Mozart: The Man Revealed Page 5

  Only one personage seemed to be less than entirely welcoming. Also living in apartments in Versailles was the most notorious woman in France, Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, otherwise known as Madame de Pompadour, mistress of the king.

  Although widely unpopular in France for the influence she had on the king, Madame de Pompadour was a generous patron of the arts, and something of a musician herself. She was competent on the harpsichord. It was therefore deemed appropriate for Leopold Mozart to take his young son to meet her.

  Wolfgang, as expected, thrilled La Pompadour with his playing. When he finished, she bent to help him down from the piano stool. He, expecting a warm embrace, flung his arms round her neck and reached forward to kiss her. Shocked and somewhat horrified, she pulled her head back to avoid the kiss. Pleasantries were exchanged, and the Mozarts departed.

  Wolfgang, genuinely shocked and disappointed at the rebuff, reminded his father of what had happened at court in Vienna. ‘Who does she think she is, not wanting to kiss me? Why, the Empress herself kissed me!’ In reporting this to Salzburg, Leopold added his own critique of the royal mistress: ‘Handsome and well proportioned, but extremely haughty.’

  It was time to leave Paris, but once more fate intervened. Wolfgang fell ill, and quite seriously. He had a high fever, severe inflammation of the throat, and brought up phlegm in such quantities that he appeared to be in danger of choking. Nannerl too fell ill, but not so severely.

  Leopold put it down to poor hygiene. The family, used to fresh-water fish from the lakes of Germany, stared with disgust at the fish on Paris stalls. They boiled all their food and water. But still they had all been afflicted with diarrhoea.

  The children recovered after rest and recuperation, and on 10 April 1764 they left Paris on the next leg of their tour. Ahead of them, the biggest prize of all: London.

  * Leopold used the Latin phrase, stante pede.

  * Pianists, along with organists, lament to this day that they are unable to take their instrument with them, and so practice time on the road is severely limited.

  * Equivalent to present-day Belgium and Luxembourg.

  If Paris was a thriving bustling city and the musical capital of Europe, London put it completely in the shade. The English capital was, quite simply, the largest and richest city in the world. Great Britain had recently emerged victorious from the Seven Years War, its navy supreme, and acquired new territory overseas, largely at the expense of France.

  A new emerging middle class saw opportunities for making money. London became the thriving hub, as people from around the country, and from abroad, flocked to the city in the hope of making their fortune.

  In the all-important world of music too, Paris could not compete with London. There were more music publishers in London than in Paris, and London was the first city in Europe to have purpose-built concert halls. There was a flourishing concert life in London, both in public and private.

  When Leopold had planned the tour, it had not been his intention to travel as far as London, but having been received with such acclaim in Paris – by the king and queen, no less – it would have been unthinkable to turn round now and head back home.

  As always word had travelled ahead of him. The French court had written to its ambassador in London. At Versailles Wolfgang had played for the Duke of Bedford, a senior British aristocrat who was in Paris to negotiate peace terms with the French after the war. He too encouraged Leopold to take his family to London, and sent word to the court there.

  The Mozarts, it seemed, wherever they went, moved in the highest social circles, thanks to the remarkable talents of the two children, Wolfgang in particular.

  Leopold has left a compelling account of the journey, particularly the Channel crossing. I shall relate the details in full, as a timely reminder that superb musician though Leopold might be, his daughter a brilliant one, and his son a genius unlike any before, still they were not immune from the problems that might beset any other traveller.

  In the first place, they had too much luggage. The family had to pare down to the essentials. This was not easy, since it was impossible to gauge how long they might remain in London. It might be days, or it might be weeks. In the event they left a lot of their belongings in the care of their Pa-risian banker. That would mean, whether they wanted it or not, the return trip would have to take them back through Paris.

  Secondly, their carriage, which had undergone repairs more than once, would have to be left behind at Calais. That meant more expense on the other side of the Channel.

  As before, though, Leopold – much as he might complain about costs – was reluctant to stint on travel. He understood that his children had to be kept as comfortable as possible if they were to perform to their best, all the more so after their most recent bout of ill health.

  And so he hired a second servant for the crossing, a man with experience of what was involved. He was an Italian by the name of Porta, and he was to prove a wise investment.

  Porta advised Leopold to hire a boat that would take extra passengers, so as to cut down on expense. He settled on a boat that would take fourteen, at a cost of five louis d’or. Four extra passengers meant a saving of two louis d’or.

  The Mozarts had never seen the sea before. One can only begin to imagine the children’s excitement, and perhaps the trepidation of their parents. Nannerl wrote in her diary of the wonder of watching the tide ebb and flow against the shingle.

  The actual crossing was thoroughly uncomfortable. There were too many people on board for a start, so that privacy was almost impossible. Every member of the Mozart family was seasick. Leopold, with self-mocking humour, wrote that the Mozart family made a sizeable liquid contribution to the Channel – at least saving money on emetics.

  On arrival outside Dover harbour, Porta helped them in the tricky manoeuvre of transferring, along with their luggage, to a smaller boat to take them ashore. Once on the quayside they were instantly surrounded by thirty or forty porters jostling to carry their luggage, touching their forelocks or caps, in a cacophony of ‘your most obedient servant’.

