Our composer’s intercourse with women—­for he was always alive to the charms of female society—­was for the most part homely and practical in the extreme, after his deafness destroyed the zest of the more romantic phases of the divine passion.  He accepted adoration, as did Dean Swift, as a right.  He permitted his female admirers to knit him stockings and comforters, and make him dainty puddings and other delicacies, which he devoured with huge gusto.  He condescended, in return, to go to sleep on their sofas, after picking his teeth with the candle-snuffers (so says scandal), while they thrummed away at his sonatas, the artistic slaughter of which Beethoven was mercifully unable to hear.

V.

The friendship of the Archduke Rudolph relieved Beethoven of the immediate pressure of poverty; for in 1809 he settled a small life-pension upon him.  The next ten years were passed by him in comparative ease and comfort, and in this time he gave to the world five of his immortal symphonies, and a large number of his finest sonatas and masses.  His general health improved very much; and in his love for his nephew Karl, whom Beethoven had adopted, the lonely man found an outlet for his strong affections, which was medicine for his soul, though the object was worthless and ungrateful.

We get curious and amusing insights into the daily tenor of Beethoven’s life during this period—­things sometimes almost grotesque, were they not so sad.  The composer lived a solitary life, and was very much at the mercy of his servants on account of his self-absorption and deafness.  He was much worried by these prosaic cares.  One story of a slatternly servant is as follows:  The master was working at the mass in D, the great work which he commenced in 1819 for the celebration of the appointment of the Archduke Rudolph as Archbishop of Olmutz, and which should have been completed by the following year.  Beethoven, however, became so engrossed with his work, and increased its proportions so much, that it was not finished until some two years after the event which it was intended to celebrate.  While Beethoven was engaged upon this score, he one day woke up to the fact that some of his pages were missing.  “Where on earth could they be?” he asked himself, and the servant too; but the problem remained unsolved.  Beethoven, beside himself, spent hours and hours in searching, and so did the servant, but it was all in vain.  At last they gave up the task as a useless one, and Beethoven, mad with despair, and pouring the very opposite to blessings upon the head of her who, he believed, was the author of the mischief, sat down with the conclusion that he must rewrite the missing part.  He had no sooner commenced a new Kyrie—­for this was the movement which was not to be found—­than some loose sheets of score paper were discovered in the kitchen!  Upon examination they proved to be the identical pages that Beethoven so much desired, and which the woman, in her anxiety to be “tidy” and to “keep things straight,” had appropriated at some time or other for wrapping up, not only old boots and clothes, but also some superannuated pots and pans that were greasy and black!