Mozart: A Life in Letters: A Life in Letters (9 page)

At the end of this week we are going to Tunbridge Wells, about 30 English miles from here, which the mail coach can cover in 3 or 4 hours as an English mile is no more than a German quarter of an hour. It’s a health resort and lies in a corner between east and south, where many of the nobility assemble in July and August, when no one who has time and money remains in London. If you write to me at the above address, I shall be sure to receive your letter as these gentlemen invariably know where I am. Meanwhile, I hope that you will have received 2 letters from me, namely, one dated – I believe – 28 or 29 May and the other 8 or 9 June. But I must now give you a small taste of the price of things in London. The lodgings that I have are too small for us and consist of 3 small rooms, one of which, like the second, is slightly larger, whereas the 3rd is not even as big as the closet in our rooms in Salzburg. For these we are paying 12 shillings a week. Now you know that 21 shillings is a guinea. If we had not known that we were in any case going to the country, we would have changed it straightaway: we must have rooms for at least 18 shillings or a guinea a week because only people of quality come to visit us and because a couple of harpsichords take up a lot of space and at present we can accommodate only one with difficulty; and because the location and size of the lodgings in such a populous city, where there is so much steam, smoke, dust and fog, contribute greatly to the preservation of one’s health. For a one-manual harpsichord one pays ⅓ a guinea a month: with 2 manuals a guinea. The cheapest wine is from Florence at 2 shillings a
buttelia
: these are wicker bottles like the ones from Monte Pulciano: so that, if my wife and I both drink and if we pour some out for the children diluted with water, as water on its own is no good, one can easily get through a bottle a day. That makes 60 shillings a month just on wine. To begin with, we wanted to get used to beer, but both I and my wife soon noticed that it was very harmful to our health, and so we had to abandon it. Lunch, which is at 3 o’clock, costs 4 shillings. We thought we could manage on 3 shillings and tried 4 different caterers, but it wasn’t possible. In the evening we can’t get a plain soup for less than 8 pence and can’t get a little potted veal for under a shilling. A chicken costs 2 shillings. I’ve already told you that 12
pence equals a shilling
. Not
to mention sugar, tea, milk, bread etc., coal – wood isn’t used – and candles and night lights: for instead of oil people burn homemade candles that have a wooden wick. Nor shall I speak of the powder, pomade etc. and the many other minor household expenses: still less shall I speak of clothes and the weekly
laundry bill
which, by the time you’ve added the silk stockings, is no small item. – –If you tot all this up – and I’m sure I’ve not included everything – you’ll find that our expenses are astonishing. And to this you have to add the unavoidable expense of entertaining ourselves, for as soon as the weather is fine, you have to walk or drive out of the city and enjoy the fresh air if you want to remain healthy. You then see many 100s of people walking to and fro in St James’s Park or in Green Park or in Hyde Park. If you want to go to Chelsea, Ranelagh, Mary-le-Bone or Vauxhall, that’s another guinea; and no matter how thrifty you may be, you can always reckon on 3 guineas a month for such expenses. I’m not including the cabs and
carosses de remise
as I need them less frequently than in Paris, first, because the pavements are good, while the roads are wretched, so that people would rather walk than run the risk of breaking a couple of ribs; and, secondly, I’m living in a part of Westminster; in other words, I’m close to the aristocracy. But we often have to take a coach. A cab costs a shilling or even 15 or 18 pence for a single short journey. A
carosse de remise
or hired coach for just half a day comes to 15 or 16 shillings, including the tip. My dearest Frau Hagenauer, what do you think a servant girl earns in a year in a tavern, a merchant’s house or any other house where there’s a lot to do? – –
10 guineas, even 12 guineas
. NB: without the tips that are very much in vogue here. The usual wages in an ordinary household are 5 or 6 guineas; a household servant or lackey etc. never earns less than a guinea a week, including his clothing and tips. But he has to provide his own board. All journeymen have to provide their own board and lodging and report for duty on time in the morning. A wigmaker’s apprentice, for example, is normally paid 2 shillings a day and has to be at work at 6 o’clock. There are even some who earn 3 shillings. Most good workers get a guinea a week. A goldsmith doesn’t start work until 9 and goes home at 6 etc. You’ll be able to tell from these few facts what London is like. – – Now let
me say something
about Ranelagh and Vauxhal
.
¹
– – These are 2 pleasure gardens unlike anything else in the world: it would be impossible to describe them adequately. But in due course I shall – God willing – show you some copper engravings not only of these places but of many other things both in Paris and London. You can then have a fuller explanation of them. I’ve left a number of copper engravings in Paris that are worth 2 louis d’or. I only regret that I can’t tell you about it all now, but it’s simply not possible, for I haven’t come to England for a few thousand florins. If Almighty God keeps us in good health and doesn’t withdraw His divine blessing, which He has so graciously granted us, I hope to be able to send a few 100 guineas from here to Salzburg. And it will be no bad thing if there’s someone at the Salzburg court who can speak English: you never know when it may be useful. Ranelagh Gardens isn’t big, but it’s attractive and is illuminated every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Within it is an amazingly large rotunda that you enter at ground level and that’s lit by an incredible number of large chandeliers, lamps and wall-lights. The orchestra is arranged in tiers on one side, with an organ at the top. The music lasts 3 hours, from 7 till 10: then quartets are played on hunting horn, clarinets and bassoon for an hour or more, in other words, until 11 or 12 o’clock. In the middle is a large stove where a fire is lit if it’s cold, as these gardens are open in March or April; and most of the entertainments take place in this hall. Around the stove are lots of tables, and along the walls of the whole hall are nothing but niches or a kind of alcove or small chapel, in each of which is a table and from them you go up a flight of steps to a similar number of boxes, just as in a playhouse, with a similar number of tables. On each table there is everything necessary for a drink of coffee or tea. On entering the gardens you pay 2½ shillings. For this, you get coffee, tea, bread and butter – as much as you can eat and drink. Here there is room to walk in addition to the space in
the middle, with 2 to 3 or even 4500 people walking round and round and constantly meeting each other. Partly in order to make it easier on the feet and partly to reduce the noise of walking, the floor is entirely covered in a finely woven mat or carpet of straw. There is space for at least 6000 people in the gardens and hall. The hall itself holds 3000 people comfortably. Each servant or attendant has a badge on his breast with the numbers of the box or chapel that he has to serve. Here all men are equal, and no lord will allow anyone to stand before him bare headed: in return for their money, all are equal.
Vauxhall
is every day. Ranelagh will soon stop because as soon as it gets very hot everyone hurries off to Vauxhall. On Friday 29 June – the Feast of St Peter and St Paul – there will be a concert or benefit at Ranelagh for a newly established
Hospital de femmes en couche
,
²
as a result everyone must pay 5 shillings to get in. I have arranged for Wolfgang to play a concerto on the organ and in that way to perform the action of an English patriot who, as far as he can, seeks to further the usefulness of this hospital, which has been built
pro bono publico
.
³
This, you see, is a way of winning the love of this quite exceptional nation.

