BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Thursday, August 31, 1820

Conversation Book 16, leaves 42r through 43r

A recovering Beethoven makes a note to get some rough woolen blankets for Oliva’s apartment, apparently expecting that he will need to stay with Oliva while house hunting again. As previously observed, this summer in Vienna is unusually cold.

Feeling somewhat better today, Beethoven visits a Mödling coffee house and reads yesterday’s Intelligenzblatt. He notes the book, Means of Making Damp Wells Dry, as well as two books suitable for gifts to students who successfully completed their examinations.

Beethoven is at least well enough to make a pun for his own amusement. He notes an apartment with 6 rooms on Erdberggasse (Earth Mountain Lane) northeast of Vienna, except he writes the street as “Erdbeergasse,” or Strawberry Lane. This is a little joke he makes several times in the conversation books, and according to editor Ted Albrecht it seems to have its origin back in 1810 when Bettina Brentano had described her address incorrectly in this manner. Perhaps it was also a way of fondly remembering a young woman in whom he was once interested (and who has been put forward as yes, yet another candidate for the Immortal Beloved.)