He began an essay on Shakespeare’s relation to music, but without waiting for this the University of Jena granted him his doctorate on February 24, 1840, a bit of speed which must have been marvellously refreshing to this poor victim of so much delay.

The very day the degree was granted, he had decided to take legal steps for libel against the attack of Wieck’s, which had been printed in pamphlet form and distributed.  Toward Wieck he is still pitiful, “The wretched man is torturing himself; let it be his punishment.”  The libel suit was not prosecuted and his anger vanished in the rapture of being made a doctor of philosophy in flattering terms.  As he confesses: 

“Of course the first I did was to send a copy to the north for my betrothed; who is exactly like a child and will dance at being engaged to a doctor.”

In May he went to Berlin and visited Clara’s mother for a fortnight; here he had two weeks’ bliss listening to Mendelssohn’s singing to Clara’s accompaniment some of the manifold songs that were suddenly beginning to bubble up from Schumann’s heart.  It was to his happiness that he credited this lyric outburst, for he had hitherto written only instrumental music.

“While I was composing them I was quite lost in thoughts of you.  If I were not engaged to such a girl, I could not write such music.”

Songs came with a rush from his soul, and he exclaims: 

“I have been composing so much that it really seems quite uncanny at times.  I cannot help it, and should like to sing myself to death like a nightingale.”

He begged Clara to come to him and drag him away from his music.  Yet all he wished was to be “where I can have a piano and be near you.”

On July 4, 1840, he made her a present of a grand piano as a surprise, taking her out for a long walk until the piano could be placed in her rooms and hers taken to his.

It will not be possible to tell here in detail the story of the process of law, or its many postponements or disappointments.  Long ago they had set their hearts upon marrying on Easter Day, 1840; they had determined not to permit their father to drive them past this date.  But they went meekly enough under the yoke of the law and passed many a month until it seemed to the litigants that the condition of waiting for a decision was to be their permanent manner of life.  But suddenly, as Litzmann says, “there stood Happiness, long besought, on the stoop, and knocked with tender fingers on the door.”

On the 7th of July, 1840, Clara was told the good news that the father had withdrawn the evidence upon which he based his opposition.  The case was not ended, but the lovers immediately began to hunt for a place to live.  On the sixteenth of July they found a little, but cosy, lodging on the Insel Strasse.  Grief had not yet finally done with them, however, for Clara must write in her journal: 

“I have not for my wedding what the simplest girl in town has, a trousseau.”