Vauxhall
amazed me and is impossible to describe. I imagined the Elysian Fields. Just picture to yourself an uncommonly large garden with all manner of tree-lined avenues, all of which are lit as in broad daylight by many 1000s of lamps, all enclosed within the most beautiful glass. In the middle is a kind of tall, open summerhouse, in which can be heard an organ and a full orchestra, with trumpets and timpani and all the other instruments. On every side and in every corner there are tables laid for supper, then certain – NB – regularly designed structures like theatre boxes with tables; a large hall that is very beautiful, with an organ and choir; the lighting at the end of the avenues enchantingly arranged like pyramids and arches, so that I did not know which way to look next. Just imagine how astonished my wife was. Of our many good friends, we both wished that Frau von Robinig and Frau Hagenauer could have been with us, something
we wish on frequent occasions. Here I must speak of a completely different matter and tell you of lace, ribbons, taffeta, cloaks, neckties, bonnets, tippets, pearls, all manner of jewellery and especially perse,
⁴
which we see every day worn by English women and in the shops. More on this on another occasion, suffice it for now to say that the ribbons, taffeta and perse surpass their French equivalents and are not even imported to our parts of Germany: it’s called East Indian perse. But to return to Vauxhall. Here people pay only
one shilling
: and for this shilling you have the pleasure of seeing many 1000s of people and the most beautifully lit gardens and of hearing beautiful music. When I was there, more than 6000 people were there.
1 shilling
isn’t much, but although you know very well that you can get in for a shilling, you don’t know how much you’ll get out with. Though you may be firmly resolved not to spend any money, you could hardly be more wrong. You wander around; you grow tired; you sit down; finally you order a bottle of wine, perhaps a few biscuits to go with it, that already costs you 4 or 5 shillings, finally you see a couple of chickens carried past, you call them over; they arrive; and so you see your guineas coaxed from your pocket. To anyone who cannot imagine what the light from several 1000 lights is like, I can only say that
in a single glass that represents one light
, there are always 2 lamps, and that in many of them there are 3 or 4 lamps. This is something that you couldn’t find anywhere else in the world but here because neither
private individuals alone
nor
the aristocracy alone
are in a position to
incur such expenses on a daily basis
, whereas nowhere are the aristocracy and the common man as united as they are here; as a result, such a costly enterprise can be sustained only in England. My fingers are now tired. I send my regards to the whole of Salzburg: I commend my wife to you, together with Nannerl and Wolfgang, who often thinks of Salzburg. I am your old friend

