Mozart: A Life in Letters: A Life in Letters

by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  Together with my wife and children, I send you our kind regards and wish you, your wife and all your family a happy New Year. We are all well, thank God. You should see Wolfg. in his black suit and French hat.

  7. Leopold Mozart to Maria Theresia Hagenauer, 1 February 1764, Paris

  Madame!

  One shouldn’t always write to men but should also remember the fair and devout sex. Whether the women in Paris are fair, I can’t say, and for good reason; for they are painted so unnaturally, like the dolls of Berchtesgaden, 1 that thanks to this revolting affectation even a naturally beautiful woman becomes unbearable in the eyes of an honest German. As for devotion, I can assure you that it’s not difficult to fathom the miracles wrought by France’s female saints; the greatest miracles are those performed by women who are neither virgins nor wives nor widows; and these miracles all take place in their lifetime. We shall speak more fully on this matter in due course. Enough! It’s difficult to work out here who is the lady of the house. Everyone lives as he or she likes, and if God is not exceptionally merciful, the French state will suffer the same fate as the former Persian Empire.

  Your husband’s two letters of 26 Dec. and 19 Jan. have arrived safely, together with their 3 enclosures.2 The most important and, to you, no doubt the most pleasant piece of news that I can give you is that, thankGod, we are all well. By the same token I too always look forward eagerly to hearing that you are all well. I would assuredly have written to you since my last letter from Versailles if I had not kept hesitating while awaiting the outcome of our affair at Versailles and as a result being able to tell you about it. But here, even more than at other courts, everything proceeds at a snail’s pace, and since this matter has to be dealt with by the Menu des plaisirs, 3 we have to be patient. If the court’s liberality matches the pleasure that my children have given it, we should do very well. I should add that it is by no means the custom here to kiss their majesties’ hands or to trouble them with a petition or even to speak to them au passage, as they call it, namely, when they are going to church through the gallery and royal apartments.

  Nor is it usual to do homage to the king or to any other member of the royal family by a nod of the head or by bending the knee. Rather, you remain erect, without the slightest movement, and in such a position you are free to watch the king and his family pass right next to you. You can easily imagine, then, how impressed and amazed were these French people, who are so infatuated with the customs of their court, when the king’s daughters stopped stock still not only in their apartments but in the public gallery when they saw my children and approached them and not only let them kiss their hands but kissed them countless times in turn. The same thing happened with Madame Dauphine.4 But the most extraordinary thing of all in the eyes of these French people was that at the grand couvert after nightfall on New Year’s Day, not only was it necessary to make room for us all to go up to high table, but my Herr Wolfgangus was privileged to stand next to the queen, 5 speaking to her constantly, entertaining her, repeatedly kissing her hands and consuming the dishes that she handed him from the table. The queen speaks German as well as we do, but as the king knows none, the queen translated everything our heroic Wolfg. said. I stood beside him: my wife and daughter stood on the other side of the king, where M. Dauphin and Mlle Adélaïde6 were sitting. Now you must know that the king never dines in public, except on Sunday evenings when the whole royal family dines together. But not everyone is allowed in. However, if there’s a big festival like New Year’s Day, Easter, Whitsuntide, name days etc. it is called the great couvert, and all people of distinction are admitted: only there’s not much room, and so it soon fills up. We arrived late, so the Swiss Guards had to clear a passage for us, and we were taken through the hall into the room next to the royal table – the room through which their majesties enter the hall. As they passed, they spoke to our Wolfg. and we then followed them to table.

