New England character and
history are the result of a wide-spread system of influences of
which the Sabbath day was the type- and not only so, but the
grand motive power.
history are the result of a wide-spread system of influences of
which the Sabbath day was the type- and not only so, but the
grand motive power.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v03 - Bag to Ber
There were no less than
seven steeples in sight from the belfry, and the sexton said: -
«On still Sundays I've heard the bell, at one time and another,
when the day was fair, and the air moving in the right way,
from every one of them steeples, and I guess likely they've all
heard our'n. ”
“Come, Rose! ” said Agate Bissell, at an even earlier hour
than when Rose usually awakened — "Come, Rose, it is the Sab-
bath. We must not be late Sunday morning, of all days in the
week. It is the Lord's day. ”
There was little preparation required for the day. Saturday
night, in some parts of New England, was considered almost as
sacred as Sunday itself. After sundown on Saturday night no
play, and no work except such as is immediately preparatory to
the Sabbath, were deemed becoming in good Christians. The
clothes had been laid out the night before. Nothing was for-
gotten. The best frock was ready; the hose and shoes were
waiting. Every article of linen, every ruffle and ribbon, were
selected on Saturday night. Every one in the house walked
mildly. Every one spoke in a low tone. Yet all were cheerful.
The mother had on her kindest face, and nobody laughed, but
everybody made it up in smiling. The nurse smiled, and the
children held on to keep down a giggle within the lawful bounds
of a smile; and the doctor looked rounder and calmer than ever;
and the dog flapped his tail on the floor with a softened sound,
as if he had fresh wrapped it in hair for that very day. Aunt
Toodie, the cook (so the children had changed Mrs. Sarah
Good's name), was blacker than ever and shinier than ever, and
## p. 1740 (#538) ###########################################
1740
HENRY WARD BEECHER
the coffee better, and the cream richer, and the broiled chickens
juicier and more tender, and the biscuit whiter, and the corn-
bread more brittle and sweet.
When the good doctor read the Scriptures at family prayer,
the infection of silence had subdued everything except the clock.
Out of the wide hall could be heard in the stillness the old
clock, that now lifted up its voice with unwonted emphasis, as if,
unnoticed through the bustling week, Sunday was its vantage
ground, to proclaim to mortals the swift flight of time. And if
he old pedant performed the task with something of an ostenta-
tious precision, it was because in that house nothing else put on
official airs, and the clock felt the responsibility of doing it for
the whole mansion.
And now came mother and catechism; for Mrs. Wentworth
followed the old custom, and declared that no child of hers should
grow up without catechism. Secretly, the doctor was quite will-
ing, though openly he played off upon the practice a world of
good-natured discouragement, and declared that there should be
an opposition set up-a catechism of Nature, with natural laws
for decrees, and seasons for Providence, and flowers for graces!
The younger children were taught in simple catechism. But
Rose, having reached the mature age of twelve, was now mani-
festing her power over the Westminster Shorter Catechism; and
as it was simply an achievement of memory and not of the
understanding, she had the book at great advantage, and soon
subdued every question and answer in it. As much as possible,
the doctor was kept aloof on such occasions. His grave questions
were not to edification, and often they caused Rose to stumble,
and brought down sorely the exultation with which she rolled
forth, “They that are effectually called do in this life partake
of justification, adoption, sanctification, and the several benefits
which in this life do either accompany or flow from them. ”
«What do those words mean, Rose ? »
«Which words, pa? ”
"Adoption, sanctification, and justification ?
Rose hesitated, and looked at her mother for rescue.
“Doctor, why do you trouble the child ? Of course she don't
know yet all the meaning. But that will come to her when she
grows older. ”
You make a nest of her memory, then, and put words there,
like eggs, for future hatching?
## p. 1741 (#539) ###########################################
HENRY WARD BEECHER
1741
“Yes, that is it exactly: birds do not hatch their eggs the
minute they lay them. They wait. ”
“Laying eggs at twelve to be hatched at twenty is subjecting
them to some risk, is it not ? ”
It might be so with eggs, but not with the catechism. That
will keep without spoiling a hundred years ! »
« Because it is so dry ? ”
“Because it is so good. But do, dear husband, go away, and
not put notions in the children's heads. It's hard enough already
to get them through their tasks. Here's poor Arthur, who has
been two Sundays on one question, and has not got it yet. ”
Arthur, aforesaid, was sharp and bright in anything addressed
to his reason, but he had no verbal memory, and he was there-
fore wading painfully through the catechism like a man in a
deep-muddy road; with this difference, that the man carries too
much clay with him, while nothing stuck to poor Arthur.
The beauty of the day, the genial season of the year, brought
forth every one; old men and their feebler old wives, young and
hearty men and their plump and ruddy companions, - young men
and girls and children, thick as punctuation points in Hebrew
text, filled the street. In a low voice, they spoke to each other
in single sentences.
“A fine day! There'll be a good congregation out to-day. ”
“Yes; we may expect a house full. How is Widow Cheney -
have you heard ? »
“Well, not much better; can't hold out many days. It will
be a great loss to the children. ”
“Yes; but we must all die — nobody can skip his turn. Does
she still talk about them that's gone ? »
«They say not.
I believe she's sunk into a quiet way; and
it looks as if she'd go off easy. ”
Sunday is a good day for dying — it's about the only jour-
ney that speeds well on this day! ”
There was something striking in the outflow of people into
the street, that till now had seemed utterly deserted. There was
no fevered hurry; no negligent or poorly dressed people. Every
family came in groups - old folks and young children; and every
member blossomed forth in his best apparel, like a rose-bush in
June. Do you know that man in a silk hat and new black coat? .
(
## p. 1742 (#540) ###########################################
1742
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Probably it is some stranger. No; it is the carpenter, Mr.
Baggs, who was racing about yesterday with his sleeves rolled
up, and a dust-and-business look in his face! I knew you would
not know him. Adams Gardner, the blacksmith, — does he not
look every inch a judge, now that he is clean-washed, shaved,
and dressed? His eyes are as bright as the sparks that fly from
his anvil!
Are not the folks proud of their children?
See what groups
of them! How ruddy and plump are most! Some are roguish,
and cut clandestine capers at every chance. Others seem like
wax figures, so perfectly proper are they. Little hands go slyly
through the pickets to pluck a tempting flower. Other hands
carry hymn-books or Bibles. But, carry what they may, dressed
as each parent can afford, is there anything the sun shines upon
more beautiful than these troops of Sunday children ?
The old bell had it all its own way up in the steeple. It
was the licensed noise of the day. In a long shed behind the
church stood a score and half-score of wagons and chaises and
carryalls, — the horses already beginning the forenoon's work of
stamping and whisking the flies. More were coming. Hiram
Beers had “hitched up," and brought two loads with his new
hack; and now, having secured the team, he stood with a few
admiring young fellows about him, remarking on the people as
they came up.
“There's Trowbridge — he'll git asleep afore the first prayer's
I don't b'lieve he's heerd a sermon in ten years.
I've
seen him sleep standin' up in singin'.
“Here comes Deacon Marble, smart old feller, ain't he ?
wouldn't think it, jest to look at him! Face looks like an ear of
last summer's sweet corn, all dried up; but I tell ye he's got the
juice in him yit! Aunt Polly's gittin' old, ain't she? They say
she can't walk half the time — lost the use of her limbs; but it's
all gone to her tongue. That's as good as a razor, and a sight
better 'n mine, for it never needs sharpenin'.
"Stand away, boys, there's 'Biah Cathcart. Good horses — not
fast, but mighty strong, just like the owner. ”
And with that Hiram touched his new Sunday hat to Mrs.
Cathcart and Alice; and as he took the horses by the bits, he
dropped his head and gave the Cathcart boys a look of such
awful solemnity, all except one eye, that they lost their sobriety.
Barton alone remained sober as a judge.
over.
## p. 1743 (#541) ###########################################
HENRY WARD BEECHER
1743
“Here comes Dot-and-Go-One' and his wife. They're my
kind o Christians. She is a saint, at any rate. ”
«How is it with you, Tommy Taft ? ”
"Fair to middlin', thank'e. Such weather would make a hand-
spike blossom, Hiram. ”
“Don't you think that's a leetle strong, Tommy, for Sunday?
