Chapter XIII: Mozart (1)

As we come nearer to our own day, the documents concerning the personal lives of composers begin to multiply. Of the love of Bach we have only that tantalising allusion to the "stranger maiden." Of Haydn we have amorous documents enough to make a brochure. When we reach Mozart, his letters alone fill two comfortable volumes. Of Beethoven there are still more numerous possessions. By Wagner and Liszt we are fairly overwhelmed.

Search not for the artist's self in his works of art. This is good cautious advice. But there are occasional exceptions, and of these Mozart is the most radiant. The qualities of eternal youth and of juventine gaiety; of intimate tenderness; of swagger that winks while it swaggers; of love that is ever deep but sunlit to the depth; and of tragedy with a touch of fatalistic horror,--all those qualities that are found scattered through his sonatas and symphonies and his various operas--all the qualities that are combined in "Don Giovanni," are the qualities of Mozart's own nature, always excepting the ruthlessness and the fanatic libertinism of his Don Juan.

Schopenhauer says that the genius is he who never quite outgrows the childhood of his attitude toward the world. Mozart was always the sublime child.

All the qualities of youth give life and personality to his letters, and place them consequently among the most delightful letters in existence. Ludwig Nohl collected most of them into two volumes, and Lady Wallace has translated them into English, with a certain amount of inaccuracy, but a surprising amount of spirit withal. They may be picked up without much difficulty, though they are out of print; and any one interested in musicians or in lovers or in letters, should make haste to add these two golden volumes to his library.

As the first letter was written in his thirteenth year and the last in the thirty-fifth and final year of his life, and as they constitute two volumes of the size of this one, it is manifest that I am here empowered only to make a skimming summary of his heart-history--woe's me!

The human affections grow by exercise. Mozart was so devoted and so enthusiastic in his fondness for his father and mother and his sister that his heart was graduated early for any demand. The most unmusical people know that Mozart stands unrivalled among infant prodigies, that he was a pocket-Paderewski, at a period when most children cannot even trundle a hoop, and that he was deep in composition before the usual child is out of kilts. Everybody has seen the pictures of the littler Mozart and his little sister perched like robins on a piano stool and giving a concert before crowned heads, with the assistance of the father and the mother, themselves musicians.

The elder Mozart made a life-work out of the career of his children, though he was a gifted musician and a shrewd and intelligent man on his own account. He was in no sense one of your child-beating brutes who make an easy livelihood by turning their children into slaves. He believed that his son was capable of being one of the world's greatest musicians, and he gave a splendid and permanent demonstration of his theory. Through all his vicarious ambition he kept his son's love and kept it almost to the point of idolatry. Indeed the boy once wrote, "Next to God comes papa."

The domestic relations of the family were indeed as happy as they well could be. Mozart's letters to his sister, Maria Anna, who was nicknamed "Nannerl," are brimful of cheerful affection and of sprightly interest in her own love affairs. His relations with his mother and father were full, not only of filial piety, but of that far better proof of real affection, a playful humour.

Mozart's mother died in Paris when her son and she were there alone together. He wrote the news of her death to a friend of his father's and bade him tell the father only that she was seriously ill but would probably recover, and gradually to prepare him for the worst. This letter he wrote at two o'clock in the morning; the same night he wrote his father a long letter full of news, incidentally saying that his mother was very ill, but that he hoped for the best, and that, in any case, resignation to the will of God was imperative. A few days later he wrote another letter telling the bitter truth, and telling it with most devout concern for his father's health and reconciliation with the divine dispensation. In this letter he seems rather the father to his own father than the young gallant of twenty-two. It was a good heart the boy had.

Mozart had been so much caressed and flattered by court beauties as a child that he was precocious in flirtation. His sister was the confidante and messenger of all sorts of boyish amours. There is a fine mysteriousness in the letters he wrote his mother while he was making a musical conquest of Milan like a veteran musician, and betraying his fourteen-year-old boyishness only in such phrases as this: "I kiss your hand a thousand times, and have a great deal to say to my sister; but what? That is known only to God and myself. Please God I hope soon to be able to confide it to her verbally."

This does not sound like the writing of a composer who was adding in a letter a few days later, "Pray to God that my opera may be successful." The opera was successful, and the Pope gave him a knighthood; and he was only fourteen years old!

Perhaps this mysterious sweetheart is the same one he alludes to later as Annamindl, and concerning whom he sends his sister such solemn messages as these:

"Don't, I entreat, forget about _the one other_, where no other can ever be."

"Say to Fraulein W. von Mölk that I rejoice at the thought of Salzburg, in the hope that I may again receive the same kind of present, for the minuets which was bestowed on me at a similar concert. She knows all about it."

"Carissima Sorella,--Spero che voi sarete stata dalla Signora, che voi già sapete."

