Johannes Brahms_ A Biography - Jan Swafford [107]
They gathered his effects, the pictures of Clara and Johannes and the children, the letters from Clara bound in a pink ribbon, musical sketches and studies, meticulous drafts of every letter he had written from the hospital. At the funeral in Bonn two days later, Brahms, Joachim, and Dietrich walked behind the coffin carrying laurel wreaths as Schumann was borne from Endenich by musicians from Düsseldorf. In the city a throng of musicians and music lovers joined the mourners; a brass band played chorales. Clara stayed behind in the chapel praying as the procession arrived at the grave surrounded by newly planted trees. After Brahms laid Clara’s wreath on the coffin there was a short sermon from the pastor, a chorus and hymn, words from Schumann’s friend Ferdinand Hiller, and the coffin descended. The friends threw in their ceremonial handfuls of earth and said farewell. In her journal Clara wrote, “All my happiness is over. A new life is beginning.”45
AS BRAHMS AND CLARA picked up the tatters of their lives, the unanswered question loomed between them. Time, which had been contracting toward the single point of Schumann’s crisis, rebounded frighteningly into the future: after a tragedy foreseen, the question of what to do, to fill the endless empty days. Joachim, staying with them in Düsseldorf, admired Johannes’s strength of mind and wrote Liszt of “the noble lady, who appears to me, in her deep grief, a lofty example of God-given strength.”46 Brahms took over lessons Clara had scheduled with the Detmold royalty and got to know a court official named Karl von Meysenbug. Soon that would produce an invitation from the little principality.
Brahms and Clara decided on a vacation to Switzerland, to find out if there they could see anything clearly. It would still be improper for them to travel alone, so they brought along Clara’s sons, Ferdinand and Ludwig, and Johannes’s sister, Elise, who had never traveled far from home. Despite her grief, Clara wrote characteristically meticulous advice to Christiane Brahms, sinking with relief into the quotidian:
Do not let [Elise] take too many things. If she needs two chemises a week, let her bring six chemises. If she is used to wearing only one, about four will be sufficient. Stockings, six pairs. She only needs two changes of dress; keep the nice blue one at home; it would be a pity if it were spoiled in the packing. If she has a black petticoat, this would be best for traveling, and then she will only want one white underskirt in case she sometimes wears a light dress.
The letter continues through matters of hats and shawls and gloves. Clara ends, “You know how heavy my heart is. I don’t want to talk of it; my heart bleeds at once. Johannes is my sure friend and protector—what a blessing I have him!”47 Did she have him, and in what way? In the middle of August, when Johannes came to Hamburg to pick up his sister for the vacation, his mother found him anxious and miserable.
The party began their vacation with a visit to Schumann’s grave in Bonn. Then, after stopovers including days with Joachim at Heidelberg, they spent two weeks in Gersau at the foot of the Rigi, walking and boating on the lake in the mild weather, and making music. For Elise Brahms the mountains and glaciers of Switzerland were like a fantastic dream; she bubbled over the trip for the