Marrying Mozart

by Stephanie Cowell

  Oh my love! They think because I am small and young there can’t be anything great and old within me. They shall, however, find out soon.

  A thousand kisses; no, more ...

  Mozart

  The four sisters and their mother packed a hamper of food for the coach journey, then rattled off toward Vienna with trunks of refurbished clothing and an opera contract, their household goods to follow shortly.

  Sophie Weber, April 1842

  A RAINY APRIL, AND YET IT DID NOT DETER MY FREQUENT visitor, Monsieur Novello, from coming, sheltered by an enormous black umbrella; his large wet feet, which he wiped on the mat, left faint tracks on the floor. After presenting me with chocolates as he always did, he took out his pen and journal from that folding desk. “You’ve been well, madame?” he asked.

  “As well as old age allows.”

  “I will venture to ask more questions then, and to listen.”

  “I’ve been waiting for you to send for coffee. No, it never keeps me from sleep; I can drink it as late as I like.”

  He looked at me in a kind and interested way. “So Aloysia won the contract,” he said.

  “Yes, she did; I think everyone knew she would. You’ve seen her portrait made a few years later in the role of Zémire, haven’t you? The half turban on the hair, which was twined around gold beads, the delicate hands, the smile. Oh, if you only knew how very beautiful she was. It took the breath away of all who saw her; it bewitched them. Even in those days she didn’t truly understand it.”

  “Tell me about your journey to Vienna.”

  “Dreadful. The roads were snowy, and I was feverish. Josefa was stony and wouldn’t say a word the whole way.”

  He leaned forward, the tip of his pen glistening with blue ink. “Josefa. My father heard her sing once. Did Mozart ever write anything for her?”

  “Yes, some songs and a great opera role years after.”

  “Of course, now I recall. His German singspiel, Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute, we call it in England), full of dark and good forces. She sang the evil Queen. That’s what my father heard her sing when he was a student in Vienna for a time, and he never forgot it. He said she had such passion.”

  “You may want to see something,” I said. “Bring me that box there. Be careful. I have always meant to have the lining replaced. In it you’ll find a silver locket; you see I am telling you true things. Yes, you may touch it.”

  My guest had wiped his fingers on his handkerchief before taking up the locket. “So this was hers!” he exclaimed, weighing it in the palm of his hand. “And what curious engraving.” He looked at it more closely, turning to the window. “Quite worn. I can’t make out the initials. May I?” I nodded, and he opened the clasp and bent over two strands of hair, touching them with the tip of one finger. “So this is her hair and ...”

  “It’s her hair, yes.”

  “But the other strand is her lover’s, of course. The man by the bookstall.”

  “Perhaps not.”

  His eyes widened. “Then whose is it, pray?”

  I lifted my hand a little to indicate the bell on the table beside him. “Ring for my landlady to bring us coffee,” I said. “I think I’d like to have a large sweet cup now, Monsieur Novello. Do ring the bell.”

  He had been listening so carefully to my words that he had forgotten, and now he apologized and rang the bell several times.

  As the last tone ceased to reverberate, I said, “You know, when we were girls still at home together, we supposed we knew everything there was to know about one another. Now that I’m old and alone, I wonder at times about the things I didn’t know. Here’s my landlady’s step in the hall. There are so many stories to be told, and if we meet enough hours, you shall hear most of them, and perhaps understand a little more of what you have come to find.”

  PART THREE

  Vienna and Aloysia, 1780

  Aloysia’s debut at the Burgtheater came within a week of their arrival, but she knew her role already, for she had memorized it in Munich, even with all the difficulties within the family and the hasty packing and the sending of Christmas greetings to many relatives. The two maternal aunts sent a good piece of lace that they must have saved from their girlhood for Aloysia’s costumes, for she would have to supply her own. Their father’s brother predicted ruin in this new venture; the sisters tore up his letter.

  Now in the center of the stage before a painted forest backdrop, Aloysia began her first aria, wearing a blue dress embroidered with silk butterflies and opened over an embroidered petticoat. At her feet were rows of shaded candles to light the scene. Some people talked through the whole aria, then quieted to listen to her improvised cadenza. The orchestra had ceased to play; the first violinist conducting from his seat waited as her highest notes mounted through the theater. Some members of the audience sat back, sighed. A few leaned forward.

  After, in the winter air, with hundreds of carriages jostling to leave the premises, and the shadow of the churches and the magnificent stone houses with their sloped roofs and mansard windows all about them, Aloysia rushed into the arms of her sisters and mother. Constanze had brought her one pink silk rose. Alfonso took them all to an elegant supper café, where he predicted the rise of a great prima donna.

  Returning home late, the sisters pulled on their white wool sleeping gowns in the large, empty, creaking old house they had rented, and shut themselves in the capacious bedroom on the fourth floor; they had slept together for so long they had not yet decided to sleep apart. Their mother took a room two floors below them. Aloysia lay among her sisters, her soft arm curled over her head, while the portrait of Saint Caecilia gazed down on them and the fantastical blue dress lay spread, as if resting, on the one large chair. She was so tired she fell asleep at once.

