THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2023 55 was dedicated to Countess Giulietta Guicciardi (1784-1856), a young lady with whom the 30-year-old Beethoven had fallen in love. Guicciardi had just moved to Vienna from Trieste and was taking piano lessons from the composer. The other link is the greatest collection of Beethoveniana. Not located in Bonn, where he was born, or in Vienna, where he became famous, the museum is in Muggia, a small town across the Gulf of Trieste. Its contents were assembled during the last 40 years by the Carrino family, who converted their villa into a Beethoven museum. In Trieste, Thayer, who never married, lived in an apartment cared for by a housekeeper on the seafront promenade and, as a Carthusian monk, dedicated most of the last 40 years of his life to his project. Even after retiring from the consulate in 1882, he stayed put in Trieste, continuing his routine as much as his health allowed him. Despite his long residence in Trieste, where the majority of the inhabitants spoke Italian, he never learned the nuances of that language, one time being embarrassed at a dinner by not recalling momentarily the Italian word for “spoon.” His research and his prior life in Germany had made Thayer’s personality more attuned to German culture and speech, and he was often taken for German, rather than American. Apart from people in the musical world, his friends in Trieste included Sir Richard Burton, who, like Thayer, died in that city. Alexander Thayer’s death in Trieste in July 1897 was big news, particularly in Germany. His library and Beethoven memorabilia were sold by his inheritors at auction both in New York and in London in 1898 and 1899. Thayer also left $30,000 to Harvard, his alma mater, to be used for scholarships. He was buried in the Protestant Cemetery of Trieste, and, over time, his tomb was either forgotten or believed lost. Then in 1964, John P. Sabec, an employee of the American Consulate General in Trieste, with the assistance of local historian Oscar De Incontrera (1903-1970), found it. Sabec then began to clear out the vegetation grown on the tomb and involved Vice Consul Samuel E. Fry (b. 1934) and Consul Samuel G. Wise (b. 1928; later ambassador). Money was raised, and back and future rent on the cemetery plot paid. The marble tombstone had previously given only his name and the dates and places of birth and death; Vice Consul Fry then paid a sculptor to add: “Biographer of Ludwig van Beethoven—American Consul in Trieste 1865-1882.” Nearby are also buried Stanislaus Joyce, James Joyce’s brother, and Achille La Guardia—father of Fiorello La Guardia, a former U.S. diplomat, congressman, and mayor of New York. n
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