  Porta, with a smattering of English, managed to see most of them off, but one look at the exhausted travellers told the men they would be going nowhere that night, and before they knew it their bags were being carried off to the nearest hotel – or at least the one from which the porters could be sure of a commission.

  Leopold probably gave in gracefully. The Mozarts were in no fit state to continue their journey. But it allowed him his customary moan. ‘Whoever has too much money need only undertake a journey from Paris to London,’ he wrote, ‘and his purse will certainly be lightened.’

  “The Mozarts,, wherever they went, moved in the highest social circles, thanks to the remarkable talents of the two children.”

  Leopold has left us no details of the journey from Dover to London, but we know the family arrived in the capital on 23 April 1764, almost two weeks after leaving Paris. It had been a long and gruelling journey, particularly coming so soon after the children’s illnesses, Wolfgang’s having been especially draining. It must certainly have made it easier for Leopold to have their mother to look after them – although again not a word in his letters about her – but he must have wondered if Wolfgang would be physically up to what lay ahead.

  The family stayed for their first night in London at the White Bear hotel in Piccadilly, which was a main gathering place for travellers arriving from Continental Europe. Probably with Porta’s help, they swiftly found lodgings – three small rooms – above a barber’s shop in Cecil Court, just off St Martin’s Lane.

  Things moved swiftly, possibly too swiftly for Leopold’s liking after such an arduous journey. The high-level recommendations from Paris had found their mark. Added to this Leopold had, once again, impressive letters of commendation. Probably the clinching factor was the fact that the Mozarts were German, and on the throne was a Hanoverian, albeit the first to be born in London and have English as a first language. George’s wi
fe, Queen Charlotte, was German born and a native German speaker.

  A mere four days after arriving in London, probably not yet fully recovered from their travels, the Mozarts were summoned to Buckingham House to perform before King George III and Queen Charlotte.

  Unlike some high-born personages, rulers even, for whom the Mozart children had played, here they could be sure of an appreciative reception. Music had played an important role at the Hanoverian court since the accession of George I. George Frideric Handel, who had died only five years earlier, and whose achievements were well known to Leopold Mozart, had been closely associated with the London court.

  George III himself delighted in his own personal band, enjoying having to guess which piece they were playing; usually it was by Handel. The king played violin and flute to a high level, and was competent at the harpsichord. Queen Charlotte played the harpsichord ‘quite well, for a queen’, as Joseph Haydn was later to observe rather drily.

  Leopold has left us no detail of exactly how the children performed at Buckingham House. We can assume Nannerl played with her usual skill, and that Wolfgang carried out his familiar tricks of guessing notes accurately, playing difficult music by sight, and his tour de force of playing on a covered keyboard.

  We do know that the Mozarts were received in the most welcoming manner by the royal couple. ‘Their unpretentious manner and friendly ways made one forget that we were with the King and Queen of England,’ Leop-old wrote home. ‘At all courts we have been courteously received, but here our welcome surpassed all others.’

  He added that fully a week later he and the family were walking in St James’s Park, dressed in different, more casual, clothes. ‘The King and Queen rode by, recognised us, greeted us, and what is more the King opened the window, saluting us cheerfully, especially our Master Wolfgang, nodding his head and waving his hand.’

  It is a beguiling image, the king of England smiling, nodding, and waving to an eight-year-old boy.

  Proof of how well the Mozart children had performed came when they were summoned to return to Buckingham House three weeks later. This time princes joined the king and queen to marvel at the extraordinary musical talent on display.

  Leopold, always ready to see the downside, lamented that he was paid only 24 guineas for the first appearance, but that at least it had been paid immediately. His mood was improved by the unexpected second invitation, and the payment of a further 24 guineas.

  From here things seemed to go rather unexpectedly downhill. Leopold made bookings for Wolfgang to perform, but there was little interest. Unaware of the habits of the English aristocracy, Leopold did not know that come May anyone with means and leisure on their hands left London for the country.

  So fulsome had been his announcements, and so thin the interest, he was forced to announce postponements and then cancellations due to Wolfgang’s ill health. It was almost certainly not true.

  He was alerted to the fact that the concert-going aristocracy would need to be back in town by 4 June, the king’s birthday. In the meantime, as they had in other towns and cities, the Mozarts became tourists.

  Leopold wrote home amusingly about Londoners and their city. In the first place the family went shopping for clothes. Why? Because they had bought new outfits in Paris and thus resembled a French family. They soon realised this was a mistake. Street urchins followed them, teasing and mocking them, and shouting, ‘Bugger the French!’

  Leopold wrote that it was best to keep quiet and act as if they didn’t hear anything. Even better, he took the family shopping for a more English look. This his wife and daughter achieved – a rare mention here of Anna Maria in a letter – by wearing a hat wherever they went. ‘No woman crosses the street without a hat on her head’, Leopold wrote.

  London, to Leopold’s observant – and critical – eye, was ‘nothing but a masquerade’, and it could be a surprising one at that. The royal palaces, for instance, were much less ostentatious than similar buildings in Paris and Vienna. They were unobtrusive, almost anonymous, and ‘rather middle-class, certainly not royal’.