  For the first few weeks they ran up and down the stairs, unable to believe the house was all theirs. It stood near St. Peter’s Church, Peterskirche, in the very center of the city, where a fair amount of Vienna’s citizens passed every day; you needed only to kneel by the window with your elbows on the sill to see the procession of nobility, priests, organ grinders, children with hoops. There in a corner of Petersplatz was the lemonade stall, now closed for the colder months, and there was also a bookshop with deep bins outside into which you could plunge your hand and come up with thick novels in English, and worn, gilded volumes of the great playwrights of France, Molière and Racine. Below the window was a procession of exquisite hats. Aloysia could tell the newest ones at a glance. She claimed she could distinguish on closer examination which ones had actually been made in Paris, and which copied here in the gorgeous shops in the Graben, where the most fashionable women bought their clothes. Most people spoke some French, the only truly civilized language.

  Within a few weeks, all the sisters considered themselves Viennese. No one who lived here could ever wish to live any other place. It was an attitude that you could, in a brief stroll through the streets, touch everything worth having in the whole world, and see the Emperor riding in his carriage. You could speak with a shrug of all else in the country, farms through provincial towns, as if all those who lived there were simply too stupid or unworthy to be here. You could drop a spattering of French and Italian, and at once be understood by everyone.

  There was only one problem: The house was not to be just their own.

  All the girls were sitting around the kitchen table one morning, gossiping about neighbors and sharing news from their old city, when they became aware that their mother was stacking many new plates and cups in their capacious cupboard, among them an enormous white soup tureen.

  Maria Caecilia turned to them, her hands clasped in a matronly way at her waist. “Oh my fleas,” she said tenderly, gazing from one to the next with the greatest satisfaction. “My treasures! I have asked myself since cousin Alfonso found us this house, what shall we do with all the rooms? And what shall I do about our income, for though, alas, Aloysia is earning nicely, more is always needed. I prayed to
be lifted from the financial constraints under which we have so often suffered since your earliest days. My Fridolin, who is now an angel, is looking after me, for the answer came. I was at once so grateful I rose from bed and said a whole rosary on my knees. What do I like to do best? What is my greatest gift? Why to cook and bake! And so, with the many extra rooms, I have decided to make our fortune and take in boarders.”

  Aloysia opened her eyes wide. “Boarders, Mama? Boarders?” Her lyrical voice rose. “This is how I’m to begin my life as a coveted soprano, living in a house of common boarders?”

  “I have my reasons,” their mother replied serenely, wiping a spot off the soup tureen. “It will bring me a comfortable old age if, by any terrible chance, you all do not marry well.” But Aloysia repeated her words incredulously, then leapt up. She rushed into the larger parlor and began to play the clavier. Josefa and the younger girls followed at once, so close together they almost stepped on one anothers’ skirts.

  Josefa sank down into the sofa cushions, biting the edge of one finger. “She’s losing her mind,” she said over the fast notes of a Clementi sonata. “We’re led by a madwoman.”

  Sophie curled close to her. “But Mama’s a terrible housekeeper; all she does well is cook. Who would take care of boarders?”

  “Sophie,” said Constanze quietly as she stood before them, “I think we would. Girls, let’s not talk about it; let’s not argue. Maybe she’ll forget about it by tomorrow.”

  No one brought up the subject at dinner that night.

  The following afternoon, shortly after the four sisters had closeted themselves away in an empty room to pin a pattern to a length of pink brocade for a dress for Aloysia’s new role, they heard the sound of a man’s feet mounting the stairs. They listened as the footsteps passed the room in which they worked. Josefa stood up abruptly, put down the pins she was holding, and started for the door. “I won’t stand for it,” she said. “What would Papa say?”

  First came the furniture movers, banging secondhand beds and wardrobes up the stairs; they brought tables, chairs, and hat stands. Two fat women who dealt in used sheets, pillows, and bed curtains followed, negotiating loudly with Frau Weber about the price; at one point they almost left in fury, carrying a dozen pillows in their arms. By the end of the week, the large house was stuffed with scratched furniture and mismatched linens.

  The first three boarders moved in the next day: Hans Haussman, a silk merchant who at once complained about the meals; the cellist Giovanni Forza, who practiced scales in his room from four in the morning and stank of raw garlic; and a tall portraitist in his twenties, called Joseph Lange, who kept to himself. There were those sheets to change, shaving water to bring. Constanze was right in her assessment, for she and Sophie were pressed into service to help at meals, supplying knives, more ale, another helping of veal. Reluctantly, they became used to the despised strangers, lowering their eyes when near them, waiting to emerge from their own room when they heard one of the boarders in the hall.

  Aloysia and Josefa would have nothing to do with the whole matter.

  The men’s laundry was piled in a small stone room and attended to by a laundress who came twice weekly. Aloysia passed the dark room each day that early spring as she slipped into the still barren garden behind the house to study her music.

