“My love for Schumann is, it is true, a passionate love; I do not, however, love him solely out of passion and sentimental enthusiasm, but, furthermore, because I think him one of the best of men, because I believe no other man could love me as purely and nobly as he or so understandingly; and I believe, also, on my part that I can make him wholly happy through allowing him to possess me, and that I understand him as no other woman could.”

This love obviously was one not lightly bestowed, but Wieck remained obdurate and refused his consent.  Then Schumann took the only step that under the circumstances was possible.  Wieck’s refusal of his consent being a legal bar to the marriage, Robert invoked the law to set his future father-in-law’s objections aside.  The case was tried, decided in Schumann’s favor, and on September 12, 1840, Robert Schumann and Clara Wieck were married in the village of Schoenefeld, near Leipsic.  That year Schumann composed no less than one hundred and thirty-eight songs, among them some of his most beautiful.  They were his wedding gift to Clara.

After their marriage his inspiration blossomed under her very eyes.  She was the companion of his innermost thoughts and purposes.  Meanwhile his musical genius and critical acumen ever were at her command in her work as a pianist.  Happily, too, a reconciliation was effected with Wieck, and we find Clara writing to him about the first performance of Schumann’s piano quintet (now ranked as one of the finest compositions of its class), on which occasion she, of course, played the piano part.

Four years after their marriage the Schumanns removed to Dresden, remaining there until 1850, when they settled in Duesseldorf, where Robert had been appointed musical director.  There was but one shadow over their lives.  At times a deep melancholy came over him, and in this Clara discerned with dread possible symptoms of coming mental disorder.  Her fears were only too well founded.  Early in February, 1854, he arose during the night and demanded light, saying that Schubert had appeared to him and given him a melody which he must write out forthwith.  On the 27th of the same month, he quietly left his house, went to the bridge across the Rhine and threw himself into the river.  Boatmen prevented his intended suicide.  When he was brought home and had changed his wet clothes for dry ones, he sat down to work on a variation as if nothing had happened.  Within less than a week he was removed at his own request to a sanatorium at Endenich, where he died July 29, 1856.

[Illustration:  The Schumann Monument in the Bonn Cemetery.]

Clara survived him forty years, wearing a crown of laurels and thorns—­the laurels of a famous pianist, the thorns of her widowhood.  It was a widowhood consecrated, as much as her wifehood had been, to her husband’s genius.  She died at Frankfort, May 19, 1896, and is buried beside her husband in Bonn.