ed him of the two daughters
of a Viennese wig-maker named Keller. Keller had frequently been kind to
Haydn, and the younger daughter seems to have inspired him with an
ardent love, but she took the veil. Elise Polko has worked up an
elaborate fiction on this affair with her usual saccharinity. When the
convent closed the younger Keller from the world, her father ingeniously
suggested to Haydn that he might marry the elder sister.

As Louis Nohl says, "Whatever may have been the reason, gratitude,
ignorance, helplessness in practical matters, or wish to have a wife at
once--whatever may have been the motive, he married, and sorely
suffered for it."

Anna Keller was older than Haydn, and the family religiousness that led
the younger daughter to enter the convent, led Anna to contribute more
of money to the Church, of food and society to the churchmen, and of her
husband's compositions to the choir, than even so pious a Catholic as
Haydn could afford or endure.

An account of the married life of these two is given by Haydn's friend
Carpani, which incidentally brings up a bit of literary thievery of
unusual quaintness. Carpani wrote his "Le Haydine" in the form of
letters from Vienna; they were published in Milan. Some time after one
Marie Henri Beyle published in Paris what purported to be an original
series of "Letters written from Vienna." He published these under the
pen name of L.A.C. Bombet. Carpani exposed the theft, but a little later
the imperturbable Beyle published a second edition of his work under the
name De Stendhal. An English translation from the French work is
commonly seen, though never with credit to Carpani. Carpani, in his
account of the home life of the Haydns, says they were happy for a
honeymoon.

* * * * *

"But soon the caprices of Mrs. Anna turned the knot to a chain, the
bliss to torment, and affairs went so far that, after suffering many
years, this new Socrates ended by separating from his Xantippe. Mrs.
Anna was not pretty, nor yet ugly. Her manners were immaculate, but she
had a wooden head, and when she had fixed on a caprice, there was no way
to change it. The woman loved her husband but was not congenial. An
excess of religious piety badly directed came to disturb this happy
harmony. Mrs. Anna wanted the house always full of priests, to whom she
furnished good dinners, suppers, and luncheons. Haydn was a bit
economical; but rather for cause than desire