Again Beethoven had to struggle with the question as to whether or not he should make the journey to London. He was strongly urged to go by his desire to earn a large sum of money. His friends pressed him with arguments in favor of the trip. Karl admonished him to make up his mind without giving heed to his insatiably sordid brother, but reminded him that Neate had assured him he would make enough money to be free of care for the rest of his life. Johann did not talk of the financial advantage alone but said that he would benefit physically, travel being good for the health. Apparently answering an objection of Beethoven’s on the score of his age, Karl reminded him that Haydn also went to London when he was fifty years old and he was “not so famous.” Schuppanzigh bursts out with his brusque third person singular: “I wish he would pluck up enough courage to make the trip; he would not regret it.” Who should accompany him? Schindler had been recommended by Neate, but his name does not occur in these conversations; instead, there is talk of Schuppanzigh and young Streicher. But as it turned out, no one was to accompany him, nobody alight with him either at the house of Stumpff or the Hotel de la Sablonière in Leicester Square which Neate had recommended as a French house much visited by foreigners. His doubts, suspicions, fears for his health, anxiety about his nephew, his fatal indecision, prevailed;--he would make the visit some other time--perhaps in the fall, as he wrote to Neate. Meanwhile would Neate aid him in the matter of the quartets? He had finished one and was at work on a second, which would be completed soon. Then he wrote again--on May 25; he was satisfied with the offer of £100 for the three quartets, was Neate agreed to his plan of sending them to a banker to be delivered on payment of the fee? If so he would send the first quartet at once and the fee might be paid after he had given notice of the completion of the other two. [Sidenote: THE NINTH SYMPHONY AT AIX-LA-CHAPELLE]