BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Monday, June 5, 1820 (approximately)

Conversation Book 14, leaves 1r through 5v

Beethoven is making an extensive shopping and errand list for his next trip to Vienna. Thus it is added to over the course of several days (he does not depart until the evening of June 9th or the morning of the 10th). Among the things he needs to buy are placemats, boots and shoes for himself and the servants, and two pairs of pants and a housevest for himself (and a similar set for nephew Karl as well) from Joseph Lind, one of the most prominent tailors in Vienna. Beethoven also needed to pick up a pound of sugar, five white vests, a hat, two white pairs of pants, two mousetraps, pillowcases, a coffee machine and numerous other items. It seems Beethoven frequently wore white while he was in Mödling. As we will see later, he also had an extensive rodent problem.

Among the errands he needed to run was finding a housekeeper, and to this end Beethoven reminds himself to visit the fishmonger woman who had promised to help him line up a new housekeeper back on May 6. He has several notes for visiting his lawyer, Johann Baptist Bach, with questions about an edition of Beethoven’s collected works, issues relating to the status of the appeal on Karl’s guardianship and what additional evidence might need to be provided, and fears that sister-in-law Johanna will get back half of the pension that Beethoven was now entitled to receive as Karl’s guardian. Beethoven reminds himself to have his knife sharpened in the city. He also complains about the rate of postage for unsealed letters; in Metternich’s Austria, postage rates were supposed to be lower for unsealed letters than sealed ones, as part of his surveillance apparatus.