'You certainly think that your dear letter did not give me the least pleasure, as I have left it so long unanswered? Ah, the time lately has been so full of excitement that I was obliged to put it off from day to day. Frau Schumann went with a friend on the 10th of this month to Ostend for the benefit of her health. I, after much persuasion, resolved to make a journey through Swabia during her absence. I did not know how greatly I was attached to the Schumanns, how I lived in them; everything seemed barren and empty to me, every day I wished to turn back, and was obliged to travel by rail in order to get quickly to a distance and forget about turning back. It was of no use; I have come as far as Ulm, partly on foot, partly by rail; I am going to return quickly, and would rather wait for Frau Schumann in Düsseldorf than wander about in the dark. When one has found such divine people as Robert and Clara Schumann, one should stick to them and not leave them, but raise and inspire one's self by them. The dear Schumann continues to improve, as you have read in my letter to my parents. There has been a great deal of gossip about his condition. I consider the best description of him is to be found in some of the works of E. T. A. Hoffmann (Rath Krespel, Serapion, and especially the splendid Kreisler, etc.). He has only stripped off his body too soon.—If you would give me pleasure, let me find a letter from you in Ddf.—is that quite too bold? I will write to you again, and more rationally, from there. I am writing this letter in the waiting-room of the railway-station, which accounts for its having become, probably, very confused.—A thousand hearty greetings to dear Uncle Giesemann, I will write to him also from Ddf.; heartiest greetings also to Frau Blume and your daughter. Remember with affection
'Your Johannes Brahms.'[50]
Stopping at Bonn on his return journey to inquire after the patient at Endenich, Brahms obtained permission to look at Schumann, himself unseen, and from his position behind an open window was able, after he had sufficiently controlled his first agitation, to assure himself that the master looked well and wore the kind, tranquil mien natural to him; and on his arrival at Düsseldorf, whom should he find there but Grimm, who, having missed the object of a journey on which he, too, had set, out, had likewise been to Endenich, seen Schumann, and gained an impression of his appearance and manner similar to that which had reassured Johannes!
Grimm left Düsseldorf in November for Hanover, and remained there till the following year, when he accepted a post as conductor of a choral society at Göttingen. Johannes also went north on a visit to his parents, but for a few weeks only. The Schumanns' house had become a second home to him, and his place in the affections of its master and mistress that of a beloved elder son. Almost every particular that had marked the course of his year's acquaintance with them had been of a kind to stir his true, loving, high-strung nature to its depths. Schumann's noble character, his quick affection for the young stranger and unconditional acceptance of his art, the ideal relation which united the great composer with his wife, the distinguished qualities of the gifted woman who found her greatest happiness in consecrating her genius to the service of her romantic love, the terrible blow which had separated the two lives so closely linked, the sadness of the present, the uncertainty of the future—each and all of these things had aroused in the heart of Johannes a tumult of feeling, a poignancy of affection, that allowed him no rest when he was out of immediate touch with the two people who were its object. He could study to his heart's content in Schumann's library, where books and music were unreservedly at his disposal; could be of use to Frau Schumann, who truly valued his sympathy and returned his affection; he was in constant communication with Joachim, and could have as much pleasant society as he cared for. In short, he felt that for the present his place was at Düsseldorf, and at Düsseldorf he remained.
It was in the spring of 1854 that he made the acquaintance of Julius Allgeyer, who, four years his senior, was at the time a student of copper-plate engraving in Düsseldorf under Josef Keller.
'Brahms,' says Allgeyer in a letter of this date, 'has Schiller's striking profile; his compositions sound different from everything else known to me. He has the bad manners of a frolicsome child and the understanding of a man.'
There was much in the circumstances and characters of the two young men to foster an intimacy between them. Allgeyer's youth had, like that of Johannes, been passed in struggle, and he resembled Brahms in his restless hunger after general culture, which he endeavoured to satisfy by constant and varied reading. The composition of Brahms' Ballades for pianoforte, Op. 10, which belongs to this time, has a direct association with Allgeyer, to whom the young musician was indebted for his acquaintance with Herder's 'Stimmen der Völker,' the volume containing a translation of the Scotch ballad 'Edward' that inspired the first of the pieces in question. Brahms' memory for such details is well illustrated by his dedication to Allgeyer of the Lieder und Romanzen for two voices, with pianoforte accompaniment, Op. 75, published in 1878, the first number of which is a setting of 'Edward.' Another avowed instance of his partiality for Herder's collection is to be found in a still later work, No. 1 of the three Intermezzi for pianoforte, Op. 117, and it may be surmised that the book contains the secret key to the composer's thoughts during the writing of more than one other of the short pieces for pianoforte designated by the general name of 'Intermezzo' or 'Capriccio.'
Brahms and Allgeyer remained intimate, though with intervals of some estrangement—if this be not too strong a term to express a temporary cessation of intercourse without alleged cause—until Brahms' death; and Allgeyer, who was introduced by Johannes to Frau Schumann, came to be regarded by her as belonging to the circle of her valued friends.[51]
Schumann's desire that his young protégé should apply his powerful ideal gifts and his skill in the handling of form to the composition of an orchestral work had not been disregarded by Brahms. He had tried his hand at an overture early in the year, and had worked through the spring and summer at a symphony, making his first attempts at instrumentation with the help of Grimm. It could not be otherwise than that the rapid succession of extraordinary events and vivid emotions which had agitated his spirit should prove a strong stimulus to his imagination; and it is not surprising to find that they moved him to the composition of a series of movements, two of which remain amongst the most powerful produced by him, one having been accepted by thousands of mourners all the world over as the most fitting musical expression known to them in the presence of profound grief. The symphony, as such, was never completed, but the work was thrown into the form of a sonata for two pianofortes, of which the first two movements have become known to the world as the first and second of the Pianoforte Concerto in D minor, and the third is immortalized in the 'Behold all Flesh,' the wonderful march movement in three-four time of the German Requiem. Brahms frequently played the sonata in private at this period with Frau Schumann or Grimm.
The two sets of Variations on Schumann's theme were published simultaneously, by Brahms' desire, in the autumn, with his Songs, Op. 7, dedicated to Dietrich, and the B major Trio; the variations by Johannes appearing as his Op. 9. The song 'Mondnacht' also appeared this year, without opus number, in a book of 'Album-Blätter' published at Göttingen.