THE PHYSICAL BEETHOVEN 269 



gray and white hair encircling it in the most picturesque disorder, that 

 square lion's nose, that broad chin, that noble and soft mouth ; . . . his 

 thick-set Cyclopean figure told of a powerful frame." 



His voice varied. " When quite himself it was light in tone, and 

 singularly affecting ; but when forced, as it so often was, on occasions of 

 anger and temper, it became very rough and far from sympathetic." 



In his later years, depressed by sickness or wrapped in his music, he 

 grew careless as to his personal appearance, and even one of his ad- 

 mirers — the Countess Gallenberg — noticed that " he was meanly dressed, 

 and very ugly to look at, but full of nobility and fine feeling and highly 

 cultivated." 



He was very regular about early rising, work and exercise, but 

 beyond this he was singularly erratic in his habits. He was up with the 

 sun, summer and winter, and worked from breakfast to dinner at two 

 or three p. m. Dinner over, he immediately went, rain or shine, hot or 

 cold, for his half walk, half run, into the country, or, at Vienna, about 

 the ramparts. In his solitary life " Nature became to him a mother, 

 sister and sweetheart." Neate said that he " never met any one who so 

 delighted in nature or so thoroughly enjoyed flowers or clouds or any 

 other natural object." " He was out of doors for hours together, 

 wandering in the woods or sitting in the fork of a favorite tree." To 

 Beethoven " every tree seemed Holy, Holy " ; he exclaims : " No one loves 

 the country better than I do," and " Oh ! the charm of the woods, — who 

 can express it?" It was in communion with nature in fields and woods 

 that his inspiration flowed most freely into his sketch books. He worked 

 as he walked: "As the bee gathers honey from the flowers of the 

 meadows, so Beethoven often collected his most sublime ideas while 

 roaming about in the open fields." He seldom composed in the after- 

 noon or evening. 



Schindler tells us that " the use of the bath was as much a necessity 

 to Beethoven as to a Turk, and he was in the habit of making frequent 

 ablutions. When it happened that he did not walk out of doors to col- 

 lect his ideas, he would not infrequently, in a fit of the most complete 

 abstraction, go to his wash hand-basin and pour several jugs of water on 

 his hands, all the while humming and roaring, for sing he could not. 

 . . . Then he would seat himself at his table and write ; and afterwards 

 get up again to the wash basin, and dabble and hum as before." On 

 more than one occasion the water went through the floor and trickled 

 from the ceiling below, with the consequence that the master was forced 

 to move to other quarters. 



Like most great men, the matter of food and eating was of little 

 moment to Beethoven. It was sufficient for him if he derived from his 

 meals ample energy for his work. "Wherefore so many dishes?" he 

 exclaimed on one occasion. " Man stands but little above other animals 



