Beethoven and his servants usually had hard times getting along with
each other. He was utterly careless and untidy, and the utmost confusion
reigned in his room. "Books and music were scattered in all directions,"
says a visitor. "Here the residue of a cold luncheon; there some full,
some half-emptied, bottles. On the desk the hasty sketch of a new
quartette; in another corner the remains of breakfast; on the pianoforte
the scribbled hints for a noble symphony, yet little more than in
embryo; hard by, a proof-sheet waiting to be returned; letters from
friends, and on business, spread all over the floor; between the windows
a goodly Stracchino cheese; on one side of it ample vestiges of a
genuine Verona salami; and notwithstanding all this confusion, he
constantly praised, with Ciceronian eloquence, his own neatness and
love of order!" When something did go astray, he would complain bitterly
that everything was done to annoy him; but, after a few moments of
raving, he recovered his natural good humour.
Though never married, Beethoven was always in love. He had several
attachments during his youthful days in Bonn, though none were really
serious. Meeting again in later life with one of his early flames, the
gifted singer, Magdalena Willman, he begged her to become his wife, but
met with a refusal. "He was very ugly and half crazy," she said
afterward in excuse. Most of the objects of his later affections were
women of rank and position, but in early years he fell a prey to the
charms of damsels in much more humble stations. According to his pupil,
Ries: "Beethoven never visited me more frequently than when I lived in
the house of a tailor, with three very handsome but thoroughly
respectable daughters."
At twenty, he fell in love with Babette, daughter of the proprietress of
a coffee-house that he frequented. That Babette's charms impressed
others may be gathered from the fact that she afterward became the
Countess Belderbusch. Three years later, Eleonora von Breuning was the
recipient of his devotion, and he would no doubt have found a good wife
in her if she, too, had not finally married some one else. The next
important figure on the list was the Countess Babette de Keglevics,
afterward Princess Odeschalchi, to whom Beethoven showed his feelings in
the shape of the Sonata, Opus 7. The Baroness Ertmann he addressed as
"Liebe, werthe, Dorothea Cecilia," while the Countess Erdoedy received
the still warmer greeting of "Liebe, liebe, liebe, liebe Graefin." All of
these women, and many others, were ready to stand almost any liberty
from Beethoven, and they entertained the warmest affection for him. At a
later date, the Countess Erdoedy erected a temple in her park to the
memory of Beethoven. That his affections were changeable, if intense,
was admitted by the composer himself. On being teased about his conquest
of a beautiful woman, he admitted that she had interested him longer
than any of the others,--namely, seven whole months.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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