Cranioklepty (5 page)

Haydn was of course a great asset in one's corner. With the court's cultural and moral investment in symphonic music, the composer had become something like a saint in Vienna. E. T. A. Hoffman is one of many writers who singled Haydn out as the most romantic of artists in the most romantic of arts: “His symphonies lead us into a boundless, green glade amid a lively, jovial throng of happy people,” Hoffman wrote. “Young men and women swing past in round dances, and laughing children, eavesdropping behind trees and rose bushes, throw flowers teasingly at one another.”
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But even such a saint did not succeed on Rosenbaum's behalf. On numerous occasions Haydn tried to convince the prince not to listen to the vicious rumors circulating about Rosenbaum and to persuade him of the young man's worth. But to no avail.

For two years this courtship dragged on. Despite all the rumors and obstacles, Rosenbaum continued to court Therese, spending as much time as he could with her. A year after they first met he took her to Franz II's wonder cabinet. Rosenbaum noted in his diary, “There are so many pretty things that one could entertain oneself very interestingly for weeks.” One exhibit in particular stood out for him: “I especially liked Angelo Soliman who stands there stuffed, next to a Moorish girl of 8.”
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There was something captivating about Soliman, this taxidermied man in a room of frozen nature. He had lived beyond death, been brought
back from decay to defy time. It was an idea that would stay with Rosenbaum and grow in him in the years to come.

It's not entirely surprising that someone like Rosenbaum would be drawn to this stuffed man. Soliman's figure was special in part because the process of taxidermy was still in its infancy— it wouldn't come into high demand until later in the nineteenth century, when European colonialists needed a reliable way to transport hunting trophies and zoological specimens back home. In particular, very few taxidermists had found a way to stuff a human in a realistic manner. “All the efforts of man to restore the skin of his fellow creature to its natural form and beauty, have hitherto been fruitless,” Sarah Bowditch wrote in her taxidermy manual in 1820. “The trials which have been made have only produced mis-shapen hideous objects, and so unlike nature, that they have never found a place in our collections. We have only some parts of man, either dried or preserved in spirits of wine, sufficiently entire to be recognized.”
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Either she was unaware of Soliman or judged him to be one of those “mis-shapen hideous objects” because the lone exception that Bowditch mentioned is the work of Frederick Ruysch, who was well known for his exotic and groundbreaking preparations. A hundred years earlier Ruysch had found a way to preserve “wet” specimens using a mixture of mercury oxide, blue pigment, and clotted pig's blood, and in 1717 he sold his unique
specimens to Peter the Great, who built an elaborate wonder cabinet around them. Ruysch was so famous that in 1824 the poet Giacomo Leopardi composed an operetta about him titled
Dialogue between Frederick Ruysch and His Mummies
, in which Ruysch's specimens come to life for a single night to explain the mysteries of death. “What were we?” the mummies sing,

What was the bitter point called life?
Stupendous mystery is today
Life to our minds, and such
As to the minds of the living
Unknown death appears. As when living
From it death fled, now flees
From vital flame
Our naked nature
Not joyous but secure;
For to be happy
Is denied to mortals and denied the dead by Fate.
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Ruysch's mummies, Bowditch noted, were an exception, “and since the bony part of our body is the only one which we are able to preserve entire and in its natural position,” Bowditch recommended that the best way to preserve a human was by cleaning and displaying the skull.

R
OSENBAUM'S ATTEMPTS TO
gain permission to wed were stymied at every turn. Gradually his description of the city he loved gave way to bleakness. “No day can be lived to the end without there being something distressing about it,” he wrote after a particularly bitter row with Therese's mother. The day he turned twenty-eight years old he summed up his life thus far: “We torment and vex ourselves, and do not know why; we drag ourselves along in the chains of misery—to the grave.”
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Though he was constantly beset by depression, his love for Therese never wavered, and if anything he felt the most pain at having caused her so much grief. “May she become my wife soon,” he wrote at one point, “so that I may make recompense, through fidelity and love, for her having suffered so much.”
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At no point did he think of dropping his pursuit. His only choice was to persevere and hope that his fortunes would change. But the tensions continued to mount. The longer the courtship was prolonged, the more his loathing for her mother grew, as did his enmity for the prince.

By December 1799 Rosenbaum had grown increasingly impatient and, sensing that the time was right, finally brought the prince the marriage license for his signature. The prince took the document, ominously muttering that he would “attend to it.”
Rosenbaum was not sure what to make of this comment, but when he asked about it again three days later, on Christmas morning, the prince tore up the marriage proposal in front of him and, “with great hue and cry,” threw the shreds at Rosenbaum's feet, saying that he wanted to hear nothing more about marriage.
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It was a crushing blow, nearly devastating the young man, but it led to a moment of clarity. All this time the impediment had been the prince who held such power over him. Rosenbaum had worked for the Esterhazy family for ten years, but if he were free of the prince's control, there would be nothing left to stand in the way of his marriage—the prince had no control over the lives of private citizens. Shortly after the Christmas incident, Rosenbaum raised that point with the prince, and on January 30 he received a curt letter that stated, “The supplicant's petition to marry is hereby dropped; he is free, however, to conclude the preparations already made by proceeding directly to marry, which step will have as a consequence his immediate dismissal from service.”
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It was not a great time to take such a risk. Since the heady days of the 1780s and '90s Vienna had become a different place, an apocalyptic city. Rosenbaum was giving up one of the few secure jobs to be had in an increasingly unstable Austria, risking financial ruin and ridicule not just for himself but for Therese as well. Should her mother's worst fears come to pass, one of the city's most promising sopranos and one of its most eligible
women would be doomed to folly and disgrace. But to Rosenbaum and Therese, their love was worth the chance. Rosenbaum resigned his post, and on June 11, 1800, he and Therese were finally married.

