! Here in Esterhaz no one asks me, Would you
like some chocolate, with milk or without? Will you take some coffee,
with or without cream? What can I offer you, my good Haydn? Will you
have vanille ice or pineapple?' If I had only a piece of good Parmesan
cheese, particularly in Lent, to enable me to swallow more easily the
black dumplings and puffs! I gave our porter this very day a commission
to send me a couple of pounds." Even amid the social pleasures and
excitements of London, where he was invited out six times a week and
had "four excellent dishes" at every dinner, he longs to be back in his
native land so that he may have "some good German soup."

Partial to Pretty Women

We read that in Austria he "never associated with any but the musicians,
his colleagues," a statement which cannot be strictly true. In London
he was, as we have seen, something of a "lion," but it is doubtful if he
enjoyed the conventional diversions of the beau monde. Yet he liked the
company of ladies, especially when they were personally attractive.
That he was never at a loss for a compliment may perhaps be taken as
explaining his frequent conquests, for, as he frankly said himself, the
pretty women "were at any rate not tempted by my beauty." Of children he
was passionately fond, a fact which lends additional melancholy to his
own unhappy and childless home life.

His Letters

He was not highly educated, and he does not seem to have taken much
interest in anything outside his own profession. This much may be
gathered from his correspondence, upon which it is not necessary to
comment at length. Mr Russell Lowell remarks that a letter which is not
mainly about the writer loses its prime flavour. Haydn's letters are
seldom "mainly about the writer." They help us very little in seeking to
get at what Newman called "the inside of things," though some, notably
those given at the end of this volume, embody valuable suggestions.
He habitually spoke in the broad dialect of his native place. He knew
Italian well and French a little, and he had enough Latin to enable him
to set the Church services. Of English he was almost entirely ignorant
until he came to London in 1791, when we hear of him walking the country
lanes with an English grammar in hand. There is an amusing story of a
dinner at Madame Mara's, at which he was present during his first visit.
Crossdill, the violoncellist, proposed to celebrate him with "three
times three." The suggestio