he was a chorister at St Stephen's. According to Dies, Haydn had
lodged with the Kellers at one time. The statement is doubtful,
but in any case his good stars were not in the ascendant when it
was ordained that he should marry into this family.

Marries

It was, as we have said, with the younger of the two daughters
that he fell in love. Unfortunately, for some unexplained reason,
she took the veil, and said good-bye to a wicked world. Like the
hero in "Locksley Hall," Haydn may have asked himself, "What is
that which I should do?" But Keller soon solved the problem for
him. "Barbers are not the most diffident people of the world," as
one of the race remarks in "Gil Blas," and Keller was assuredly
not diffident. "Never mind," he said to Haydn, "you shall have
the other." Haydn very likely did not want the other, but,
recognizing with Dr Holmes's fashionable lady that "getting
married is like jumping overboard anyway you look at it," he
resolved to risk it and take Anna Maria Keller for better or
worse.

His Wife

The marriage was solemnized at St Stephen's on November 26, 1760,
when the bridegroom was twenty-nine and the bride thirty-two.
There does not seem to have been much affection on either side to
start with; but Haydn declared that he had really begun to "like"
his wife, and would have come to entertain a stronger feeling for
her if she had behaved in a reasonable way. It was, however, not
in Anna Maria's nature to behave in a reasonable way. The