R
OSENBAUM AND HIS
new wife woke up from their private misery to find that the Vienna around them had changed. The city was under massive strain, keeping up a thin pretense of prosperity as dark clouds threatened to the west. The year they were married, Vienna celebrated the millennial anniversary of the coronation of Charlemagne, the symbolic founding of the Hapsburg Empire. “It would be an affront to the inhabitants of the Imperial capital,” read the proclamation posted everywhere in the city, “to doubt that patriots of all stations will be present at this so rare observance.”
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Meanwhile, a different sort of millennium was coming from France. The letters in the words “
l'empereur Bonaparte
,” as Pierre Bezukhov discovers in
War and Peace,
can be converted into numbers that add up to “666,” and it was Napoleon's apocalyptic army that bore down on Vienna the night of its grand celebration. On Christmas Day, exactly a year after the prince had torn up his marriage petition, Rosenbaum spent the day watching frantic defense preparations along the outer walls of the city and then went to the millennial celebration in the evening. “It was
quite full,” he noted, and Therese “sang with rare art . . . during the cantata people were talking of a defeat.”
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It was the inauspicious beginning of a dark decade for Vienna. The splendor and gleam that had typified the city only a few years before were gone, replaced by the endless threat of war, high unemployment, and out-of-control inflation. Bread riots broke out, and bakeries were ransacked; the imperial guard had to be called out on numerous occasions to brutally suppress popular uprisings. In 1807 a freak hurricane destroyed the famous Augustinian Church, rolling up its massive iron clock dial like a sheet of paper. And for several days afterward a comet with a long tail was visible in the night sky.

I
MPROBABLY, THROUGHOUT ALL
of this Rosenbaum and Therese prospered. Their marriage flourished—in part because of his business acumen, in part because of her talent and stardom, and not least because of their love for each other. For all her mother's fears, Therese was provided a comfortable middle-class life. The couple remained devoted to one another for the rest of their lives. But Rosenbaum never forgot the anguish the prince had put them through.

Haydn remained close to the young couple. Forty years their senior, he nonetheless visited and dined with them often, particularly in the few years immediately after their marriage. In 1801
they came to Eisenstadt for two weeks and saw Haydn nearly every day. He entertained them, showered Therese with compliments, drove them around in his carriage, and treated them to carousing dinners that lasted late into the night. As his health declined he saw them less, but in 1803 he steadfastly assured them both of his affection.

Despite this close connection among the three of them, Rosenbaum would always remain the odd man out: the greatest composer of his day, the most-sought-after soprano in Vienna, and the accountant. At dinner together they talked of Therese's art, of the reasons her voice was superior, and of how she might mentor other young singers. They talked of Haydn's new compositions, of the medal he had received from the Paris Opera. They did not spend much time talking about Rosenbaum's work.

During this time Rosenbaum began to develop another, more controversial interest. In the six years since he had first heard of Gall's theories, he had grown steadily more fascinated with the principles of phrenology. He began to spend more time with people like his childhood friend Johann Nepomuk Peter, who had a similar interest in studying the brain's machinations, and who liked to refer to the founder of phrenology by the diminutive nickname “Gallschen.” Together they discussed the latest discoveries, differences between Gall's system and that of his pupil Spurzheim, and the ways in which the Austrian penal system might be improved if phrenological reforms were instituted. This new science of the brain, both were convinced, was the way of progress and the future.

There was a great deal about this new science that would appeal to someone like Rosenbaum. He was essentially a man of numbers who worked in a world of quantifiable facts and known outcomes. He knew at all times what he was worth and kept meticulous records of what he was owed. He had gotten this far in life through analytic rationality. And yet the world he loved was one of ineffable beauty, spectacular excess, and musical genius.

According to Immanuel Kant, genius is something that can be identified but not defined: A genius is “a talent,” Kant wrote, “for producing that for which no definite rule can be given.” For Kant, the genius “does not know himself how he has come by his ideas; and he has not the power to devise the like at pleasure, or in accordance with a plan, [or] to communicate it to others in precepts that will enable them to produce similar products.”
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At the same time that Gall was working out his theories, Kant was explaining genius as an invisible force that drives the engine of progress, as a thing whose products can be seen but which itself remains elusive.

It was in this sense that phrenology—alone of all the sciences—might be useful, in giving one a tool for understanding genius. With phrenology, it seemed, one could map the unknown and invisible territories of the brain. And this was perhaps its most appealing aspect: Just as it could decode and explain pathology,
it could also reveal the truth about genius in a way that even the genius him- or herself could not. The discussion surrounding the physical location of genius in the brain and its manifestation on the skull became a recurrent source of debate. For phrenologists, the only true way to know for sure was through exact measurements of the actual heads.

It was the promise of understanding something as ineffable as creative genius that resonated most strongly with Rosenbaum. Even as he dutifully recorded in his diary exactly what Therese's performances earned her—how many people attended each performance, the admission prices, and her percentage—there was no way to put a price on a voice so high and trembling that it terrified the empress. He could gather every known fact on Haydn and weigh each available datum and still never understand why one's spirits soared almost to the point of terror when the chorus sang, “And there was light.”

It was phrenology, Rosenbaum came to understand, that could bridge these two worlds.

O
N
M
ARCH
27, 1808
, a tribute was held in Haydn's honor. The seventy-six-year-old composer at first did not think he was up to attending but in the end was cajoled into it. He donned his Paris medal, and servants carried him into the hall on an ornate armchair. To universal applause he was welcomed by the prince; his fellow composers Salieri and Beethoven knelt and kissed his hand. By the end of the first half of the concert, the strain was too
much and he had to leave. But he stood and bade his farewell to the musical society of Vienna, greatly moved.