In 1821, there rose a famous operatic war between Spontini and Weber at Berlin. Caroline was prostrated with terror. Spontini"s "Olympic" was given first with enormous success, and "Der Freischutz," in which Caroline had had so large a share, and which meant so much to the two, was forced into a dramatic comparison. In spite of a somewhat dubious beginning, the first night was one of the greatest ovations a musician has ever lived to see. In the midst of the tempestuous applause, every one looked for the composer, who was "sitting in a dark corner of his wife"s box and kissing away her tears of joy."
When they returned to Dresden in July, Caroline"s health was undermined by the emotions of the Berlin triumph, and it was necessary for her to be taken to Switzerland, where Carl was compelled to leave her. An accident in crossing the Elbe led him to write his will, leaving Caroline everything without reserve, and his dying curse upon any one who should disturb his wishes.
Now consumption began to fasten its claws more deeply on him, and when his wife returned she found him constantly racked with cough and fever.
One day he saw the first fatal spot of blood upon his handkerchief; he turned pale and sighed: "G.o.d"s will be done."
From that moment neither his conviction that he was doomed to an early death, nor his courage to die pluckily, ever left him. When "Der Freischutz" was given in Dresden, Caroline was ill at home. Carl arranged a courier service by which he received, after every scene, news of his wife. In February of the next year, he was compelled to leave Dresden; he placed in his wife"s hands a sealed letter only to be opened in case of his death. This letter gave a complete account of all his affairs, and a last expression of his immense love for her. On his many tours, he met almost uninterrupted triumph, but as he wrote to Caroline:
"I would rather be in my still chamber with you, my beloved life.
Without you all pride is shorn of its splendour; my only real joy can be in that which gives you joy too."
From now on he spent a large part of his time away from her, always tormented to the last degree by homesickness, always harrowed by the fear that he might die out of the reach of his adored wife and two children, and never feeling that he had laid by money enough to leave them free of the danger of want, after he should have drifted into the grave that yawned just before his weary feet.
It is hard to find in story or history a more pitiful struggle against fate and the frustration of every deep desire than the last days of Carl Maria von Weber, hurrying from triumph to triumph, and dying as he jolted along his way, or stood bowing with hollow heart before uproarious mult.i.tudes. Homesickness grew to be a positive frenzy with him.
"They carry me in triumph," he wrote to Caroline: "they watch for every wink to do me kindnesses. But I feel I can only be happy there, where I can hear my lambs bleat, and their mother low, and can beat my dog, or turn away my maids, if they are at all too troublesome."
In 1825, Christmas found him at a distance, and he could not reach home.
"I shall think of you all on Christmas-eve," he wrote, "But that I never cease to do. All my labours are for you--all my joy is with you."
"Can I but be with you on New Year"s eve," he wrote again, with that tinge of superst.i.tion which always more or less pervaded his character, "I shall be with you all the year."
Now London beckoned to him, as she had to so many German musicians, to whom she always has stood for the city of gold and of rescue from pauperdom. Ghastly as Von Weber looked in the clutches of his disease; hungry as his heart and body were for a long, an eternal rest, he felt that he must not shrink from this final goal. As his son writes with aching heart in the biography:
"To Gublitz, who doubted of his ability to undertake the journey to London, he replied, in a tone of melancholy irony: "Whether I can or no, I must. Money must be made for my family--money, man. I am going to London to die there. Not a word! I know it as well as you." The bright, cheery, lively Weber, who revelled in the triumph of his "Freischutz,"
was already dead and gone.
"Before his departure, Weber regulated all his affairs in the most punctilious manner. The presentiment of the fast-approaching end rendered him doubly careful that all should be in order; and, in his last conferences with his legal friends, he was always anxious to insure the presence of his wife, whose strong practical good sense he knew.
During these painful duties his personal appearance became so fearfully changed, that most of his friends began to fear he would no longer find strength sufficient for his journey. His form sank together: his voice was almost totally gone: his cough was incessant.
"In the circle of intimates who still visited him at that tea-table, of which his wit, and pleasantry, and genial humour had so long made the charm, he would often murmur, with a faint smile, "Don"t take it ill, good people, if I drop asleep: indeed I cannot help it."
"And his head would fall upon his breast. His poor wife suffered cruel agonies: she could not but feel that he was really spending the small remaining breath of life for the sake of her and the children. She manoeuvred in secret to induce friends to persuade him that he ought to renounce his fearful journey, when all her own affectionate efforts to this intent had failed. But the response was ever the same sad one.
""Whether I undertake this journey, or no, it is all one! Within a year I am a dead man. But if I go, my children will have bread, when their father is gone: if I do not, want may stare them in the face. What is to be done?" On one occasion he added, "I should like to come back once more and see my dear ones" faces again: and then, in G.o.d"s name, let G.o.d"s will be done! But to die there, it would be hard, very hard!"