  You can’t possibly expect me to describe Versailles for you. I’ll say only this, that we arrived there on Christmas Eve and attended Matins and 3 Masses in the Chapel Royal. We were in the royal gallery when the king returned from seeing Madame Dauphine, whom he had just informed of the death of her brother, the elector of Saxony.7 I heard good and bad music there. Everything that was intended to be sung by single voices and to resemble an aria was empty, cold and wretched – in a word, French, but the choruses are all good and even very good. So I have been to Mass in the Chapel Royal every day with my little man to hear the choir in the motet that is always performed there. The king’s Mass is at l o’clock. But if he goes hunting, his Mass is at 10 o’clock and the queen’s Mass at half past 12. More on all this in due course. Our 16 days in Versailles have cost us about 12 louis d’or. Perhaps you think this is too much and hard to understand? – – In Versailles there are no carosses de remise or fiacres8 but only sedan chairs. Every journey costs 12 sous. You’ll soon see that some days the chairs cost us a laubthaler and more, as we always need 2, if not 3, chairs: and then the weather was always bad. If you add 4 new black suits, 9 you’ll not be surprised if our visit to Versailles comes to 26 or 27 louis d’or. Let’s see what we get from the court in return. Apart from what we hope to receive from the court, we’ve earned no more than 12 louis d’or in Versailles.10 My Master Wolfgang has received a gold snuffbox from Madame la Comtesse de Tessé, together with a gold watch, which is valuable because it is so small and whose size I’m indicating here,

