Mozart: A Life in Letters: A Life in Letters (8 page)

Before the family left Paris, Wolfgang and Nannerl gave concerts on 10 March and 9 April at the theatre of M. Félix, in the rue St Honoré; both performances were arranged by the German journalist and critic Friedrich Melchior von Grimm (1723–1807), long resident in Paris and acquainted with many important figures in French society. The family set out for London on 10 April 1764, travelling by way of Calais and Dover. They arrived on 23 April.

Monsieur!

You know that the further away a thing is, the smaller it presents itself to the eye. And so it is with my letters. My handwriting becomes smaller and smaller according to the distance I am from Salzburg. If we were to sail to America, it would become completely illegible. It costs a shilling to send to Germany a mere letter without a cover and another shilling for the cover, so that a letter with a cover costs 2 shillings. A guinea is 21 shillings and is equal in value to a louis d’or, for in Dover the banker
Miné
, who had been recommended to me in Paris, gave me 12 guineas for 12 louis d’or: for French money isn’t accepted here. You can easily work out, then, what a shilling is worth.
¹
In the letter that she was kind enough to write to me in Paris, our dear Frau Hagenauer asked whether we
might even go to England and Holland
. When I left Salzburg, I was only half resolved to go to England: but as everyone, even in Paris, urged us to go to London, I made up my mind to do so; and now, with God’s help, we are here: but we’ll not be going to Holland, I can assure everyone of that. Although I am assured that I could soon earn 2 to 300 ducats in The Hague, for example, I know that the cost would be exorbitant; the people, especially the Dutch, are rather uncouth. And in general one should visit places only in winter in order to take proper advantage of the situation; and that’s simply impossible, unless we were to spend 4, 5 or more years travelling. We could also go to Hamburg if we wanted to: but it’s too far away for me, too far north. We could go
to Copenhagen to the greatest advantage in the world; both the Royal Danish Minister in Paris, Baron de Gleichen, and the Danish envoy here, Count Bothmer, were prepared to guarantee us a certain sum in advance, but it would never occur to me to accept. Even less has Prince Galitzin
²
persuaded me to give him any grounds for hoping that we might ever resolve to go to Russia. These countries are too remote, and too cold. The present country is sufficiently remote, even though it is one of the most beautiful and blessed countries in terms of the produce of its fields and its cattle, but it is a dangerous country on account of the constant variations in temperature between hot and cold. Because England is an island, it suffers a lot from the constant variations in the winds that blow in off the sea. Some days it is uncommonly hot; but within a moment a north wind may rise up, and within a quarter of an hour it is uncommonly cold: that is why you see only clothes of woollen cloth here. The food is uncommonly nourishing, substantial and rich; the beef, veal and lamb are better than you’ll find anywhere else in the world. You see the finest cattle in the fields, and lambs that are almost as big as a calf, with wool that’s thick and long. Hence the excellent manufactured goods. But this food is too rich, while the beer, which you can get in various kinds, is quite amazingly strong and good. But because beer is a product of the country, the wine, by contrast, is indescribably expensive, with an astonishing tax on it. The same is true of coffee, which costs more than 4 German florins a pound. Moreover, you have to buy it already roasted and ground, for which a number of shops exist: anyone who roasts a pound of coffee at home is fined 50 guineas. You can imagine the face that my wife pulled when she heard about this arrangement. Enough, the English are trying to sell off their tea and prevent the money for coffee from leaving the country. The tea kettle is on the hearth all day, and when you visit people, they serve you tea with bread and butter, in other words, a thinly sliced loaf of bread covered in butter. I should add that lunch is generally taken between 2 and 3 o’clock, and at night most people eat nothing or else only cheese, butter and bread, which they wash down with a good
jug of strong beer. No woman goes out into the street without wearing a hat on her head, but these hats are very varied; some are completely round, others are tied together at the back and may be made of satin, straw, taffeta etc. All are decorated with ribbons and trimmed with lace. Even a modest one costs half a guinea. Initially you think you are seeing only maskers. Men never go out bare headed, and a few are powdered. Whenever the street urchins see anyone decked out and dressed in a vaguely French way, they immediately call out:
Bugger French! French bugger!
The best policy is then to say nothing and pretend you haven’t heard. Were it to enter your head to object, the rabble would send in reinforcements and you’d be lucky to escape with only a few holes in your head. For our own part, we look entirely English. I just had to get a few clothes made for me and Wolfg. and buy a few women’s hats, which cost
