Close upon this letter, which must have been answered with no hesitation and no inferiority of passion, came the summons to battle for the prize.  Wieck, who had been a cordial father, declined with undue enthusiasm the role of father-in-law.  He had viewed with hope Robert’s entrance into the career of music, had advised the mother to let him make it his life; then the youth ruined his chances of earning large moneys as a concert performer by practising until his right hand was permanently injured and the third finger useless.  As early as 1831 Wieck is quoted as objecting to Schumann’s habits, and saying that, if he had no money at all, he might turn out well; for Schumann, while never rich, never knew poverty.  But their friendship continued cordial and intimate, and Wieck went into partnership with him in the Neue Zeitschrift fuer Musik; he was a member of the famous Davids-buendler, that mystical brotherhood of art, wherein Clara is alluded to as “Chiara,” perhaps also as “Zilia.”  None the less, or perhaps all the more, Wieck objected to seeing his famous and all-conquering child marry herself away to the dreamer and eccentric.

Wieck’s own domestic affairs had not flowed too smoothly; he had married the daughter of Cantor Tromlitz, who was the mother of Clara and four other children, but the marriage, though begun in love, was unhappy, and after six years was ended in divorce.  Clara remained with her father, while her mother married a music-teacher named Bargiel, and bore him a son, Waldemar, well known as a composer and a good friend and disciple of Robert Schumann.  Wieck had married again, in 1828, Clementine Fechner, by whom he had a daughter, Marie, who also attained some prominence as pianist and teacher.

On February 13, 1836, we have seen Schumann write his love to Clara.  The number of the day, the stormy night, and the remembrance of his mother’s death were all appropriate omens.  Wieck stormed about Clara’s head with rebuke and accusations, and threatened like another Capulet, till he scared the seventeen-year-old girl into giving him Schumann’s letters.  Then he threatened to shoot Schumann if she did not promise never to speak to him again.  She made the promise, and the manner in which she did not keep it adds the necessary human touch to this most beautiful of true love stories.  Schumann was never underhanded by choice, or at all, except a little on occasion in this love affair; so now he called at once upon his old teacher, friend and colleague.

The interview must have been brief and stormy, for, on the 1st of March, 1836, Schumann writes to August Kahlert, a stranger but a fellow musical journalist, at Breslau, where Clara had gone: 

“I am not going to give you anything musical to spell out today, and, without beating about the bush, will come to the point at once.  I have a particular favour to ask you.  It is this:  Will you not devote a few moments of your life to acting as messenger between two parted souls?  At any rate, do not betray them.  Give me your word that you will not!