Haydn, it will be seen, describes her as a widow of sixty.
According to Goldsmith, women and music should never be dated;
but in the present case, there is a not unnatural curiosity to
discover the lady's age. Mr Krehbiel gives good grounds for
doubting Haydn's statement that Mistress Schroeter was sixty when
he met her. She had been married to Johann Samuel Schroeter, an
excellent German musician, who settled in London in 1772.
Schroeter died in 1788, three years before the date of Haydn's
visit, when he was just thirty-eight. Now Dr Burney, who must
have known the family, says that Schroeter "married a young lady
of considerable fortune, who was his scholar, and was in easy
circumstances." If, therefore, Mrs Schroeter was sixty years old
when Haydn made her acquaintance, she must have been nineteen
years her husband's senior, and could not very well be described
as a "young" lady at the time of her marriage.

It is, however, unnecessary to dwell upon the matter of age. The
interesting point is that Haydn fell under the spell of the
charming widow. There is no account of their first meeting; but
it was probably of a purely professional nature. Towards the end
of June 1791 the lady writes: "Mrs Schroeter presents her
compliments to Mr Haydn, and informs him she is just returned to
town, and will be very happy to see him whenever it is convenient
to him to give her a lesson." A woman of sixty should hardly have
been requiring lessons, especially after having been the wife of
a professor who succeeded the "English Bach" as music-master to
the Queen. But lessons sometimes cover a good deal of love-making,
and that was clearly the case with Haydn and Mrs Schroeter.