  and Nannerl has received an uncommonly beautiful heavy toothpick case made entirely of gold. From another lady Wolfg. received a silver writing case and Nannerl an uncommonly fine tortoiseshell snuffbox inlaid with gold. Our collection of snuffboxes has been further increased by a red one with gold bands, by another in some kind of glass material set in gold and by one in vernis martin 11 inlaid with the most beautiful flowers in coloured gold and various pastoral instruments. To these may be added a cornelian ring set in gold with an antique head, and a host of trifles that are of no value, such as sword-bands, ribbons and armlets, flowers for bonnets and scarves etc. for Nannerl etc. In a word, I hope that within 4 weeks I shall be able to tell you a better tale of louis d’or for it takes longer to be properly known in Paris than to walk to Maxglan;12 and I can assure you that it needs no telescope to see the evil aftermath of the last war everywhere you look. For the French are keen to continue their superficial splendour to the highest degree, and as a result no one is rich apart from the fermiers, 13 whereas the gentry are deep in debt. The bulk of the country’s wealth lies in the hands of some 100 persons, a few big bankers and fermiers généraux ; and, finally, most of the money is spent on Lucretias who don’t stab themselves. All the same, you can well imagine that particularly beautiful and valuable things can be seen here, but one also sees astonishing follies. In winter the women wear not only clothes trimmed with fur, but collars and neckties, and instead of decorative flowers to pin in their hair, they wear the same things made from fur, and instead of armlets etc., but the most ridiculous sight is the sword-band that’s fashionable here and that’s wrapped round and round with fine fur – it’s a good way of stopping the sword from freezing. In addition to this idiotic modishness in all things, there is also their great love of comfort, which means that this nation no longer hears the voice of nature, and as a result everyone in Paris sends new-born children to be raised in the country. It is the midwives who take these children to the country, each with a large book in which the names of the father and mother etc. are entered by the local clergyman, followed by the name of the nurse or, rather, the peasant and his wife at the place where the child is taken. This is done by persons of both high and low rank, and they pay a trifle for it. But you can see the most pitiful consequences of this: you’ll hardly find any other place where there are so many wretched and maimed individuals. You have only to spend a minute in church or walk along a few streets before you come across someone who’s blind or lame or limping, or some half-putrefied beggar or someone lying in the st
reet whose hand was eaten away by pigs when he was a child, or someone else who as a child fell into the hearthfire and had half his arm burnt off while his foster-father and family were working in the fields etc. There are whole crowds of such people that so disgust me that I avoid looking at them when I pass. But I shall now move swiftly from the ugly to the charming and, indeed, to someone who has charmed a king. I’m sure you’d like to know what Madame Marquise Pompadour looks like, wouldn’t you? – – She must have been very beautiful indeed, for she’s still very comely. She’s tall and stately in appearance, fat or, rather, plump, but very well-proportioned, blonde, looks a lot like the late Tresel Freysauff, while her eyes have a certain similarity to those of Her Majesty the Empress.14 She does herself great credit and is uncommonly intelligent. Her apartments at Versailles are a veritable paradise and look out on to the gardens; in Paris she has a magnificent hôtel, entirely rebuilt, in the Faubourg St Honoré.15 In the room that contains the clavecin 16 – which is all gilt and most artistically lacquered and painted – there is a life-size portrait of her and beside it a portrait of the king. But now for something different! – – There’s a constant war here between Italian and French music. The whole of French music isn’t worth a tinker’s curse; but terrible changes are afoot: the French are starting to vacillate, and in 10 or 15 years French taste will, I hope, have vanished altogether. The Germans are now showing them a thing or two in publishing their compositions. Among these, the most popular are Monsieur Schobert, Monsieur Eckard and Monsieur Honauer for the keyboard, Monsieur Hochbrucker17 and Monsieur Mayr for the harp. Monsieur Le Grand, a French keyboard player, has abandoned his own style completely, and his sonatas reflect our own taste. Monsieur Schobert, Monsieur Eckard, Monsieur Le Grand and Monsieur Hochbrucker have all brought us their engraved sonatas and presented them to my children. 4 sonatas by Monsieur Wolfgang Mozart are currently being engraved.18 Just imagine the stir that these sonatas will make in the world when it says on the title-page that they are the work of a 7-year-old child, and when the sceptics are challenged to test him, as has already happened, and he gets someone to write down a minuet or whatever and then – without even touching the keyboard – adds the bass and, if desired, the 2nd violin as well. You’ll hear in due course how good these sonatas are; one of them has an andante in a very unusual style.19 And I can tell you, dear Frau Hagenauer, that every day God works new wonders through this child. By the time we return home, God willing, he will be in a position to perform court duties. He is always accompanying other performers at public concerts. He even transposes the arias while accompanying them è prima vista ; and everywhere people place Italian and French works before him that he has no difficulty in sight-reading. – – My little girl plays the hardest pieces by Schobert and Eckard etc., Eckard’s being the more difficult, with incredible precision, so that the contemptible Schobert cannot conceal his jealousy and envy and is making himself a laughing stock in the eyes of Monsieur Eckard, who is an honest man, and of many others. I shall have more to say on several matters that it would take me too long to explain here. Monsieur Schobert isn’t at all the man he is said to be. He flatters you to your face but is the falsest of men; yet his religion is the one that’s in fashion. May God convert him! – But now some very sad news, something extremely upsetting: we are all in a state of great anxiety and confusion. In a word, Countess Van Eyck 20 is in a critical condition and without God’s special mercy is unlikely to live. We were with her on Sunday before lunch, from 12 till 1, and she was very cheerful. She had been at home for a few days, suffering from a cold, but that day she had been to church. As always, she talked an incredible amount with Wolfgang. That night I heard a carriage during the night and a certain commotion. In the morning I heard that the countess had suddenly been taken ill and brought up a lot of blood. On Monday she was bled 3 times; by Tuesday she seemed to be improving; but that night she again coughed up blood and was again bled. But it remains as before, the bleeding was always extremely bad, she fainted, and, in a word, there’s little hope that she will get better. You can imagine our distress, which is all the greater in that I can only look on from a distance and may never speak to her or see her again. My children are praying for her and are in tears as Wolfgang loves the countess and she is exceptionally fond of him, too. I am writing this on the evening of 1 Feb. God grant that I may have more cheerful news before I finish this letter tomorrow morning. 2 Feb. I heard nothing of any import last night; the countess did not sleep all night, but things are no worse, and there are even grounds to be more hopeful, as her stools are no longer coloured with blood and her temperature has gone down a little. I hear that the count has not left her bedside, and there are 2 nurses in the house and 2 doctors. I hope that the count will already have informed his parents-in-law in Salz.21 But I don’t know if this is so, and so I would ask you not to say anything to anyone until you have spoken to Mlle Rosalia Joly 22 who– in the unlikely event that their lordships know nothing – will be able to make sensible use of my news. Enough! We are always wretched individuals, whether we be in Salzburg or in Paris. My wife can think only of the poor dear countess all day long, and indeed we are all deeply concerned.

