That any man should ever write his thoughts for other men to read, seems
the very height of egoism.
Literature never dies, and so the person who writes constitutes himself
a rival of Shakespeare and seeks to lure us from Montaigne, Milton,
Emerson and Carlyle. To write nothing better than grammatical English,
to punctuate properly, and repeat thoughts in the same sequence that
have been repeated a thousand times, is to do something icily regular,
splendidly null.
To down the demons of syntax and epithet is not enough. To compose
blameless sonatas and produce symphonies in the accepted style, is not
adding an iota to the world's worth.
The individual who tries to compose either ideas or harmonious sounds,
and hopes for success, must compose because he can not help it. He must
place the thing in a way it has never before been placed; on the subject
he must throw a new light; he must carry the standard forward, and plant
it one degree nearer the uncaptured citadel of the Ideal. And he must
remember this: the very prominence of his position will cause him to be
the target of contumely, abuse and much stupid misunderstanding. If he
complains of these things (as he probably will), he reveals a rift in
the lute and proves that he is only a half-god, after all.
Men of the highest type of culture--those of masterly talent--are not
gregarious in their nature. The "jiner" instinct goes with a man who is
a little doubtful, and so he attaches himself to this society, club or
church.
The very tendency to "jine" is an admission of weakness--it is a getting
under cover, a combining against the supposed enemy. The "jiner" is an
ameba that clings to flotsam, instead of floating free in the great
ocean of life. The lion loves his mate, but prefers to flock by himself.
The pioneer in art, as in any other field, must be willing to face
deprivations and loneliness and heart-hunger. He must find companionship
with birds and animals, and be brother to the trees and swift-flying
clouds. When men meet on the desert or in the forest wilds, how grateful
and how gracious is their hand-clasp! When love and understanding come
to those who live on the border-land of two worlds, how precious and
priceless the boon!
* * * * *
Robert Schumann was the son of a book-publisher of Zwickau. He was a
handsome lad with the flash of genius in his luminous eyes, and an
independence like that of an Alpine goat. When very young they say he
used to have tantrums. If your child has a tantrum, it is bad policy for
you to imitate him and have one, too.
A tantrum is only one of the little whirlwinds of God--it is misdirected
energy, power not yet controlled. When Robert had a tantrum, his father
would shake him violently to improve his temper, or fall upon him with a
strap that hung handy behind the kitchen-door. Then the mother, when the
father was out of the way, would take the lad and cry over him, and
coddle him, and undo the discipline.
The best treatment for tantrums is--nothing. The more you let a nervous,
impressionable child alone, the better.
When the lad was fourteen years old, we find him setting type in his
father's printery. He was working on a book called, "The World's
Celebrities," and his share of the work dealt with Jean Paul Richter. He
grew interested in the copy and stopped setting type and read ahead, as
printers sometimes will. The more he read, the more he was fascinated.
He fell under the spell of Jean Paul the Only.
Jean Paul, inspired by Jean Jacques, was the inspirer of the whole brood
of young writers of his time. To him they looked as to a Deliverer.
Jean Paul the Only! The largest, gentlest, most generous heart in all
literature! The peculiar mark of Richter's style is analogy and
comparison; everything he saw reminded him of something else, and then
he tells you of things of which both remind him. He leads and lures you
on, and takes you far from home, but always brings you safely back. Yet
comparison proves us false when we deal with Richter himself. He stands
alone, like Adam's recollection of his fall, which according to Jean
Paul was the one sweet, unforgetable thing in all the life of the First
Citizen of his time.
Jean Paul seems to have combined in that mighty brain all feminine as
well as masculine attributes. The soul in which the feminine does not
mingle is ripe for wrong, strife and unreason. "It was mother-love,
carried one step further, that enabled the Savior to embrace a world,"
says Carlyle.
The sweep of tender emotion that murmurs and rustles through the writing
of Jean Paul is like the echo of a lullaby heard in a dream. Perhaps it
came from that long partnership when mother and son held the siege
against poverty, and the kitchen-table served them as a writing-desk,
and the patient old mother was his sole reviewer, critic, reader and
public.
For shams, hypocrisy and pretense Jean Paul had a cyclone of sarcasm,
and the blows he struck were such as only a son of Anak could give; but
in his heart there was no hate. He could despise a man's bad habits and
still love the man behind the veneer of folly. So his arms seem ever
extended, welcoming the wanderer home.