P'raps you mean afore it's cut ?
“Sartin; that's what I mean. But you mustn't stop me,
Hiram. Parson Buell '11 be lookin' for me. He never begins
till I git there. "
“You mean you always git there 'fore he begins. ”
Next, Hiram's prying eyes saw Mr. Turfmould, the sexton
and undertaker, who seemed to be in a pensive meditation upon
all the dead that he had ever buried. He looked upon men in
a mild and pitying manner, as if he forgave them for being in
good health.
You could not help feeling that he gazed upon
you with a professional eye, and saw just how you would look
in the condition which was to him the most interesting period
of a man's earthly state. He walked with a soft tread, as if he
was always at a funeral; and when he shook your hand, his left
hand half followed his right, as if he were about beginning to
lay you out. He was one of the few men absorbed by his busi-
ness, and who unconsciously measured all things from its stand-
point.
Good-morning, Mr. Turfmould!
How's your health ? How
is business with you? ”
« Good the Lord be praised! I've no reason to complain. ”
And he glided silently and smoothly into the church.
“There comes Judge Bacon, white and ugly,” said the critical
Hiram. "I wonder what he comes to meetin' for. Lord knows
he needs it, sly, slippery old sinner! Face's as white as a lily;
his heart's as black as a chimney fue afore it's cleaned. He'11
get his fue burned out if he don't repent, that's certain. He
don't believe the Bible. They say he don't believe in God.
Wal, I guess it's pretty even between 'em. Shouldn't wonder if
God didn't believe in him neither. ”
As soon as the afternoon service was over, every horse on
the green knew that it was time for him to go home. Some
grew restless and whinnied for their masters. Nim ble hands
soon put them into the shafts or repaired any irregularity of
harness. Then came such a scramble of vehicles to the church
## p. 1744 (#542) ###########################################
1744
HENRY WARD BEECHER
door for the older persons; while young women and children,
venturing further out upon the green, were taken up hastily,
that the impatient horses might as soon as possible turn their
heads homeward. Clouds of dust began to arise along every
outward-going road. In less than ten minutes not a wagon or
chaise was seen upon the village green. They were whirling
homeward at the very best pace that the horses could raise.
Stiff old steeds vainly essayed a nimbler gait, but gave it up
in a few rods, and fell back to the steady jog. Young horses,
tired of long standing, and with a strong yearning for evening
oats, shot along the level ground, rushed up the little hills, or
down upon the other side, in the most un-Sunday-like haste.
The scene was not altogether unlike the return from a military
funeral, to which men march with sad music and slow, but from
which they return nimbly marching to the most brilliant quick-
step.
In half an hour Norwood was quiet again. The dinner, on
Sunday, when for the sake of the outlying population the two
services are brought near together in the middle of the day, was
usually deferred till the ordinary supper hour. It was evident
that the tone of the day was changed. Children were not so
strictly held in. There was no loud talking, nor was laughing
allowed, but a general feeling sprung up around the table that
the severer tasks of the day were ended.
Devout and age-sobered people sat in a kind of golden twi.
light of meditation. The minister, in his well-ordered house,
tired with a double service, mingled thoughts both glad and sad.
His tasks were ended. He was conscious that he had manfuily
done his best. But that best doing, as he reflected upon it,
seemed so poor, so unworthy of the nobleness of the theme, and
so relatively powerless upon the stubborn stuff of which his peo-
ple's dispositions were made, that there remained a vague, unquiet
sense of blame upon his conscience.
It was Dr. Wentworth's habit to walk with his family in the
garden, early in the morning and late in the afternoon. If early,
Rose was usually his company; in the afternoon the whole family,
Agate Bissell always excepted. She had in full measure that
peculiar New England feeling that Sunday is to be kept by stay-
ing in the house, except such time as is spent at church. And
though she never, impliedly even, rebuked the doctor's resort to
his garden, it was plain that deep down in her heart she thought
## p. 1745 (#543) ###########################################
HENRY WARD BEECHER
1745
it an improper way of spending Sunday; and in that view she
had the secret sympathy of almost all the noteworthy villagers.
Had any one, upon that day, made Agate a visit, unless for
some plain end of necessity or mercy, she would have deemed it
a personal affront.
Sunday was the Lord's day. Agate acted as if any use of it
for her own pleasure would be literal and downright stealing.
“We have six days for our own work. We ought not ti
begrudge the Lord one whole day. ”
Two circumstances distressed honest Agate's conscience. The
one was that the incursion of summer visitors from the city
was tending manifestly to relax the Sabbath, especially after
the church services. The other was that Dr. Wentworth would
occasionally allow Judge Bacon to call in and discuss with him
topics suggested by the sermons. She once expressed herself in
this wise: -
“Either Sunday is worth keeping, or it is not. If you do
keep it, it ought to be strictly done. But lately Sunday is ravel-
ing out at the end. We take it on like a summer dress, which
in the morning is clean and sweet, but at night it is soiled at
the bottom and much rumpled all over. ”
Dr. Wentworth sat with Rose on one side and her mother on
the other, in the honeysuckle corner, where the west could be
seen, great trees lying athwart the horizon and checkering the
golden light with their dark masses. Judge Bacon had turned
the conversation upon this very topic.
«I think our Sundays in New England are Puritan and Jew-
ish more than Christian. They are days of restriction rather
than of joyousness. They are fast days, not feast days. ”
“Do you say that as a mere matter of historical criticism, or
do you think that they could be improved practically ? ”
Both. It is susceptible of proof that the early Christian
Sunday was a day of triumph and of much social joy. It would
be well if we could follow primitive example. ”
"Judge, I am hardly of your opinion. I should be unwilling
to see our New England Sunday changed, except perhaps by a
larger social liberty in each family. Much might be done to
make it attractive to children, and relieve older persons from
ennui. But after all, we must judge things by their fruits. If
you bring me good apples, it is in vain to abuse the tree as
craggy, rude, or homely. The fruit redeems the tree. ”
111-IIO
## p. 1746 (#544) ###########################################
1746
HENRY WARD BEECHER
"A very comely figure, Doctor, but not very good reasoning.
New England has had something at work upon her beside her
Sundays. What you call the fruit' grew, a good deal of it at
any rate, on other trees than Sunday trees. ”
"You are only partly right.
New England character and
history are the result of a wide-spread system of influences of
which the Sabbath day was the type- and not only so, but the
grand motive power. Almost every cause which has worked
benignly among us has received its inspiration and impulse
largely from this One Solitary Day of the week.
"It is true that all the vegetable growths that we see about
us here depend upon a great variety of causes; but there is one
cause that is the condition of power in every other, and that is
the Sun! And so, many as have been the influences working at
New England character, Sunday has been a generic and multi-
plex force, inspiring and directing all others, It is indeed the
Sun's day.
"It is a little singular that, borrowing the name from the
heathen calendar, it should have tallied so well with the Script-
ure name, the Lord's day — that Lord who was the Morning Star
in early day, and at length the Sun of Righteousness!
“The Jews called it the Sabbath - a day of rest. Modern
Christians call it the Sun's day, or the day of light, warmth, and
growth.
If this seems fanciful so far as the names of the day
are concerned, it is strikingly characteristic of the real spirit of
the two days, in the ancient and modern dispensation. I doubt if
the old Jews ever kept a Sabbath religiously, as we understand
that term. Indeed, I suspect there was not yet a religious
strength in that national character that could hold up religious
feeling without the help of social and even physical adjuvants.
Their religious days were either fasts or like our Thanksgiving
days. But the higher and richer moral nature which has been
developed by Christianity enables communities to sustain one day
in seven upon a high spiritual plane, with the need of but very
little social help, and without the feasting element at all. ”
That
very
well for a few saints like you and me,
Doctor, but it is too high for the majority of men. Common
people find the strict Sundays a great annoyance, and clandes-
tinely set them aside. ”
“I doubt it. There are a few in every society that live by
their sensuous nature. Sunday must be a dead day to them — a
may be
## p. 1747 (#545) ###########################################
HENRY WARD BEECHER
1747
dark room. No wonder they break through. But it is not so
with the sturdy, unsophisticated laboring class in New England.
