BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Saturday, June 25, 1825

Nephew Karl is still visiting Uncle Ludwig in Baden. He says the old woman, housekeeper Barbara Holzmann, always comes up short with the receipts because she forgets a great deal. She doesn’t therefore want to stay beyond July 7, when her agreed time is up. Karl tells her he doesn’t know anything about her time being up on July 7, and in any case, she needs to stay on for 14 days, until Uncle Ludwig finds another housekeeper. Certainly she had been done wrong concerning the receipts, if she herself had not made the error. Ludwig suggests that the receipts be added up again. Karl tells him “she was so wild that she wouldn’t hear anything about calculating the receipts again.” According to Holzmann, the kitchen maid does not want to stay either. Maybe the best thing to do would be to include in the advertisement for a housekeeper in the Wiener Zeitung that they are also looking for a maid.

The maid apparently is particular and does not want to work in the large room, only in the kitchen. Otherwise she is quite satisfied and has no complaints. The two of them go shopping daily. Holzmann has told her she should stay. She really would like to cook. Why doesn’t she cook, then, asks Uncle Ludwig? “Perhaps she’s afraid because she sees that the meals that the old woman prepares are often not to your liking.”

Conversation Book 90, 17v-19r. Karl returns to Vienna, either this afternoon, or more likely tomorrow, though he does not write in the conversation book on Sunday. July 7 would mark two months since Frau Holzmann had moved with Beethoven to Baden. She has worked on and off for him now for years, and she may have started to realize her memory was slipping.