"My dearest Sister,--I entreat you not to forget before your journey, to perform your promise, that is, to make a certain visit. I have my reasons for this. Pray present my kind regards in that quarter, but in the most impressive and tender manner,--the most tender; and, oh,--but I need not be in such anxiety. I beg my compliments to Roxalana, who is to drink tea this evening with the Sultan. All sorts of pretty speeches to Madlle Mizerl; she must not doubt my love. I have her constantly before my eyes in her fascinating _négligé_. I have seen many pretty girls here, but not one whose beauty can be compared with hers." The daughter of Doctor Barisani, the family physician, was for a time his heart's queen. Later Rosa Cannabich was "the magnet." And Wendling's daughter paid her visit to his heart's best room.

These instances of puppy-love can have given little anxiety to the father and mother; but soon old Leopold began to fear that this amorous activity might interfere with his son's wedlock to his art. When, therefore, he was sixteen years old and began to take a solemn interest in an opera singer at Munich, to weep over the beauty of her singing, and to seek her acquaintance, the father began to protest. This was Mlle. Keiserin, the daughter of a cook, and Mozart was later a little ashamed of his easy enthusiasm.

There seems to be an implied affair, perhaps more serious, in this letter to his father, dated 1777--he was born in 1756:

"As to the baker's daughter, I have no objection to make; I foresaw all this long ago. This was the cause of my reluctance to leave home, and finding it so difficult to go. I hope the affair is not by this time known all over Salzburg. I beg you, dear papa, most urgently to keep the matter quiet as long as possible, and in the meantime to pay her father on my account any expense he may have incurred by her entrance into the convent, which I will repay gladly when I return to Salzburg."

Meanwhile he was well immersed in his dalliance with his Bäsle, or cousin. In 1777, when Mozart was twenty-one and travelling on a concert-tour with his mother, he met, at Augsburg, Marianne Mozart, the daughter of his uncle, a book-binder. His experience at Augsburg with certain impertinent snobs disgusted him with the place, and he wrote his father that the meeting with his fair cousin was the only compensation of visiting the town. He found her "pretty, intelligent, lovable, clever, and gay," and, like him, "rather inclined to be satirical."

They struck up a correspondence which shows him in most hilarious moods. His letters are full of that _possenhaften Jargon_ with which he sprinkled his letters to his sister. He calls his cousin by the pet name of Bäsle, with which he rhymes "Häsle," a colloquial word for "rabbit." His first letter to her overflows with nonsense and meaningless rhymes, puns, and quibbles, such as:

"Ich hoffe, Sie werden auch meinen Brief--trief, welchen ich Ihnen aus Mannheim geschrieben erhalten haben--schaben. Desto besser, besser desto!"

Lady Wallace has made a translation which reproduces well the nonsense if not literally the sense. This is a sample:

"My dear Coz-Buzz:--I have safely received your precious epistle--thistle, and from it I perceive--achieve, that my aunt--gaunt, and you--shoe, are quite well--bell. I have to-day a letter--setter, from my papa--ah-ha, safe in my hands--sands."

A week later he writes her a letter beginning:

"My dear niece, cousin, daughter! mother, sister, and wife!--Potz Himmel! Croatians, demons, witches, hags, and cross batteries! Potz Element! air, earth, fire and water! Europe, Asia, Africa, and America! Jesuits, Augustines, Benedictines, Capucins, Minorites, Franciscans, Dominicans, Carthusians, and Knights of the Cross! privateers, canons regular and irregular, sluggards, rascals, scoundrels, imps, and villains all! donkeys, buffaloes, oxen, fools, blockheads, numskulls, and foxes! What means this? Four soldiers and three shoulder-belts! Such a packet and no portrait!"

It seems that she had promised him her picture! She sends it later, and it is still in the Mozart Museum, showing her, as Jahn declares, to have a good-natured and cheerful face, and rather a stocky figure; he adds, "Without being beautiful she seems right pleasing." It is certain that in whatever butterfly humour Mozart regarded her, she took him and his kisses and his flowery declarations seriously. Had he not said in this very letter, "love me as I love you, and then we shall never cease loving each other?" Had he not thence broken into French?

"Je vous baise vos mains,--vôtre visage--afin, tout ce que vous me permettez de baiser. Je suis de tout mon coeur," etc.

His sister later had a target painted for a club of Salzburg friends who met for crossbow practice, and the target represented "the melancholy farewell of two persons dissolved in tears, Wolfgang and the Bäsle."

His flirtations with his cousin seemed to have angered his father, who was eager for him to go to France and conquer Paris. The father was the more indignant as Mozart was at the same time becoming entangled with Aloysia Weber--of whom more later. Mozart loved his father and treated him with the utmost respect, but he could rise to a sense of his own dignity when the occasion demanded, and he wrote him:

"The bitter way in which you write about my merry and innocent intercourse with your brother's daughter, makes me justly indignant; but it is not as you think. I require to give you no answer on the subject."

A few days later he writes to his cousin with all the old hilarity, his letter being mostly in doggerel rhyme beginning:

"You may think or believe that I have croaked (_crepirt_) or kicked the bucket (_verreckt_). But I beg you not to think so, for how could I write so beautifully if I were dead?"

Nearly a year later he writes to her regretting that he could not have her visit him at Kaisersheim, and begging her to meet him in Munich.

