Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians — Robert Schumann, Part 2
* * * * * Clara Wieck was only ten years old, with dresses that came to her knees, when Robert Schumann first began to take lessons of her father.
She was tall for her age, and had a habit of brushing her hair from her eyes as she played, that impressed the young man as very funny.
She could not remember a time when she did not play: and she showed such ease and abandon that her father used to call her in and have her illustrate his ideas on the keyboard.
Robert didn't like the child--she was needlessly talented.
She could do, just as a matter of course, the things that he could scarcely accomplish with great effort.
He didn't like her.
Already Clara had played in various concerts, and was a great favorite with the local public.
Soon her father planned little tours, when he gave performances assisted by his two daughters, who could play both violin and piano.
Their fame grew and fortune smiled.
Wieck took a larger house and raised his prices for pupils.
Robert Schumann wandered over to Zwickau to visit his folks, then went on down the Rhine to Heidelberg to see Rosen.
It was nearly a year before he got back to Leipzig, resolved to continue his music studies.
Wieck had a front room vacant, and so the young man took lodgings with his teacher.
It was not so very long before Clara was wearing her dresses a little longer.
She now dressed her hair in two braids instead of one, and these braids were tied with ribbons instead of a shoe-string.
More concerts were being arranged, and the attendance was larger--people were saying that Clara Wieck was an Infant Phenomenon.
Robert was progressing, but not so rapidly as he wished.
To aid matters a bit, he invented a brace and extension to his middle finger.
It gave him a farther reach and a stronger stroke, he thought.
In secret he practised for hours with this "corset" on his finger; he didn't know that a corset means weakness, not strength.
After three straight hours of practise one day, he took the machine from his hand and was astonished to see the finger curl up like a pretzel.
He hurried to a physician and was told that the member was paralyzed.
Various forms of treatment were tried, but the tendons were injured, and at last the doctors told him his brain could never again telegraph to that hand so it would perfectly obey orders.
He begged that they would cut the finger off, but this they refused to do, claiming that, even though the finger was in the way, piano-playing in any event was not the chief end of man--he might try a pick and shovel.
Clara, who now wore her dress to her shoe-tops, sympathized with the young man in his distress.
She said, "Never mind, I will play for you--you write the music and I will play it!"
Gradually he became resigned to this, and spent much of his time composing music for Heine's songs and his own.
Wieck didn't much like these songs, and forbade his daughter playing such trashy things--only a paraphrase of Schubert's work, anyway, goodness me!
The girl pouted and rebelled, and erelong Robert Schumann was requested to take lodgings elsewhere.
Moodily he obeyed, but he managed to keep up a secret correspondence with Clara, through the help of her sister.
Whenever Clara played in public, Robert was sure to be there, even though the distance were a hundred miles.
He had given up playing, and now swung between composing and literature, having assumed the editorship of a musical magazine.
When Clara now played in concert, she wore a train, and her hair was done up on the top of her head.
Schumann's musical magazine was winning its way--the young man had a literary style.
Mendelssohn commended the magazine, and its editor in turn commended Mendelssohn.
A new star had been discovered on the horizon--a Pole, Chopin by name.
And whenever Clara Wieck appeared, there were extended notices, lavish in praise, profuse in prophecy.
Herz had written an article for a rival journal about Clara Wieck, wherein the statement was made that no woman trained on, that her playing was intuitive, and the limit quickly reached--marriage was death to a woman's art, etc. To this Schumann replied with needless heat, and his friends began to joke him about his "disinterestedness."
He was getting moody, and there were times when he was silent for days.
His passion for Clara Wieck was consuming his life.
He resolved to go direct to Frederick Wieck and have it out.
* * * * * They are always called "the Schumanns"--Robert and Clara.
You can not separate them, any more than you can separate the great Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett.
"Whomsoever God hath joined together, let no man put asunder," seems rather a needless injunction, since we know that man's efforts in the line of separation have ever but one result: opposition fans the flame.
Just as Elizabeth Barrett's father forcibly opposed the mating of his daughter, so did Frederick Wieck oppose the love of his daughter Clara for Robert Schumann.
And one can not blame the man so very much--he knew the young man and he knew the girl; and deducting fifty per cent for paternal pride, he saw that the girl was much the stronger character of the two.
Clara had already a recognized reputation as a performer; her playing had made her father rich, and he was sure that greater things were to come.
Beside that, she was only seventeen years old--a mere child.
Robert was twenty-six, with most of his future before him--he was advised to win a name and place for himself before aspiring to the hand of a great artist: and so he was bowed out.
He took the matter into the courts, and the decision was that, as she was now eighteen years old, she had the right to wed, if she were so minded.
And so they were married; but Frederick Wieck was not present at the ceremony to give the bride away.
* * * * * Schumann was essentially feminine in many ways, as the best men always are.
In spite of his mental independence, he did his best work when shielded in the shadow of a stronger personality.
Without Clara, Robert would probably be unknown to us.
She gave him the courage and the confidence that he lacked; and she it was who interpreted his work to the world.
Heine characterized Meyerbeer's "Les Huguenots" as "like a Gothic cathedral whose heaven-soaring spire and colossal cupolas seem to have been planted there by the sure hand of a giant; whereas the innumerable features, the rosettes and arabesques that are spread over it everywhere like a lacework of stone, witness to the indefatigable patience of a dwarf."
