Johannes Brahms_ A Biography - Jan Swafford [380]
On March 24, Brahms wrote Joachim in England, “I’m going downhill; every word spoken or written is a strain.”48 Next day he dragged himself out to have lunch at the Millers’, with Mandyczewski and Richard Mühlfeld. At the end he did not want to leave, sighing, “Oh, let me stay a bit, it’s so beautiful here!” Next day, feeling deathly weak, he took to his bed under the picture of Bach, writing a note to stepmother Karoline: “Dear Mother, For the sake of variety I’ve lain down for awhile, so can’t write easily. But don’t be afraid: nothing has changed, and all I need is patience as usual. From the heart, your Johs.” It is the only time on record since childhood that Brahms was bedridden. Next day he wrote a final note, to Ignaz Brüll saying he would not be able to make a dinner invitation set for the following day.
He would not leave the house again alive. In the last days Frau Truxa saw to him faithfully, friends and doctors slipped in and out, Antonin Dvořák among the visitors. On the piano rack lay a large volume of the monumental Bach Gesellschaft Edition, completed the previous year. The book was opened to a motet, the margins of the music covered with Brahms’s notations. Watching over the piano were the bust of Beethoven and the bronze relief of Bismarck.
Now Brahms was a shrunken face on the bed, his breathing labored, the famous beard flowing over the white nightshirt and covers that Frau Truxa kept fresh. At times he became delirious and had to be restrained. Near the end of March there was an episode of bloody diarrhea. A doctor told him it was a necessary climax to his jaundice, after which he would recover. Brahms accepted the lie.
His humor did not desert him. Frau Truxa would help him up and across the room to the washstand; he called it “washing with police escort.” Once when she came in to bathe him he snapped, “You want to give me my last bath? I’m not a baby!” She said she was just trying to save him the trouble. Relenting, he whispered, “You’re a sensible woman. One can negotiate with you.”
That was hours before he died. He had gotten a morphine injection from his doctor’s son. In the early morning of April 3 Artur Faber came by and gave him a glass of Rhine wine for his thirst. Brahms took the glass in both hands and sipped slowly. With a sigh he said, “Oh, that tasted fine. You’re a kind man,” and sank back down.
Just before nine a.m., Frau Truxa came in and when she looked at him could not stifle a sob. Brahms struggled to sit up and say something to her, but the words would not come out. Great tears rolled down his face and he fell back on the pillow. Then, with no struggle, he stopped breathing.49
VIENNA LOVES A GREAT FUNERAL and every Viennese aspires to one. The city had donated a Grave of Honor for Brahms in the Central Cemetery, and the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde supplied funds for the ceremonies. Friends and admirers arrived from all over Austria and Germany. George Henschel came to Brahms’s apartment in the afternoon of April 3, to find the rooms already overflowing with a display of funeral pomp ironic for an agnostic who had lived plainly: silver crosses on black velvet, a huge brass candelabrum with candles blazing, flowers piled higher than the coffin. The Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde handled the arrangements. Engraved invitations went out for the funeral on April 6. That morning, thousands gathered in the streets, crowding Karlsgasse in front of the house and lining the miles-long route of the procession. A stream of friends and deputations went up and down the stairs