12 guineas
in all. The least you’d pay to have a simple suit made up is 14 shillings, and you’d have to pay another pound sterling – 20 shillings – if it were to be lined. – – It doesn’t surprise me that you find little or no fine English cloth in Germany or have to pay an astonishing amount for it, superfine cloth, a kind that respectable people most usually buy and which I’ve taken myself, costs 18 shillings an English yard, which is much shorter than the French yard. But the
finest
cloth costs 21 shillings. You can easily imagine that everything is uncommonly expensive here. The reason is that a guinea causes less stir here than a ducat does with us: but the people who believe that the English throw away their money are wrong; there’s no middle way for them. Most are over-punctilious in the way they manage their affairs; a very few are uncommonly generous. We still don’t know how things will turn out for us. We should really have been here during the winter. From 6 to 9 o’clock on 27 April we were with the queen and king at the Queen’s Palace in St James’s Park,
³
in other words, we were already at court within 5 days of arriving. We were given only 24 guineas, which we received immediately on leaving the king’s
apartment, but the kindness with which both their majesties – the king as well as the queen – received us is indescribable. In short, their common touch and friendly manner allowed us to forget that they were the king and queen of England; we have been received at every court with quite extraordinary courtesy, but the welcome that we were given here surpasses all the others: a week later we were walking in St James’s Park; the king came driving past with the queen: and although we were wearing different clothes, they still recognized us and not only greeted us but the king opened the window, leant out and, laughing, greeted us and especially our Master Wolfgang as he was driving past, nodding and waving his hand. Talking of driving reminds me that I wish you could come here for a few days and see the beautiful horses and the most frightful carriages. The horses are as beautiful as the carriages are frightful. These latter are low and wide. The coachman’s seat is just like a dovecote roof, so that if the coachman falls off his seat, it’s like falling from the first floor of a low house. But the horses! the beautiful horses! if I’d a hundred English horses that were mine, standing in Calais, I’d have enough. To see English people in Germany is nothing to write home about; but to see them in their own country and by choice is very different. The sea and especially the ebb and flow of the tide in the harbour at Calais and Dover, then the ships and, in their wake, the fish that are called porpoises rising up and down in the sea, then – as soon as we left Dover – to be driven by the finest English horses that run so fast that the servants on the coach seat could scarcely breathe from the force of the air – all this was something entirely strange and agreeable. However strange it may have been for us in Paris to see a woodcutter, a carpenter etc. with an axe or saw under his arm, a tattered coat on his back and a snow-white powdered court wig on his head, it was no less odd for us to see the common women in the market in London with pipes of tobacco in their mouth. The city is very beautiful, but I have too little space to describe it here; the architecture is completely different from that in France. The pavement in front of the houses is paved with large flat square stones, so that walking is very easy; the roads, by contrast, are calculated to break your neck. All the houses have their main apartments below ground,
the 2nd you enter at ground level, and rooms 1 and 2 are up to 3 floors up. The apartment below ground is light, it has the biggest windows, and smiths and locksmiths and all the other artisans generally have their workshops down here. That is why there are grills of iron or wood outside all the houses, so that no one falls down them. My enclosed letter to His Grace, our most gracious prince and master, will have reached you safely, I hope;
⁴
I sent it off straight after our arrival in London. May I ask you to have the following Masses said as soon as possible, namely:
3 Masses at the Holy Child of Loreto. 3 Masses at Maria Plain. 2 Masses at St Francis of Paula in Berg l and 2 at St Joh n of Nepomukin the parish church or wherever you want. Also 2 at St Anthony in the parish church
.
⁵
I should add that we’ve left most of our luggage with the banker Herr Hummel in Paris. We’ve also left there, separately, all the snuffboxes and 2 watches and other valuables, together with 2 beautiful new satin dresses, one ruby-coloured with white trimmings belonging to my wife and one blue dress with white trimmings belonging to my little girl, as well as all the accessories that go with them and many other things besides. The expensive dress that I bought my little girl in Paris – it has a pale yellow background, with flowers and broad gold stripes, and is very beautiful – I brought with me to England.

