‘What is your opinion?’
‘My opinion is that if this is what you wish, then I cannot oppose it.’
‘That was not what I asked. I was asking your medical opinion.’
M- glanced across at the mother. ‘My… medical opinion is that you are still at a precarious stage. I think it very possible that a complete cure may be effected. Equally, it is very possible that any gains made, once lost, could never be recovered.’
‘That is very clear. Then I choose to stay. I wish to stay.’
The mother instantly began a display of stamping and shouting, the like of which M- had never before encountered in the imperial city of V-. It was an outburst far beyond the natural expression of Frau von P-’s Italian blood, and might even have been comical, had not her nervous frenzy set off an answering spasm of convulsion in the daughter.
‘Madam, I must ask you to control yourself,’ he said quietly.
But this enraged the mother even more, and with two sources of provocation in front of her, she continued to denounce her daughter’s insolence, stubbornness and ingratitude. When M- tried to lay a hand on her forearm, Frau von P- turned on Maria Theresia, seized her, and threw her headlong into the wall. Above the women’s screams, M- summoned his staff, who held back the termagant just as she was about to set upon the doctor himself. Suddenly, another voice was added to the bedlam.
‘Return my daughter! Resist me and you die!’
The door was thrown violently open, and Herr von P- himself appeared, a framed figure with sword aloft. Hurling himself into the study, he threatened to cut to pieces anyone who opposed him.
‘Then, sir, you will have to cut me to pieces,’ M- answered firmly. Herr von P- stopped, uncertain whether to attack the doctor, rescue his daughter, or console his wife. Unable to decide, he settled for repeating his threats. The daughter was weeping, the mother screaming, the physician attempting to argue rationally, the father noisily promising mayhem and death. M- remained dispassionate enough to reflect that the young Mozart would have happily set this operatic quartet to music.
Eventually, the father was pacified and then disarmed. He departed with malediction on his tongue, and seeming to forget his wife, who stood for a few moments looking from M- to her daughter and back again, before herself leaving. Immediately, and for the rest of the day, M- sought to calm Maria Theresia. As he did so, he came to conclude that his initial presumption had been confirmed: Maria Theresia’s blindness had certainly been a hysterical reaction to the equally hysterical behaviour of one or both of her parents. That a sensitive, artistic child, in the face of such an emotional assault, might instinctively close herself off from the world seemed reasonable, even inevitable. And the frenzied parents, having been responsible for the girl’s condition in the first place, were now aggravating it.
What could have caused this sudden, destructive outburst? More, surely, than a mere flouting of parental will. M- therefore tried to imagine it from their point of view. A child goes blind, all known cures fail until, after more than a dozen years, a new physician with a novel procedure begins to make her see again. The prognosis is optimistic, and the parents are rewarded at last for their love, wisdom, and medical courage. But then the girl plays, and their world is turned upside down. Before, they had been in charge of a blind virtuoso; now, sight had rendered her mediocre. If she continued playing like that, her career would be over. But even assuming that she rediscovered all her former skill, she would lack the originality of being blind. She would be merely one pianist among many others. And there would be no reason for the Empress to continue her pension. Two hundred gold ducats had made a difference to their lives, And how, without it, would they commission works from leading composers?
M- understood such a dilemma, but it could not be his primary concern. He was a physician, not a musical impresario. In any case, he was convinced that once Maria Theresia became accustomed to the sight of her hands on a keyboard, once observation ceased altering her performance, her skill would not merely return, but develop and improve. For how could it possibly be an advantage to be blind? Furthermore, the girl had chosen openly to defy her parents and continue the cure. How could he disappoint her hopes? Even if it meant distributing cudgels to his servants, he would defend her right to live under his roof.
Yet it was not just the frenzied parents who were threatening the household. Opinion at court and in society had turned against the physician who had walled up a young woman and now refused to return her to her parents. That the girl herself also refused did not help M-’s case: in the eyes of some it merely confirmed him as a magician, a bewitcher whose hypnotic powers might not cure, but could certainly enslave. Moral fault and medical fault intertwined, giving birth to scandal. Such a miasma of innuendo arose in the imperial city that Professor Stoerk was provoked into action. Withdrawing his previous endorsement of M-’s activities, he now wrote, on 2nd May 177-, demanding that M- cease his ‘imposture’ and return the girl.
Again, M- refused. Maria Theresia von P-, he replied, was suffering from convulsions and delirious imaginings. A court physician was sent to examine her, and reported to Stoerk that in his opinion the patient was in no condition to be sent back. Thus reprieved, M- spent the next weeks devoting himself entirely to her case. With words, with magnetism, with the touch of his hands, and with her belief in him, he succeeded in bringing her nervous hysteria under control within nine days. Better still, it presently became evident that her perception was now sharper than at any previous time, suggesting that the pathways of the eye and brain had become strengthened. He did not yet ask her if she wanted to play; nor did she suggest it.
M- knew that it would not be possible to keep Maria Theresia von P-until she was fully cured, but did not wish to surrender her until she had acquired sufficient robustness to hold the world at bay. After five weeks of siege, an agreement was reached: M- would return the girl to her parents’ care, and they would allow M- to continue treating her as and when it might be necessary. With this peace treaty in place, Maria Theresia was handed over on 8th June 177-.
That was the last day on which M- saw her. At once, the von P-s reneged on their word, keeping their daughter in close custody, and forbidding all contact with M-. We cannot know what was said, or done, in that household, we can know only its predictable consequence: Maria Theresia von P- relapsed immediately into blindness, a condition from which she was not to emerge in the remaining forty-seven years of her life.
We have no account of Maria Theresia’s anguish, of her moral suffering and mental reflection. But the world of constant darkness was at least familiar to her. We may presume that she gave up all hope of cure, and also of escape from her parents; we may know that she took up her career again, first as pianist and singer, then as composer, and eventually as teacher. She learnt the use of a composition board invented for her by her amanuensis and librettist, Johann Riedinger; she also owned a hand printing machine for her correspondence. Her fame spread across Europe; she knew sixty concertos by heart, and played them in Prague, London and Berlin.
As for M-, he was driven from the imperial city of V- by the Faculty of Medicine and the Committee to Sustain Morality, a combination which ensured that he was remembered there as half charlatan, half seducer. He withdrew first to Switzerland, and then established himself in Paris. In 178-, seven years after they had last seen one another, Maria Theresia von P- came to perform in the French capital. At the Tuileries, before Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, she introduced the concerto Mozart had written for her. She and M- did not meet; nor can we tell if either of them would have desired such a meeting. Maria Theresia lived on in darkness, usefully, celebratedly, until her death in 182-.