  The same was true of the aristocratic ladies. It is difficult, he wrote, ‘to distinguish a tailor’s or a shoemaker’s wife from a Mylady. Except that the first two are much of the time better turned out than the last.’ He added that if a ‘Mylady’ had no reason to ‘display herself’, then she did not do so.

  “Every Body will be astonished to hear a Child of such tender Age playing the Harpsichord in such a Perfection.”

  Leopold Mozart promoting his son.

  Certainly London had its aristocracy, not to mention royalty, but for me Leopold’s description came as a complete surprise. Were these high-born dukes and duchesses really that much less ostentatious than their Continental counterparts? And if so, might that be one of the underlying reasons the revolutions and upheavals to sweep across Europe never took root on the English side of the Channel?

  Not that London was without its political protests, and Leopold witnessed them. He watched astounded as thousands of marchers, ‘honest people who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow’, were allowed to demonstrate for better working conditions, something that would have been utterly unthinkable in Vienna.

  Leopold became quite enamoured of London and the English. He might have bemoaned the state of the roads, riddled with potholes – ‘Better to walk than run, because if you run you risk falling and breaking a couple of ribs’ – but he read (or claimed to have read) two volumes on the history of London. He also said he picked up the English language really quickly, and it is true that he continued to study it when he returned home to Salzburg.

  As for the sights, he was as impressed as anybody. ‘When one stands on London Bridge and contemplates the host of ships always lying in the Thames, the amazing multitude of masts makes one seem to behold a thick forest ahead.’

  Leopold would not be Leopold, though, without words of criticism. Breakfast of tea with milk and buttered toast was the sort of thing the lowliest soldiers in the imperial army would eat. It was not fit food for the Mozarts, though he rather liked the custom of keeping a kettle on the boil to serve visitors tea with bread and butter later in the day.

  It was impossible, too, to escape street hawkers, determined to relieve you of your money. ‘One holds out a pot of flowers, another toothpicks made of quill, another copper engravings, another sulphur matches, another sewing thread, another ribbons of various colours.’

  Worst of all, beggars would sing in the street, and they would be the commonest songs doing the rounds, ‘which one hears with disgust hour after hour’. Not ideal for a true musician’s sensibilities.

  Leopold confessed both he and Anna Maria (another rare inclusion) were utterly spellbound by the largest pleasure park in London, Vauxhall Gardens* – like the Elysian Fields, with night transformed into day by no fewer than a thousand lamps, floodlit pyramids and arches, pavilions, and a fine concert hall. People had to pay no more than a shilling for entrance, and this son of a class-conscious empire again marvelled at how noblemen and commoners mixed happily.

  There was, naturally, a hitch and it was, naturally, financial. You may resolve firmly not to waste money, Leopold wrote, but it is a futile hope. You walk and walk, you become tired, you sit down, you allow yourself a bottle of wine, perhaps with some biscuits, and that’s four or five shillings gone. Still hungry, you see a few roasted chickens being carried past, you beckon, they come over. ‘Thus are guineas lured from one’s purse.’

  Once again it is a captivating image, the Mozart family enjoying themselves in Vauxhall Gardens, eating, drinking, perhaps listening to music, looking just like any other family.

  With the nobility back in town, it was time to earn some money. Wolfgang and Nannerl made their public London debut on 5 June 1764. Leopold had not undersold the concert:

  Miss Mozart of eleven and Master Mozart of seven Years of Age, Prodigies of Nature, taking the opportunity of representing to the Public the greatest Prodigy
that Europe or that Human Nature has to boast of. Every Body will be astonished to hear a Child of such tender Age playing the Harpsichord in such a Perfection – it surmounts all Fantastic and Imagination [sic], and it is hard to express which is more astonishing, his Execution upon the Harpsichord playing at Sight, or his own Composition.

  Knowing what we know today, it is hard to argue with Leopold or accuse him of exaggeration. Except in one respect. Nannerl was twelve years of age, Wolfgang eight.†

  The concert, in the Great Room in Spring Garden near St James’s Park, was a triumph. Leopold related, probably with slight overstatement, that ‘not only all the ambassadors, but the principal families in England, attended’.

  The applause, he reported, was tumultuous, and he was delighted to confess himself shocked that after the costs of renting the hall, two harpsichords, other musicians, music stands and candles, were deducted, he took in 100 guineas within three hours.

  More concerts followed, more success, more money coming in. London had taken the Mozarts to its heart. But here is where Leopold made something of a miscalculation. He showed he had not understood the English character quite as well as he believed he had.

  In short he oversold his children. He put them on daily view to anyone who might care to come and witness their talents. He advertised that the family would be at home ‘Every Day in the Week from Twelve to Two o’clock’ for the children to be put to the test.

  Leopold was acquiring a reputation for having his children perform on any occasion that might bring a financial return. This was considered to be in somewhat poor taste and, together with a corresponding lack of exclusivity, led to a falling off of private engagements.

  There was one more invitation, the third, to perform before the royal couple at Buckingham House, but it was to be the last, despite the Mozart family remaining in London for a further nine months.