Note 120 — Chapter XXI

The Editor of this English edition of Thayer’s “Life of Beethoven” is unwilling to admit that the author’s argument against the Countess Guicciardi as the lady to whom the famous love-letter which is the basis of the episode referred to by the author, has been disproved; or that the burden of proof is against Thayer’s theory (never put forward as a demonstrated fact, but rather as what the scientists call a “working hypothesis”) that the object of his love at the time the letter was written was the Countess Therese Brunswick (or Brunsvik, as the Hungarian branch of the family wrote the name). The question is one of great difficulty, however, and the Editor has thought it wise, expedient and only fair to the memory of Mr. Thayer, to bring together the disjecta membra of his argument as they are to be found in the body of Vol. II and the body and Appendices of Vol. III of the original German edition, in a continuous chapter, and then to add, in the form of a comprehensive postscript, an abstract of the opinion of others and some suggestions of his own touching the woman who, though not yet definitively identified, wears the halo which streams from the title which Beethoven bestowed upon her—his “Immortal Beloved.” It will be observed that the question turns largely on an adjustment of dates—a necessary procedure in other affairs of Beethoven’s besides those of his heart.