  I’m now running out of space, but I must tell you that the archbishop here has been cast out into the wilderness or, to put it more mildly, has been sent into exile. He had a lampoon printed that was directed against the parlement and in favour of the Jesuits, and it was this that brought his punishment down on him.23 As far as I know, virtually everyone blames him as the king, on hearing that he planned to publish this piece, tried in a friendly manner to dissuade him, but he persisted and as a result forcibly dashed his head against the wall. The king hastened to exile him, otherwise the parlement would have arrested him. The secular arm is a little too powerful here. On the other hand, the clergy run around the streets on their own here, lowering their cowls below their shoulders and clasping their hats beside them, so that they are indistinguishable from any lay pedestrian. Farewell and thank God that there’s no paper left, otherwise you’d have to put on your glasses. With greetings from myself, my children and my wife, I am your most obedient servant

  Mozart

  [ On the inside of the envelope ]

  Could I ask you to pass on our most humble good wishes to all our good friends? They will all be reasonable enough to realize that it is impossible to do more than name a long list of people. What is our honest Delmor doing? Is he still in our neighbourhood? He’ll no doubt think of us occasionally when he sees no one at our windows. Please give him my good wishes and especially those of little Wolfgang. He’s an honest man. Is it cold in Salzb. too? – It was snowing when we arrived here but hasn’t done since then. It’s like autumn here, but mostly it’s been misty and unsettled. But it’s good that it’s not been very cold as a klafter of wood costs l louis d’or. I must write to Herr Spitzeder and Herr Adlgasser.24

  I’m finishing this at 9 in the morning on 3 Feb. The countess has had another bad night. Things are a little better during the daytime but it doesn’t last: her pulse remains feverish: perhaps her lung is affected.