Dear Jean Paul, big and homely, what an insight you had into the heart
of things, and what a flying-machine your imagination was! Room for many
passengers? Yes, and children especially, for these you loved most of
all, because you were ever only just a big overgrown boy yourself. You
cried your eyes out before your hair grew white, and then a child or a
woman led you about; and thus did you supply Victor Hugo a saying that
can not die: "To be blind and to be loved--what happier fate!"
Yes, Jean Paul used to cry at his work when he wrote well, and I do,
too. I always know when I write particularly well, for at such times I
mop furiously. However, I seldom mop.
Robert Schumann began to write little essays, and the essays were as
near like Jean Paul's as he could make them. He read them to his mother,
just as Jean Paul used to write for his mother and call her "my Gentle
Reader"--he had but one.
Robert's mother believed in her boy--what mother does not? But her love
was not tempered by reason, and in it there was a sentimental flavor
akin to the maudlin.
The father wanted the lad to take up his own business, as German fathers
do, but the mother filled the lad's head with the thought that he was
fit for something higher and better. She was not willing to let the
seed ripen in Nature's way--she thought hothouse methods were an
improvement.
Such a mother's ambition centers in her son. She wants him to do the
thing she has never been able to do. She thirsts for honors, applause,
publicity, and all those things that bring trouble and distress and make
men old before their time.
So we find the boy at eighteen packed off to Heidelberg to study law,
with no special preparation in knowledge of the world, of men or books.
But old father antic, the law, was not to his taste. Robert liked music
and poetry better. His fine, sensitive, emotional spirit found its best
exercise in music; and at the house of Professor Carus he used to sing
with the professor's wife. This Professor Carus, by the way, is, I
believe, directly related to our own Doctor Paul Carus, of whom all
thinking people in America have reason to be proud. I am told that when
a boy of eighteen or nineteen mingles his voice several evenings a week
with that of a married lady aged, say, thirty-five, and they also play
"four hands" an hour or so a day, that the boy is apt to surprise the
married lady by falling very much in love with her. Boys are quite given
to this thing, anyway, of falling in love with women old enough to be
their mothers--I don't know why it is. Sometimes I am rather inclined to
commend the scheme, since it often brings good results. The fact that
the woman's emotions are well tempered with a sort of maternal regard
for her charge holds folly in check, dispels that tired feeling,
promotes digestion, and stimulates the action of the ganglionic cells.
It was surely so in this instance, for Madame Carus taught the youth how
to compose, and fired his mind to excel as a pianist. He wrote and
dedicated small songs to her, and their relationship added cubits to the
boy's stature.
From a boy he became a man at a bound. Just as one single April day,
with its showers and sunshine, will transform the seemingly lifeless
twigs into leafy branches, so did this young man's intellect ripen in
the sunshine of love.
As for Professor Carus, he was too busy with his theorems and biological
experiments to trouble himself about so trivial a matter as a youngster
falling in love with his accomplished wife--here the Professor's good
sense was shown.
Jean Paul Richter lighted his torch at the flame of Jean Jacques
Rousseau. In a letter to Agnes Carus, Schumann has acknowledged his
obligation to Richter, in a style that is truly Richteresque.
Says Robert:
Dear Lady:--I read from Jean Paul last night until I fell asleep
and then I dreamed of you. It was at the torch of Jean Paul that I
lighted my tallow dip, and now he is dead and these eyes shall
never look into his, nor will his voice fall upon my ears. I cry
salt tears to think that Jean Paul never knew you. If I could only
have brought you two together and then looked upon you, realizing,
as I would, that you had both come from High Olympus! Blissful are
the days since I knew you, for you have brought within my range of
vision new constellations, and into my soul has come the clear,
white light of peace and truth. With you I am purified, freed from
sin, and harmony fills my tired heart. Without you--why, really I
have never dared think about it, for fear that reason would topple,
and my mind forget its 'customed way--let's talk of music. * * *
Professor Carus kept his ear close to the ground for a higher call, and
when the call came from Leipzig, he moved there with his family.
It was not many weeks before Robert was writing home, explaining that
lawyers were men who get good people into trouble, and bad folks out;
and as for himself he had decided to cut the business and fling himself
into the arms of the Muse.
This letter brought his mother down upon him with tears and pleadings
that he would not fail to redeem the Schumanns by becoming a Great Man.