If it came to a vote, you would find that the farmers of New
England would be the defenders of the day, even if screwed up
to the old strictness. Their instinct is right.
Their instinct is right. It is an observ-
ance that has always worked its best effects upon the common
people, and if I were to change the name, I should call Sunday
The Poor Man's Day.
“Men do not yet perceive that the base of the brain is full of
despotism, and the coronal brain is radiant with liberty. I mean
that the laws and relations which grow out of men's relations in
physical things are the sternest and hardest, and at every step
in the assent toward reason and spirituality, the relations grow
more kindly and free.
“Now, it is natural for men to prefer an animal life. By-
and-by they will learn that such a life necessitates force, absolut-
ism. It is natural for unreflecting men to complain when custom
or institutions hold them up to some higher degree. But that
higher degree has in it an element of emancipation from the
necessary despotisms of physical life. If it were possible to
bring the whole community up to a plane of spirituality, it
would be found that there and there only could be the highest
measure of liberty. And this is my answer to those who grum-
ble at the restriction of Sunday liberty. It is only the liberty
of the senses that suffers. A higher and nobler civil liberty,
moral liberty, social liberty, will work out of it. Sunday is the
common people's Magna Charta. ”
«Well done, Doctor! I give up. Hereafter you shall see me
radiant on Sunday. I must not get my hay in if storms do
threaten to spoil it; but I shall give my conscience a hitch up,
and take it out in that. I must not ride out; but then I shall
regard every virtuous self-denial as a moral investment with
good dividends coming in by-and-by. I can't let the children
frolic in the front dooryard; but then, while they sit waiting
for the sun to go down, and your Sun-day to be over, I shall
console myself that they are one notch nearer an angelic condi.
tion every week. But good-night, good-night, Mrs. Wentworth.
I hope you may not become so spiritual as quite to disdain the
body. I really think, for this world, the body has some respect-
able uses yet. Good-night, Rose. The angels take care of you,
if there is one of them good enough. ”
## p. 1748 (#546) ###########################################
1748
HENRY WARD BEECHER
“I am.
And so the judge left.
They sat silently looking at the sun, now but just above the
horizon. A few scarfs of cloud, brilliant with flame-color, and
every moment changing forms, seemed like winged spirits, half
revealed, that hovered round the retiring orb.
Mrs. Wentworth at length broke the silence.
"I always thought, Doctor, that you believed Sunday over-
strictly kept, and that you were in favor of relaxation. ”
Just as fast as you can make it a day of real reli-
gious enjoyment, it will relax itself. True and deep spiritual
feeling is the freest of all experiences. And it reconciles in
itself the most perfect consciousness of liberty with the most
thorough observance of outward rules and proprieties. Liberty
is not an outward condition. It is an inward attribute, or rather
a name for the quality of life produced by the highest moral
attributes. When communities come to that condition, we shall
see fewer laws and higher morality.
« The one great poem of New England is her Sunday!
Through that she has escaped materialism. That has been a
crystal dome overhead, through which Imagination has been
kept alive. New England's imagination is to be found, not in
art and literature, but in her inventions, her social organism,
and above all in her religious life. The Sabbath has been the
nurse of that. When she ceases to have a Sunday, she will be
as this landscape is - now growing dark, all its lines blurred, its
distances and gradations fast merging into sheeted darkness and
night. Come, let us go in ! »
Copyrighted by Fords, Howard and Hulbert.
## p. 1749 (#547) ###########################################
1749
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
1770-1827)
BY E. IRENÆUS STEVENSON
M
E ARE warned on high authority that no man can serve two
masters. The caution should obtain in æsthetics as well as
in ethics. As a general rule, the painter must stick to his
easel, the sculptor must carve, the musician must score or play or
sing, the actor must act, - each with no more than the merest coquet-
tings with sister arts. Otherwise his genius is apt to suffer from
what are side-issues for temperament. To many minds a taste, and
even a singular capacity, for an avocation has injured the work done
in the real vocation.
Of course there are exceptions. The
versatility has not always been fatal. We
recall Leonardo, Angelo, Rossetti, and Blake
among painters; in the ranks of musicians
we note Hoffmann, Berlioz, Schumann, Wag-
ner, Boito.
In other art-paths, such per-
sonal pages as those of Cellini, and the
critical writings of Story of to-day, may
add their evidence. The essentially auto-
biographic in such a connection must be
accepted with reserve. So must be taken
much admirable writing as to the art in
which the critic or teacher has labored.
BEETHOVEN
Didactics are not necessarily literature. Per-
haps the best basis of determining the right to literary recognition
of men and women who have written and printed more or less with-
out actually professing letters, will be the interest of the matter they
have left to the kind of reader who does not care a pin about their
real life-work, or about their self-expression as it really comes down
to us.
In painting, the dual capacity — for the brush and for letters -
has more shining examples than in music. But with Beethoven,
Schumann, Boito, and Wagner, comes a striking succession of men
who, as to autobiography or criticism or verse, present a high quality
of interest to the general reader. In the instance of Beethoven the
critical or essayistic side is limited. It is by his letters and diary
that we study (only less vividly than in his music) a character of
## p. 1750 (#548) ###########################################
1750
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
he was,
profound depth and imposing nobility; a nature of exquisite sensitive.
ness. In them we follow, if fragmentarily, the battle of personality
against environment, the secrets of strong but high passion, the
artist temperament, - endowed with a dignity and a moral majesty
seldom equaled in an art indeed called divine, but with children who
frequently remind us that Pan absorbed in playing his syrinx has a
goat's hoof.
Beethoven in all his correspondence wrote himself down as what
- a superior man, a mighty soul in many traits, as well as
a supreme creative musician.
His letters are absorbing, whether
they breathe love or anger, discouragement or joy, rebellion against
untoward conditions of daily life or solemn resignation. The reli-
gious quality, too, is strong in them; that element more in touch
with Deism than with one or another orthodoxy. Withal, he is as
sincere in every line of such matter as he was in the spoken word.
His correspondence holds up the mirror to his own nature, with its
extremes of impulse and reserve, of affection and austerity, of confi-
dence and suspicion. It abounds, too, in that brusque yet seldom
coarse humor which leaps up in the Finale of the Seventh Sym-
phony, in the Eighth Symphony's waggery, the last movement of the
Concerto in E flat. They offer likewise verbal admissions of such
depression of heart as we recognize in the sternest episodes of the
later Sonatas and of the Galitzin Quartets, and in the awful Alle-
gretto of the Symphony in A. They hint at the amorous passion
of the slow movements of the Fourth and Ninth Symphonies, at the
moral heroism of the Fifth, at the more human courage of the
Heroic,' at the mysticism of the Ninth's tremendous opening. In
interesting relation to the group, and merely of superficial interest,
are his hasty notes, his occasional efforts to write in English or in
French, his touches of musical allusiveness.
It is not in the purpose of these prefatory paragraphs to a too-
brief group of Beethoven's letters to enter upon his biography.
That is essentially a musician's life; albeit the life of a musician
who, as Mr. Edward Dannreuther suggests, leaves behind him the
domain of mere art and enters upon that of the seer and the
prophet. He was born in Bonn in 1770, on a day the date of which is
not certain (though we know that his baptism was December 17th).
His youth was not a sunshiny period. Poverty, neglect, a drunken
father, violin lessons under compulsion, were the circumstances
ushering him into his career. He was for a brief time a pupil of
Mozart; just enough so to preserve that succession of royal geniuses
expressed in linking Mozart to Haydn, and in remembering that Liszt
played for Beethoven and that Schubert stood beside Beethoven's last
sick-bed. Hi patronage and interest gradually took th
composer
## p. 1751 (#549) ###########################################
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
1751
under its care.
