He began also to publish most enthusiastic criticisms of her concerts, calling her “the wonder-child,” and “the first German artist,” one who “already stands on the topmost peak of our time.”  He even printed verses upon her genius.  In a letter to Wieck, in 1833, he says, “It is easy to write to you, but I do not feel equal to write to Clara.”  She was still, however, the child to him; the child whom he used to frighten with his gruesome ghost-stories, especially of his “Doppelgaenger,” a name, Clara afterwards took to herself.  Child as she was, he watched her with something of fascination, and wrote his mother: 

“Clara is as fond of me as ever, and is just as she used to be of old, wild and enthusiastic, skipping and running about like a child, and saying the most intensely thoughtful things.  It is a pleasure to see how her gifts of mind and heart keep developing faster and faster, and, as it were, leaf by leaf.  The other day, as we were walking back from Cannovitz (we go for a two or three hours’ tramp almost every day), I heard her say to herself:  ‘Oh, how happy I am! how happy!’ Who would not love to hear that?  On this same road there are a great many useless stones lying about in the middle of the footpath.  Now, when I am talking, I often look more up than down, so she always walks behind me and gently pulls my coat at every stone to prevent my falling; meantime she stumbles over them herself.”

What an allegory of womanly devotion is here!

Gradually Schumann let himself write to Clara a whit more like a lover than a brother, with an occasional “Longingly yours.”  He begged her to keep mental trysts with him, and, acknowledging a composition she had dedicated to him, he hinted: 

“If you were present, I would press your hand even without your father’s leave.  Then I might express a hope that the union of our names on the title-page might foreshadow the union of our ideas in the future.  A poor fellow like myself cannot offer you more than that....  Today a year ago we drove to Schleusig, how sorry I am that I spoiled your pleasure on that occasion.”

Of this last, we can only imagine some too ardent compliment, or perhaps some subjection to one of his dense melancholies.  In the very midst of his short infatuation with Ernestine von Fricken, he is still corresponding with Clara.  Their tone is very cordial, and, knowing the sequel, it is hard not to read into them perhaps more than Schumann meant.  The letters could hardly have seemed to him to be love letters, since he writes to Clara that he has been considering the publication of their correspondence in his “Zeitschrift,” though he was probably not serious at this, seeing that he also plans to fill a balloon with his unwritten thoughts and send it to her, “properly addressed with a favourable wind.”

“I long to catch butterflies to be my messengers to you.  I thought of getting my letters posted in Paris, so as to arouse your curiosity and make you believe that I was there.  In short a great many quaint notions came to my head and have only just been dispersed by a postilion’s horn; the fact is, dear Clara, that the postilion has much the same effect upon me as the most excellent champagne.”