  8. Leopold Mozart to Lorenz Hagenauer, 22 February 1764, Paris

  Monsieur,

  The sun can’t always shine, clouds often gather, only for the sky to clear again. I delayed reporting the sad death of Countess van Eyck, as I thought it sufficient to prepare the hearts of the people of Salzburg for this sad event and to leave others to report the end. Once I am out of Paris, I shan’t fail to report a number of details; and I would have written a few friendly words to Mlle Rosalia, to whom I send my good wishes, but I must beg her indulgence, she will find my reasons more than justified. Enough! No one likes to die anywhere, but here it is doubly sad for an honest German if he falls ill or even dies. Moreover, the death of the late countess left the count feeling unwell, although he is now slowly recovering. Their German nursemaid, Sophia, who will be returning to Germany in a few days’ time, almost paid for her distress wi
th her life. Soon afterwards a sudden and unexpected occurrence placed me in a certain embarrassment. My dear Wolfgang suddenly contracted a sore throat and a cold, so that, having noticed the cold early on the 16th, he developed such an inflammation in his throat during the night that he was in danger of choking: but the mucus that he suddenly produced and that he could not bring up fell back into his stomach; I then got him quickly out of bed and walked him back and forth across the room. He had an astonishingly high fever, but I gradually reduced this with pulvis antispas [ modicus ] Hallen [ sis ] and, God be praised, he was up again within 4 days and is now fully recovered. As a precaution I wrote by the local post to our friend the German doctor Herrenschwand, the doctor of the Swiss Guards. But he did not think it necessary to come more than twice. I then gave him a little aqua laxat [ iva ] Vien [ nensis ]1 as a laxative; God be praised, he is now well. My little girl, too, is suffering from a cold, but is not feverish. And it’s no wonder because we arrived in Paris on 18 November, and it snowed heavily for a few days, but this soon disappeared, and since then we’ve seen no snow in Paris; the weather has always been misty or damp and so mild that autumn in Germany is much colder: indeed, we’ve had some extraordinarily beautiful warm days that quickly gave way, however, to the most appalling rain, so that people virtually never go out here without taking a silk umbrella with them. This explains why these handy silk umbrellas are so fashionable here, because the weather in Paris is in such total accord with the character of its inhabitants and subject to change. Colds here are worse and more dangerous than in Germany, they are generally feverish colds, and because the local doctors are very fond of bleeding their patients, they despatch many to the next world by bleeding them. Could I ask you to have 4 Masses said as soon as possible at Maria Plain and 1 at the Holy Child at Loreto, 2 which we promised for the sake of our children, and make a note of this for me? I hope that the Masses will continue to be said at Loreto as long as we are away, just as I asked. As a result of what I’ve told you about the wet weather, I must add that the Seine was so amazingly high about 2 weeks ago that the people here had to cross the Place de Grève in boats, and many parts of the city, towards the river, were impassable. You’ll have read in the newspapers about the damage caused by the water around Frankfurt and in Holland and elsewhere. We shall be driving out to Versailles again in 2 weeks at the latest in order to present the great Herr Wolfgang’s opus 1– his engraved sonatas – to Madame Victoire, the king’s second daughter, to whom it is dedicated. His opus 2 will be dedicated, I think, to Madame la Comtesse de Tessé.3 God willing, important things will have happened within 3 or, at the most, 4 weeks; we have tilled the soil well and may now hope for a good harvest. But one must take things as they come. I should have had at least 12 louis d’or more if my children had not had to stay at home for a number of days. Thank God they are better – – – do you know what the people here want? – – They want to persuade me to have my boy inoculated with smallpox. But now that I have made known my aversion to this proposal, they are leaving me in peace. Here it is the universal fashion and may be done without permission, not in the city, but in the country: but this is only because inoculation has been very successful, with the result that people are having themselves inoculated in droves and all at the same time, children and adults alike, so that there are sometimes 3, 4 or more persons suffering from smallpox under the same roof. But as this could have unfortunate consequences, it has to be done in the country or be notified to the Intendant 4 of Paris. For my own part, I leave it to the grace of God. It depends on His divine mercy whether He wishes to keep this prodigy of nature in the world in which He has placed it or to take it to Himself. I shall certainly watch over it, so that it is all one whether we are in Salzburg or anywhere else in the world. But it is this that makes travelling so expensive. No one who has not travelled can imagine what demands it makes. You have to keep your hands constantly in your purse and always have your wits about you and invariably keep in your mind’s eye a plan for the next few months, but a plan that can be changed at once if circumstances change. Now for something else. Don’t be surprised if I write things down in no particular order, but in cases like these you have to write down your ideas while they strike you, otherwise you forget them. In Germany people believe mistakenly that the French are unable to withstand the cold; but this is a mistake that is revealed as such the moment you see all the shops open all winter. Not just the businessmen etc. but the tailor, shoemaker, saddler, cutler, goldsmith etc., in a word, all kinds of trades work in open shops and before the eyes of the world, so that all the shops are so many rooms where you can see people working, year in, year out, whether it’s hot or cold. As soon as evening falls, the shops are all lit, so that in some there may be 6, 7, 8 or as many as 10 lights burning, in others there may be several sconces, and a beautiful chandelier hanging in the middle. Most of the shops are open until 10. The shops that sell victuals are open until 11. Here the women have nothing but chauffrettes 5 under their feet: these are small wooden boxes lined with lead and full of holes, with a red-hot brick or hot ashes inside, or little earthenware boxes filled with coal. As soon as it is daylight, you see an incalculable throng of people of both sexes, young and old, walking in the Tuileries, the Palais Royal, the boulevard and other promenades throughout the winter, even in the coldest wind. Tell me now whether the French are afraid of the cold. All the windows are thrown open at the least sign of sunshine. And no matter how cold the wind, the doors are open, and they sit by the fireside.