Austria and Germany recognized him, England
accepted him early, universal intelligence became enthusiastic over
utterances in art that seemed as much innovations as Wagneristic
writing seemed to the next generation. In Vienna, Beethoven may
be said to have passed his life. There were the friends to whom he
wrote -- who understood and loved him. Afflicted early with a deaf-
ness that became total, the irony of fate, — the majority of his
master-works were evolved from a mind shut away from the pleas-
ures and disturbances of earthly sounds, and beset by invalidism and
suffering. Naturally genial, he grew morbidly sensitive. Infirmities
of temper as well as of body marked him for their own. But under-
neath all superficial shortcomings of his intensely human nature was
a Shakespearean dignity of moral and intellectual individuality.
It is not necessary here even to touch on the works that follow
him. They stand now as firmly as ever — perhaps more firmly — in
the honor and the affection of all the world of auditors in touch with
the highest expressions in the tone-world. The mere mention of such
monuments as the sonatas, the nine symphonies, the Mass in D minor,
the magnificent chain of overtures, the dramatic concert-arias, does not
exhaust the list. They are the vivid self-expressions of one who
learned in suffering what he taught in song: a man whose personality
impressed itself into almost everything that he wrote, upon almost
every one whom he met, and who towers up as impressively as the
author of Hamlet,' the sculptor of Moses,' the painter of “The
Last Supper.
It is perhaps interesting to mention that the very chirography of
Beethoven's letters is eloquent of the man. Handwriting is apt to
be. Mendelssohn, the well-balanced, the precise, wrote like copper-
plate. Wagner wrote a fine strong hand, seldom with
Spontini, the soldier-like, wrote with the decision of a soldier. Bee-
thoven's letters and notes are in a large, open, dashing hand, often
scrawls, always with the blackest of ink, full of changes, and not a
flourish to spare — the handwriting of impulse and carelessness as to
form, compared with a writer's desire of making his meaning clear.
erasures.
E. Sosnosur Visussion
## p. 1752 (#550) ###########################################
1752
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
FROM LETTER TO DR. WEGELER, VIENNA
I
It was
N What an odious light have you exhibited me to myself! Oh!
I acknowledge it, I do not deserve your friendship.
no intentional or deliberate malice that induced me to act
towards you as I did — but inexcusable thoughtlessness alone.
I say no more. I am coming to throw myself into your arms,
and to entreat you to restore me my lost friend; and you will
give him back to me, to your penitent, loving, and ever grateful
BEETHOVEN.
TO THE SAME
Hº
more
VIENNA, June 29th, 1800.
My dear and valued Wegeler:
OW MUCH I thank you for your remembrance of me, little as
I deserve it or have sought to deserve it; and yet you are
so kind that you allow nothing, not even my unpardonable
neglect, to discourage you, always remaining the same true, good,
and faithful friend. That I can ever forget you or yours, once
so dear and precious to me, do not for a moment believe. There
are times when I find myself longing to see you again, and
wishing that I could go to stay with you. My fatherland, that
lovely region where I first saw the light, is still as distinct and
beauteous in my eyes as when I quitted you; in short, I shall
esteem the time when I once see you, and again greet
Father Rhine, as one of the happiest periods of my life. When
this may be I cannot yet tell, but at all events I may say that
you shall not see me again till I have become not only eminent
as an artist, but better and more perfect as a man; and if the
condition of our fatherland be then more prosperous, my art
shall be entirely devoted to the benefit of the poor. On, bliss-
ful moment! — how happy do I esteem myself that I can expedite
it and bring it to pass!
You desire to know something of my position: well! it is by
no means bad. However incredible it may appear, I must tell
you that Lichnowsky has been, and still is, my warmest friend
(slight dissensions occurred occasionally between us, and yet they
only served to strengthen our friendship). He settled on me last
## p. 1753 (#551) ###########################################
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
1753
I can
year the sum of six hundred florins, for which I am to draw on
him till I can procure some suitable situation. My compositions
are very profitable, and I may really say that I have almost
more commissions than it is possible for me to execute.
have six or seven publishers or more for every piece if I choose:
they no longer bargain with me - I demand, and they pay -- So
you see this is a very good thing. For instance, I have a friend
in distress, and my purse does not admit of my assisting him at
once, but I have only to sit down and write, and in a short time
he is relieved. I am also become more economical than for-
merly.
To give you some idea of my extraordinary deafness, I must
tell you that in the theatre I am obliged to lean close up against
the orchestra in order to understand the actors, and when a little
way off I hear none of the high notes of instruments or singers.
It is most astonishing that in conversation some people never
seem to observe this; as I am subject to fits of absence, they
attribute it to that cause. Often I can scarcely hear a person if
he speaks low; I can distinguish the tones but not the words, and
yet I feel it intolerable if any one shouts to me. Heaven alone
knows how it is to end! Vering declares that I shall certainly
improve, even if I be not entirely restored. How often have I
cursed my existence! Plutarch led me to resignation. I shall
strive if possible to set Fate at defiance, although there must be
moments in my life when I cannot fail to be the most unhappy
of God's creatures. I entreat you to say nothing of my affliction
to any one, not even to Lorchen. I confide the secret to you
alone, and entreat you some day to correspond with Vering on
the subject. If I continue in the same state, I shall come to
you in the ensuing spring, when you must engage a house for
me somewhere in the country, amid beautiful scenery, and I
shall then become a rustic for a year, which may perhaps effect
a change. Resignation! - what a miserable refuge! and yet it is
my sole remaining one. You will forgive my thus appealing to
your kindly sympathies at a time when your own position is sad
enough.
Farewell, my kind, faithful Wegeler! Rest assured of the love
and friendship of your
BEETHOVEN.
## p. 1754 (#552) ###########################################
1754
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
FROM THE LETTERS TO BETTINA BRENTANO
N"
EVER was there a lovelier spring than this year; I say so, and
feel it too, because it was then I first knew you. You have
yourself seen that in society I am like a fish on the sand,
which writhes and writhes, but cannot get away till some benevo-
lent Galatea casts it back into the mighty ocean. I was indeed
fairly stranded, dearest friend, when surprised by you at a moment
in which moroseness had entirely mastered me; but how quickly
it vanished at your aspect! I was at once conscious that you
came from another sphere than this absurd world, where, with
the best inclinations, I cannot open my ears. I am a wretched
creature, and yet I complain of others! ! You will forgive this
from the goodness of heart that beams in your eyes, and the good
sense manifested by your ears; at least they understand how to
flatter, by the mode in which they listen. My ears are, alas! a
partition-wall, through which I can with difficulty hold any inter-
course with my fellow-creatures. Otherwise perhaps I might
have felt more assured with you; but I was only conscious of
the full, intelligent glance from your eyes, which affected me so
deeply that never can I forget it. My dear friend! dearest girl! ---
Art! who comprehends it ? with whom can I discuss this mighty
goddess ? How precious to were the few days when we
talked together, or, I should rather say, corresponded! I have
carefully preserved the little notes with your clever, charming,
most charming answers; so I have to thank my defective hearing
for the greater part of our fugitive intercourse being written
down. Since you left this I have had some unhappy hours,--
hours of the deepest gloom, when I could do nothing. I wan-
dered for three hours in the Schönbrunn Allée after you left us,
but no angel met me there to take possession of me as you did.
Pray forgive, my dear friend, this deviation from the original
key, but I must have such intervals as a relief to my heart.
You have no doubt written to Goethe about me? I would gladly
bury my head in a sack, so that I might neither see nor hear
what goes on in the world, because I shall meet you there no
more; but I shall get a letter from you? Hope sustains me, as
it does half the world; through life she has been my close com-
panion, or what would have become of me? I send you Kennst
me
## p. 1755 (#553) ###########################################
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
1755
I am
Du das Land,' written with my own hand, as a remembrance of
the hour when I first knew you.
If you mention me when you write to Goethe, strive to find
words expressive of my deep reverence and admiration.
about to write to him inyself with regard to “Egmont,' for
which I have written some music solely from my love for his
poetry, which always delights me. Who can be sufficiently grate-
ful to a great poet, — the most precious jewel of a nation!
