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Reference has already been made to the diary or note-book kept by
Haydn during his visit. The original manuscript of this curious
document came into the hands of his friend, Joseph Weigl, whose
father had been 'cellist to Prince Esterhazy. A similar diary was
kept during the second visit, but this was lost; and indeed the
first note-book narrowly escaped destruction at the hands of a
careless domestic. Haydn's autograph was at one time in the
possession of Dr Pohl. A copy of it made by A. W. Thayer, the
biographer of Beethoven, in 1862, became, as previously stated,
the property of Mr Krehbiel, who has printed the entries, with
running comment, in his "Music and Manners in the Classical
Period" (London, 1898). Mr Krehbiel rightly describes some of
the entries as mere "vague mnemonic hints," and adds that one
entry which descants in epigrammatic fashion on the comparative
morals of the women of France, Holland and England is unfit for
publication. Looking over the diary, it is instructive to observe
how little reference is made to music. One or two of the entries
are plainly memoranda of purchases to be made for friends. There
is one note about the National Debt of England, another about the
trial of Warren Hastings. London, we learn, has 4000 carts for
cleaning the streets, and consumes annually 800,000 cartloads of
coals. That scandalous book, the Memoirs of Mrs Billington,
which had just been published, forms the subject of a long entry.
"It is said that her [Mrs Billington's] character is very
faulty, but nevertheless she is a great genius, and all the women
hate her because she is so beautiful."
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