BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Saturday, June 24, 1826
Nephew Karl comes to see his Uncle Ludwig today. Karl talked to his landlady, Frau Schlemmer, about the business with the leftovers yesterday. She has no faith in Passy to be a housekeeper any more. Ludwig grumbles that she wants to sleep at her own home. Karl observes, “It is apparent that she does not want to sleep here; therefore, she tries to postpone it as long as possible and thinks that in the end you will get used to it.”
Ludwig wants to give her 14 days’ notice. Karl tells his uncle: “That is not necessary. I think you only have to tell her that you see it does not work with the housekeeping.—Since she is not even in the house yet, you do not need to give her 14 days’ notice; you would also have to endure many things during these 14 days.”
A man comes to the apartment. It is her shoemaker, and Karl says he spoke French with her. “A very gallant young man.” Karl asks his uncle whether he has tried her out on making a roast.
Uncle Ludwig makes a remark (probably unfavorable) about unpaid assistant Karl Holz. Karl is surprised. “Holz? I thought [former unpaid assistant Anton] Schindler.”
Passy may quit anyway; she told Frau Schlemmer that she feels so uncomfortable that she would not have come here if her honor had not demanded it. If things don’t get any better, it won’t last long. Beethoven feels sorry for her reduced circumstances. Karl thinks “She cannot be in such a bad position, for she has a very nice apartment and nice furniture, and she also has a maid.” Frau Schlemmer agrees she is not so badly off. Karl’s opinion is that “She has seen a lot of the world, and she is good with people. But one only sees her as something extraordinary at first sight. One soon sees that there is nothing behind the front.”
She is making dinner; Karl believes that “The dishes will probably be of the same quality as the ones at Lichnowsky’s, where we had a lot of courses, yet we left the table hungry.”
Karl and Passy talk about the menu for tomorrow which they present to Ludwig for his consideration:
Cordial soup, with rice.
Meat with anchovy sauce.
Vegetables. Green beans with liver.
A duck, ducks are very good now.
Frittaten casserole.
Ludwig would like venison. Karl tells him, very well, a haunch of venison. Passy has her own venison merchant where she gets everything. It could be larded or roasted; it depends on how large it is. She will buy a small back and take care to buy it fresh and make it well.
Uncle Ludwig asks Karl where his classmates at the Polytechnic Institute live. Almost all of those in the business school with him are living on the Wieden. Karl, recognizing his uncle’s suspicious nature, says he only goes to see a few of them, the best of them.
Karl changes the subject and asks his uncle whether he has heard about Carl Maria von Weber’s death in London. He has; Ludwig made a note in the conversation book on Wednesday, June 21, while he was reading the Wiener Zeitschrift, that Weber was only 40 at the time of his passing. Karl says that Weber’s new opera, Oberon, is said to have exhausted him. “I have seen an article about him and his performance in London; it said that his face was tremendously serious, and revealed more of reflection than of genius.”
Ludwig suggests Karl accompany Passy to the market; Karl declines. She can do the shopping.
Karl notes that Gottfried Weber, writing in Schott’s music journal Cäcilia, is defending himself against the attacks from Abbé Stadler over the authorship of Mozart’s Requiem. His letters do not show him to be an ordinary gentleman.
Karl mentions humorously that at the Zum wilden Mann inn, the waitstaff calls his uncle a baron. “Recently the dining waiter said to another one: Quick, a plate for the Baron Beethoven.”
Karl departs, but he will be back tomorrow, when nephew and uncle have another blowup between them.
Conversation Book 113, 35v-38v.