With songs and hearts a-sporting,
Or weaponed for a fight!
A DAY WITH
ROBERT
SCHUMANN
BY MAY BYRON
LONDON
HODDER & STOUGHTON
In the same Series.
Mozart.
Beethoven.
Mendelssohn.
Schubert.
Chopin.
Wagner.
Gounod.
Tschaikovsky.
A DAY WITH SCHUMANN.
It is an April morning in 1844,in the town of Leipzig,—calm,cool, and fraught with exquisitepromise of a prolific spring,—whenthe Herr ProfessorDoctor Robert Schumann,rising before six o'clock as is his wont, veryquietly and noiselessly in his soft feltslippers, dresses and goes downstairs. Forhe does not wish to disturb or incommodehis sleeping wife, whose dark eyes are stillclosed, or to awaken any of his three littlechildren.
The tall, dignified, well-built man, with hispleasant, kindly expression, and his air ofmingled intellect and reverie, bears his wholecharacter written large upon him,—his transparenthonesty, unflagging industry, andgenerous, enthusiastic altruism. No touch ofself-seeking about him, no hint of ostentation [Pg 8]or conceit: he is still that same reticent andsilent person, of whom it was said someyears ago by his friends,
He smokes tobacco as no one can:
A man of thirty, I suppose,
And short his hair, and short his nose."
That, indeed, is the sum total of his outwardappearance: as for the inward man, it isnot to be known save through his writings.Literature and music are the only means ofexpression, of communication with others,which are possessed by this modest, pensive,reserved