“This is ground that we covered only a week ago when we last enjoyed drinking tea together. The circumstances have not changed and nor has my answer.”
An icy silence ensued.
“I would be most interested to know what caused your sudden departure to London?”
The Prince’s features became fixed as though chiselled in granite and he stayed silent.
“The Munshi,” continued the Queen playfully, “is excellent at reading the press - both the British and the foreign press - and keeping me informed of events around the world. I don’t have my glasses with me, but perhaps the Munshi would like to read out the recent article from the New York Times?”
Karim stood beside the Queen and started to read in a loud and clear tone an article which associated Prince Albert Victor with what the newspaper called the Cleveland Street scandal. It concluded with the comment: “‘The Prince seems to inherit his father’s vices but not his virtues. His connection with the Cleveland Street scandal is only another indication of the debauchery which too conspicuously tinctures European royalty. The inbred crowd of stock of all Europe is being sadly deteriorated both bodily and mentally and cannot, in any event survive the strength of a higher order of governmental civilisation which the common people are attaining.’”
“Thank you, Munshi. Your English is improving with extraordinary celerity.” She turned to her son. “I note that this story has been in the foreign press, but not yet in the British press. The Munshi normally focuses his attention on British newspapers, but I was telegraphed that some foreign newspapers had mysteriously appeared at Buckingham Palace and out of curiosity I had them sent up here. It would be most unfortunate if this story got into the British press. It might be felt that not only was Prince Albert Victor unsuitable to become king but that the person responsible for his upbringing was unsuitable too. I do, of course, have six other living children who might in extremis be considered heirs were it to be felt that for you, Bertie, the throne represented too great a challenge.”
The Prince looked thunderstruck at what the Munshi had just read out and the Queen’s subsequent aperçu. He stood up, sat down again, and then drained his tea. Finally he muttered a comment that while happy families are all the same, unhappy families are unhappy in different ways. He rose to leave and as he did so the Queen murmured, “I am surprised and pleased, Bertie, that amid all your family’s travails you have the chance to read Tolstoy. Do take care when you ascend your train back to London. Even in such clement weather as we have been enjoying, the platform can be very slippery”
Holmes and I were told that same evening by a stony-faced Quaife that we were free to leave. As we headed for the exit, Holmes pointed out the marks of a large carriage that had stopped in front of the palace to pick up a passenger a short time earlier.
Holmes was in an ebullient mood over the avoidance of a constitutional crisis. “Quaife quoted Machiavelli about how it is better for a Prince to be feared than loved. He failed to add that Machiavelli went on to say that a Prince must avoid being despised. The Prince of Wales knew that if the public associated his son with the Cleveland Street scandal, both the next two generations of the royal family would be tainted.”
And so it was that a scandal in the House of Saxe Coburg was avoided and it only remains to report the fates of those mentioned in this story.
The telegraph boys were found guilty as charged but their sentences were well under half the normal tariff for their offences. This caused considerable comment at the time, but not enough to cause any formal enquiry to be conducted into the affair. The Munshi remained as the Queen’s trusted adviser until her death in 1901. She was buried with the keepsakes from her husband and from John Brown that she had wished for. The Munshi was the last person to see her body before the coffin was closed. He subsequently returned to India where the Queen had ensured he was allotted a substantial piece of land. She was succeeded to the throne in 1901 by her son, Prince Albert Edward, who changed his name to Edward on becoming king. Prince Albert Victor did not succeed his father to the throne. He succumbed to a bout of influenza in 1892, although it is noteworthy that no other members of his close family or household were affected by this highly contagious and frequently fatal disease. Holmes and I carried on our lives in Baker Street, but neither of us were sorry when the case of “The Hound of the Baskervilles” kept us well away from London in the autumn.
To protect the reputations of those concerned, I have asked Pearson to ensure that this story is not published until a successor to Queen Victoria has been on the throne for longer than she has been able to grace it.
An Anonymous Commission
The story that follows is a difficult one to chronicle in a way that makes the sequence of its events clear for the reader. Its narrative includes a journey Holmes and I made to Vienna with a brief sojourn in Bonn on the Rhine, but the anonymous commission of the title of this story had nothing to do with the original reason why Holmes and I travelled to Central Europe. Furthermore, we met two key figures in this story before we had any idea that we were going to be engaged in the investigation of this commission and with no idea when we met them of the crucial role they would play in the resolution of events that are of the greatest importance to musical history.
In June of 1891 Holmes was asked by the British Government to be its consultant on political events in the Hapsburg Empire. Holmes had a number of other investigations to carry out at this time, but to prepare him to act in his new capacity, it was arranged for him to be invited to a number of diplomatic receptions in London before he left for a tour of Central European capitals. I was also fortunate enough to be invited, as the British Government had asked me to accompany Holmes on his mission to record events.
When our diplomatic work finally started, the first city on our tour of duty was, inevitably, Vienna. We arrived there in early February 1892 and were accommodated at the excellent Imperial Hotel on the Ringstraβe. Our mission in the great city at the heart of the Hapsburg Empire required the utmost political delicacy and may at some point in the future serve as the basis of a separate story. The events I am now recounting, however, had nothing to do with this and, apart from one very brief episode about two thirds of the way through this narrative, I will not refer again to our pursuit of the original objective of our journey.
