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'Blessed girl! you always bring a ray of light just at the darkest moment, returned Lavinia, with a sigh of relief, while Matilda looked over a barricade of sketch-books bristling with paint-brushes, and added anxiously, 'If you could suggest how I am to work this miracle, you will be a public benefactor. 'Behold the amendment I propose, began Amanda, perching herself on one of the arks.
At this time he carried sketch-books in which he jotted everything all manner of drawings and outlines of nature and architecture, notes of local gossip, chemical memoranda, notes of expenses, tavern bills, views of coasts and cities, ruins, castles, manufacturing works, and detached figures.
Thayer doubts this story, because he could not find anything in Beethoven's sketch-books corroborating it; but even if it should be a myth, there are many well authenticated facts which show that Beethoven, like other composers, owed many of his best ideas to the magic influence of love in stimulating his mental powers.
"At times I wish I could stop making a labor of religion, and enjoy it a little. How pleasant it would be to go off to Japan together and fill our sketch-books with drawings." This suggestion came on Esther so suddenly that she forgot herself and gave a little cry of delight. "Oh, are you in earnest?" she said. "It seems to me that I could crawl and swim there if you would go with me."
Sir Reginald and Lady Bygrave had been invited, but had not yet arrived, and it would, of course, have been uncourteous to commence luncheon, hungry as everybody was, till they appeared. The party had, in the meantime, to amuse themselves according to their tastes; some of the ladies had brought their sketch-books, others their work though the greater number preferred doing nothing.
Then he had all sorts of drawing-materials papers, and pencils, and sketch-books, and a colour-box, and mathematical instruments, and even a chronometer. He had a writing-case, and a tool-box, and a flute and violin, and some music-books. I asked him if he could use the quadrant.
Often in this way he evolved a theme for which he afterward found a use. In looking over a sketch-book in the summer he would run across something he liked, and the idea would expand into a matured work. His sketch-books are full of all kinds of random and fugitive material half-finished fugues, canons, piano pieces, songs, single themes.
The children, who are adepts at drawing with brush and pencil, wander in field and lane with sketch-books in their hands; and one of them at least was so moved by the beauty of a winter sunrise, as seen from his cottage window, that, in his own words, he felt he must try to paint it, the result being a water-colour sketch which I have shown to a competent artist, who tells me that the feeling in the sky is quite wonderful.
Simultaneously with the appearance in the sketch-books of motives for the Ninth Symphony, another is projected, as was the case when composing his previous ones, which generally appeared in pairs, as already noted. A wealth of ideas flowed in on him while engaged on any great work, much of which, when not available for the one, could be utilized on the other.
These have even invited officials to look at their sketch-books, which, had they had any suspicion or any eyes in their heads, would have revealed plans and armaments of their own fortresses interpolated among the veins of the botanist's drawings of leaves or on the butterflies' wings of the entomologist.
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