In Munich it was Mozart's fate to find a tragedy awaiting him, for Aloysia (whom he had loved as solemnly as he had loved his cousin frivolously, and to whom he looked forward longingly after his long absence) showed herself indifferent. He had planned that his cousin should "have a great part to play in this meeting with Aloysia." This I would rather interpret as evidence that Mozart was quite ignorant of any deep affection in his cousin. There is nothing in his life that shows him as anything other than the most tender-hearted of men, and it is inconceivable that he should have brought his cousin to Munich simply to drag her at the chariot of his triumph with Aloysia.

And yet his flirtation with the Bäsle certainly went past mere bantering and repartee. She stayed several weeks in Munich and must have furnished Mozart grateful diversion from his humiliation. She went with him to Salzburg and later, when she returned to her own home, we find him writing with the same exuberance, addressing her as--

"Dearest, best, lovingest, fairest, enticingest, by-an-unworthy-cousin-to-harness-broken."

With her name he puns on _Bäsle_ and _Bass_, thence, "_Bäschen oder Violoncellchen_"--a little bass-viol or violoncelline. He writes, as he says, to appease her "alluring beauty (_visibilia et invisibilia_) heightened by wrath to the height of your slipper-heel." Then he writes her a passionate parody on a poem of Klopstock's, and writes it in circular form around his own sketch of her portrait, which implies neither beauty on her part nor art on his.

This is the last letter he seems ever to have written her excepting a business letter two years later. And this marks the end of a flirtation which he seems to have regarded as sheer frivolity. But this was not her mood. Biographer Jahn says:

"The Bäsle seems to have taken her cousin's courtship seriously; at least all the neighbours thought from the way she spoke of him that there was something of deluded expectation in her tone. She spoke neither gladly nor often of this time. She was not musical and could not have had a proper appreciation of Mozart's artistic value. His vivacity and velocity of musical performance seemed comical to her. Of her later life nothing is known to me; she lived later with the Postmaster Streite in Bayreuth and died there Jan. 25, 1841, at the great age of eighty-three."

So much for the Bäsle. Poor girl! But while the hollyhock was taking the bee's fickleness so solemnly, a rose was revenging her upon him. A more serious--for Mozart a very serious--affair, was his infatuation with Aloysia Weber, a fifteen-year-old girl with much beauty and little heart.

When Mozart was in Manheim in 1778, writing flowery letters to the Bäsle, he had occasion to have certain music copied, to be sung before the Princess of Orange, who had become interested in his work. The copyist was also a prompter in the theatre and a very poor, but hospitable man. His name was Weber, and his brother became the father of Carl Maria von Weber, the composer.

The fact that Weber was poor was the first recommendation to Mozart. Another magnet was, that Weber had a daughter fifteen years old who was gifted with a voice and seemed capable of a great artistic career. It was this vicarious ambition that had interested him in the young singer Keiserin some years before. And now we find him writing to his father on Jan. 17, 1778, the following description of the Weber family:

"He has a daughter who sings admirably, and has a lovely pure voice; she is only fifteen. She fails in nothing but in stage action; were it not for that, she might be the prima donna of any theatre. Her father is a downright honest German who brings up his children well, for which very reason the girl is persecuted here. He has six children,--five girls and a son. He and his wife and children have been obliged to live for the last fourteen years on an income of 200 florins, but as he has already done his duty well, and has lately provided a very accomplished singer for the Elector, he has now actually 400 florins. My aria for De' Amicis she sings to perfection with all its tremendous passages."

He and his mother had been living with the Wendlings. Frl. Wendling, who had engaged Mozart's interest for a time, turned out to be a disreputable character and the father to be devoid of all religion. The deeply pious Mozart writes in the same letter to his father, "Friends who have no religion cannot long be our friends." Then, with man's usual consistency, he outlines the white lie by which he is going to break off the association with the Wendlings; and goes on to say that he wishes to form a similar connection with the Weber family. The daughter Aloysia is improving vastly in her singing under his tuition; he has written an aria especially for her, and he plans a trip to Italy principally for her benefit. They could live very comfortably, he says, because Aloysia's eldest sister could cook. The father Weber reminds him greatly of his own father, and Aloysia will be, he is sure, a congenial friend for Nannerl.

Mozart is so much in love with Aloysia that in this long letter to his father he declares:

"I am so deeply touched with this oppressed family that my greatest wish is to make them happy, and perhaps I may be able to do so.... I will be answerable with my life for her singing, and her doing credit to my recommendation.... I will gladly write an opera for Verona for thirty zeccini, solely that Madlle. Weber may acquire fame by it; for if I don't, I fear she may be sacrificed.... I have now written you of what is in my heart; my mother is satisfied with my plans."

How well the mother was satisfied with the plans is evident from the postscript in her own hand, added secretly to the letter and displaying a slight touch of motherly jealousy:

"No doubt you perceive by the accompanying letter that when Wolfgang makes new friends he would give his life for them. It is true that she does sing incomparably; still, we ought not to lose sight of our own interests. I write this quite secretly while he is at dinner, for I don't wish him to know it."

