Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/272

268 treatment by baths and drugs, always hopeful, always finally worse.

In October, 1826, Beethoven, with his miserable nephew, visited Johann Beethoven at Gneixendorf. This niggardly man denied his sick brother a fire in his room, although the weather became severe, and the food he served him was not suited to Beethoven's disturbed digestion. They quarreled over the affairs of the nephew, and the composer packed his things on December 2 for a journey back to Vienna.

"It was biting weather, and even the winter sun seemed permanently hidden. A closed vehicle was consequently indispensable for a fifty miles' journey; the brother would not lend his, so with great misgivings Beethoven hazarded an open conveyance—a milk cart, it is supposed,—'the most wretched vehicle of hell' as the composer described it. . . . Beethoven, though only clad in summer clothing, resolutely faced all." It was a two days' journey and it cost him his life.

He took to his bed. Not only were his old ailments aggravated, but inflammation of the lungs set in. His nephew neglected to call a physician and none came to see him until three days after his return. Dropsy, the last symptom of his old abdominal ailment, appeared and on December 18 he had to be tapped. Again on January 8 and 28 the fluid had to be withdrawn. "Better water from my body than from my pen," he is said to have remarked. Malfatti, a former physician, was called, and under his care he improved, but only for a time. "His long, painfully long, end was now beginning. His constitution, powerful as that of a giant, blocked the gates against death for nearly three months." The end came on March 26, 1827, at the age of fifty-seven.

The physical Beethoven was a most impressive figure. He was not tall—was in fact, short,—not over five feet five inches, but with broad shoulders, and very firmly built. Siegfried said that "in that limited space was concentrated the pluck of twenty battalions." His head was large, with profuse black hair thrown backward and upward from a grand forehead; he had great breadth of jaw and somewhat protruding lips. His clean-shaven face was pock-marked from early youth, and browned and burned by wind and sun; his eyes, large and jet black, were full of the fire of genius, and were often remarkably bright and peculiarly piercing; his teeth were beautifully white and regular. His hands were thick and dumpy, with short, untapered fingers; his feet, small and graceful. On the whole his was not a handsome figure, "but the ugly pock-marked man with the piercing eye, was possessed of a power and beauty more attractive than mere physical charm." One person described him as "power personified," and another thought of him as a Jupiter.

Julius Benedict, who saw him in 1822, wrote: "Who could ever forget those striking features? The lofty vaulted forehead with thick