Johannes Brahms_ A Biography - Jan Swafford [232]
May noticed that even if Brahms sniffed at gratuitous compliments he still responded with a boyish blush of pleasure to any sincere expression of appreciation. He did nothing overt to ingratiate himself with anyone, but she observed that he was tacitly but no less acutely aware of the effect his music or his playing had on people. He seemed to treat servants and tradespeople with more consistent friendliness than he did his friends. One of his landladies in Lichtental told May that Brahms would often show up in the afternoon to help her chop vegetables for dinner. Chambermaids, innkeepers, and Florence May called him kind and cheerful; Clara and Joachim certainly did not.
May found him an ideal piano teacher, even though, “I do not wish to rhapsodize; he would have been the first to object to this.” He was calm, patient, and persistent, required daily finger exercises from Clementi’s studies, explained everything with absolute clarity. When she did well he tended to respond, “That will make a great effect with Frau Schumann.” At the end of lessons he usually played for her, most often Bach. She found his touch exquisite and his Scarlatti breathtaking, but he said his playing was not what it used to be. “You must learn by the faults also,” he told her. They had one tiff, when she insisted he play and he didn’t feel like it. That day he left in a huff, but showed up for her next lesson as if nothing had happened. Soon afterward he allowed her to charm him into playing for her, and he never refused again.6 Only later did she discover Brahms’s crusty and sardonic side, and she never noted the misogyny.
Florence May’s lessons, however, ended precipitously that summer. When Clara Schumann returned, May announced that she wanted to study “the technical” side of music with Clara and “the spiritual” with Brahms. Clara immediately threw her out, and Brahms felt obliged to do the same. There were no hard feelings. May kept in touch with Brahms for the rest of his life and he invariably welcomed her visits. As a performer she became one of his greatest champions in Britain, and in 1905 published the first major Brahms biography in English.
IN OCTOBER 1871, Brahms returned to Vienna, spent two months at Zum Kronprinzen, then made his move to Karlsgasse No. 4. At the beginning of January, Johann Jakob Brahms wrote his son a report on the illness that had been dogging him: “It is nothing more than liver disease, it is not fatal, but still very painful.” He added that Fritz Schnack, Karoline’s son, was near death from a back injury and Karoline had gone to St. Petersburg to bring him home. “I visited Herr Marxsen, he greets you heartily. He is glad you have taken the position [as Gesellschaft director]. Your loving Father and Mother wish you a joyful and happy new year.”
When Fritz Schnack arrived with his mother in Hamburg they called in a doctor to examine him, and while the doctor was there Johann Jakob agreed to a once-over as well. The report was devastating. Two weeks later, Brahms received the news from Karoline: “Unfortunately I have to write you that this time it’s very bad.… Father can’t even stand up. His strength has vanished all at once.”7 Soon Brahms learned the full story, that his father was near death from liver cancer.
Feelings of regret and nostalgia washed over him. “My father is very seriously ill,” he wrote Reinthaler just before leaving for Hamburg. “That the two lucky people were not granted a long time together, that after a long laborious life he could not longer enjoy a comfortable old age, how sorrowful that makes me!” Brahms had been more the child of his mother than his father—of Christiane’s intelligence, her kindness, even her lapidary skills as a seamstress—but in the end it was Johann Jakob who claimed the larger share of his son’s heart. It had been one of Johannes’s greatest pleasures to provide his