Poor old Ludwig, revisited; and the lives of the artistic, generally

A couple of months back, I posted some extracts from a review of a biography of Beethoven about his often unhappy life.

There's another review out on a different biography, and this paragraph is blogworthy:

This physical suffering was intensified by his inability to find the partner he craved so fervently. Beethoven kept on falling in love with women whose higher social status placed them out of reach. After the final collapse of his relationship with Josephine, Countess von Deym, he fled to the country estate of another aristocratic lady, Countess Erdödy, and promptly disappeared. It was assumed that he had returned to Vienna, but after three days a servant found him hiding in a remote part of the palace gardens, apparently trying to starve himself to death. Prudish in his attitude to the sexual behaviour of others - he even disapproved of the 'lascivious' subject matter of Mozart's Don Giovanni - he resorted increasingly to prostitutes for his own gratification. 'I am always ready for it,' he told his friend Baron Zmeskall, 'the time I prefer most of all is at about half past three or four o'clock in the afternoon.' His attempt to express his need for a lasting human relationship by adopting and then micro-managing his nephew Karl ended in disaster, when the object of his affection first ran away and then tried to shoot himself.

So, there you have it:  you now know the timing of Beethoven's sexual appetite down to the half hour.

I have to also say that it surprises me, this frequency with which the use of prostitutes (or at least mistresses) features in the lives of the artistically successful.  I've said it before, but if you're married by age 30 and have a long and happy marriage in which you never sleep with anyone else, it seems you can just about guarantee that you will not be a literary or artistic success.    I'm trying to think of a possible exception to this rule:  the 20th century's most famous Catholic writers certainly don't fit the bill - Graham Greene particularly, but I think Evelyn Waugh is thought to have been a frequent customer of brothels during his overseas travels.  CS Lewis is thought by most to have had a weird mummy thing going on with his deceased mate's mother.   Possibly GK Chesterton (although he's not considered exactly top of the range in the artistic ranks)?

A quick check of some biographic details indicate he did enjoy happy domesticity,  and this (rather interesting) essay about him generally argues with direct autobiographical quotes that whatever temptations he considered himself prone to, he specifically denied they were homosexual.   But really - with his rotundity, you would not expect him to have easy access to sexual liaisons of any kind - prostitutes would have feared for their lives, most likely.

So there you go - maybe I have found a famous-ish author who didn't seem to do anything too untoward in his sex life, although his physical characteristics make it questionable whether it was even possible.   Further examples from readers are most welcome.

Update:  from an essay about attitudes to prostitution generally:   

Many great writers, composers and playwrights have regularly indulged, patronised, and befriended prostitutes, including Franz Kafka, Guy de Mauppausant, Georges Rouault, Toulouse Lautrec, Dennis Potter, Picasso, Paul Verlaine. 

 Dennis Potter seems a bit out of place in that list!