Five days afterwards Mozart recurs to the subject, referring to a friend who married for money and commenting:

"I hope never to marry in this way; I wish to make my wife happy, but not to become rich by her means.... The nobility must not marry from love or inclination, but from interest, and all kinds of other considerations. It would not at all suit a grandee to love his wife after she had done her duty, and brought in to the world an heir to his property. But we poor humble people are privileged not only to choose a wife who loves us, and whom we love, but we may, can, and do take such a one, because we are neither noble, nor high-born, nor rich, but, on the contrary, lowly, humble, and poor; we therefore need no wealthy wife, for our wealth, being in our heads, dies with us, and these no man can deprive us of, unless he cut them off, in which case we need nothing more."

Next week he writes again asking his father to concern himself for the Webers. The poor father had been imploring Wolfgang to go to Paris for fame and fortune's sake. Now he finds him so far from being willing to pursue his own promising career, that he wishes to give up all thought of Paris and subordinate his genius to the task of boosting into fame the daughter of a poverty-stricken music-copyist!

Leopold answers in the violent tone he could adopt on occasions, and tries to distract his son's attention by appealing to his ambition. He asks him to decide whether he wishes to become "a commonplace artist whom the world will forget, or a celebrated capellmeister of whom posterity will read years after in books,--whether, infatuated with a pretty face you one day breathe your last on a straw sack, your wife and children in a state of starvation, or, after a well-spent Christian life, you die in honour and independence and your family well provided for.... Get to Paris without delay, take your place by the side of really great people. _Aut Caesar ant nihil_."

Little the father could have realised how much truth there was to be in the dark side of his prophecy; and that, too, in spite of the fact that his son took his advice. Leaving Aloysia behind, the son and his mother went to Paris.

He landed there in the very midst of the tempest raging around Gluck. Paris did not at all please Mozart, and the French people disgusted him. For this Paris was not entirely to blame, seeing that Mozart had gone there unwillingly and was parted from his beloved Aloysia. It was in Paris, too, that his mother died. And now, while he was so deeply concerned for Aloysia's career and was trying so desperately to secure her an engagement in Paris, she was blandly forgetting him. Of this, however, he had no suspicion until he reached Munich, where she, the star of his heart and of his ambition, was waiting for him.

What the change was that had come over Aloysia it is impossible to tell. The first thought is that, having risen to prominence by Mozart's tuition and assistance, she spurned the ladder that had uplifted her. But Nohl's theory that her head was turned by her admission to the favour that quickly surrounds the successful prima donna is hardly to be held, in view of the fact that in rejecting a man of Mozart's prominence she took the actor Lange, who had little, if any, more prominence. It was doubtless simply the old story of the one who loves and the other who lets herself be loved, just to keep up practice, until she learns to love elsewhere.

When Mozart reached Munich, he was still in mourning for his mother, and dressed according to the French custom of the time, in red coat with black buttons. He hurried to meet Aloysia and felt at once the chill of her jilt. The lips once so warm under his gave him merely the formal German kiss. She seemed scarcely to recognise the one for whose sake once she shed so many tears. Whereupon Mozart immediately flung himself upon the piano stool and sang, in a loud voice, with forced gaiety, "Ich lass das Mädel gern das mich nicht will,"--which you might translate, "Gladly I give up the girl that gives up me." It was on Christmas Day that Mozart had hastened to the presence of his beloved. For the Christmas gift she gave him back his heart! and right gallantly he took it. But his gaiety was hollow, and when he went to the house of a friend he locked himself in a room and wept for days.

Still he continued to live with the Webers and to brave out his despair before them all. He feared to turn to his father for full sympathy, and his fears were apparently justified, for his father seemed only to have answered with rebuking him for his foolish "dreams of pleasure." To this ill-timed reproof Mozart answered:

"What do you mean by dreams of pleasure? I do not wish to give up dreaming, for what mortal on the whole compass of the earth does not often dream? above all, dreams of pleasure--peaceful dreams, sweet, cheering dreams, if you will--dreams which, if realised, would have rendered my life (now far rather sad than happy) more endurable."

In a few weeks, however, he returned home to Salzburg, and there his cousin the Bäsle, who had brightened a part of his trial in Munich, followed him. And this was in the month of January of the year 1779.

As for Aloysia, she had cause enough to regret jilting one of the greatest, as well as one of the most gentle, souls in the world. She married the actor Lange and lived unhappily with him. According to Jahn, each both gave and received cause for jealousy. Years after, Mozart drifted back into her vicinity under curious circumstances. The lovers became good friends, and such friends, that for him, at least, Lange could not feel jealousy, according to Jahn, who adds, "Otherwise he would hardly have taken the rôle of Pierrot in the pantomime in which his wife played Columbine and Mozart the Harlequin."