Is poor Herr Zugseisen
⁵
no better?

PS: On the 18th – it was noon, i.e., 2 in the afternoon – there was an amazing thunderstorm that, among other things, struck a church tower in the part of the city not far from the Thames, toppling a whole block of stone. It was like the one that stuck the tower and church at Mülln that time.

It also passed along the clock wire. 2 milords told me recently that in China a wire runs down into the earth from each house and that the effect is always that the thunder attaches itself to the wire and travels down into the earth without damaging the houses.
⁶

The Mozarts remained in London for fifteen months altogether. The summer of 1764 was spent partly in Chelsea, where Leopold recovered from a serious illness, the family was at court again on 25 October, and toward the end of the year Leopold had Wolfgang’s sonatas K10–15 published with a dedication to Queen Charlotte. The children gave public concerts on 21 February 1765 at the Haymarket Theatre and on 13 May 1765 at Hickford’s Great Room in Brewer Street. By July the family had moved to the downmarket Swan and Harp Tavern in Cornhill, where the children were available for daily performances between 12 and 3 o’clock. In addition to the sonatas, Wolfgang also composed his first symphonies (K16, 19, and possibly 19a) and the motet
God is our Refuge
K20 while in London. The family departed for the Netherlands on 24 July 1765, despite Leopold’s earlier resolution not to go there. Their journey took them to Dover, Calais, Dunkirk, Lille, Ghent, Antwerp and Rotterdam before arriving in The Hague on 10 September.

Monsieur!

You are now receiving a letter from the Haag; but not the Haag near Munich, nor the Haag near Lambach in Austria. No! From Den Haag in Holland. You’re bound to find this very surprising, not least because you may have hoped, even if you did not believe it, that we were not so far away but already closer. We would in fact have been, if not near you, at least already out of Holland if we had not been held back for 4 weeks by an indisposition that affected first my Wolfgang, then me myself in Lille. But first you must hear all about the chance occurrence that brought us to Holland, as I had never intended to go to Holland, but, rather, to Milan and back home again via Venice. The Dutch envoy in London repeatedly urged us to visit the Prince of Orange
¹
in The Hague. But I let this go in at one ear and out at the other. We prepared for our departure, and so little did I think of going to Holland that I sent
all our furs
and other things in a trunk to Paris. In the event we actually left London on 24 July and spent a day in Canterbury, before staying until the end of the month on the estates of an English gentleman
²
in order to see the horse racing. On the very day of our departure the Dutch envoy drove to our lodgings and discovered that we had gone to Canterbury for the races, after which we would be leaving England. He was with us in a trice and begged me to go to The Hague, saying that the Princess of Weilburg
³
– the sister of the Prince of Orange – was extraordinarily anxious to see this child, about whom she had heard and read so much. In a word, he and everyone else had so much to say on the subject, and the proposal was so attractive that I had to decide to