The Love Affairs of Great Musicians (Vol. 1&2). Hughes Rupert
him of the two daughters of a Viennese wig-maker named Keller. Keller had frequently been kind to Haydn, and the younger daughter seems to have inspired him with an ardent love, but she took the veil. Elise Polko has worked up an elaborate fiction on this affair with her usual saccharinity. When the convent closed the younger Keller from the world, her father ingeniously suggested to Haydn that he might marry the elder sister.
As Louis Nohl says, "Whatever may have been the reason, gratitude, ignorance, helplessness in practical matters, or wish to have a wife at once—whatever may have been the motive, he married, and sorely suffered for it."
Anna Keller was older than Haydn, and the family religiousness that led the younger daughter to enter the convent, led Anna to contribute more of money to the Church, of food and society to the churchmen, and of her husband's compositions to the choir, than even so pious a Catholic as Haydn could afford or endure.
An account of the married life of these two is given by Haydn's friend Carpani, which incidentally brings up a bit of literary thievery of unusual quaintness. Carpani wrote his "Le Haydine" in the form of letters from Vienna; they were published in Milan. Some time after one Marie Henri Beyle published in Paris what purported to be an original series of "Letters written from Vienna." He published these under the pen name of L.A.C. Bombet. Carpani exposed the theft, but a little later the imperturbable Beyle published a second edition of his work under the name De Stendhal. An English translation from the French work is commonly seen, though never with credit to Carpani. Carpani, in his account of the home life of the Haydns, says they were happy for a honeymoon.
"But soon the caprices of Mrs. Anna turned the knot to a chain, the bliss to torment, and affairs went so far that, after suffering many years, this new Socrates ended by separating from his Xantippe. Mrs. Anna was not pretty, nor yet ugly. Her manners were immaculate, but she had a wooden head, and when she had fixed on a caprice, there was no way to change it. The woman loved her husband but was not congenial. An excess of religious piety badly directed came to disturb this happy harmony. Mrs. Anna wanted the house always full of priests, to whom she furnished good dinners, suppers, and luncheons. Haydn was a bit economical; but rather for cause than desire. At this time he had hardly enough to live on discreetly, and he began to look with evil eye on this endless procession of holy grasshoppers (locuste) who ravaged his larder. Nor was it appropriate to the house of a studious man, this ceaseless clatter of a numerous, genial, and lazy society; therefore, solidly religious as he was, he could not enjoy these sacred repasts and he had to close the door of the refectory. After that the deluge (inde iræ). Mrs. Anna had a religious brother. Haydn couldn't keep him from visiting his sister.
"Monks are like cherries; if you lift one from the basket, ten come along with it. Haydn's convent was not depopulated. Nor did the demands decrease. Every now and then Mrs. Anna had a new request; to-day a responsory, to-morrow a motet, the day after a mass, then hymns, then psalms, then antiphons; and all gratis. If her husband declined to write them, there appeared on the scene the great confederates of capricious women; the effects of hysteria, spleen (gli insulti di stomaco), spasms; then shrieks, then criminations, weepings, quarrels, and bad humour unceasing. Haydn ended with having to appease the woman, to lose his point, and pay the doctor and the druggist to boot. He had always drouth in his purse and despair in his mind. It is a true miracle that a genius in such a contrast could create the wonderful works that all the world knows.
"It was at this time that, seeking solace in friendship, he contracted that bond of sentiment which lasted till death with Boselli, a singer in the service of Prince Esterházy. This friendship, rousing jealous suspicions in the mind of Mrs. Anna, ended by rendering her unendurable. The hostile fates willed that no fruit should be borne of Haydn's marriage." [On this point Haydn once opened his heart to Griesinger, saying: "My wife was incapable of bearing children, and therefore I was less indifferent to the charms of other womankind."] "Lacking its most solid link, the marital chain could not stand such shocks, and grew fatally weaker. The pair ceased to live together, and only that sacramental knot remained indissoluble and strong, which Haydn had contracted at the age of twenty-seven. Mrs. Anna lived to seventy years on a sufficient pension which her husband faithfully paid, and she died in 1800. These vicissitudes in great part explain why Haydn, though he earned much, could not for a long while put aside a penny and make himself a little ease."
It is not a pretty picture that Carpani draws of this home life, and Anna is made out to be far from a lovable creature. She is compared to the patron saint of shrews, Xantippe. But even Xantippe had her side of the story to tell; and with all possible admiration for that man Socrates, of such godlike wisdom and such great heart, it must be remembered that Socrates had many habits which would not only cause ostracism from society to-day, but would have tried the temper of even such a wife as the meek Griselda of Chaucer's poem.
We constantly meet these husbands who are seemingly rich in geniality and yet are mysteriously unhappy at home. It is the custom of the acquaintances of these fellows to put all the blame on the wife. But there is a distinct type of mind which always enjoys dining abroad and appreciates a few herbs in a stranger's house more than a stalled ox at home. These people are gentle and genial and tender only out-of-doors. You might call them extra-mural saints.
I have a strong suspicion that Haydn, who was so dear and good a soul that he was commonly called "Papa" by his friends and disciples, was one of the souls that shrivel up inside the house. In any case he can never be forgiven for publishing his domestic miseries as he did. He talked inexcusably to his friends about his wife; he complained everywhere of her extravagances and of her quarrelsomeness. When Griesinger wished to make Haydn's wife a present, Haydn forbade him, saying:
"She does not deserve anything! It is little matter to her whether her husband is an artist or a cobbler."
As he passed in front of a picture of her once, he seized the violinist Baillot by the arm, and pointing to the picture said, "That is my wife. Many a time she has maddened me."
In 1792 he wrote to his mistress from London:—"My wife, the infernal beast" (bestia infernale—Pohl translates this höllische Bestie) "has written so much stuff that I had to tell her I would not come to the house any more; which has brought her again to her senses."
This was thirty-two years after his marriage, and a year later he writes again:
"My wife is ailing most of the time and is always in the same miserable temper, but I do not let it distress me any longer. There will sometime be an end of this torment."
Louis Nohl speaks of this as written in a gentle and almost sorrowful tone! As his biographers find gentleness in such writing, it is easy to see why Mrs. Haydn has had few defenders.
Heaven forbid that I should be considered as throwing all the blame for the unhappiness upon the husband. Anna Keller had a remarkably long and sharp tongue whose power she did not neglect; she once complained to her husband that there was not money enough in the house to bury him in case he died suddenly. He pointed to a series of canons which he had written and framed. When he was in London revelling in his triumph, she sent him a letter in which she asked him for money enough to buy a certain little house she had set her heart on, naïvely adding that it was just a cosy size for a widow.
Haydn bought it later for himself, and lived in it several years as a widower. Carpani in his thirteenth letter draws a pleasant picture of Haydn's life with his mistress Boselli, and incidentally describes how various composers composed: Gluck with his piano in a summer meadow and the bottled sunshine of Champagne on each side; Sarti in a dark room at night with a funereal lamp pendant from the ceiling; Salieri in the streets eating sweets; Paer while joking with his friends, gossiping on a thousand things, scolding his servants, quarrelling with his wife and children and petting his dog; Cimarosa in the midst of noisy friends; Sacchini with his sweetheart at his side and his kittens playing on the floor about him; Paesiello in bed; Zingarelli after reading the holy fathers or a classic; Anfossi in the midst of roast capons, steaming sausages, gammons of bacon and ragouts.
"But Haydn, like Newton, alone and obscure, voyaged the skies in his chair; on his finger the ring of Frederick like the invisible ring of Angelica. When he returned among mortals, Boselli and his friends divided his time. For thirty years he led this life,