscences is in place here. She distinctly remembered sitting, when a child, upon her own mother’s knee, and hearing Madame van Beethoven--“a quiet, suffering woman”--relate that when she went with her little boy Ludwig to Holland it was so cold on the boat that she had to hold his feet in her lap to prevent them from being frostbitten; and also that, while absent, Ludwig played a great deal in great houses, astonished people by his skill and received valuable presents. The circumstance of the cold feet warmed in the mother’s lap, is precisely one to fasten itself in the memory of a child and form a point around which other facts might cluster.[21] Another incident related in connection with this journey to Holland--not as a fact, but as one which she had heard spoken of in her childhood--and one very difficult to comprehend, is, that some person, whether an envious boy or a heartless adult she could not tell, drew a knife across the fingers of Ludwig to disable him from playing! FOOTNOTES: [13] In one of Beethoven’s conversation books his nephew writes on December 15, 1823: “To-day is the 15th of December, the day of your birth, but I am not sure whether it is the 15th or 17th, inasmuch as we can not depend on the certificate of baptism and I read it only once when I was still with you in January.” The nephew, it will be observed, does not appeal to a family tradition but to the baptismal certificate and the uncertainty, therefore, is with reference to the date of baptism, not of birth. Hence the deduction which Kalischer makes (“Vossische Zeitung,” No. 17, 1891) that Beethoven was born on December 15. Hesse calls to witness a clerk employed in Simrock’s establishment with whom Beethoven had business transactions, and who had written on the back of the announcement of Beethoven’s death, “L. v. Beethoven was born on December 16, 1770.” [14] The mistake in the mother’s name is sufficiently explained by the use of Lena as the contraction of both Helena and Magdalena. [15] “The baptismal certificate seems to be incorrect, since there was a Ludwig born before me. A Baumgarten was my sponsor, I believe. Ludwig van Beethoven.” [16] “Allg. Mus.-Ztg.,” May 23. 1827. [17] There was no teacher of this name in Bonn at the time. There was a Rupert, however, who may have been the one meant by Fischer. [18] These memoirs are in manuscript. They were formerly in the possession of Dr. Bodifée of Bonn, later in the Town Hall. [19] Error; Beethoven’s mother did not die until 1787, long after he had left school.