In September of this year the interest of Beethoven’s old friend Andreas Streicher, whose wife was a visitor at Baden, seems to have been awakened in a marked degree, and he gave himself to the devising of plans to ameliorate the composer’s financial position. He revived the project for a complete edition of the compositions which, as he outlines it, he thinks might yield a profit of 10,000 florins, good money; proposes six high-class subscription concerts in the approaching winter, which, with 600 subscribers, would yield 4,800 florins; finally he suggests that manuscript copies of the Mass in D with pianoforte or organ accompaniment be sold to a number of singing societies. Though this project had in a measure been attempted in the case of the Singverein of Berlin and achieved in that of the Cäcilienverein of Frankfort, Beethoven seems to have authorized Streicher to make an effort in the direction proposed, for two copies of a letter evidently written to be communicated to singing societies or representative members have been found. In the letter Beethoven suggests that owing to the cost of copying, etc., the price be 50 ducats--just as much as he had asked of his royal subscribers for the full orchestral score. None of the projects came to execution, though the first, which lay close to Beethoven’s heart, came up for attention at a later date. [Sidenote: PRAISE FOR ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH] Towards the end of September, Johann Stumpff, a native of Thuringia but a resident of London, was among the visitors at Baden who were admitted to intimate association with Beethoven. This was another Stumpff, not the one who came to Vienna in 1818 with a letter from Thomas Broadwood, and who tuned the new English pianoforte. He was a manufacturer of harps and an enthusiastic admirer of Beethoven’s music. Anticipating a meeting with the composer, he had provided himself with a letter of introduction to Haslinger, whose help to that end he asked. He had also gotten a letter from Streicher, whose acquaintance he had made in London. He accomplished his end and wrote a long and enthusiastic account of his intercourse with Beethoven at Baden, whither Haslinger had accompanied him on his first visit.[120] He was received by Beethoven with extraordinary cordiality. The composer accepted an invitation to dinner, entertained his host at dinner in return, played for him on his Broadwood pianoforte (after Stein, at Stumpff’s request, had restored its ruins), and at parting gave him a print of one of his portraits and promised to alight at his house if ever he came to London. Much of his conversation, which Stumpff records, is devoted to a condemnation of the frivolity and bad musical taste of the Viennese, and excessive laudation of everything English. “Beethoven,” Stumpff remarks, “had an exaggerated opinion of London and its highly cultured inhabitants,” and he quotes Beethoven as saying: “England stands high in culture.