Note D — Chapter XV
Reading edition
When writing this letter Beethoven could have had no prevision that in this aboriginal North America, in a little village called Natick, there was then living a five-year-old boy, answering to the name of Alexander W. Thayer, who was eventually to furnish a biography of the master, so painstaking, exact and voluminous, that it is unique in its class. The Beethoven biography was Thayer's life-work, to which he gladly sacrificed his means as well, and was then only brought down to the year 1816. Thayer's name will always be associated with that of Beethoven, it is such a record-making work. It is published only in German at this writing (1904), but an English translation is promised on completion of the second edition, one volume of which has appeared in 1902. Mr. Thayer died in 1897.