Nohl thus sums up the whole affair: "Neither happiness nor riches brightened Aloysia's path in life, nor the peace of mind arising from the consciousness of purity of heart. Not till she was an aged woman, and Mozart long dead, did she recognise what he had really been; she liked to talk about him and his friendship, and in thus recalling the brightest memories of her youth, some of that lovable charm seemed to revive that Mozart had imparted to her and to all with whom he had any intercourse. Every one was captivated by her gay, unassuming manner, her freedom from all the usual virtuoso caprices in society, and her readiness to give pleasure by her talent to every one, as if a portion of the tender spirit with which Mozart once loved her had passed into her soul and brought forth fresh leaves from a withered stem. But years of faults and follies intervened for Aloysia. Meanwhile, he parted from her with much pain, though the esteem with which he had hitherto regarded her was no longer the same."

* * * * *

Of all strange things in the strange history of lives upon this earth, there cannot be many more strange than this, that Mozart, after being so sadly treated by this woman, should have his next love affair with her youngest sister. A novelist would not dare tax the credulity of his readers with such a plot. But such impossibilities and implausibilities belong exclusively to the historian.

The Webers moved to Vienna where Aloysia was highly successful as a prima donna. In March, 1781, the Archbishop, to whom Mozart played the part of musical lackey, summoned him to the same city. The Archbishop was one whose petty malicious and grinding temper almost drove the pious Mozart to contempt of all churchmen. At least he drove him finally to a declaration of independence which, in our modern eyes, he was very long in reaching. The Archbishop's brother, Count Arco, was so infuriated at the impertinence of a mere musical flunkey, like Mozart, daring to present a formal resignation, that he heaped abuse upon him and finally kicked him out of the room. Everybody knows about this kick, but seemingly ignores the fact that Mozart was restrained from retaliation only by the fact that he was in the apartment of the prince, and that it was the dream of his life and his very definite plan to meet Count Arco and return the kick with interest. But the Archbishop and the count went back to Salzburg and the opportunity did not occur.

The portrait usually presented of Mozart meekly accepting the humiliation is of a piece with the legend that Keats died of a broken heart because of a bitter review of his poetry. The fact being, of course, that Keats' death was due to constitutional weakness, and that the emotion inspired by the attack upon his art was a burning desire to punch the critic's head.

Strange to say, Mozart could not convince his pusillanimous father that he did not owe an apology to the Archbishop for being kicked. But he was so deeply offended that he never returned to Salzburg. So much for those who cherish the pathetic belief that the days of patrons were of benefit to the artist and his art.

Mozart did not starve upon being left positionless in Vienna. The emperor desired to establish a national opera, and Mozart took up the composition of his "Die Entführung aus dem Serail." In the first moment of his quarrel with the Archbishop Mozart had left the retinue and sought rooms outside. Where could he go for a home but back to the household of the Webers?--now more than ever in poverty since the good father had died and Aloysia had married soon after obtaining her new engagement.

The very name of Weber was a red rag to Leopold Mozart, and he began a series of bitter rebukes, which the son answered with ample dignity and gentleness.

"What you write about the Webers, I do assure, is not the fact. I was a fool about Madame Lange, I own; but what is a man not when he is in love? But I did love her truly, and even now I feel that she is not indifferent to me; it is perhaps, therefore, fortunate that her husband is a jealous booby and never leaves her, so that I seldom have an opportunity of seeing her. Believe me when I say that old Madame Weber is a very obliging person, and I cannot serve her in proportion to her kindness to me, for indeed I have not time to do so."

A little later one of Mozart's letters is interrupted and is finished in a strange hand as follows:

"Your good son has just been summoned by Countess
Thun, and he has not time to finish the letter to his dear
father, which he much regrets, and requests me to let you
know this, for, being post-day, he does not wish you to be
without a letter from him. Next post he will write again.
I hope you will excuse my P.S., which cannot be so agreeable
to you as what your son would have written. I beg
my compliments to your amiable daughter. I am your
obedient friend,

"CONSTANZE WEBER."

This is the first appearance in Mozart's correspondence of this name. Constanze Weber was the younger sister of Aloysia. She had no dramatic or vocal ambition, though she had musical taste and sang and played fairly well, especially at sight. Strangely enough, she had an unusual fondness for fugues and made Mozart write down many of his improvisations.

The gossips of Vienna lost no time in construing his renewal of friendship with the Webers. The buzz became so noisy that it reached the alert ears of the father in Salzburg, and he wrote demanding that Wolfgang should move at once.

Mozart answered that he had been planning to move, but only to quiet the gossip that he is to marry Constanze--ridiculous gossip, he calls it.

"I will not say that, living in the same house with the young lady to whom people have married me, I am ill-bred and do not speak to her, but I am not in love with her. I banter and jest with her when time permits (which is only in the evenings when I chance to be at home, for in the morning I write in my room, and in the afternoon am rarely in the house), but nothing more. If I were obliged to marry all those with whom I have jested, I should have at least two hundred wives."

