Russell, who saw him at the piano about the year 1825, says that when he wanted to play quietly the notes did not sound and that it was very moving to follow in silence the emotion animating him expressed in his face, and in the movements of his fingers. Buried in himself,[1] and separated from all mankind, his only consolation was in Nature. "She was his sole confident," says Theresa of Brunswick, "she was his refuge." Charles Neate, who knew him in 1815, says that he never saw anyone who loved flowers, clouds and nature so devotedly[2]; he seemed to live in them. No one on earth can love the country so much as I," wrote Beethoven. "I love a tree more than a man." When in Vienna he walked round the ramparts every day. In the country from daybreak till night he walked alone, without hat, in sunshine ог rain. Almighty God! In the woods I am happy, happy in the woods, where each tree speaks through Thee. O God, what splendour! In the forests, on the hills, it is the calm, the quiet, that helps me."
His unrestfulness of mind found some respite there.[3] He was harassed by financial cares. He
- ↑ See the admirable notes of Wagner on Beethoven's deafness (Beethoven, 1870).
- ↑ He loved animals and pitied them. The mother of the historian, von Frimmel, says that for a long while she had an involuntary dislike for Beethoven, because when she was a little girl he drove away with his handkerchief all the butterflies that she wanted to catch.
- ↑ He was always uncomfortable in his lodgings. In thirty-five years in Vienna, he changed his rooms thirty times.
