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 irae).  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.