Kings and princes can indeed create professors and privy-
councillors, and confer titles and decorations, but they cannot
make great men, spirits that soar above the base turmoil of
this world. There their powers fail, and this it is that forces
them to respect us.
seven steeples in sight from the belfry, and the sexton said: -
«On still Sundays I've heard the bell, at one time and another,
when the day was fair, and the air moving in the right way,
from every one of them steeples, and I guess likely they've all
heard our'n. ”
“Come, Rose! ” said Agate Bissell, at an even earlier hour
than when Rose usually awakened — "Come, Rose, it is the Sab-
bath. We must not be late Sunday morning, of all days in the
week. It is the Lord's day. ”
There was little preparation required for the day. Saturday
night, in some parts of New England, was considered almost as
sacred as Sunday itself. After sundown on Saturday night no
play, and no work except such as is immediately preparatory to
the Sabbath, were deemed becoming in good Christians. The
clothes had been laid out the night before. Nothing was for-
gotten. The best frock was ready; the hose and shoes were
waiting. Every article of linen, every ruffle and ribbon, were
selected on Saturday night. Every one in the house walked
mildly. Every one spoke in a low tone. Yet all were cheerful.
The mother had on her kindest face, and nobody laughed, but
everybody made it up in smiling. The nurse smiled, and the
children held on to keep down a giggle within the lawful bounds
of a smile; and the doctor looked rounder and calmer than ever;
and the dog flapped his tail on the floor with a softened sound,
as if he had fresh wrapped it in hair for that very day. Aunt
Toodie, the cook (so the children had changed Mrs. Sarah
Good's name), was blacker than ever and shinier than ever, and
## p. 1740 (#538) ###########################################
1740
HENRY WARD BEECHER
the coffee better, and the cream richer, and the broiled chickens
juicier and more tender, and the biscuit whiter, and the corn-
bread more brittle and sweet.
When the good doctor read the Scriptures at family prayer,
the infection of silence had subdued everything except the clock.
Out of the wide hall could be heard in the stillness the old
clock, that now lifted up its voice with unwonted emphasis, as if,
unnoticed through the bustling week, Sunday was its vantage
ground, to proclaim to mortals the swift flight of time. And if
he old pedant performed the task with something of an ostenta-
tious precision, it was because in that house nothing else put on
official airs, and the clock felt the responsibility of doing it for
the whole mansion.
And now came mother and catechism; for Mrs. Wentworth
followed the old custom, and declared that no child of hers should
grow up without catechism. Secretly, the doctor was quite will-
ing, though openly he played off upon the practice a world of
good-natured discouragement, and declared that there should be
an opposition set up-a catechism of Nature, with natural laws
for decrees, and seasons for Providence, and flowers for graces!
The younger children were taught in simple catechism. But
Rose, having reached the mature age of twelve, was now mani-
festing her power over the Westminster Shorter Catechism; and
as it was simply an achievement of memory and not of the
understanding, she had the book at great advantage, and soon
subdued every question and answer in it. As much as possible,
the doctor was kept aloof on such occasions. His grave questions
were not to edification, and often they caused Rose to stumble,
and brought down sorely the exultation with which she rolled
forth, “They that are effectually called do in this life partake
of justification, adoption, sanctification, and the several benefits
which in this life do either accompany or flow from them. ”
«What do those words mean, Rose ? »
«Which words, pa? ”
"Adoption, sanctification, and justification ?
Rose hesitated, and looked at her mother for rescue.
“Doctor, why do you trouble the child ? Of course she don't
know yet all the meaning. But that will come to her when she
grows older. ”
You make a nest of her memory, then, and put words there,
like eggs, for future hatching?
## p. 1741 (#539) ###########################################
HENRY WARD BEECHER
1741
“Yes, that is it exactly: birds do not hatch their eggs the
minute they lay them. They wait. ”
“Laying eggs at twelve to be hatched at twenty is subjecting
them to some risk, is it not ? ”
It might be so with eggs, but not with the catechism. That
will keep without spoiling a hundred years ! »
« Because it is so dry ? ”
“Because it is so good. But do, dear husband, go away, and
not put notions in the children's heads. It's hard enough already
to get them through their tasks. Here's poor Arthur, who has
been two Sundays on one question, and has not got it yet. ”
Arthur, aforesaid, was sharp and bright in anything addressed
to his reason, but he had no verbal memory, and he was there-
fore wading painfully through the catechism like a man in a
deep-muddy road; with this difference, that the man carries too
much clay with him, while nothing stuck to poor Arthur.
The beauty of the day, the genial season of the year, brought
forth every one; old men and their feebler old wives, young and
hearty men and their plump and ruddy companions, - young men
and girls and children, thick as punctuation points in Hebrew
text, filled the street. In a low voice, they spoke to each other
in single sentences.
“A fine day! There'll be a good congregation out to-day. ”
“Yes; we may expect a house full. How is Widow Cheney -
have you heard ? »
“Well, not much better; can't hold out many days. It will
be a great loss to the children. ”
“Yes; but we must all die — nobody can skip his turn. Does
she still talk about them that's gone ? »
«They say not.
I believe she's sunk into a quiet way; and
it looks as if she'd go off easy. ”
Sunday is a good day for dying — it's about the only jour-
ney that speeds well on this day! ”
There was something striking in the outflow of people into
the street, that till now had seemed utterly deserted. There was
no fevered hurry; no negligent or poorly dressed people. Every
family came in groups - old folks and young children; and every
member blossomed forth in his best apparel, like a rose-bush in
June. Do you know that man in a silk hat and new black coat? .
(
## p. 1742 (#540) ###########################################
1742
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Probably it is some stranger. No; it is the carpenter, Mr.
Baggs, who was racing about yesterday with his sleeves rolled
up, and a dust-and-business look in his face! I knew you would
not know him. Adams Gardner, the blacksmith, — does he not
look every inch a judge, now that he is clean-washed, shaved,
and dressed? His eyes are as bright as the sparks that fly from
his anvil!
Are not the folks proud of their children?
See what groups
of them! How ruddy and plump are most! Some are roguish,
and cut clandestine capers at every chance. Others seem like
wax figures, so perfectly proper are they. Little hands go slyly
through the pickets to pluck a tempting flower. Other hands
carry hymn-books or Bibles. But, carry what they may, dressed
as each parent can afford, is there anything the sun shines upon
more beautiful than these troops of Sunday children ?
The old bell had it all its own way up in the steeple. It
was the licensed noise of the day. In a long shed behind the
church stood a score and half-score of wagons and chaises and
carryalls, — the horses already beginning the forenoon's work of
stamping and whisking the flies. More were coming. Hiram
Beers had “hitched up," and brought two loads with his new
hack; and now, having secured the team, he stood with a few
admiring young fellows about him, remarking on the people as
they came up.
“There's Trowbridge — he'll git asleep afore the first prayer's
I don't b'lieve he's heerd a sermon in ten years.
I've
seen him sleep standin' up in singin'.
“Here comes Deacon Marble, smart old feller, ain't he ?
wouldn't think it, jest to look at him! Face looks like an ear of
last summer's sweet corn, all dried up; but I tell ye he's got the
juice in him yit! Aunt Polly's gittin' old, ain't she? They say
she can't walk half the time — lost the use of her limbs; but it's
all gone to her tongue. That's as good as a razor, and a sight
better 'n mine, for it never needs sharpenin'.
"Stand away, boys, there's 'Biah Cathcart. Good horses — not
fast, but mighty strong, just like the owner. ”
And with that Hiram touched his new Sunday hat to Mrs.
Cathcart and Alice; and as he took the horses by the bits, he
dropped his head and gave the Cathcart boys a look of such
awful solemnity, all except one eye, that they lost their sobriety.
Barton alone remained sober as a judge.
over.
## p. 1743 (#541) ###########################################
HENRY WARD BEECHER
1743
“Here comes Dot-and-Go-One' and his wife. They're my
kind o Christians. She is a saint, at any rate. ”
«How is it with you, Tommy Taft ? ”
"Fair to middlin', thank'e. Such weather would make a hand-
spike blossom, Hiram. ”
“Don't you think that's a leetle strong, Tommy, for Sunday?