Among the rooms elsewhere offered to Mozart was one at Aurnhammer's. The daughter of the family threw herself at Mozart's head with a vengeance. According to his picture of her, she was so ugly and untidy that even Mozart could not flirt with her. He draws an amusing picture of his predicament--a sort of Venus and Adonis affair, with a homely Venus:

"She is not satisfied with my being two hours every day with her,--I am to sit there the livelong day while she tries to be agreeable. But, worse still, she is seriously smitten with me. I thought at first it was a joke, but now I know it to be a fact. When I first observed it--by her beginning to take liberties, such as reproaching me tenderly if I came later than usual, or could not stay long, and similar things--I was obliged, to prevent her making a fool of herself, to tell her the truth in a civil manner. This, however, did no good, and she became more loving than ever. At last I was always very polite, except when she began any of her pranks, and then I snubbed her bluntly; but one day she took my hand and said, 'Dear Mozart, don't be so cross; you may say what you please I shall always like you.' All the people here say that we are to be married, and great surprise is expressed at my choosing such a face. She told me that when she heard anything of the sort she always laughed at it. I know, however, from a third person, that she confirms it, adding that we are to travel immediately afterwards. This did enrage me. I told her my opinion pretty plainly, and warned her not to take advantage of my good nature. Now I no longer go there every day, but only every two days, so the report will gradually die away. She is nothing but an amorous fool."

Life in Vienna has always been gay enough. In those days it was far from prudish and Mozart was always of unusual fascination for women. He loved frivolity and went about much, but he seems by no means to have deserved the reputation given him by the gossip of that time and this, that he was a confirmed rake. It is impossible for any one acquainted with Mozart's career and letters to accuse him of studious hypocrisy, and this accusation is necessary to support the theory that he was anything but a serious-minded toiler, and for his time and surroundings a well-behaved and conscientious man.

He finally left the home of the Webers and had previously written his father, as we have seen, that he was not at all in love with Constanze. But he was either in love with her without knowing it, or he soon tumbled headlong in love with her; for, soon after leaving the house, he plighted his troth with her.

He was some time, however, in mustering courage enough to break the news to his father. To a letter dated December 5, 1781, he added a vague hint of new ideas. This was enough to provoke his father's curiosity. It was satisfied in Mozart's long reply of December 15th:

"My very dearest father, you demand an explanation of the words in the closing sentence of my last letter. Oh! how gladly long ago would I have opened my heart to you; but I was deterred, by the reproaches I dreaded, from even thinking of such a thing at so unseasonable a time, although merely thinking can never be unseasonable. My endeavours are directed at present to securing a small but certain income, which, together with what chance may put in my way, may enable me to live--and to marry! You are alarmed at this idea; but I entreat you, my dearest, kindest father, to listen to me. I have been obliged to disclose to you my purpose; you must therefore allow me to disclose to you my reasons also, and very well-grounded reasons they are.

"My feelings are strong, but I cannot live as many other young men do. In the first place, I have too great a sense of religion, too much love for my neighbour to do so, and too high a feeling of honour to deceive any innocent girl. My disposition has always inclined me more to domestic life than to excitement; I never have from my youth upward been in the habit of taking any charge of my linen or clothes, etc., and I think nothing is more desirable for me than a wife. I assure you I am forced to spend a good deal owing to the want of proper care of what I possess. I am quite convinced that I should be far better off with a wife (and the same income I now have), for how many other superfluous expenses would it save! An unmarried man, in my opinion, enjoys only half of life.

"But now, who is the object of my love? Do not be startled, I entreat you. Not one of the Webers, surely? Yes, one of the Webers,--not Josepha, not Sophie, but the third daughter, Constanze. I never met with such diversity of dispositions in any family. The eldest is idle, coarse, and deceitful--crafty and cunning as a fox; Madame Lange (Aloysia) is false and unprincipled, and a coquette; the youngest is still too young to have her character defined,--she is merely a good humoured, frivolous girl; may God guard her from temptation!

"The third, however, namely, my good and beloved Constanze, is the martyr of the family, and, probably on this very account, the kindest hearted, the cleverest, and, in short, the best of them all; she takes charge of the whole house, and yet does nothing right in their eyes. Oh! my dear father, I could write you pages were I to describe to you all the scenes I have witnessed in that house. She is not plain, but at the same time far from being handsome; her whole beauty consists of a pair of bright black eyes and a pretty figure. She is not witty, but has enough of sound good sense to enable her to fulfil her duties as a wife and mother. Her dress is always neat and nice, however simple, and she can herself make most of the things requisite for a young lady. She dresses her own hair, understands housekeeping, and has the best heart in the world. I love her with my whole soul, as she does me. Tell me if I could wish for a better wife. All I now wish is, that I may procure some permanent situation (and this, thank God, I have good hopes of), and then I shall never cease entreating your consent to my rescuing this poor girl, and thus making, I may say, all of us quite happy, as well as Constanze and myself; for, if I am happy, you are sure to be so, dearest father, and one-half of the proceeds of my situation shall be yours. Pray, have compassion on your son."

