Let us also dismiss as unauthorised and gratuitous the words of Pauline D. Townsend, in her biography of Haydn, when she says of Mrs. Schroeter that she was “an attractive, although, according to modern taste, a somewhat vulgar woman, of over sixty years of age, and there is no disguising the fact that she made violent love to Haydn.  Her letters to Haydn are full of tenderness and in questionable taste; his to her have not been preserved, but we can have little doubt that they were warmer in tone than they would have been had not the Channel rolled between him and Frau Haydn in Vienna.”  We know how little Frau Haydn had had to do with Haydn’s life in his own town.  You may judge for yourself as to the charge of “vulgarity.”

The existence of Mrs. Schroeter’s veritable Love Letters of an Englishwoman was known for many years, and Pohl in his book on “Mozart und Haydn in London” quoted from them.  But for their complete publication in the original English, we are indebted to Mr. Krehbiel’s “Music and Manners in the Classical Period.”  This captivating work contains also a note-book which Haydn kept in London; it is filled with amusing blunders in English and vivid pictures of London life of the time, pictures as delectable in their way as the immortal garrulity of Pepys.

I cannot do better than let these letters speak for themselves through such quotations as I have room to make.  There are twenty-two of them in all, in Mr. Krehbiel’s book.  The abbreviations are curious and explain themselves.  M.L. is “my love,” D.L. is “dear love,” M.D. is “my dear,” and M. Dst. is its superlative.  The abbreviations were possibly due to the fact that the letters exist only in Haydn’s own handwriting, copied into his note-book without attention to their proper order.  Or they may have been simply the amorous shorthand of that day.

Two of them are signed R.S. and this leads me to believe that Mrs. Schroeter’s first name began with R., though we know neither that nor her maiden name.  In the first letter Mrs. Schroeter says that she encloses him “the words of the song you desire.”  This letter is dated February 8th.  In his note-book there is an entry on February 13, 1792, and just preceding it a little Italian poem in which I have been pleased to see what was possibly this very song, its first lines being suggestively like the first line of Mrs. Schroeter’s letter.

  “Io vi mando questo foglio
  Dalle lagrime rigato,
  Sotto scritto dal cordoglio
  Dai pensieri sigillato
  Testimento del mio amore
  (Io) vi mando questo core.”

Among the letters there are many anxious allusions, which may indicate that Haydn was suffering from insomnia, unless you are inclined to give them a more subtle significance.  But to the quotations, with regrets that they must be incomplete.

“Wednesday, Febr. 8th, 1792.

“M.D.  Inclos’d I have sent you the words of the song you desire.  I wish much to know how you do to day.  I am very sorry to lose the pleasure of seeing you this morning, but I hope you will have time to come tomorrow.  I beg my D you will take great care of your health and do not fatigue yourself with too much application to business.  My thoughts and best wishes are always with you, and I ever am with the utmost sincerity M.D. your &c.”