P'raps you mean afore it's cut ?
“Sartin; that's what I mean. But you mustn't stop me,
Hiram. Parson Buell '11 be lookin' for me. He never begins
till I git there. "
“You mean you always git there 'fore he begins. ”
Next, Hiram's prying eyes saw Mr. Turfmould, the sexton
and undertaker, who seemed to be in a pensive meditation upon
all the dead that he had ever buried. He looked upon men in
a mild and pitying manner, as if he forgave them for being in
good health.
You could not help feeling that he gazed upon
you with a professional eye, and saw just how you would look
in the condition which was to him the most interesting period
of a man's earthly state. He walked with a soft tread, as if he
was always at a funeral; and when he shook your hand, his left
hand half followed his right, as if he were about beginning to
lay you out. He was one of the few men absorbed by his busi-
ness, and who unconsciously measured all things from its stand-
point.
Good-morning, Mr. Turfmould!
How's your health ? How
is business with you? ”
« Good the Lord be praised! I've no reason to complain. ”
And he glided silently and smoothly into the church.
“There comes Judge Bacon, white and ugly,” said the critical
Hiram. "I wonder what he comes to meetin' for. Lord knows
he needs it, sly, slippery old sinner! Face's as white as a lily;
his heart's as black as a chimney fue afore it's cleaned. He'11
get his fue burned out if he don't repent, that's certain. He
don't believe the Bible. They say he don't believe in God.
Wal, I guess it's pretty even between 'em. Shouldn't wonder if
God didn't believe in him neither. ”
As soon as the afternoon service was over, every horse on
the green knew that it was time for him to go home. Some
grew restless and whinnied for their masters. Nim ble hands
soon put them into the shafts or repaired any irregularity of
harness. Then came such a scramble of vehicles to the church
## p. 1744 (#542) ###########################################
1744
HENRY WARD BEECHER
door for the older persons; while young women and children,
venturing further out upon the green, were taken up hastily,
that the impatient horses might as soon as possible turn their
heads homeward. Clouds of dust began to arise along every
outward-going road. In less than ten minutes not a wagon or
chaise was seen upon the village green. They were whirling
homeward at the very best pace that the horses could raise.
Stiff old steeds vainly essayed a nimbler gait, but gave it up
in a few rods, and fell back to the steady jog. Young horses,
tired of long standing, and with a strong yearning for evening
oats, shot along the level ground, rushed up the little hills, or
down upon the other side, in the most un-Sunday-like haste.
The scene was not altogether unlike the return from a military
funeral, to which men march with sad music and slow, but from
which they return nimbly marching to the most brilliant quick-
step.
In half an hour Norwood was quiet again. The dinner, on
Sunday, when for the sake of the outlying population the two
services are brought near together in the middle of the day, was
usually deferred till the ordinary supper hour. It was evident
that the tone of the day was changed. Children were not so
strictly held in. There was no loud talking, nor was laughing
allowed, but a general feeling sprung up around the table that
the severer tasks of the day were ended.
Devout and age-sobered people sat in a kind of golden twi.
light of meditation. The minister, in his well-ordered house,
tired with a double service, mingled thoughts both glad and sad.
His tasks were ended. He was conscious that he had manfuily
done his best. But that best doing, as he reflected upon it,
seemed so poor, so unworthy of the nobleness of the theme, and
so relatively powerless upon the stubborn stuff of which his peo-
ple's dispositions were made, that there remained a vague, unquiet
sense of blame upon his conscience.
It was Dr. Wentworth's habit to walk with his family in the
garden, early in the morning and late in the afternoon. If early,
Rose was usually his company; in the afternoon the whole family,
Agate Bissell always excepted. She had in full measure that
peculiar New England feeling that Sunday is to be kept by stay-
ing in the house, except such time as is spent at church. And
though she never, impliedly even, rebuked the doctor's resort to
his garden, it was plain that deep down in her heart she thought
## p. 1745 (#543) ###########################################
HENRY WARD BEECHER
1745
it an improper way of spending Sunday; and in that view she
had the secret sympathy of almost all the noteworthy villagers.
Had any one, upon that day, made Agate a visit, unless for
some plain end of necessity or mercy, she would have deemed it
a personal affront.
Sunday was the Lord's day. Agate acted as if any use of it
for her own pleasure would be literal and downright stealing.
“We have six days for our own work. We ought not ti
begrudge the Lord one whole day. ”
Two circumstances distressed honest Agate's conscience. The
one was that the incursion of summer visitors from the city
was tending manifestly to relax the Sabbath, especially after
the church services. The other was that Dr. Wentworth would
occasionally allow Judge Bacon to call in and discuss with him
topics suggested by the sermons. She once expressed herself in
this wise: -
“Either Sunday is worth keeping, or it is not. If you do
keep it, it ought to be strictly done. But lately Sunday is ravel-
ing out at the end. We take it on like a summer dress, which
in the morning is clean and sweet, but at night it is soiled at
the bottom and much rumpled all over. ”
Dr. Wentworth sat with Rose on one side and her mother on
the other, in the honeysuckle corner, where the west could be
seen, great trees lying athwart the horizon and checkering the
golden light with their dark masses. Judge Bacon had turned
the conversation upon this very topic.
«I think our Sundays in New England are Puritan and Jew-
ish more than Christian. They are days of restriction rather
than of joyousness. They are fast days, not feast days. ”
“Do you say that as a mere matter of historical criticism, or
do you think that they could be improved practically ? ”
Both. It is susceptible of proof that the early Christian
Sunday was a day of triumph and of much social joy. It would
be well if we could follow primitive example. ”
"Judge, I am hardly of your opinion. I should be unwilling
to see our New England Sunday changed, except perhaps by a
larger social liberty in each family. Much might be done to
make it attractive to children, and relieve older persons from
ennui. But after all, we must judge things by their fruits. If
you bring me good apples, it is in vain to abuse the tree as
craggy, rude, or homely. The fruit redeems the tree. ”
111-IIO
## p. 1746 (#544) ###########################################
1746
HENRY WARD BEECHER
"A very comely figure, Doctor, but not very good reasoning.
New England has had something at work upon her beside her
Sundays. What you call the fruit' grew, a good deal of it at
any rate, on other trees than Sunday trees. ”
"You are only partly right.
New England character and
history are the result of a wide-spread system of influences of
which the Sabbath day was the type- and not only so, but the
grand motive power. Almost every cause which has worked
benignly among us has received its inspiration and impulse
largely from this One Solitary Day of the week.
"It is true that all the vegetable growths that we see about
us here depend upon a great variety of causes; but there is one
cause that is the condition of power in every other, and that is
the Sun! And so, many as have been the influences working at
New England character, Sunday has been a generic and multi-
plex force, inspiring and directing all others, It is indeed the
Sun's day.
"It is a little singular that, borrowing the name from the
heathen calendar, it should have tallied so well with the Script-
ure name, the Lord's day — that Lord who was the Morning Star
in early day, and at length the Sun of Righteousness!
“The Jews called it the Sabbath - a day of rest. Modern
Christians call it the Sun's day, or the day of light, warmth, and
growth.
If this seems fanciful so far as the names of the day
are concerned, it is strikingly characteristic of the real spirit of
the two days, in the ancient and modern dispensation. I doubt if
the old Jews ever kept a Sabbath religiously, as we understand
that term. Indeed, I suspect there was not yet a religious
strength in that national character that could hold up religious
feeling without the help of social and even physical adjuvants.
Their religious days were either fasts or like our Thanksgiving
days. But the higher and richer moral nature which has been
developed by Christianity enables communities to sustain one day
in seven upon a high spiritual plane, with the need of but very
little social help, and without the feasting element at all. ”
That
very
well for a few saints like you and me,
Doctor, but it is too high for the majority of men. Common
people find the strict Sundays a great annoyance, and clandes-
tinely set them aside. ”
“I doubt it. There are a few in every society that live by
their sensuous nature. Sunday must be a dead day to them — a
may be
## p. 1747 (#545) ###########################################
HENRY WARD BEECHER
1747
dark room. No wonder they break through. But it is not so
with the sturdy, unsophisticated laboring class in New England.