This news was answered by a simoom of rage from Salzburg. The father had a partial justification for his wrath in the fact that a busybody had carried to him all manner of slander about Mozart and, likewise, slander about Constanze. He writes reminding Wolfgang of his mistake about Aloysia, and mentions a rumour that Wolfgang had been decoyed into signing a written contract of marriage with Constanze. To this Mozart writes very frankly and in a manner that shows Constanze in a beautiful light:

"You are well aware that, her father being no longer alive, a guardian stands in his place. To him (who is not acquainted with me) busybodies and officious gentlemen must have no doubt brought all sorts of reports, such as, that he must beware of me, that I have no fixed income, that I would perhaps leave her in the lurch, etc., etc. The guardian became very uneasy at these insinuations. We conversed together, and the result was (as I did not explain myself so clearly as he desired) that he insisted on the mother putting an end to all intercourse between her daughter and myself until I had settled the affair with him in writing. What could I do? I was forced either to give a contract in writing or renounce the girl. Who that sincerely and truly loves can forsake his beloved? Would not the mother of the girl herself have placed the worst interpretation on such conduct? Such was my position. The contract was in this form:

"'I bind myself to marry Madlle. Constanze Weber in the course of three years, and if it should so happen, which I consider impossible, that I change my mind, she shall be entitled to draw on me every year for 300 florins.'

"Nothing in the world could be easier than to write this, for I knew that the payment of 300 florins never would be exacted, because I could never forsake her; and if unhappily I altered my views, I would only be too glad to get rid of her by paying the 300 florins; and Constanze, as I knew her, would be too proud to let herself be sold in this way.

"But what did the angelic girl do when her guardian was gone? She desired her mother to give her the written paper, saying to me, 'Dear Mozart, I require no written contract from you. I rely on your promise.' She tore up the paper. This trait endeared Constanze still more to me."

The correspondence between father and son waxed fast and furious. Mozart does not attempt to defend Madame Weber or the guardian, but he will not have a word said against the devotion and honour of his Constanze. Jealous perhaps of the activity of the prospective father-in-law, Madame Weber now began to go into training for a traditional rendition of the rôle of mother-in-law. She made the life of her daughter and of Mozart as miserable as possible, and fixed in them the determination that, whatever happened, they would not live with her after they were married. Mozart and his sweetheart made a determined combination to win the affection of Mozart's sister, and Constanze sent to Nannerl many a little present, apologising because she was too poor to send anything worth sending. Finally she was bold enough to enclose a letter to Nannerl. The composition of such a letter under such circumstances is, at best, no easy matter, and I cannot help thinking that Constanze has evolved a little model:

"MY DEAR AND VALUED FRIEND:--I never should have been so bold as to yield to my wish and longing to write to you direct, if your brother had not assured me that you would not take amiss this step on my part. I do so from my earnest desire to make acquaintance, by writing at least, with a person who, though as yet unknown to me, bears the name of Mozart, a name so precious to me. May I venture to say that, though I have not had the pleasure of seeing you, I already love and esteem you as the sister of so excellent a brother? I therefore presume to ask you for your friendship. Without undue pride I think I may say that I partly deserve it, and shall wholly strive to do so. I venture to offer you mine, which, indeed, has long been yours in my secret heart. I trust I may do so, and in this hope I remain your faithful friend, CONSTANZE WEBER.

"My compliments to your papa."

With so much quarrelling going on around them and concerning them, it is small wonder that the two lovers were finally nagged into the condition of such nervousness that they fell to quarrelling with each other. One feud adds spice to the very first of these letters to Constanze, which she so carefully guarded,--Aloysia Weber seems never to have preserved any of Mozart's correspondence. It throws also a curious light on the social diversions of Vienna society at that time.

"VIENNA, April 29, 1782.

"MY DEAR AND BELOVED FRIEND:--You still, I hope, allow me to give you this name? Surely you do not hate me so much that I may no longer be your friend, nor you mine? And even if you do not choose henceforth to be called my friend, you cannot prevent my thinking of you as tenderly as I have always done. Reflect well on what you said to me to-day. In spite of my entreaties, you have met me on three occasions with a flat refusal, and told me plainly that you wished to have no more to do with me. It is not, however, a matter of the same indifference to me that it seems to be to you, to lose the object of my love; I am not, therefore, so passionate, so rash, or so reckless, as to accept your refusal. I love you too dearly for such a step. I beg you then once more to weigh well and calmly the cause of our quarrel, which arose from my being displeased at your telling your sisters (N.B., in my presence) that at a game of forfeits you had allowed the size of your leg to be measured by a gentleman. No girl with becoming modesty would have permitted such a thing. The maxim to do as others do is well enough, but there are many things to be considered besides,--whether only intimate friends and acquaintances are present,--whether you are a child, or a girl old enough to be married,--but, above all, whether you are with people of much higher rank than yourself. If it be true that the Baroness [Waldstädten] did the same, still it is quite another thing, because she is a _passée_ elderly woman (who cannot possibly any longer charm), and is always rather flighty. I hope, my dear friend, that you will never lead a life like hers, even should you resolve never to become my wife. But the thing is past, and a candid avowal of your heedless conduct would have made me at once overlook it; and, allow me to say, if you will not be offended, my dearest friend, will still make me do so. This will show you how truly I love you. I do not fly into a passion like you. I think, I reflect, and I feel. If you feel, and have feeling, then I know I shall be able this very day to say with a tranquil mind: My Constanze is the virtuous, honourable, discreet, and faithful darling of her honest and kindly disposed,

"MOZART."

