Breuning also says in his book “Aus dem Schwarzspanierhause,” that he was sometimes seen driving in the Prater with two or four horses in an old-fashioned phaeton, either handling the reins himself or lolling carelessly in the seat with two gallooned servants on the box. Beethoven’s friends used to ridicule his brother to his face. In a Conversation Book of 1822-23 Count Moritz Lichnowsky writes: “Everybody thinks him a fool; we call him only the Chevalier--all the world says of him that his only merit is that he bears your name.” No doubt there was something, even a good deal, of the parvenu in Johann’s character. He had neither the intellectual nor moral poise to fit him for the place which he thought he was entitled to fill by virtue of his wealth and his relationship to one of the most famous men of his age. Nor could he command respect from a social point of view. How far from above reproach his wife was, Beethoven showed by his unjustifiable conduct when he sought to have her ejected from Linz in order to separate her from his brother. That conduct Ludwig’s letters, soon to be quoted, show had been condoned by him, but a memorandum found among Schindler’s papers discloses that her conduct in Vienna was such that Beethoven again thought of invoking the police.[56] [Sidenote: A DEFENSE OF THE OLDER BROTHER] That Johann van Beethoven was fond of money is indicated in his remarks in the Conversation Books, when his advice to his brother is always dictated by financial considerations and, no doubt, by the thoughts of profits in which he hoped to share. But what would you? For what other purposes had Beethoven asked him in to his councils? Surely not to get his views on the artistic value of his work. He defers in his letters to his brother’s superior business sagacity--that is all. It does not anywhere appear that Johann ever attempted to overreach him or lead him to financial injury. No doubt Beethoven in his fits of anger said many things about him which put him in a bad light before his friends; but did he not do the same thing in their own cases? Did Schindler escape calumny? The better evidence is that offered by the letters which show that Beethoven had confidence in his brother’s honesty and judgment, invited his help, and was solicitous lest he suffer loss from his efforts. If Johann lacked appreciation of his brother’s real significance in art, he was proud of the world’s appreciation of him, and if he could not have high regard for that high moral attitude in the matter which had brought condemnation on his sister-in-law and wife, he at least showed magnanimity in not trying to do his brother injury and being always ready to help him when he could. It is very likely that he was not at all musical and that his affectation of appreciation of his brother’s works made him a fair subject for ridicule. But surely there was little moral obliquity in that. In a conversation in 1824 the nephew relates that his uncle had been present