"The morning of the 7th of February had not yet dawned, after a night of bitter tears, when Weber"s travelling-carriage drove up to his door. The time was come for the separation of the husband, who scarcely hoped to see his home again, from the loving wife, who felt that he was a dying man. Another tear upon the forehead of his sleeping children--another long lingering kiss--the suffering man dragged his swollen feet into the carriage, huddled feverishly in his furs--the door was closed--and he rolled away from home, on that cold winter"s morning, sobbing till the shattered chest might almost burst at once.
"Caroline rushed back to her room, and sank on her knees, with the cry: "It is his coffin I have closed upon him!"
"At the first post, Weber parted with his own coachman and his own horses. It was the last wrench from home and its remembrances. His voluminous correspondence with his wife was the only tie left to Weber; and nothing can be more touching than these letters, amounting in all to fifty-three, in which the sufferer was always trying to conceal, as far as he could, his sufferings; the anxious woman left behind, always repressing her own bitter anguish lest it should increase the other"s sorrow."
Carl had been lured to London by reports of the enormous craze of the whole people over his work. It was his fate to reach there just after the tide of enthusiasm had turned, and was lapsing into the ebb of weariness and impatience. After the first rapturous curiosity of personal greeting, he found that the public would take little of him but "Der Freischutz," and of this opera he had grown weary, as composers always grow of their spoiled children of fortune.
His health, too, was in tragic state. Frightful spasms and hemorrhages seemed to tear him asunder. At a dinner given him, two of the guests had to carry him up the stairs. He was hardly strong enough to stand during the cheers that greeted him when he came before his audience. But the worst disease of all, the one that would not cease gnawing at his heart, was his homesickness. To a doctor who offered him a new remedy, he cried:
"Go! go! no doctor"s tinkering can help me now. The machine is shattered. But, ah, would but G.o.d in His mercy grant that it might hold together till I could embrace my Lina and my boys once more!" His effort to keep Caroline from knowing his illness was kept up. When she wrote him that the children were begging to know why he remained so long away, he answered:
"Yes, the father is long, long away; ah, and how long is the time to him! how every day is counted! Patience! patience! Day crawls after day."
"G.o.d bless you, my deeply beloved ones!" he wrote once more. "I count days, hours, minutes, until we meet again. We have often been parted before, and loved each other dearly, G.o.d knows. But this terrible yearning I have never known before."
At last he grew so desperately sad that he broke his rule and wrote his wife full details of his suffering; he had given up hope of ever seeing his home again.
At this time, a singer wished to bring out a new song of his, and furnished him with words. His once alert fancy groped long for a melody, but, as his son writes:
"At last on the morning of the 18th of May, the great artist"s flitting genius came back to him, and for the last time gave him a farewell kiss upon that n.o.ble forehead now bedewed with the cold sweat of death--for the last time! But the trembling hands were unable to write down more than the notes for the voice."
Fate had still reserved a bitter blow for him. He had fastened his hopes upon a farewell concert, and grew morbid upon the importance of it to his future.
"This day week is my concert," he wrote on the 19th of May. "How my poor heart beats when I think of it! What will be the result? The last chances left me are this concert and my benefit. When I think on all they cost me, should they not turn out so as to meet my modest expectations, it were hard indeed. But I must not let my courage fail me. I will rely on Him, who has already been so infinitely merciful to us. You will think, my beloved life, that I lay far too much stress on this. But remember that my hope of fortune for us was the only purpose of this weary journey. Can you not comprehend, then, why I now hold for so important that which has always played but a subordinate part in my life? Pray, dearest heart, pray that poor old papa"s wishes, which are all for your dear sakes, may yet be fulfilled."
To complete the mockery of his last days, fashion declined to interest itself in his concert, and, to keep even the common public away, the skies poured down floods of rain. The house was almost empty. The enthusiasm of the few good hearts there were Job"s consolation. At the end of the concert he was led to his room, where he sank down, a complete wreck in mind and hope, muttering:
"What do you say to that? That, that is "Weber in London"!"
His hand trembled so that he could hardly write any more to his wife; still, in a quivering scrawl, he bade her address her answer not to London, but to a city on the way home, for he is starting homeward--homeward at last! But he is not coming home through Paris, as he had planned. He writes:
"What should I do there? I cannot walk--I cannot speak. I will have nothing more to do with business for years to come. So it is far better I should take the straight way home by Calais, through Brussels, Cologne, Coblenz, and thus by the Rhine to Frankfort. What a charming journey! I must travel very slowly, however, and probably rest for half a day now and then. I shall gain a good fortnight thus; and by the end of June I hope to be in your arms.
"How will you receive me? In Heaven"s name, alone. Let no one disturb my joy of looking again upon my wife and my children, my dearest and my best... Thank G.o.d! the end of all is fast approaching."
