BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Monday, December 5, 1825
Beethoven makes a short errand list today:
- Have the straw mattress sewn.
- Another pocket knife.
Nephew Karl comes by Uncle Ludwig’s apartment, probably around noon. A new maid for his uncle came by his rooms. She can start Thursday, December 8. Karl asks whether Uncle Ludwig wants to pay her earnest money. Uncle Ludwig is suspicious, but Karl confirms she is entitled to that money in advance. She is in the Rothes Haus [the nearby large residential building where the von Breuning family lives]. Beethoven does not seem to want her, and Karl asks who will carry the water to the apartment, then?
Theresia Adelmann will need to be paid for her short stint as Beethoven’s housekeeper. She gets 6 florins 40 kreutzers for the 8 days, plus 3 bread money payments for 1 florin 48 kreutzers, making a total of 8 florins, 28 kreutzers. If she stays an additional day for 9 total, then she would be entitled to more. Karl acknowledges that out where she worked before, she made an ordinary beef soup, so at least she is economical in that respect.
Adelmann returns with the folding screen. The only one she could find cost 14 florins, and she is carrying it back.
The housekeeping area next to the kitchen is warmer than the antechamber, Karl observes.
Among all of the applicants that they have found through their frequent advertisements in the Wiener Zeitung, there was not a single one of them who Frau Schlemmer [Karl’s landlady] considered to be qualified to be in charge of housekeeping, Karl says. The maid is willing to stay until Ludwig has another housekeeper. Ludwig wants her gone, but Karl asks whether it might not be better to retain her the extra 3 days until the new maid starts? [She might have to repay that 3 days of earnest money.] Karl is getting frustrated because a new maid working with a housekeeper who is herself still quite new would not be ideal and could not satisfy Uncle Ludwig. Finally, Karl convinces his uncle and tells Adelmann that the maid can stay until Thursday. Adelmann said she would prefer that over having another stranger.
Adelmann is cooking a capon, and Karl asks whether it is a Styrian capon, which have been heavily advertised in the Wiener Zeitung lately at “the most reasonable prices possible.” Karl observes that it has natural color.
Karl mentions that one can buy genuine Turkish coffee in the Spiegelgasse on the corner at Neuner’s coffeehouse.
Karl has to leave to attend his afternoon classes. He asks whether Uncle Ludwig might come to visit him at his place this evening or tomorrow. Ludwig says he will come tomorrow. Uncle Ludwig questions him about whether a letter or some other document Karl is to write has been finished. Karl says that he still has to write it, and departs.
Later in the day, copyist Wenzel Rampl comes to see Beethoven. He may be here to get the score of the Missa Solemnis to copy for the projected Akademie benefit concerts, but Franz Michael Reisser, the vice director of the Polytechnic Institute, still has the manuscript, despite efforts to retrieve it from him. Most likely Beethoven tells him that Holz, whom he has deputized to pursue the matter, should have the score by the 7th. [Beethoven had written Holz about November 26th instructing him to under no circumstances leave the score in Reisser’s hands. But Holz has not come back with the score yet.] Rampl gives Beethoven his address, and makes an appointment for Thursday [December 8, a holiday] at noon. Later this month, Beethoven will need Rampl to make a copy of the new quartet for Prince Galitzin, but that score is not yet finished.
Later at a coffeehouse (perhaps Neuner’s for the Turkish coffee that Karl had suggested), Ludwig reads the newspapers. He copies down an advertisement for an official’s pious daughter over 30 years of age, who wants a position as a housekeeper. This is not the first time that he has copied down this advertisement.
Conversation Book 99, 4r-6v; BH 53 pp.39-40.