The Schumanns Johannes Brahms
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THE SCHUMANNS AND JOHANNES BRAHMS THE MEMOIRS OF EUGENIE SCHUMANN LINCOLN MAC VEAGH THE DlAL PRES·S NEW YORK • MCMXXVII PRINTEDINGREATBfilTAIN ROBERT SCHUMANN AND CL.-\.RA SCHUl\IANN IN 'Tl-lE YEA!~ 1850 I~ HAl\lBURG Fron~ a daguerreot;,Pe in t!u Sclzumann lifustum in Zwickau DEDICATED TO MY SISTERS MARIE AND ELISE INTRODUCTION HEN I began to write down these Memoirs in the W year 1920, I was guided by a definite intention. I find that erroneous statements are current concerning the lives and characters of my brothers. To disprove these by giving a faithful picture of their personalities as they are revealed first-hand in their letters, seemed to me a duty to them not only as beloved brothers, but as sons of our parents. I am not sure that I had publication in view ; I felt constrained to say how things had really been, and I started to write. One word led to another, one remembrance called forth a thousand. I wrote for the pleasure of writing ; I surveyed my life and lingered where I listed. The longer I wrote, the more it was my mother's personality which became the prominent one. On her eightieth birthday I surprised my sister Marie with the first five chapters. She was pleased with them. A kind publisher who read -µiem gave me encouragement, and induced me to supplement and revise. I took up the pen once more and found that I had many more things to say. The disconnected chapters became a book. If I have given little in it, it is the best that I have to give, the memories of great and good characters, of great and good times. .. Vil CONTENTS P.AG:S: CIIlLDHOOD I SCHOOL YEARS • 20 BROTHERS AND SISTERS • 56 OUR MOTHER go OUR FRIENDS • 103 THINGS GAY AND GRAVE (1869-1871) • 120 BRAHMS • BERLIN-FRANKFURT . 1 74 AN ATI'EMPT . 1 95 A LITTLE BOOK OF MEMORIES FOR OUR CHILDREN . 205 . IX LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Robert Schumann and Clara Schumann in the year 1850 in Hamburg. Frontispiece Robert Schumann as a young man /acing page 6 Clara Wieck in her seventeenth year . ,, 16 Robert Schumann in the year 1850 in Hamburg • " Marie, Elise, Ludwig, Ferdinand, Eugenie, and Felix, Children ofRobertand Clara Schumann .32 " Marie Schumann in her t:w"enty-second year . 40 " Elise Schumann in her twentieth year . " 54 Julie Marmorito Schumann in her twenty-third year 62 " Ludwig Schumann in his nineteenth year " 64 Ferdinand Schumann in his nineteenth vear 68 " " Felix Schumann in his eighteenth year. 76 " Eugenie Schumann in her eighteenth year . 88 " Clara Schumann • • " 94 Pauline Viardot-Garcia 106 • " Hermann Levi 114 " JosephJoachim in 1869 122 • " Frau Schumann's Cottage in Baden-Baden . 128 " Johannes Brahms in I 869 " 144 Julius Stockhausen 186 " Clara Schumann during the last years of her life . 200 . " XI CHILDHOOD WAS born in Dusseldorfin December 1851, the seventh I of eight children, boys and girls, and my father com municated the event to Grandmamma Bargiel in the following letter :- ' DEAR MAMMA !-You know what a letter from me usually means. Once more Heaven has protected Klara, and in the early hours of the morning a healthy child, a girl, was born. Fancy ! only three hours earlier Klara and I were present at the Jubilee party for Professor Schadow, which we did not want to miss. I am so happy that Klara is bright and well in spite of everything, and we will take great care of her during the next few weeks. ' Affectionate messages to your children, especially to Woldemar for the last things he sent me. I will write to him separately about that. 'We are preparing many musical events for the near future : a performance of the " Elijah," then Bach's Matthew Passion for the end ofJanuary, probably also of my fairy tale " The Pilgrimage of the Rose," the orchestra tion of which I have now finished. Perhap's Woldemaf might come for that? We must talk about it again. ' Now, affectionate greetings and kisses to yourself, and let us both thank Providence for having preserved our beloved Klara's strength. We hope to hear from you very soon.