The end of all was fast approaching. He sent his friends out to purchase souvenirs of unhappy London, as gifts for his family. He was so impatient to be off that he would listen to no advice to postpone his starting.
"I must go back to my own, I must!" he sobbed incessantly. "Let me see them once more--and then G.o.d"s will be done." The attempt appeared impossible to all. With great unwillingness he yielded to his friend"s request to have a consultation of physicians. "Be it so," he answered.
"But come of it what may, I go!"
His only thought, his only word, was "Home!" On the 2d of June he wrote his last letter to his beloved,--the last lines his hand ever traced.
"What a joy, my own dear darling, your letter gave me! What a happiness to me to know that you are well! ... As this letter requires no answer, it will be but a short one. What a comfort it is not to have to answer... G.o.d bless you all and keep you well! Oh, were I but amongst you all again! I kiss you with all my heart and soul, my dearest one!
Preserve all your love for me, and think with pleasure on him who loves you above all, your Carl."
He was to leave London on the 6th of June; on the night of the 4th he could talk to his friends only of their kindness and of his eagerness to be home. To a friend, who stayed to help him through the painful ordeal of undressing, he murmured his thanks and said, "Now let me sleep."
The next morning, when they came to his room, he had been dead for hours. London was full of words of regret for the man whose music had added so much to the beauty and cheerfulness of the world. A great benefit for his family was arranged, but fate would not cease mocking him in his grave,--the receipts hardly equalled the expenses!
A committee pet.i.tioned the Dean of Westminster to allow the funeral to be held in the Abbey. The courteous answer of regret reminded the committee that Von Weber was a Roman Catholic! The musicians volunteered, however, to give him a splendid funeral, and at least music was not wanting when his body was lowered into the grave in an alien land. Von Weber"s son, Max, describes how the news was sent to Caroline by Von Weber"s devoted friend, Furstenau:
"It was the death-warrant of the purest wedded bliss that had ever made two mortals happy; it was nigh a fatal cup of poison to one of the n.o.blest hearts of womankind: it told two little blooming boys that they were orphaned. No wonder that Furstenau had not the courage to address Caroline von Weber herself: his letter had been sent to her dearest friend, Fraulein von Hanmann. The sad messenger of death went down to Kosterwitz, the letter in hand.
"But she, too, had not the courage to break the fearful news to the impulsive little woman, unaided and alone. She stopped her carriage at a little distance from the house, to beg the support of Roth, who lived close by. But Caroline had heard the carriage-wheels--had looked out--had seen her friend descend on that unaccustomed spot, and disappear into Roth"s house. A fearful presentiment seized her--she rushed toward the spot--she saw the two standing in the little garden, wringing their hands and weeping--she knew all--and she lay senseless at their feet. Her little boy Max had followed her in childish alarm. Nigh forty years have gone by since then; but he has never forgotten the sound of that terrible cry, when his mother, slowly recovering from her swoon, clasped him convulsively in her arms, and wetted his face with a flood of tears."
Nearly twenty years later it was before Von Weber"s body at last reached the Fatherland. The agonies of homesickness he had endured seemed to haunt even the cold clay. In 1841, a writer made an ardent appeal for the restoration of this glory of German song, to the German soil. The idea became a crusade. But it was not until 1844, and then chiefly by the aid of Wagner, then conductor in Dresden, and a close friend of Caroline and her children, that success was attained. The younger son, Alexander, had already been buried; on December 14, 1844, the father"s body was placed by his side. It had been carried through the streets of Dresden behind a black banner, on which were inscribed words which once would have meant so much: "Weber in Dresden."
"In the richly decorated chapel of the cemetery, all the ladies of the theatre, with Schroder-Devrient at their head, awaited the body, and covered the coffin with their laurels. The ceremony was at an end. The torches were extinguished; the crowd dispersed. But, by the light of two candles still burning on the altar, might be seen the form of a small, now middle-aged woman who had flung herself upon the bier, whilst a pale young man knelt praying by her side."
This pale young man was the Baron Max Maria von Weber, to whose pen we owe a wonderful portrait of a wonderful man. It was the son"s love, strangely tempered with wisdom, that showed us all the phases of this character, which, by revealing its worser side, made the better side convincing, complete, alive.
Weber had lived hardly more than half of the allotted three score and ten, but he had lived life in all its phases, from riotous dissipation amid royal splendour and insolence to a brave and whole-souled battle for the welfare of his home. It is futile to attempt judging the effect of music upon life, and of life upon music. Too many sorts of man have written too many sorts of music and lived too many sorts of life. But, if you wish to use Von Weber"s life as an example of the influence of music, surely, you would write Von Weber"s name on the credit side of the ledger, for he reached his best music when his life was best managed. He took a musician for his wife, and her high ideals of art and life made him a man and a soldier against Fate.
Home they brought his body, a pride to his Fatherland, and the greater Wagner who owed the great Weber so much, spoke over his grave these words: