From Memory's Shrine: The Reminscences of Carmen Sylva

by Carmen Sylva

It is but fitting and natural that I should open with this revered name the series of my reminiscences, as my childish recollections hardly go further back than the date of the first time I heard her, when I was only eight years old, at my very first concert in Bonn. That was so great an event in my life, and I was so impatient for the evening to come, that I hardly know how I got through the whole day that preceded it. Seldom has any day since appeared so interminably long. Still, the evening did come at last, and I remember accompanying my mother to the concert-room, into which she was wheeled in her invalid-chair, for, although still quite young, she had been for many years in ill-health and unable to walk. But whether I walked by her side, or how I got there, I no longer know, for I have only a sort of confused recollection of having been brought there without any effort on my own part, as though I had been borne thither on wings! My first concert! My heart still beats loud when I think of it.

It was a big, crowded room we entered. But I did not see the people. I paid no attention to anybody. I saw nothing but the estrade on which the piano was placed. Our seats were so far to the right that, small as I was, I should not have seen the pianist at all had I not obtained my mother’s permission to establish my diminutive person in the passage left between the two rows of seats, where I had a full view of the keyboard. I was all eyes, all ears, quivering from head to foot with intense nervous expectation. At last Madame Schumann came in, and, advancing swiftly to the instrument, sat down before it. She was dressed in black velvet, with a single deep-red rose stuck low behind one ear in her dark hair, which was very thick and inclined to curl, and which she wore plainly parted and flat to the head, instead of having it according to the fashion of those days twisted to stand out on each side of the face. What struck me at once was something harmonious in her whole appearance; it always seemed to me afterwards as if her dress must have been crimson too, to match the rose in her hair. Her hands were small, firm and plump, the touch full, healthy and vigorous, almost of virile strength. I carried the rich, clear tones away with me, to ring in my ears for long afterwards. But that which went straight to my heart, and haunted me longer still, was the pathetic look in her eyes.

Leaning a little forward, bending as it were over the keys, as if to be alone with her own music and the better to hear herself, apparently utterly oblivious of the rest of the world, the player kept her magnificent, melancholy eyes persistently cast down. But I could see those wonderful eyes, and her sadness impressed me so much that it almost spoilt my pleasure in the music, for I was wondering all the time how it could be that anyone who played so divinely could all the same look so unutterably sad. I did not then know her unhappy story; I had not heard how her husband had gone out of his mind, leaving her penniless, with a large family to provide for, and that it was, indeed, to provide her children’s daily bread that she thus played in public. It did not occur to me that anyone could be poor who wore a velvet dress. Besides it was impossible to my childish mind to conceive that any artist could be poor. On the contrary, I looked upon them all as being fabulously rich, as having all the treasures of the universe at their disposal. Those beliefs were natural to my age, for in childhood Romance is Reality, and Reality a very poor sort of Romance! Have we not been all of us the heroes of our own fairy-tales?—either Aladdin or Robinson Crusoe, and more often Crusoe on his island than Aladdin in the magic cave, since at that time of life the riches of this world appeal very feebly to our imagination.

But for the pathetic expression of a pair of dreamy eyes my mind was sufficiently receptive, sorrow and heartache being already only too familiar to me. My mother, as I have mentioned, was at that time an invalid, my younger brother had been a sufferer from his birth, and my father was slowly dying of consumption. The daily spectacle of pain and illness may well open a child’s eyes to the expression of suffering in other human faces. But as I was always a very reserved child, accustomed to keep all puzzling problems to myself and brood over them in silence, I asked no questions, and consequently learnt nothing about my new idol nor even suspected the existence of a domestic tragedy. Schumann’s works were at that time a sealed book for me, with the exception of a few simple pieces, intended for children. And children’s pieces were not what I cared about. I only wanted Beethoven!

After that I did not see her again for many years—till I was grown up, a girl of twenty, in St. Petersburg. I was just recovering from an illness, and it was whilst I was still so weak that I could hardly stand, that I had the sudden news of my dear father’s death. The blow was such an overwhelming one, I felt at first as if everything in life were over for me, and that I should never take pleasure in anything again. And just then Mme. Schumann arrived with her daughter Marie. The Grand Duchess Hélène, in whom so many artists had found a true friend and enlightened patroness, hastened to place rooms in her palace at the disposal of the celebrated pianist. So mother and daughter, to my unspeakable joy and consolation, took up their abode with us for seven weeks, and were lodged in the suite of apartments just above my own. Whenever she was going to practice, Mme. Schumann would send word to me, and then I would manage to drag myself upstairs, and let myself be propped up by cushions in a corner of the room, where I could listen undisturbed. It was as if I were being slowly awakened from a deathlike trance, and being brought back to an interest in life again by the strains of that exquisite music. Better still, my aunt very soon arranged for me to take some piano-lessons of this great artist, and these mark quite an epoch in my life. They were certainly quite exceptional

lessons in every way, altogether unlike everything else of that nature, for at first I was almost too feeble to hold my fingers on the keys. But my dear professor soon found something for me, to which my strength was just equal—Schumann’s delicious “Scenes of Childhood”—and from these we went on little by little to higher flights. But it was not alone for the progress in my music that these hours were of inestimable value; I look back to them as having left their mark on the whole course of my life ever since, for I was roused from my own lethargy and despondency by learning the trials through which my new friend had passed. This noble-minded woman could, indeed, have hit upon no better lesson in fortitude than that which was contained in the simple story of her own youth, as calmly and unaffectedly she told her young companion of the catastrophe which had wrecked her life. It was, indeed, a revelation to me, this glimpse into the workings of another soul, whose sufferings I had never even suspected. The simple words in which the tale was told wrung my heart more than any studied eloquence could have done, and I blushed to think that I had dared to wrap myself up in my own sorrow, as if I were the only sufferer in the world. I learnt from her how much another had borne silently, uncomplainingly, and I understood how duty may often call upon us to take up our burden and resume the daily struggle before our wounds are yet healed, instead of giving ourselves up to the luxury of grief. I will try, as far as I can, to give Clara Schumann’s story in her own words, as she told it to me, in the long conversations we held in those unforgettable hours. She spoke of her childhood, for her troubles began early; her parents were separated, and the little girl never knew a really happy home. In spite of the slight deafness, with which she was troubled from her earliest years, her father insisted on having her trained as a musician, and she was prepared to make her appearance in public when she was only twelve years old. “It was all very hard,” she related, “for I adored my mother, whom I hardly ever saw. I remember my father once taking me to Berlin to pay her a visit, and the way in which he flung the door open, with the words: ‘Here, madam, I have brought your daughter to see you!’ Yes, those were hard circumstances for me, and the more so, as he had married again, and my stepmother was anything but kindly disposed towards me.”

There was a pause, and her expression changed as she went on to tell of her love-idyl and early marriage. This was a dreamy look in her eyes, and an arch smile on her lips that made her face quite young again, while she spoke of those bygone days of short-lived happiness.

“It was when I was only fourteen,” she said, “that Robert Schumann first became a visitor at our house. He was then just eighteen years of age, and very soon we two young people had fallen in love, and even become secretly engaged. Secretly, I need hardly say, so frightened was I of my father, who, for his part, had constantly announced that he had his own quite fixed plans for my future.”