Brahms’ stingy side

Musicologist Richard Leonard describes a stingy side to Brahms’s personality:

It is true that at times he was generous, giving away large sums to persons in need, and often imposing a strict secrecy; but about his own affairs he was as congenitally stingy as a peasant.  He bought only the cheapest clothes, wore the same suit for years, and did not care that he looked slovenly.  He ate only in cheap restaurants, and he always traveled third class.  To avoid paying duty on his favourite cigars he asked his friends to smuggle them in for him, and once he was fined seventy gulden for hiding Turkish tobacco in a stocking when he crossed the frontier. 

Leonard, Richard (1961) The Stream of Music. London: Hutchinson & Co., p. 266.


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