Next morning, bright and early, I was in the artist-pilgrim's room,
listening to that which it thrilled him to tell and me to hear. And
first he told me the story of Schumann's love.
The "old schoolmaster," Wieck, trained his daughter more ambitiously
than judiciously; and, indeed, none but one of the elect would ever have
survived the tasks imposed on her childhood. Indeed, she had no
childhood: at the piano she was kept through all the bright days, roving
only from scale to scale, when she should have been roving from flower
to flower. At length her genius asserted itself, and she entered into
her destiny; thenceforth flowers bloomed for her out of exercise-books,
and she could touch the notes which were sun-bursts, and those which
were mosses beneath them. From this training she came before the best
audience in Germany, and stood a sad-eyed, beautiful child of fourteen
summers, and by acclamation was crowned the Queen of the Piano. Franz
Liszt remembered his enthusiasm of that period, and many years afterward
wrote in his extravagant way,--"When we heard Clara Wieck in Vienna,
fifteen years ago, she drew her hearers after her into her poetic world,
to which she floated upward in a magical car drawn by electric sparks
and lifted by delicately prismatic, but nervously throbbing winglets."
At her performance of Beethoven's F Minor Sonata, Grillparzer was
inspired to write the following verses:--
"A weird magician, weary of the world,
In sullen humor locked his charms all up
Within a diamond casket, firmly clasped,
And threw the key into the sea, and died.
The manikins here tried with all their might;
In vain! no tool can pick the flinty lock;
His magic arts still slumber, like their master.
A shepherd's child, along the sea-shore playing,
Watches the waves, in hurrying, idle chase.
Dreaming and thoughtless, as young maidens are,
She dippeth her white fingers in the flood,
And grasps, and lifts, and holds it! 'Tis the key.
Up springs she, up, her heart still beating higher.
The casket glances, as with eyes, before her.
The key fits well, up flies the lid. The spirits
All mount aloft, then bow themselves submissive
To this their gracious, innocent, sweet mistress,
Who with white fingers guides them in her play."
The first, perhaps, to recognize the surpassing ability of that child
was the young editor of the "Zeitschrift." Robert Schumann. On her first
appearance, he wrote,--"Others make poetry,--she is a poem." And soon
afterward,--"She early lifted the veil of Isis. The child looks calmly
up,--the man would, perhaps, be dazzled by the brilliancy."
From this moment there was an elasticity and purpose about the young
composer, the secret of which no one knew, not even himself. Like one
caught in the whorls of some happy dream, who will not pause to ask,
"Whither?" he poured out before this child the half-revealed hopes
striving within him; an equal spell was woven about her ingenuous and
earnest heart, and their souls were joined in that purple morning; in
due time they were to be rather _clenched_, through pain. It was under
this baptismal touch of Love that Schumann wrote his first
sonata,--"Florestan and Eusebius." It gained him at once a fame with all
from whom fame was graceful.
In the light of this period of his life must be interpreted those
wonderful little "pieces" which mystify whilst they fascinate; without
it their meaning is as strange as their names. Often did he say,--"I can
write only where my life is in unison with my works." "Listen now to
these," said Florestan, as he opened an album and struck the piano;
"these are the voices of a new life." The "Alternatives," with song, "My
peace is o'er"; "Evening Thoughts"; "Impromptus," (whose first theme was
written by Clara): these; seemed like the emotion of some newly winged
aspirant released from its chrysalis, resting on its first flower. But
faster than planets through the abysses Love moves on. Florestan ceased,
and there was a long silence; and then he told the unspeakable portion
of his story by performing these two: "Sternenkranz," "Warum." Who has
ever scaled the rapture of the former, or fathomed the pathos of the
latter? Every summit implies its precipice; and the star-wreath that
crowned Love was snatched at by the Fate which soon burdened two hearts
with the terrible questioning, _Wherefore?_
Thus: before these two were fully conscious of the love they bore each
other, the shrewd eye of old Wieck had caught a glimpse of what was
coming to pass. He had educated this girl to be an artist to bring _him_
fame; alas, it must be confessed that he thought also of certain
prospective thalers. Willing as he was that all Leipsic should admire
his daughter, he did not like the enthusiasm of the "Zeitschrift." He
then began to warn Clara against "this Faust in modern garb, who, when
he had gained one finger, would soon have the whole hand, and finally
the poor soul into the bargain!" Stupid old schoolmaster, thou shouldst
have known that it is Mephistopheles, and not Faust, that women hate!
The old man, finding that his warnings were of no avail, forbade all
acquaintance, forbade Robert's visits to his house. Then, inaugurating
at once Clara's career as a _virtuoso_, he took her to Vienna.
No wonder, that, when she appeared there, it was to be as the priestess
of Beethoven. It takes something besides an academy to train artists up
to Beethoven. Robert was forbidden to write to her; but the
"Schwärmibriefe of Eusebius to Chiara," utterly unintelligible to the
general reader of the "Zeitschrift," who, doubtless, fancied that its
editor had gone mad, were quite clear to a certain little lady in
Vienna, who consequently pined less than her father had anticipated.
"Amid all our musical soul-feasts," he writes, "there always peeps out
an angel-face, which more than resembles a certain Clara. Why art thou
not with us? (_Warum!_) And how thou wilt have thought of us last
night, from the 'Meeresstille' to the flaming close of the A major
symphony! I also thought of thee then, Chiara, pure one, bright one,
whose hands are stretched towards Italy, whither thy longing draws thee,
but thy dreamy eye still turned to us."
At length a sun-burst. In 1840 appeared the first number of Schumann's
"Myrthen," whose dedication, _Seiner geliebten Braut_, breaks forth in
the passionate and beautiful song,--"Thou my soul, O thou my heart!"
But this word _Braut_ means Bride in the German sense of "affianced";
and although the joy of this relation passed over Schumann like the
breath of a Tropic, bringing forth, amongst other gorgeous fruits, his
glorious First Symphony, which some one has well called the Symphony of
Bliss, yet, ere this bliss was more than an elusive vision, the two
passed through fierce wildernesses, and drank together of bitter Marahs.
"But of all this," said Florestan, "you will know, if you have the right
to know, from these,"--his "Voice from afar," and his "Night-Pieces."
Neither of us dared break the silence claimed by these exquisite pieces
when they ceased; we shook hands and parted without a word.