As we sat having dinner on our first evening at the hotel, a waiter came to our table.
“Herr Holmes, a lady has arrived and is waiting in the foyer to see you,” he said stiffly.
“Is she here on her own?” asked my friend surprised.
“Yes, sir,” said the waiter, “she is unaccompanied.”
“She must have a pressing requirement to see me if she felt the need to come here at night on her own. Do you know the reason for her visit?”
“She would not say who she was or what she wanted. If you wish, sir, you can see her if you look through the window at the end of this dining room down into the lobby.”
Holmes and I looked down into the bustling reception hall of the hotel and it was immediately clear who our client was. Seated bolt upright and alone, dressed all in black, was a lady with dark curly hair.
“We cannot leave a woman who has evidently been newly widowed to wait for us,” said Holmes. Accordingly, Holmes informed our waiter that we would only return to finish our meal once we had seen the mysterious lady in the foyer.
She rose as she saw us coming downstairs. As we approached, we could see her face was white while her eyes were red-rimmed with fresh sorrow.
“I am Frau Constanza Mozart,” she said in halting English, which I paraphrase to aid understanding. “As you may be aware, my husband died in December and it is a matter of great good fortune that you are here in Vienna, Herr Holmes, for I have the most pressing need of your assistance.”
“I was very sorry to hear of your misfortune, Madame,” said
Holmes. “Your husband’s music has always been a source of great pleasure to me and it would indeed be an honour for me to be able to assist you.”
“In July last year,” she explained, “a masked stranger came to our house dressed from head to toe in dark clothing. He said he was acting as an intermediary for someone else whom he would not name and that he wanted to commission my husband to write a requiem mass. My husband was busy with other works at the time, but he accepted an advance payment and was told that he would receive the balance of his fee on completion of the work. Unusually, the commissioner did not seem to have specified a completion date or, at least, the intermediary was unable to name one. There was something sinister about the stranger and over the next few months, his visits to learn what progress was being made with the commission cast a lengthening shadow over my husband. Wolfgang’s health started to fail and, as he grew weaker, he became delusional. He became more and more convinced that the requiem he was writing was a mass which would mark his own death. Nevertheless, he completed the other works he had on hand - two operas and a concerto for clarinet - and, in spite of his ailing health, he started to concentrate fully on his requiem. When death came upon him in December, the mass was only about half-complete.”
“And, Madame,” asked Holmes gently, “how can I help you in this matter?”
“We still do not know who the commissioner of the work was to enable us to petition him for the remainder of the fee. This is a matter of the greatest importance. My husband’s estate has few tangible assets and, as well as me, his widow, my husband has left small two boys whose futures depend on me and what I can make of those unpublished works of which I still have the manuscripts.”
“Is the commissioner of the requiem obliged to pay the remainder of the fee for the work since you say that it is incomplete?”
“As you will understand, no provision was made in the terms of the commission for the situation of my husband’s death leaving the work incomplete. It would therefore be very difficult to enforce payment unless the work is completed. My husband left some notes on scraps of paper that he was revising on the day he died. He told me that they contained indications about how the work could be finished and on that bleak day, he also gave one of his ablest students further instructions on how to complete the work. My husband was a talented teacher and I am confident, based on the word of this student, that the work is capable of being completed from these sketches and my husband’s instructions.”
“Is it not strange that no one has come forward as the person who asked your husband to write this work? Your husband’s death - forgive me for touching on such a sensitive subject - has been widely reported. One would have thought that the commissioner would want to know what became of the work he commissioned especially as he had paid an advance on it, even if he again chose to do so anonymously and through an intermediary. Does this peculiar set of circumstances not give you an indication of his identity?”
“No, Mr Holmes. We do not have the least idea who the commissioner could have been. The intermediary he sent left no clues other than the advance on the fee and a promise to return. But no one has been to see us, even though, as you say, the announcement of my husband’s death has been in every newspaper.”
Holmes sat in thought for some time before he asked: “Do you have with you what your husband was able to get onto paper?”
“I have brought his manuscript with me along with the scraps of paper which I referred to.” Frau Mozart handed over an envelope.
“Very good, Frau Mozart,” said Holmes, “I shall tonight examine the manuscript and the scraps to see with what indications they furnish us. Could I ask you to return here at nine o’clock tomorrow morning and to bring with you the student who, you say, can complete this work?”
Having now given my reader the background and inception of the anonymous commission of the title, I must now roll back the action to one of the diplomatic receptions to which Holmes and I attended in the first few days of October of 1891. At this reception we met the first of the two remarkable figures who will play an important role in this drama.