If it came to a vote, you would find that the farmers of New
England would be the defenders of the day, even if screwed up
to the old strictness. Their instinct is right.
Their instinct is right. It is an observ-
ance that has always worked its best effects upon the common
people, and if I were to change the name, I should call Sunday
The Poor Man's Day.
“Men do not yet perceive that the base of the brain is full of
despotism, and the coronal brain is radiant with liberty. I mean
that the laws and relations which grow out of men's relations in
physical things are the sternest and hardest, and at every step
in the assent toward reason and spirituality, the relations grow
more kindly and free.
“Now, it is natural for men to prefer an animal life. By-
and-by they will learn that such a life necessitates force, absolut-
ism. It is natural for unreflecting men to complain when custom
or institutions hold them up to some higher degree. But that
higher degree has in it an element of emancipation from the
necessary despotisms of physical life. If it were possible to
bring the whole community up to a plane of spirituality, it
would be found that there and there only could be the highest
measure of liberty. And this is my answer to those who grum-
ble at the restriction of Sunday liberty. It is only the liberty
of the senses that suffers. A higher and nobler civil liberty,
moral liberty, social liberty, will work out of it. Sunday is the
common people's Magna Charta. ”
«Well done, Doctor! I give up. Hereafter you shall see me
radiant on Sunday. I must not get my hay in if storms do
threaten to spoil it; but I shall give my conscience a hitch up,
and take it out in that. I must not ride out; but then I shall
regard every virtuous self-denial as a moral investment with
good dividends coming in by-and-by. I can't let the children
frolic in the front dooryard; but then, while they sit waiting
for the sun to go down, and your Sun-day to be over, I shall
console myself that they are one notch nearer an angelic condi.
tion every week. But good-night, good-night, Mrs. Wentworth.
I hope you may not become so spiritual as quite to disdain the
body. I really think, for this world, the body has some respect-
able uses yet. Good-night, Rose. The angels take care of you,
if there is one of them good enough. ”
## p. 1748 (#546) ###########################################
1748
HENRY WARD BEECHER
“I am.
And so the judge left.
They sat silently looking at the sun, now but just above the
horizon. A few scarfs of cloud, brilliant with flame-color, and
every moment changing forms, seemed like winged spirits, half
revealed, that hovered round the retiring orb.
Mrs. Wentworth at length broke the silence.
"I always thought, Doctor, that you believed Sunday over-
strictly kept, and that you were in favor of relaxation. ”
Just as fast as you can make it a day of real reli-
gious enjoyment, it will relax itself. True and deep spiritual
feeling is the freest of all experiences. And it reconciles in
itself the most perfect consciousness of liberty with the most
thorough observance of outward rules and proprieties. Liberty
is not an outward condition. It is an inward attribute, or rather
a name for the quality of life produced by the highest moral
attributes. When communities come to that condition, we shall
see fewer laws and higher morality.
« The one great poem of New England is her Sunday!
Through that she has escaped materialism. That has been a
crystal dome overhead, through which Imagination has been
kept alive. New England's imagination is to be found, not in
art and literature, but in her inventions, her social organism,
and above all in her religious life. The Sabbath has been the
nurse of that. When she ceases to have a Sunday, she will be
as this landscape is - now growing dark, all its lines blurred, its
distances and gradations fast merging into sheeted darkness and
night. Come, let us go in ! »
Copyrighted by Fords, Howard and Hulbert.
## p. 1749 (#547) ###########################################
1749
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
1770-1827)
BY E. IRENÆUS STEVENSON
M
E ARE warned on high authority that no man can serve two
masters. The caution should obtain in æsthetics as well as
in ethics. As a general rule, the painter must stick to his
easel, the sculptor must carve, the musician must score or play or
sing, the actor must act, - each with no more than the merest coquet-
tings with sister arts. Otherwise his genius is apt to suffer from
what are side-issues for temperament. To many minds a taste, and
even a singular capacity, for an avocation has injured the work done
in the real vocation.
Of course there are exceptions. The
versatility has not always been fatal. We
recall Leonardo, Angelo, Rossetti, and Blake
among painters; in the ranks of musicians
we note Hoffmann, Berlioz, Schumann, Wag-
ner, Boito.
In other art-paths, such per-
sonal pages as those of Cellini, and the
critical writings of Story of to-day, may
add their evidence. The essentially auto-
biographic in such a connection must be
accepted with reserve. So must be taken
much admirable writing as to the art in
which the critic or teacher has labored.
BEETHOVEN
Didactics are not necessarily literature. Per-
haps the best basis of determining the right to literary recognition
of men and women who have written and printed more or less with-
out actually professing letters, will be the interest of the matter they
have left to the kind of reader who does not care a pin about their
real life-work, or about their self-expression as it really comes down
to us.
In painting, the dual capacity — for the brush and for letters -
has more shining examples than in music. But with Beethoven,
Schumann, Boito, and Wagner, comes a striking succession of men
who, as to autobiography or criticism or verse, present a high quality
of interest to the general reader. In the instance of Beethoven the
critical or essayistic side is limited. It is by his letters and diary
that we study (only less vividly than in his music) a character of
## p. 1750 (#548) ###########################################
1750
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
he was,
profound depth and imposing nobility; a nature of exquisite sensitive.
ness. In them we follow, if fragmentarily, the battle of personality
against environment, the secrets of strong but high passion, the
artist temperament, - endowed with a dignity and a moral majesty
seldom equaled in an art indeed called divine, but with children who
frequently remind us that Pan absorbed in playing his syrinx has a
goat's hoof.
Beethoven in all his correspondence wrote himself down as what
- a superior man, a mighty soul in many traits, as well as
a supreme creative musician.
His letters are absorbing, whether
they breathe love or anger, discouragement or joy, rebellion against
untoward conditions of daily life or solemn resignation. The reli-
gious quality, too, is strong in them; that element more in touch
with Deism than with one or another orthodoxy. Withal, he is as
sincere in every line of such matter as he was in the spoken word.
His correspondence holds up the mirror to his own nature, with its
extremes of impulse and reserve, of affection and austerity, of confi-
dence and suspicion. It abounds, too, in that brusque yet seldom
coarse humor which leaps up in the Finale of the Seventh Sym-
phony, in the Eighth Symphony's waggery, the last movement of the
Concerto in E flat. They offer likewise verbal admissions of such
depression of heart as we recognize in the sternest episodes of the
later Sonatas and of the Galitzin Quartets, and in the awful Alle-
gretto of the Symphony in A. They hint at the amorous passion
of the slow movements of the Fourth and Ninth Symphonies, at the
moral heroism of the Fifth, at the more human courage of the
Heroic,' at the mysticism of the Ninth's tremendous opening. In
interesting relation to the group, and merely of superficial interest,
are his hasty notes, his occasional efforts to write in English or in
French, his touches of musical allusiveness.
It is not in the purpose of these prefatory paragraphs to a too-
brief group of Beethoven's letters to enter upon his biography.
That is essentially a musician's life; albeit the life of a musician
who, as Mr. Edward Dannreuther suggests, leaves behind him the
domain of mere art and enters upon that of the seer and the
prophet. He was born in Bonn in 1770, on a day the date of which is
not certain (though we know that his baptism was December 17th).
His youth was not a sunshiny period. Poverty, neglect, a drunken
father, violin lessons under compulsion, were the circumstances
ushering him into his career. He was for a brief time a pupil of
Mozart; just enough so to preserve that succession of royal geniuses
expressed in linking Mozart to Haydn, and in remembering that Liszt
played for Beethoven and that Schubert stood beside Beethoven's last
sick-bed. Hi patronage and interest gradually took th
composer
## p. 1751 (#549) ###########################################
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
1751
under its care.