This letter seems to have ended the quarrel--the only one we know of their having. For, a week later in a letter to his father, Mozart implies that Constanze and he are once more on excellent terms; also that Nannerl had answered Constanze's letter with appropriate courtesy.

Meanwhile, in spite of the excitement of producing his opera and fighting the strong opposition to it, Mozart is still more deeply absorbed in gaining his father's consent to his marriage. He briefly dismisses his account of his opera's immense success and bends all his ardour to winning over his father. The agony of his soul quivers in every line. Vienna is alive with gossip. Some say that he and Constanze are already married. He fears to compromise the woman he loves. He hints that if he cannot wed her with his father's blessing he will wed her without it.

Meanwhile, the young woman's mother had by this time, got the bit fast in her teeth. Now, the Baroness Waldstädten had been touched by the troubles of the young lovers and had invited Constanze to visit her for some weeks. This excited the mother's apprehension, perhaps not unwisely in view of the levity of the baroness' standards of conduct, and she insisted upon Constanze cutting her visit short.

When Constanze refused this, Frau Weber sent word that if she did not return immediately, the law would be sent for her. This threat drove Mozart to desperation, and the marriage degenerated into a race between the priest and the policeman. Fortunately the priest won. The baroness wrote in person to the father for his consent, advancing Mozart 1,000 gulden to cover the 500 gulden which Constanze would have as a marriage portion; and secured their release from the delayful necessity of publishing the banns.

Romeo and his Juliet were married on August 4, 1782. Shortly after the wedding the father's consent arrived. It was a rather stingy consent however, and warned Mozart that he could not expect pecuniary assistance and that he ought to tell Constanze of this fact.

There was an implied insult to the girl's love in this ungracious remark, and it stung Mozart deeply. For Constanze, who had torn up the contract of betrothal on a previous occasion, had not been the girl to take money into account.

Three days after the wedding Mozart wrote to his father a long account of it with a promise that he and his bride would take the first opportunity of asking forgiveness in person. "No one attended the marriage but Constanze's mother and youngest sister, Herr von Thorwarth in his capacity of guardian, Herr von Zetto (Landrath) who gave away the bride, and Gilofsky, as my best man. When the ceremony was over, both my wife and I shed tears; all present (even the priest) were touched on seeing the emotion of our hearts. Our sole wedding festivities consisted of a supper, which Baroness Waldstädten gave us, and indeed it was more princely than baronial. My darling is now one hundred times more joyful at the idea of going to Salzburg; and I am willing to stake--ay, my very life, that you will rejoice still more in my happiness when you really know her; if, indeed, in your estimation, as in mine, a high-principled, honest, virtuous, and pleasing wife ought to make a man happy."

Now we enter upon the test of this romantic devotion--this wedlock of the twenty-six year old musician and the maiden of nineteen, who married in spite of the opposition of both families and in spite of the poverty that awaited them. There are many accounts of the domestic career of these two, written in a tone of patronage or cynicism. But this tone is gratuitous on the part of those who assume it. As thorough a study of the facts and documents as I can make, shows no ground whatsoever for refusing to accept this love-match as an ideal wedding of ideal congeniality, and mutual and common devotion.

Poverty came with all its vicissitudes and settled upon the hearth, but we ought not to forget that both Wolfgang and Constanze had always been poor; that they were used to poverty, and were light-hearted in its presence. When they had no money to buy fuel, they were found dancing together to keep warm. Surely, for two such hearts, poverty was only a detail, and could in no sense be counted of sufficient weight to counterbalance the affection each found in each.

As for Mozart's career we must feel that no amount of wealth would have availed against his improvidence and his extravagance in the small way in which fate permitted him to be extravagant. Nor could a life of bachelorhood or a life with some woman married for money conceivably have made him produce greater compositions--for no greater compositions than those he produced during his married life have ever been produced by any composer under any circumstances. Let us then read without conviction such accounts as we may find tending to belittle the goodness or cheapen the virtues of Constanze or of Mozart.

The Webers had lived at Vienna in a house called Auge Gottes, and Mozart used to refer to his elopement as "Die Entführung aus dem Auge Gottes," as a pun on the name of the opera that had made his marriage possible, "Die Entführung aus dem Serail." It is a curious coincidence that the name of the principal character of this opera was Constanze, and that she was a model of devotion through all trials. Once away from the wrangling mother-in-law, the young couple enjoyed domestic bliss to the height. Later, mother Weber seems to have reformed and to have become a welcome guest in Mozart's house, where Aloysia herself became also a cherished friend.

Nothing could exceed the tenderness of the lovers for each other. It continued to the last. Constanze was so watchful of him that she cut up his meat at dinner when his mind was on his compositions, lest he might cut himself. She used to read aloud to him and tell him stories and hear his improvisations and insist upon their being written out for permanence. While the wife was showing all this solicitude, the husband, genius though he was, was showing equal tenderness to the wife.