As his pen travels rapidly over the pages, the reason of his cramped and crabbed handwriting is only too evident. Schumann's right hand is crippled. In an evil hour of his youth, while yet he was consumed with the ambition of a would-be virtuoso, he experimented, with artificial restrictions, upon one of his right-hand fingers, intending thus to strengthen the rest by assiduous practice … with the result that he lamed his hand for ever. This disastrous attempt deprived the world of a good pianist, but conferred upon it a great composer: for it is possible that the executive would have superseded the creative ability within him. Nevertheless, he confesses that, "My lame hand makes me wretched sometimes … it would mean so much if I were able to play. What a relief to give utterance to all the music surging within me! As it is, I can barely play at all, but stumble along with my fingers all mixed up together in a terrible way. It causes me great distress."
Thus, you perceive, he is considerably debarred from expressing himself in sounds, no less than in words: he must perforce retire more and more within himself. The ease with which he writes is balanced by the difficulty with which he speaks: and bitterly he has complained, "People are often at a loss to understand me, and no wonder! I meet affectionate advances with icy reserve, and often wound and repel those who wish to help me… It is not that I fail to appreciate the very smallest attention, or to distinguish every subtle change in expression and attitude: it is a fatal something in my words and manner which belies me."
He is, indeed, only paralleled by the Lotus Flower of his own delicious song, – shrinking from the daylight of publicity, and softly unfolding to the gentle rays of love.
The Lotus flower is pining
Under the sun's red light:
Slowly her head inclining,
She dreams and waits for the night.
The moon, who is her lover,
Awakes her with his rays,
And bids her softly uncover
Her veiled and gentle gaze.
Now glowing, gleaming, throbbing,
She looks all mutely above, —
She is trembling, and sighing, and sobbing,
For love and the pangs of love.
(Heine.)
And here she enters the room, this woman who is literally his alter ego, and the small prattle of children is audible in the awakening house. Madame Schumann is, in her husband's words, a "pale, not pretty, but attractive" young woman of twenty-six, "with black eyes that speak volumes," – slender, vivacious, affectionate: the exact complement of Robert in all respects. It is easy to perceive in them, at the first glance, "two noble souls distinguished by fastidious purity of character – two buoyant minds concentrated to the service of the same art." The heavily-thoughtful face of the composer lights up with sudden sunshine.
"Come and sit beside me, my dear, sweet girl!" says he. "Hold your head a little to the right, in the charming way you have, and let me talk to you a little. Upon my word, Clärchen, you look younger than ever this morning. You cannot be the mother of three. You cannot be the celebrated pianist. You are just the queer, quaint little girl you were ten years ago, with strong views of your own, beautiful eyes, and a weakness for cherries!" This is a very long speech for Schumann, and his wife looks at him with a shade of anxiety – such anxiety as she is never wholly free from. For the words which she wrote in her diary on her wedding day were more prophetic than even she may yet recognise: "My responsibilities are heavy – very heavy; give me strength to fulfil them as a good wife should. God has always been and will continue to be my helper. I have always had perfect trust in Him, which I will ever preserve." She, and she alone, is aware of all those mysterious clouds of melancholia, those strange sounds of inexplicable music, which brood at times above her darling husband – friend, comrade and lover in one. She, and she only, can banish, as David did from Saul, the terrible phases of irrational depression, and exorcise the evil power which is always lurking ambushed in Schumann's outwardly happy life.
"See," says he, with modest pride, "what a vast amount of work I have completed this morning!"
"You are a most diligent creature, Robert!" she tells him, "and yet I cannot but wish sometimes, that this literary work were off your mind – that you had more time to devote towards composing, which is your true métier. I want all the world to understand how great a master you are – I am jealous of every minute spent upon the Neue Zeitschrift!"
"Don't be too ambitious for me, Clärchen: I desire no better place than a seat at the piano with you close by."
"That does not satisfy me," says the impetuous little lady, "I want you to be recognised and applauded by all men. When I am rendering your divine compositions, I feel as though all the while I were declaring: 'Just hear this! – Just listen to that! – This is by Robert Schumann, the greatest genius in Germany: it is an honour to me to be allowed to perform such works.'"
"My dear, those compositions are my poor, weak way of expressing my thoughts about you! The battles which you have cost me, the joy you have given me, are all reflected by my music. You are almost the sole inspiration of my best – the Concerto, the Sonata, the Davidsbündler dances, the Kreisleriana, the Novelletten. Why, dearest, in the Novelletten are my thoughts of you in every possible position and circumstance and all your irresistibleness!.. No one could have written the Novelletten, unless he had gazed into such eyes and touched such lips as yours. In short, another may do better work, but nothing just like these."
"That, indeed, I feel," replies Clara with a little sigh, "and the very significance of their meaning, I believe, forbids my doing full justice to their amazing difficulties. You need a pianist like Liszt, my Robert, to interpret you to the best advantage."
"I have every admiration for Liszt's wonderful playing, with its diapason of all the moods between the extremes of fiery frenzy, and utmost delicacy. But his world is not mine – not ours, Clärchen. Art, as we know it – you when you play, I when I compose – has an intimate charm that is worth far more to us than all Liszt's splendour and tinsel."
They embrace with the warmth and sweetness of perfect mutual comprehension: and she prevails upon him to descend from cloudy Olympian editorial heights, so far as to refresh himself with a modest Frühstück or breakfast, and a brief gambol with the little ones – for he has that devotion to tiny children characteristic of all great men. Never, perhaps, has any composer so thoroughly entered into childish griefs and fears and pleasures – the April shower and shine of babyhood – than Schumann in his Kinderscenen. The consummate musician who has surmounted every difficulty, acquainted himself with every method of his art – the man who has mastered the forms of symphony, chamber-music, pianoforte and vocal music to their farthest present limits – here stands forth as the exponent of little innocent every-day emotions. By the Fireside, Bogeys, A Child's Petition, From Foreign Lands, Blindman's Buff, and so on, the simple titles run. "They are descriptive enough, you see, and as easy as winking!" he has told his wife. And they are the very breath of childhood, – they "dally with the innocence of love, like the old age." Nobody could have imagined them but a man who had eternal youth in his heart. "The dissonances are as softly blended as if a child had actually poured forth its pure soul."