Very different is the work of Robert Schumann, who, like his master Schubert, knew little of the architectonics of the Art Divine.
But Schubert seems to have been the first to give us the "lyric cry"--the prayer of a heart bowed down, or the ecstasy of a soul enrapt.
Schumann built on Schubert.
Music was to Schumann the expression of an emotion.
He saw in pictures, then he told in tones, what his inward eye beheld.
He even went so far as to give the names of persons, their peculiarities and experiences on the keyboard.
It is needless to say that the tension of mind in such experiments is apt to reach the breaking strain.
We are under bonds for the moderate use of every faculty, and he who misuses any of God's gifts may not hope to go unscathed.
The exquisite quality of Robert Schumann's imagination served to make him shun the society of vulgar people.
The inability to grasp things intuitively harassed him, and he acquired a habit of keeping silence, except with the elect.
He lived within himself, unless Clara were by, and then he leaned on her.
And what a strong, brave and beautiful soul she was!
In a sense she sacrificed her own career for the man she loved.
And by giving all, she won all.
Most descriptions of women begin by telling how the individual looked and what she wore.
No pen-portraits of Clara Schumann have come down to us, for the reason that she was too great, too elusive in spirit, for any snapshot artist to attempt her.
She never looked twice the same.
In feature she was commonplace, her form lacked the classic touch, and her raiment was as plain as the plumage of a brown thrush in an autumn hedgerow.
She was as homely as George Eliot, Mary Wollstonecraft, Rosa Bonheur, George Sand, or Madame De Stael.
No two of the women named looked alike, but I once saw a composite photograph of their portraits and the picture sent no thrills along my keel.
Their splendor was a matter of spirit.
Have you ever seen the Duse?
--there is but one.
In repose this woman's face is absolute nullity.
She starts with a blank--you would never take a second glance at her at a pink tea.
Her dress is bargain day, her form so-so, her features clay.
But mayhap she will lift her hand and resting her chin upon it will look at you out of half-closed eyes that never are twice alike.
If you are speaking you will suddenly become aware that she is listening, and then you will become uncomfortable and try to stop, but can not; for you will realize that you have been talking at random, and you want to redeem yourself.
The presence of this plain woman is a challenge--she knows!
Yet she never contradicts, and when she wills it, she will lead you out of the maze and make you at peace with yourself; for our quarrel with the world is only a quarrel with self.
When we are at peace with self we are at peace with God.
The Duse is a surprise, in that her homeliness of face masks an intellect that is a revelation.
Her body is an exasperation to the tribe of Worth, but it houses a soul that has lived every life, died every death, known every sorrow, tasted every joy, and been one with the outcast, the despised, the forsaken; and has stood, too, clothed in shining raiment by the side of the great, the noble, the powerful.
Knowing all, she forgives all.
And across the face and out of the eyes, and even from her silence, come messages of sympathy--messages of strength, messages of a faith that is dauntless.
Great people are simply those who have sympathy plus.
Clara Schumann knew the excellence of her chosen mate, and through her sympathy made it possible for him to express himself at his highest and best.
She also guessed his limitations and sought to hold him 'gainst the calamity she saw looming on the horizon, no bigger than a man's hand.
When he was moody and there came times of melancholy, she invited young people to the house; and so Robert mingled his life with theirs, and in their aspirations he shook off the demons of doubt.
It was in this way that he became interested in various rising stars, and although in some instances we are aware that his prophecies went astray, we know that he hailed Chopin and Brahms long before they had come within the ken of the musical world, that so often looks through the large end of the telescope.
And this kindly encouragement, this fostering welcome that the Schumanns gave to all aspiring young artists, is not the least of their virtues.
We love them because they were kind.
* * * * * Clara Schumann was wise beyond the lot of woman.
She knew this fact which very few mortals ever realize: The triumphs of yesterday belong to yesterday, with all of yesterday's defeats and sorrows--the day is Here, the time is Now.
She did not drag her troubles behind her with a rope, nor wax vain over achievements done.
When the light of her husband's intellect went out in darkness and he lived for a space a lingering death, she faced the dawn each morning, resolved to do her work and do it the best she could.
When death came to Robert's relief, her one ambition, like that of Mary Shelley, was to write her husband's name indelibly on history's page.
The professedly and professionally cheerful person is very depressing.
The pessimist always has wit, for wit reveals itself in the knowledge of values.
And the individual who accepts what Fate sends, and undoes Calamity by drinking all of it, is sure to have a place in our calendar of saints.
Clara Schumann, a widow at thirty-seven, with a goodly brood of babies, and no income to speak of, lived one day at a time, did her work as well as she could, and always had a little time and energy over to use for others less fortunate.
Such fortitude is sure to bear fruit, and friends flocked to her as never before.
The way to secure friends is to be one.
Madame Schumann made concert tours throughout the Continent and England, meeting on absolute equality the music-loving people, as well as the Kings of Art.
She played her husband's pieces with such a wealth of expression that folks wondered why they had never heard of them.
And so today, wherever hearts are sad, or glad, and songs are sung, and strings vibrate, and keys respond to love's caress, there is in hearts that know and feel, a shrine; and on this shrine in letters of gold two words are carved, and they are these: THE SCHUMANNS.
[Illustration: SEBASTIAN BACH]