London concert-goers will no doubt recall the glowing success that accompanied the visit to the British capital of the Austrian master, Joseph Haydn, in the period from the beginning of 1891 to the early summer of 1892. The German-born but London-based impresario, Peter Salomon, had travelled to Vienna to invite him to come to England to write music for a concert series. Haydn had spent thirty years working as the court composer of the immensely wealthy Esterházy family. He had become, along with Mozart, one of the two most famous composers in Europe, but he had never travelled independently of his employers, who moved between three palaces located in Vienna, in Eisenstadt, just south of Vienna, and in Ödenburg (also known as Sopron) in Western Hungary. In spite of his fame, for much of his time in the Esterházy family’s employment, Haydn was treated as a lowly servant. He was not allowed to sell his works outside the court, had to repair the musical instruments of the court, and was required to wear a servant’s livery.
After thirty years’ experience of life as a court composer, shut off from the main streams of European thought and approaching sixty years of age, Haydn might have been expected to be parochial, frail or cantankerous. Nothing, however, could have been further from the truth. On the contrary the small and dapper Austrian veritably twinkled with esprit and the piece of chamber music given its first performance at this reception reflected his character as it fizzed with wit and energy.
Holmes was not normally inclined to be sociable, but he and Haydn, once they had been introduced, instantly found they had much in common. Haydn spoke workmanlike but far from fluent English, while Holmes’s German at this time was rusty after a long period of neglect. This proved to be no obstacle at all as they got to know each other.
“My friend Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart said that I did not speak enough languages to travel the world, dear Mr Holmes,” said Herr Haydn, “but I find that my language is understood everywhere. And your fame too, Mr Holmes, goes everywhere. Everyone in Austria knows of the adventures of you and your friend. You, above all, and of course best of all in the good company of your companion Dr Watson here, were amongst the people I most wanted to meet during my time in London.”
I have commented elsewhere that Holmes was accessible upon the side of flattery, but to be flattered by one of his musical heroes caused him to unbutton himself far more than was his wont. The very next day, the humble flat in Baker Street played host to Herr Haydn, and its living room served as the location of the first performance of a piece for two violins, which the maestro said he had composed overnight to play with Holmes.
Their shared interests were not confined to music. On a later visit, to my considerable consternation, as well as to the unsurpassed horror of Mrs Hudson, Haydn demonstrated that his shooting skills were at the same level as those of my friend. Taking up Holmes’s pistol on a whim, Haydn shot at the wall to trace out in pock marks the letters FdK in the plaster next to where Holmes had created VR in honour of the British Queen. “These letters,” Haydn explained, although I could barely see him through the blinding smoke his shooting practice had created as he said this, “stand for Franz der Kaiser. If it is customary in your country to fire guns at the wall to demonstrate admiration for your Queen, then I feel it is incumbent on me to use the same method to show my admiration for my Emperor!”
Once the pungent smell of gunshot generated by the shooting practice had dissipated to the extent that our living room was again habitable, Holmes expressed his wonder at the composer’s shooting prowess. Haydn dismissed the accomplishment as a trifle, commenting “I pride myself more on the originality of my ideas rather than in any great skill at execution. In this case I got the idea of celebrating my monarch in this noisy and smoky way from you. I must confess I greatly admire your traditions and institutions in this country, Herr Holmes. Indeed, I have already i
ncorporated the music from ‘God Save the Queen’ into my initial sketches for one of my forthcoming symphonies. When I return to Austria, I intend to write a national song for the people of my empire, which will have the same effect as your own nation’s glorious anthem. I shall call my work ‘Gott, erhalte Franz, den Kaiser!’ or ‘God save the Emperor Franz!’ “
Over the next few weeks I saw Holmes closer to a warm friendship than I had ever seen him with anyone before while Haydn himself proved to be an able and enthusiastic student of the science of detection. On one occasion, to my companion’s great delight, Haydn noted from a residue of soil on Holmes’s stick that Holmes had recently made an abortive trip to visit him at his quarters in Great Poultney Street. For his part, Holmes, just as eagerly, took composition lessons from the Austrian maestro. Whenever I visited Baker Street - which was frequently, in spite of the fact that I was married at this time and in practice - I was far from being frozen out of the friendship for Herr Haydn was always as cordial to me as he was to Holmes.
“I have my friend Griesinger in Vienna,” commented Haydn amiably. “He writes down and occasionally adds a slight decoration to what I tell him of my life. And you, my dear Dr Watson, perform for the world the same inestimable service by narrating the so-absorbing adventures of the great Mr Holmes.”
“I assure you, my dear Haydn,” countered Holmes drily, “that where your friend Griesinger adds a slight decoration to details you give him of your life, my friend Dr Watson here will add, at the slightest opportunity, a minuet and trio to material arising from our collaborations.” A joy it was to be in Baker Street and to hear them playing each other’s compositions in close harmony.
It was just before Christmas 1891 that the news of Mozart’s death at the age of thirty-six reached London and our new friend was beside himself with grief. “Even though he was nearly a quarter of a century younger than me, I learnt so much from Mozart. It is only half a dozen years ago that he dedicated six string quartets to me, which he had written in a very advanced style. We had played quartets together in Vienna with our esteemed fellow composers, Vanhal and Dittersdorf. The quartets I have written since Mozart published his works are full of things I learnt from him. Before I left Vienna, he and I met. He said then that it might be the last time we saw each other. I assumed he was referring to my advancing years and I never for one instant thought that the cause of our separation might be his own untimely death.”
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