London, but it is a shame to spoil a good and famous story.
The true woman in the case makes her entrée in this innocent style:
"Mrs. Schroeter presents her complements to Mr. Haydn, and informs him that she is just returned to town, and will be very happy to see him whenever it is convenient to him to give her a lesson.
"James-st., Buckingham gate, Wednesday, June the 29th, 1791."
This little note was the first of a series of genuine love letters preserved for many years by Haydn. His answers to them seem to have been lost, though the whimsical spade of time that has recently brought to light the works of Bacchylides, after two thousand years and more of oblivion, may with equal speed unsod Haydn's letters to this interesting personage. May we be there to see!
Just nineteen years before this little preludising note, Mrs. Schroeter was an Englishwoman of wealth and aristocracy. In that year there came to London a German musician, Johann Samuel Schroeter, a brother of Corona Schroeter, one of that Amazonian army of beauties to whom Goethe made love and wrote poetry. He became music-master to the English queen as successor to that son of Sebastian Bach who is known as "the English Bach." He speedily won pupils and esteem among the higher circles of London society. But being welcomed as a musician was one thing and as a son-in-law quite another. When, therefore, he made one of his most aristocratic pupils his wife by a clandestine marriage, there was, according to Fetis, such scandal and such a threat of legal proceedings that he consented to the annulment of the marriage in consideration of a pension of five hundred pounds, and retired from the city to escape notoriety. Sixteen years after his entry into London Schroeter died of consumption.
Three years later another German musician, Joseph Haydn, appears in London, and is taken up by society. Mrs. Schroeter, apparently not sated by her first experience, proceeds to repeat it pat. Just as before, she becomes a pupil in music, and later a pupil in love of the newcomer. But whereas her husband had died at the age of thirty-eight, her new lover Haydn was fifty-nine when she met him.
Dies quoted Haydn's own words as saying, "In London, I fell in love with a widow, though she was sixty years old at the time." But Mr. Krehbiel shows good reason for believing that Dies must have misunderstood Haydn. To me it occurs as a possibility that Haydn said to Dies, not "though she was sixty years old," but "though I was sixty years old." I think we are safe in assuming with Mr. Krehbiel that she was not more than thirty-five or forty, an age not yet so great, according to statistics, as that of Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, and Marian Delorme, at the times of their most potent beauty.
Let us also dismiss as unauthorised and gratuitous the words of Pauline D. Townsend, in her biography of Haydn, when she says of Mrs. Schroeter that she was "an attractive, although, according to modern taste, a somewhat vulgar woman, of over sixty years of age, and there is no disguising the fact that she made violent love to Haydn. Her letters to Haydn are full of tenderness and in questionable taste; his to her have not been preserved, but we can have little doubt that they were warmer in tone than they would have been had not the Channel rolled between him and Frau Haydn in Vienna." We know how little Frau Haydn had had to do with Haydn's life in his own town. You may judge for yourself as to the charge of "vulgarity."
The existence of Mrs. Schroeter's veritable Love Letters of an Englishwoman was known for many years, and Pohl in his book on "Mozart und Haydn in London" quoted from them. But for their complete publication in the original English, we are indebted to Mr. Krehbiel's "Music and Manners in the Classical Period." This captivating work contains also a note-book which Haydn kept in London; it is filled with amusing blunders in English and vivid pictures of London life of the time, pictures as delectable in their way as the immortal garrulity of Pepys.
I cannot do better than let these letters speak for themselves through such quotations as I have room to make. There are twenty-two of them in all, in Mr. Krehbiel's book. The abbreviations are curious and explain themselves. M.L. is "my love," D.L. is "dear love," M.D. is "my dear," and M. Dst. is its superlative. The abbreviations were possibly due to the fact that the letters exist only in Haydn's own handwriting, copied into his note-book without attention to their proper order. Or they may have been simply the amorous shorthand of that day.
Two of them are signed R.S. and this leads me to believe that Mrs. Schroeter's first name began with R., though we know neither that nor her maiden name. In the first letter Mrs. Schroeter says that she encloses him "the words of the song you desire." This letter is dated February 8th. In his note-book there is an entry on February 13, 1792, and just preceding it a little Italian poem in which I have been pleased to see what was possibly this very song, its first lines being suggestively like the first line of Mrs. Schroeter's letter.
"Io vi mando questo foglio
Dalle lagrime rigato,
Sotto scritto dal cordoglio
Dai pensieri sigillato
Testimento del mio amore
(Io) vi mando questo core."
Among the letters there are many anxious allusions, which may indicate that Haydn was suffering from insomnia, unless you are inclined to give them a more subtle significance. But to the quotations, with regrets that they must be incomplete.
"Wednesday, Febr. 8th, 1792.
"M.D. Inclos'd I have sent you the words of the song you desire. I wish much to know how you do to day. I am very sorry to lose the pleasure of seeing you this morning, but I hope you will have time to come tomorrow. I beg my D you will take great care of your health and do not fatigue yourself with too much application to business. My thoughts and best wishes are always with you, and I ever am with the utmost sincerity M.D. your &c."
"March the 7th 92.
"My D. I was extremely sorry to part with you so suddenly last night, our conversation was particularly interesting and I had a thousand affectionate things to Say to you. my heart was and is full of tenderness for you but no language can express half the Love and Affection I feel for you. you are dearer to me every Day of my life. I am very Sorry I was so dull and Stupid yesterday, indeed my Dearest it was nothing but my being indisposed with a cold occasioned my Stupidity. I thank you a thousand times for your Concern for me. I am truly Sensible of your goodness and I assure you my D. if anything had happened to trouble me, I wou'd have open'd my heart and told you with the greatest confidence, oh, how earnestly I wish to See you. I hope you will come to me tomorrow. I shall be happy to See you both in the Morning and the Evening. God Bless you my love. my thoughts and best wishes ever accompany you and I always am with the most Sincere and invariable Regard my D,
"Your truly affectionate—
"my Dearest I cannot be happy till I see you if you Know do tell me when you will come."
"April 4th 92.
"My D: With this you will receive the Soap. I beg you a thousand pardons for not sending it sooner. I know you will have the goodness to excuse me. I hope to hear you are quite well and have Slept well. I shall be happy to See you my D: as soon as possible. I shall be much obliged to you if you will do me the favor to send me Twelve Tikets for your Concert. may all success attend you my ever D H that Night and always is the sincere and hearty wish of your "Invariable and Truly affectionate—"
"James St. Thursday, April 12th
"M.D. I am so truly anxious about you. I must write to beg to know how you do? I was very sorry I had not the pleasure of Seeing you this Evening, my thoughts have been constantly with you and my D.L. no words can express half the tenderness and
