he words of Pauline
D. Townsend, in her biography of Haydn, when she says of Mrs. Schroeter
that she was "an attractive, although, according to modern taste, a
somewhat vulgar woman, of over sixty years of age, and there is no
disguising the fact that she made violent love to Haydn. Her letters to
Haydn are full of tenderness and in questionable taste; his to her have
not been preserved, but we can have little doubt that they were warmer
in tone than they would have been had not the Channel rolled between him
and Frau Haydn in Vienna." We know how little Frau Haydn had had to do
with Haydn's life in his own town. You may judge for yourself as to the
charge of "vulgarity."

The existence of Mrs. Schroeter's veritable Love Letters of an
Englishwoman was known for many years, and Pohl in his book on "Mozart
und Haydn in London" quoted from them. But for their complete
publication in the original English, we are indebted to Mr. Krehbiel's
"Music and Manners in the Classical Period." This captivating work
contains also a note-book which Haydn kept in London; it is filled with
amusing blunders in English and vivid pictures of London life of the
time, pictures as delectable in their way as the immortal garrulity of
Pepys.

I cannot do better than let these letters speak for themselves through
such quotations as I have room to make. There are twenty-two of them in
all, in Mr. Krehbiel's book. The abbreviations are curious and explain
themselves. M.L. is "my love," D.L. is "dear love," M.D. is "my dear,"
and M. Dst. is its superlative. The abbreviations were possibly due to
the fact that the letters exist only in Haydn's own handwriting, copied
into his note-book without attention to their proper order. Or they may
have been simply the amorous shorthand of that day.

Two of them are signed R.S. and this leads me to believe that Mrs.
Schroeter's first name began with R., though we know neither that nor
her maiden name. In the first letter Mrs. Schroeter says that she
encloses him "the words of the song you desire." This letter is dated
February 8th. In his note-book there is an entry on February 13, 1792,
and just preceding it a little Italian poem in which I have been pleased
to see what was possibly this very song, its first lines being
suggestively like the first line of Mrs. Schroeter's letter.

"Io vi mando questo foglio
Dalle lagrime rigato,
Sotto scritto dal cordoglio
Dai pensieri sigillato
Testimento del