cherishes and tenderly loves thee and to thee will always be true."
Even to Bologna, whither Polzelli went with her two sons, says Pohl, "followed Haydn's love—and his gold." He intended after his first London visit to go to Italy to visit her, and wrote further:
"I cherish thee and love thee as on that first day, and am always sad that I cannot do more for you. Yet have patience. Surely the day will come when I can show thee how much I love thee."
Loisa's choice of a spouse had been unhappy, as so many marriages have been where the wife is a singer on the stage, and the husband a fiddler in the band. Haydn seems to have sympathised with Loisa in her unhappy domestic affairs, as cordially as she had sympathised with him in his. He had sympathy, too, for her similarly ill-matched sister, Christine Negri, for he writes of her as—
"Already long separated from her husband, that beast, she has been as unhappy as even you, and awakes my sympathy."
Also in March, 1791, he wrote Loisa about her husband in a manner implying that he was a brute or a maniac: "Thou hast done well to have him taken to the hospital to save thy life." Haydn and Loisa, being Catholics, never thought of seeking divorce: their only hope of celebrating a formal marriage lay in the death of both her brutish husband and his shrewish wife—"when four eyes shall close." Loisa's husband was the first to oblige, for in August, 1791, his death wrings a charitable word from even Haydn:
"Thy poor husband! I tell thee that Providence has managed well in freeing thee from thy heavy burden, for it is better to be in the other world, than useless in this one. The poor fellow has suffered enough."
Later he writes:
"DEAR POLZELLI:—Probably that time will come which we have so often longed for. Already two eyes are closed. But the other two—ah, well, as God wills!" Eight years more, and the reluctant and wide-eyed Anna Haydn was foiled of her desire to be a widow in the snug cottage of her choice. The lovers at last were both single. But now, freed of their shackles, why do they not rush to each other's arms? The only answer we receive is this chill and shocking document found long after Haydn's death; it is written in Italian and dated shortly after Frau Haydn's death:
"I, the undersigned, promise Signora Loisa Polzelli (in case I shall be disposed to marry again) to take no other for wife than the said Loisa Polzelli; and if I remain a widower, I promise the said Loisa Polzelli after my death to leave her a life pension of 300 gulden, that is 300 florins in Vienna money. Valid before every court. I sign myself,
"JOSEPH HAYDN,
"Maestro di Cappella of his Highness, the Prince Esterhazy.
Vienna, May 23, 1800."
On this sad and icy postscript to the ardent love affair, Schmidt comments: "The form of this writing leaves the conclusion plain, that Haydn was forced to this act by the Polzelli. This throws a poor light on her character, and we dare not evade the conclusion that, for twenty years in this love affair for life, she had in mind a business arrangement with the master."
Thus cynically writes Schmidt of the woman who for a score of years occupied Haydn's affections. And all of the biographers are inclined to heap upon her more or less contempt; but as you shall see a little later, the genial master himself was not above reproach, and Loisa's anxiety was not unfounded, for her Joseph was casting amorous glances elsewhere. Thus after the long ardour, the love letters have frozen into a hard and fast negative betrothal in which Haydn promises to marry no one else. This, Schmidt says, was dragged out of Haydn. But, if such a bond were necessary, it speaks surely as ill for Haydn as for the woman who had given her life and her good name to brighten his joyless heart.
Yet, dead as his love was, honour remained with him, though it was a rather close-reckoning honour. Three months later he answered with money her request for house-rent, and in a will dated May 5, 1801, occurs this clause, cancelling his former agreement, and making new provisions:
"To the widow Aloysia Polzelli, formerly singer at Prince Nikolaus Esterházy's, payable in ready money six months after my death, 100 florins, and each year from the date of my death, for her life … 150 florins. After her death her son, Anton Polzelli, to receive 150 florins for one year, having always been a good son to his mother and a grateful pupil to me. N.B.—I hereby revoke the obligation in Italian, signed by me, which may be produced by Mme. Polzelli; otherwise so many of my poor relations with greater claims would receive too little. Finally Mme. Polzelli must be satisfied with the annuity of 150 florins." Two years later we find him writing to her (and, rumour said, his) son: "I hope thy mamma finds herself well." In a new will, dated 1809, the year of his death, Haydn withdraws the cash gift to Loisa, and leaves her only 150 florins annuity. She still remains, however, his chief heir. Meanwhile, without waiting for his death, she had married again to Luigi Franci, like herself a singer and an Italian. She outlived him and Haydn also, only to die in poverty and senility, far away in Hungary. Poor, eighty-two year old Loisa! Her affairs had been sadly mismanaged.
Why had Loisa given up all hope of marrying Haydn, even when his wife was dead and she was possessed of his agreement, signed, sealed, and delivered, to marry no one but her? Awhile ago I stooped to repeating the scandal that during Signora Polzelli's life, Haydn had been casting sheep's eyes elsewhere. But it is such a pretty scandal! Besides, these old contrapuntists were trained from youth to keep two or more tunes going at once.
I am not referring to Haydn's friendship with Frau von Genzinger. It was Karajan who discovered and published this pleasant correspondence with her. She was the wife of a very successful physician, a "ladies' doctor" (Damen Doktor). She was the daughter of the Hofrath von Kayser; her name was Maria Anna Sabina; she was born Nov. 6th, 1750, and had been married some seventeen years, and was the mother of five children when Haydn began taking his every Sunday dinner with the family. Karajan says that she was an ausgezeichnete singer and pianist.
A deep friendship sprang up at once between them and they corresponded freely. Haydn's letters to her were published by Nohl, and you may read them in Lady Wallace's translation. They are full of the most interesting lights upon Haydn's life and experiences, and are brimful of affection for Frau von Genzinger. But the husband and the children are almost always referred to in the letters, and the friendship seems to have been entirely and only a friendship—as Schmidt calls it, "eine tiefe und zugleich respectvolle Neigung."
Mr. Upton, who accepts the friendship as "honourable," finds in Frau von Genzinger the only true feminine inspiration Haydn ever had for composition. "We owe much of his music to his wife; but the savage and truculent manner in which she inspired him was not conducive to the best work of his genius. There is no record that the Polzelli was of any benefit to him musically; certainly she was not morally."
But there was another woman who idolised Haydn the musician, and with Haydn the man conducted a quaint and curious love duet embalmed in many a billet-doux fragrant with charm.
It was not, then, Frau von Genzinger that threatened Polzelli's supremacy. Nor was it Madame Bartolozzi, for whom Haydn wrote a sonata and three trios; nor Mrs. John Hunter, who wrote words for many of his canzonets. Nor yet Mrs. Hodges, for whom he composed, and whom he called "the loveliest woman I ever saw." Nor yet again the fascinating actress, Mrs. Billington, of whom the pleasant story is told, that Haydn, when he went to London, called on Sir Joshua Reynolds at his studio, found him painting Mrs. Billington as "Saint Cecilia listening to the angels," and protested gallantly that Reynolds ought to have painted the angels listening to her. For which sprightliness he received immediately a fervent hug and a kiss from those so sweet and promiscuous lips. The skeptics object, that Reynolds exhibited the picture in London in 1790, a year before Haydn
