The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2Hughes, Rupert
History
The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2
Hughes, Rupert
Composers -- Biography
"Robert must transfer to me 8,000 thalers of his capital, the interest
of which shall come to me, also the capital, in case of a
separation--What a hideous thought! Robert has 12,000 thalers, and
shall he give his wife two-thirds?"
Robert had already given her four hundred thalers in bonds. The new
terms being rejected, Wieck put everything possible in the way of a
speedy termination of the lawsuit. He made it impossible for Clara to
get back to Paris, as she wished, to earn more money before the
marriage. He demanded that she should postpone her wedding and take a
concert tour for three months with him for a consideration of six
thousand thalers. Clara declined the arrangement.
One day she sent her maid to the house of her father, and asked him for
her winter cloak. He gave this answer to the maid: "Who then is this
Mam'selle Wieck? I know two Fräulein Wieck only; they are my two little
daughters here. I know no other!" As Litzmann says: "With so shrill a
dissonance ended Clara's stay at Leipzig." He compares this exile of
the daughter by the father to the story of King Lear and Cordelia. But
it was the blind and tyrannical old Lear of the first act, driving from
his home his most loving child. On October 3d, Clara went back to
Berlin to her mother. Her father moved heaven and earth to make Clara
suspect Schumann's fidelity, and he gave the love affair as unpleasant
a notoriety as possible. For an instance of senile spite: Clara had
always been given a Behrens piano for her concerts in Berlin. Wieck
wrote to a friend to go to Behrens, and warn him that he must not lend
Clara his pianos, because she was used to the hard English action, and
would ruin any others! He wrote that he hoped the honour of the King of
Prussia would prevent his disobedient daughter from appearing in public
concerts in Berlin. It need hardly be said that Clara was neither
forbidden her piano nor her concerts; indeed, the king appeared in
person at her concert and applauded the runaway vigorously. By a
curious chance at the end of her _pièce de résistance_, a string broke
on the piano; but as a correspondent of Schumann's paper wrote, it came
"just at the end, like a cry of victory." After this, Wieck wrote to
Behrens protesting against his lending a hand to "a demoralised girl
without shame." Clara learned that such of her letters as had gone
through the Wieck home were opened, and she received an anonymous
letter which she knew must have been dictated by her father. Her
suspicions were later proved. The worst of the affair was the
diabolical malice that led Wieck to have the letter put into her hand
just before her chief Berlin concert.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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