  Once, she almost walked into the portraitist, Lange. “Ah, the air,” he said. “I can almost smell the linden blossoms already. Mademoiselle, there’s nothing more beautiful than Vienna in the spring.” He bowed to her slightly and she nodded curtly. As he went, she imagined she could detect the scent of linden blossoms in the air, until the linseed oil and paint smell that clung to the man’s coat erased it. Her father had tried painting for a time, Aloysia remembered. His easel was set up in the parlor when he decided he would paint portraits to supplement their income; only a total lack of ability had deterred him.

  “Wolfgang Mozart is a genius, young woman.” Those had been the Munich conductor Cannabich’s words to her when they met in the street after Mozart had returned to Salzburg. ”A genius, and a good kind man, loves you; never forget that.” The conductor’s face had been serious, and he had looked tired. The two of them stood by a bakery talking for a time, before he bowed to her and walked away.

  Aloysia thought about their encounter that spring day as she sat on a bench in the garden behind their new house, writing a letter to her fiancé.

  Mozart’s own rich and charming letters came regularly to Vienna. How many plans, schemes, determinations he had; how clever he was. But more than that, they gave her advice on the style and technique of her singing. She studied them. In the first weeks at the opera, when other sopranos had snarled at her and tried to edge her offstage or drown her delicate voice with their larger ones, she had despaired and he had understood; he pointed out her gifts and how she could use them to her best advantage. She had depended on her father’s teaching more than she knew, and now she depended on the young composer.

  Wolfgang, send me all styles of cadenzas you’ve heard on your travels. And come to me quickly, for I’m longing for you. I’m longing for our marriage. Why don’t you come and turn the city upside down with your music, and take me away from this wretched boardinghouse to live in splendid rooms?

  Two strangers have sent me flowers. Last night after the performance, several of us were invited by the director to a fine supper. You don’t know how I felt having to return home after all the laughter. Mother expects a large portion of my earnings. I want some pearls for my hair desperately.

  My regards to your dear sister and father.

  I haven’t forgotten Josefa, you know, I managed to have her engaged for small roles. Oh, I love opera with all its gossip and scandals, its lovers and mistresses and promises and betrayals.

  Aloysia hesitated, the letter unfinished in her lap.

  Why didn’t he come? She wanted to go to masked balls and dance until the dawn, when the stars have left the sky and only the pale ghost of the moon remained, and she must, she should. She had been given a new role, and the audience had called her name: Aloysia, Aloysia.

  “Dearest come quickly,” she ended the letter to him, but then forgot to mail it. Weeks later she found it under the garden bench, illegible from the spring rains.

  Hot summer lingered through September; dust lay over all the streets of the city, and, roused by carriage wheels or feet or a rug beater, it even drifted through the windows onto the strings of the clavier, which stood in the parlor of the second story.

  Constanze had sat there almost all day copying music; now she stretched her aching back, rubbed her neck, and looked about her. She had the room to dust. After putting away her ink, she was taking the dust rag from her apron pocket when she heard the door open below and someone running up the steps.

  Sophie flew through the door, her light, flowery summer dress reaching to her ankles, and threw off her bonnet. Her face was streaked with tears. “She’s gone; she’s gone. She left a letter on the hall table addressed to you, Josefa, and me. She’s gone!”

  “Who? What?”

  Sophie waved the letter in the air as if to shake the words from it. “Aloysia has run away with Lange, the painter.”

  “Dear God,” cried Constanze.

  They almost fell over each other rushing up the stairs. Lange’s room was stripped bare. The quiet portraitist had left nothing but his sheets neatly stripped from the bed, the smell of linseed oil, and, on the floor, a little splat of deep red paint, like blood of seduced virgins. They stared at it, holding hands. “Dearest mice,” the letter said when they unfolded it and held it between them. “You might as well know because I can’t hide it anymore. He came into the garden, and we went into the little shed. I don’t know what came over me. Oh, my loves, he worships the ground I walk on. I can’t live without him; I hardly know myself. And now I’m five months’ gone with child, which I didn’t plan, but what can be done? Be virtuous. I love you all with all my heart.”

&nbs
p; Five months with child. They had teased her that she was gaining weight. Only Josefa, they now recalled, had looked down at her flustered sister wryly, a slight smile on the corners of her lips. Too many dumplings, too much bread and butter, Aloysia. Then the young singer had demanded her own room, where she could struggle to lace her corset away from curious eyes. Now they understood.

  The three sisters and their mother barricaded themselves in the kitchen under the hanging pots, sitting around the bowl of rising dough and the onion skins left from making the stew. “Oh Aloysia, Aloysia,” Maria Caecilia said, rocking back and forth. “My darling, my sweet. First Josefa throws away the good name of Weber, and then our precious Aloysia follows. The slut, the whore! What will we do? What reputation can our family have left? And what of us, what of us? She’ll lose her work and be laughed off the stage. How will I pay for this house? What can we do?”