-Your. ROBERT. ' ~Mon.day, 1 December I 85 I, 'At ten o'clock a.m.' Not the slightest remembrance of this dear father has remained with me ! No wonder, for in March 1854, A I MEMOIRS OF EUGENIE SCHUMANN when he was taken to Endenich, I was only two years and three months old. How often have I tried to penetrate the obscurity of the first years of infancy, always imagining that the form of him who must often have bent over my cradle would return to my consciousness ! But in vain ! The veil remained impenetrable. My birth was the last event he noted down in the ' Little Book of Memories ' which he kept for us children. I had resigned myself to the thought that it would remain the only visible sign of contact between him and me, when not long ago, to my unspeakable joy, I found in his letter to my mother dated April 1, 1855, these words: 'Write and tell me about Eugenie, she showed such quick intelligence.' So, after all, his thoughts had been occupied with me during his illness, as they had in times of health with my brothers and sisters. His early death cast deep shadows on my life as well as on theirs. Even as a mere child I felt that I had sustained an irreparable loss. I thought of him continually, and shed many tears over the sad fate which had overtaken him. Later, I tried to picture his personality to myself, tried to imagine what it would be like to have a father. But I did not succeed ; all that I was told about him did not make him a living person. As I grew up I learnt to love him in his works. Modest as my musical gifts were, they were sufficient to make me apprehend his spirit. I felt deeply the fervour, the devotion and purity of his nature; the high aspirations of his soul, the wonderful wealth of ideas. In imagination I re-created him and the psychic processes which had led to his sad fate. Once, when I was lying dangerously ill, I said to my doctor: 'I do not wonder at my father's illness, because no end of flowers were blossoming in his head.' Nor have I many remembrances of my mother from the early years of my childhood. The first is from the Dusseldorf years. We younger children were playing together in the dining-room one evening, when it suddenly 2 CHILDHOOD occurred to us : We will go in to Mamma, she will give us chocolates. But we had first to cross another room, to our-childish imagination enormous, with a stand in one comer, on which hung a large yellow fur coat that my father had worn on his trip to Russia. We dreaded this fur coat like a wild animal, and needed all our courage to pass it. We took one another by the hands, bolted through the darkness and burst into Mamma's room. There she was, sitting at her writing-desk by the light of a bright lamp. I can still see her, her slender form dressed in a black velvet bodice and silk skirt. How safe we felt after the danger we had braved ! She kept us with her for a little while, took the coveted sweets out of a drawer of her desk, and sent us away again. My second recollection dates from the year 1857, when I was five years and six months old. I see my mother standing in the water and holding out her arms to me ; some one lifts me up, and she takes me and dips me into the stream. That was at St. Goarshausen, and my mother had bathed me in the waves of the Rhine, given me baptism for life, for I feel certain that this moment, inseparably bound up with the image of my mother, has inspired me with that passionate love for the Rhine which has accompanied me through life ; love for our German Rhine, our child of sorrows, for whose sake much blood has been shed, and still more will be shed in the future .. Another incident which I remember in connection with this stay in St. Goarshausen is an excursion to the ' Lore ley , rock, when the young woman in charge of us was dissolved in tears. I did not know the cause of her sorrow, and had I known it I should probably not have under stood it. But from that day the ideas of' Loreley, and tears have always been connected in my mind. In the year I 858 we spent a fe,v weeks in Gottingen, and I remember my mother in a white muslin dress with black sprigs and a broad black sash, playing hide-and-seek with 3 MEMOIRS OF EUGENIE SCHUMANN my elder sisters and our friends Brahms, Grimm, and Agathe Siebold. She had hidden in the thick green of an asparagus bed. Chased out of it, she ran as fast as she could towards the tree which was ' home,' and I have never forgotten the shock when, close to it, she stumbled over a root and fell headlong. Yet another incident from those years has remained so firmly imprinted on my memory throughout all my life, that, although it is not connected with my mother, I cannot resist describing it. I see, as though it were in a picture, a group of children standing in the hall of our house in Dtisseldorf.