Poetry was foolishness and all musicians were poor--there were a hundred
of them in Zwickau who lived on rye-bread and wienerwurst.
The boy promised and the mother went home pacified. But not many weeks
had passed before Robert set out on a pilgrimage to Bayreuth, to visit
the scene of Jean Paul's romances. On this same tour he went to Munich,
and there met Heinrich Heine, who was from that day to enter into his
heart and jostle Jean Paul for first place. He was accompanied on this
memorable trip by Gisbert Rosen, who proved his lifelong friend and
confidant. Very naturally Leipzig was the ardently desired goal of his
wanderings. At once on arriving there, he sought out the home of
Professor and Madame Carus. That his greeting (and mayhap hers) did not
contain all the warmth the boy lover had anticipated is shown in a
letter to Rosen, wherein he says: "This world is only a huge graveyard
of buried dreams, a garden of cypress and weeping willows, a silent
peep-show with tearful puppets. Alas for our high faith--I wonder if
Jean Paul wasn't right when he said that love lessens woman's delicacy,
and time and distance dissipate it like morning dew?"
Yet Madame Carus was kind, for Robert played at little informal concerts
at her house, and she urged him to abandon law for music; and he refers
the matter to Rosen, asking Rosen's advice and explaining how he wants
to be advised, just as we usually do. Rosen tells him that no man can
succeed at an undertaking unless his heart is in the work, and so he
shifts the responsibility of deciding on Professor Carus, whom Robert
"respects," but does not exactly admire enough to follow his advice.
Robert does not consider the Professor a practical man, and so leaves
the matter to his wife. In the meantime songs are written similar to
Heine's, and essays turned off, pinned with the precise synonym, the
phrase exquisite, just like Jean Paul's. Progress in piano-playing goes
steadily forward, with practise on the violin, all under the tutelage of
Madame Carus, who one fine day takes the young man to play for Frederick
Wieck, the best music-teacher in Leipzig.
* * * * *
"Musicians?" said Wieck, "I raise them!"
And so he did. He proved the value of his theories by making great
performers of Maria and Clara, his daughters--two sisters more gifted in
a musical way have never been born. Germany excels in philosophy and
music--a seeming paradox. Music is supposed to be a compound of the
stuff that dreams are made of--hazy, misty, dim, intangible feelings set
to sounds--we close our eyes and they take us captive and carry us away
on the wings of melody. And so it may be true that music is born of
moonshine, and fragrant memories, and hopes too great for earth, and
loves unrealized; yet its expression is the most exacting of sciences. A
Great Musician has not only to be a poet and a dreamer, but he must also
be a mathematician, cold as chilled steel, and a philosopher who can
follow a reason to its lair and grapple it to the death. And that is why
Great Musicians are so rare, and that is also why, perhaps, there are no
great women composers. "Women of genius are men," said the De Goncourts.
A Great Musician is a paradox, a miracle, a multiple-sided man--stern,
firm, selfish, proud and unyielding; yet sensuous as the ether, tender
as a woman, innocent as a child, and as plastic as potters' clay. And
with most of them, let us frankly admit it, the hand of the Potter
shook. When people write about musicians, they seldom write moderately.
The man is either a selfish rogue or an angel of light--it all depends
upon your point of view. And the curious part is, both sides are right.
Wieck was very fond of his daughters, and like good housewives who are
proud of their biscuit, he apologized for them. "He never quite forgave
our mother because we were girls," said Clara once, to Kalkbrenner.
Wieck, the good man, was a philosopher, and he had a notion that the
blood of woman is thinner than that of man--that it contains more white
serum and fewer red corpuscles, and that Nature has designed the body of
a woman to nourish her offspring, but that man's energy goes to feed his
brain. Yet his girls were so much beyond average mortals that they would
set men a pace in spite of the handicap.
Fortunate it is for me that I do not have to act as the court of last
appeal on this genius business. The man who decides against woman will
forfeit his popularity, have his reputation ripped into carpet-rags, and
his good name worked up into crazy-quilts by a thousand Woman's Clubs.
But certain it is that women are the inspirers of music. As critics they
are more judicial and more appreciative. Without women there would be no
Symphony Concerts, any more than there would be churches.
Women take men to the Grand Opera and to Musical Festivals--and I am
glad.
* * * * *
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]