Austria and Germany recognized him, England
accepted him early, universal intelligence became enthusiastic over
utterances in art that seemed as much innovations as Wagneristic
writing seemed to the next generation. In Vienna, Beethoven may
be said to have passed his life. There were the friends to whom he
wrote -- who understood and loved him. Afflicted early with a deaf-
ness that became total, the irony of fate, — the majority of his
master-works were evolved from a mind shut away from the pleas-
ures and disturbances of earthly sounds, and beset by invalidism and
suffering. Naturally genial, he grew morbidly sensitive. Infirmities
of temper as well as of body marked him for their own. But under-
neath all superficial shortcomings of his intensely human nature was
a Shakespearean dignity of moral and intellectual individuality.
It is not necessary here even to touch on the works that follow
him. They stand now as firmly as ever — perhaps more firmly — in
the honor and the affection of all the world of auditors in touch with
the highest expressions in the tone-world. The mere mention of such
monuments as the sonatas, the nine symphonies, the Mass in D minor,
the magnificent chain of overtures, the dramatic concert-arias, does not
exhaust the list. They are the vivid self-expressions of one who
learned in suffering what he taught in song: a man whose personality
impressed itself into almost everything that he wrote, upon almost
every one whom he met, and who towers up as impressively as the
author of Hamlet,' the sculptor of Moses,' the painter of “The
Last Supper.
It is perhaps interesting to mention that the very chirography of
Beethoven's letters is eloquent of the man. Handwriting is apt to
be. Mendelssohn, the well-balanced, the precise, wrote like copper-
plate. Wagner wrote a fine strong hand, seldom with
Spontini, the soldier-like, wrote with the decision of a soldier. Bee-
thoven's letters and notes are in a large, open, dashing hand, often
scrawls, always with the blackest of ink, full of changes, and not a
flourish to spare — the handwriting of impulse and carelessness as to
form, compared with a writer's desire of making his meaning clear.
erasures.
E. Sosnosur Visussion
## p. 1752 (#550) ###########################################
1752
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
FROM LETTER TO DR. WEGELER, VIENNA
I
It was
N What an odious light have you exhibited me to myself! Oh!
I acknowledge it, I do not deserve your friendship.
no intentional or deliberate malice that induced me to act
towards you as I did — but inexcusable thoughtlessness alone.
I say no more. I am coming to throw myself into your arms,
and to entreat you to restore me my lost friend; and you will
give him back to me, to your penitent, loving, and ever grateful
BEETHOVEN.
TO THE SAME
Hº
more
VIENNA, June 29th, 1800.
My dear and valued Wegeler:
OW MUCH I thank you for your remembrance of me, little as
I deserve it or have sought to deserve it; and yet you are
so kind that you allow nothing, not even my unpardonable
neglect, to discourage you, always remaining the same true, good,
and faithful friend. That I can ever forget you or yours, once
so dear and precious to me, do not for a moment believe. There
are times when I find myself longing to see you again, and
wishing that I could go to stay with you. My fatherland, that
lovely region where I first saw the light, is still as distinct and
beauteous in my eyes as when I quitted you; in short, I shall
esteem the time when I once see you, and again greet
Father Rhine, as one of the happiest periods of my life. When
this may be I cannot yet tell, but at all events I may say that
you shall not see me again till I have become not only eminent
as an artist, but better and more perfect as a man; and if the
condition of our fatherland be then more prosperous, my art
shall be entirely devoted to the benefit of the poor. On, bliss-
ful moment! — how happy do I esteem myself that I can expedite
it and bring it to pass!
You desire to know something of my position: well! it is by
no means bad. However incredible it may appear, I must tell
you that Lichnowsky has been, and still is, my warmest friend
(slight dissensions occurred occasionally between us, and yet they
only served to strengthen our friendship). He settled on me last
## p. 1753 (#551) ###########################################
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
1753
I can
year the sum of six hundred florins, for which I am to draw on
him till I can procure some suitable situation. My compositions
are very profitable, and I may really say that I have almost
more commissions than it is possible for me to execute.
have six or seven publishers or more for every piece if I choose:
they no longer bargain with me - I demand, and they pay -- So
you see this is a very good thing. For instance, I have a friend
in distress, and my purse does not admit of my assisting him at
once, but I have only to sit down and write, and in a short time
he is relieved. I am also become more economical than for-
merly.
To give you some idea of my extraordinary deafness, I must
tell you that in the theatre I am obliged to lean close up against
the orchestra in order to understand the actors, and when a little
way off I hear none of the high notes of instruments or singers.
It is most astonishing that in conversation some people never
seem to observe this; as I am subject to fits of absence, they
attribute it to that cause. Often I can scarcely hear a person if
he speaks low; I can distinguish the tones but not the words, and
yet I feel it intolerable if any one shouts to me. Heaven alone
knows how it is to end! Vering declares that I shall certainly
improve, even if I be not entirely restored. How often have I
cursed my existence! Plutarch led me to resignation. I shall
strive if possible to set Fate at defiance, although there must be
moments in my life when I cannot fail to be the most unhappy
of God's creatures. I entreat you to say nothing of my affliction
to any one, not even to Lorchen. I confide the secret to you
alone, and entreat you some day to correspond with Vering on
the subject. If I continue in the same state, I shall come to
you in the ensuing spring, when you must engage a house for
me somewhere in the country, amid beautiful scenery, and I
shall then become a rustic for a year, which may perhaps effect
a change. Resignation! - what a miserable refuge! and yet it is
my sole remaining one. You will forgive my thus appealing to
your kindly sympathies at a time when your own position is sad
enough.
Farewell, my kind, faithful Wegeler! Rest assured of the love
and friendship of your
BEETHOVEN.
## p. 1754 (#552) ###########################################
1754
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
FROM THE LETTERS TO BETTINA BRENTANO
N"
EVER was there a lovelier spring than this year; I say so, and
feel it too, because it was then I first knew you. You have
yourself seen that in society I am like a fish on the sand,
which writhes and writhes, but cannot get away till some benevo-
lent Galatea casts it back into the mighty ocean. I was indeed
fairly stranded, dearest friend, when surprised by you at a moment
in which moroseness had entirely mastered me; but how quickly
it vanished at your aspect! I was at once conscious that you
came from another sphere than this absurd world, where, with
the best inclinations, I cannot open my ears. I am a wretched
creature, and yet I complain of others! ! You will forgive this
from the goodness of heart that beams in your eyes, and the good
sense manifested by your ears; at least they understand how to
flatter, by the mode in which they listen. My ears are, alas! a
partition-wall, through which I can with difficulty hold any inter-
course with my fellow-creatures. Otherwise perhaps I might
have felt more assured with you; but I was only conscious of
the full, intelligent glance from your eyes, which affected me so
deeply that never can I forget it. My dear friend! dearest girl! ---
Art! who comprehends it ? with whom can I discuss this mighty
goddess ? How precious to were the few days when we
talked together, or, I should rather say, corresponded! I have
carefully preserved the little notes with your clever, charming,
most charming answers; so I have to thank my defective hearing
for the greater part of our fugitive intercourse being written
down. Since you left this I have had some unhappy hours,--
hours of the deepest gloom, when I could do nothing. I wan-
dered for three hours in the Schönbrunn Allée after you left us,
but no angel met me there to take possession of me as you did.
Pray forgive, my dear friend, this deviation from the original
key, but I must have such intervals as a relief to my heart.
You have no doubt written to Goethe about me? I would gladly
bury my head in a sack, so that I might neither see nor hear
what goes on in the world, because I shall meet you there no
more; but I shall get a letter from you? Hope sustains me, as
it does half the world; through life she has been my close com-
panion, or what would have become of me? I send you Kennst
me
## p. 1755 (#553) ###########################################
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
1755
I am
Du das Land,' written with my own hand, as a remembrance of
the hour when I first knew you.
If you mention me when you write to Goethe, strive to find
words expressive of my deep reverence and admiration.
about to write to him inyself with regard to “Egmont,' for
which I have written some music solely from my love for his
poetry, which always delights me. Who can be sufficiently grate-
ful to a great poet, — the most precious jewel of a nation!
Kings and princes can indeed create professors and privy-
councillors, and confer titles and decorations, but they cannot
make great men, spirits that soar above the base turmoil of
this world. There their powers fail, and this it is that forces
them to respect us.