Our sworn friend Monsieur Grimm did everything for us in Paris and, quite apart from all his other kindness, gave Nannerl a gold watch as a parting gift, while to Wolfgang he gave a fruit knife of the kind that people tend to use with sweetmeats in Paris, the handle is made of mother-of-pearl set in gold, and it has 2 blades, one of gold, the other of silver. I also left 7 pieces of double louis d’or in a gold snuffbox there, and I have a letter of credit for 4800 livres for the 200 louis d’or that I entrusted to Herr Tourton & Baur;
⁶
I’d intended to send off the present letter a week ago; but I was prevented
from doing so, partly because I wanted to wait for some news. But I can report only that on 19 May we were again with the king and queen from 6 to 10 in the evening, when the only other people present were three princes – two of the king’s brothers and the brother of the queen. As we were leaving, we were again handed 24 guineas. If this happens every 3 or 4 weeks, it won’t be too bad. We are now going to give a so-called benefit or
concerto al nostro profitto
on 5 June. It is really not the time to give such concerts, and little profit can be expected as it’s out of season and the cost of putting on a concert like this is 40 guineas: but it’s the king’s birthday on the 4th, so that many of the nobility will come up to town from the country, and so we must take the risk and seize the moment to make ourselves better known. Each person pays half a guinea, and if it were winter, I’m sure I could count on 600 persons, in other words, 300 guineas: but now they all go to the pleasure gardens and into the country.
Basta!
all will be well as long as we stay healthy with God’s help and if He keeps our invincible Wolfgang in good health. The king gave him not only works by Wagenseil to play, but also Bach, Abel and Handel,
⁷
all of which he rattled off
prima vista
.
⁸
He played the king’s organ so well that everyone rates his organ playing far higher than his harpsichord playing. He then accompanied the queen in an aria that she sang and a flautist in a solo. Finally he took the violin part in some Handel arias that happened to be lying around and played the most beautiful melody over the simple bass, so that everyone was utterly astonished. In a word, what he knew when we left Salzburg is a mere shadow of what he knows now. You can’t imagine it. Together with the rest of us, he sends you his best wishes from the clavier, where he is now seated, playing Kapellmeister Bach’s trio, and not a day passes without his speaking at least 30 times of Salzburg and his and our friends and patrons. He now has an opera constantly
in his head that he wants to perform with just young people in Salzburg. I have already had to count up all the players he’s noted down for the orchestra, among whom Herr Kolb and Herr Ränftl
⁹
are mentioned quite often.

Monsieur!

I have just received the enclosed bill of exchange from Paris and therefore hasten to forward it to you without delay in order that you can make use of it straightaway. I do not really understand how these matters are transacted at a distance and so I spoke with two local bankers, Loubier et Teissier, who are very good friends of mine and who, after seeing the letter I received from Messrs Tourton et Baur and noting the figure of £179½ quoted therein, have agreed that the value of 200 louis d’or is correct, given the difference in the exchange rate. You will not fail, therefore, to send this as soon as possible to Hamburg and, once it has been accepted, credit me with the sum of 2250 f. At the same time I have pleasure in reporting that I have again deposited a small sum of
100 guineas
with the afore-named bankers Loubier and Teissier, which I could pay to someone in the service of Salzburg who is currently in these parts. If you yourself can use this sum in Paris, The Hague, Amsterdam, Hamburg etc. or elsewhere, it would be most agreeable to me, and as I see that I shall probably still have to transfer a certain balance to Salzburg, I would ask you to be mindful of this and lend me a hand. In the event that a larger sum is to be paid, I can transfer an extra 30, 40 or even 50 guineas without depriving myself of money. I must also let you know that from now on you should send your letters to the following address:
Monsieur Mozart chez Mrs Charles Loubier et Teissier Banquiers. Austin-Friars. London
.