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But at first all was not gloom; for Beethoven was in love not the love of fleeting fancy that, like other poets, he may have experienced before, but deeply, tragically, in love; and it seems that, for a time at least, this love was returned. The lady was the Countess Julia Guicciardi; but his dream did not last long, for in the year 1801 she married a Count Gallenberg.
Oh! love me forever, and never doubt the faithful heart of your lover, L. Ever thine. Ever mine. Ever each other's. There has been much discussion about the date. It is certified, in the first place, in the church register which Alex. Thayer saw in Vienna, that Giulietta was married to Count Gallenberg in 1801; and in the next place, the 6th of July falls on a Monday in 1800.
Since Giulietta was married Nov. 3, 1803, to Count Gallenberg, she could not have been the one whose life he hoped to share. Who then remains? Thayer suggests that the woman thus honoured may have been another Thérèse, the Countess Thérèse von Brunswick. She was the cousin of Giulietta, whose husband said of Beethoven that Thérèse "adored him."
Therese herself told Miriam that one day Giulietta, who had become the affianced of Count Gallenberg, rushed into her room, threw herself at her feet like a "stage princess," and cried out: "Counsel me, cold, wise one! I long to give Gallenberg his congé and marry the wonderfully ugly, beautiful Beethoven, if if only it did not involve lowering myself socially."
Count Gallenberg, the lessee of the famous Karnthnerthor Theatre, was kind to him, and the publisher Haslinger treated him politely. He had brought with him his variations on "La ci darem la mano"; altogether the times seemed propitious and much more so when he was urged to give a concert.
Giulietta came to her for advice, saying that she longed to throw over Count Gallenberg for "that beautiful horrible Beethoven if it were not such a come-down." She did not condescend, as we have seen, and lived to regret it bitterly. The idolatry of the pupil finally seized the teacher. Beethoven came to dote upon the large heart, the pure soul, and the serene mind of Thérèse.
Both Lenz and Marx follow him in the date; both quote Beethoven's words, that the lady in question married Count Gallenberg before the departure of the latter to Italy; both coincide in overlooking the circumstance related in the "Leipziger Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung," that, before June, 1806, a grand performance of music, composed and directed by Gallenberg, took place at Naples in honor of Joseph Bonaparte; proof sufficient that Beethoven could not in July of that year have addressed the lady in these terms: "Mein Engel, mein Alles, mein Ich!"
The most glorious lovesong ever composed, "Adelaide," was written by him; but Julia Guicciardi preferred a Count Gallenberg, keeper of the royal archives in Vienna, and Beethoven, to the end of his days, went on his way alone.
There exists for me no greater happiness than working at and exhibiting my art. I will meet my fate boldly. It shall never succeed in crushing me." But Giulietta went over to the great majority of Beethoven's sweethearts, and married wisely otherwise. Three years after, at her father's behest, she wedded a writer of ballet music, the Count Gallenberg, to whom Beethoven later advanced money.
As these Letters were not written until the prince had passed his fortieth year, it will be necessary, before considering them in detail, to give a brief sketch of his previous career. Hermann Ludwig was the only son of Graf von Pueckler of Schloss Branitz, and of his wife, Clementine, born a Graefin von Gallenberg, and heiress to the vast estate of Muskau in Silesia.
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