Johannes Brahms_ A Biography - Jan Swafford [96]
She arrived home at the beginning of July to prepare for a concert in Bad Ems with Jenny Lind. The soprano had donated her services as a favor, but felt obliged to write advising Clara for her part of the program “to choose simple things which can be understood by people who love beauty.” She did not elaborate, but the obvious point was: no Brahms. Clara replied, with equal parts firmness and restraint, “I will yield to the public taste only insofar as it does not run counter to my convictions.”54 But she did not play Brahms on the program.
The experience in Ems proved dismal. Preparations had been rushed, with the result that Lind’s husband, Herr Goldschmidt, had to do a lot of last-minute preparation besides playing his wife’s accompaniments. He got no help from Johannes, who arrived with Clara, snubbed both Goldschmidts, and quickly headed off on a hiking trip.55 Among other reasons for his chilliness, Brahms probably had a good idea of what Clara’s friends thought of him and his music. In the concert, meanwhile, with the overflowing audience full of grandees from the Detmold court, Jenny Lind got most of the applause. Clara was livid:
How degraded I felt by an audience which could not understand one of my pieces, and did not attempt to, but which cared for nothing but Jenny Lind. The whole of last winter, with all its torments, did not exact such a sacrifice as this evening when I was forced to humiliate myself from a sense of duty.… I cried bitterly when I got home—if only Johannes had been with me, he would have provided some comfort.56
Even if the proceeds of the concert turned out well enough to pay Clara’s bills for the summer and finance a vacation, that was not enough to assuage her anger and resentment. This journal entry says a great deal about Clara Schumann: at least in the moment she wrote it, her husband’s madness did not feel as dreadful to her as being upstaged by Jenny Lind.
AFTER THE DISTRESS of the concert, Clara and Johannes set out on a trip along the Rhine. It was their first vacation together, though they were not alone—for the sake of propriety, Clara’s maid Fräulein Bertha attended them. In five days they made their way along the river on foot over a hundred miles, going on to the Neckar Valley and Heidelberg, and ending with a visit to Frankfurt. For all the gloom that perennially hung around Clara, it was a beautiful interlude for both of them—romantic, if any of their times together can be called that. Carrying their supplies in his knapsack, Johannes guided her through the resplendent Rhine landscape resonant with German history and folktale. Together they climbed the Loreley cliff, walked through the old gate of St. Goarshausen with the “Katz” Castle looming above, and walked down medieval streets lined with half-timbered houses. He made her laugh and forget; she basked in his youth. “He draws in great breaths of nature,” she wrote, “and one grows young with him.” Johannes clambered into trees to survey their route and pulled Clara up hills to admire ruined castles and hillsides covered with vineyards. She sat in the shade in the summer breeze, eating fruit and listening as he babbled away.57 “I always like to see Brahms’s radiant face.… Johannes very happy again. The old days ought to come back for him, his fresh, vigorous nature would suit them.”58
During that idyll on the Rhine, something new entered their relations, or rather entered Brahms’s side of them. Even if they never said it aloud, they knew now that Robert was not going to get well. If Clara and Johannes were ever physically lovers, it probably began during this trip. It is just as likely that they were not. In fact, whatever happened between them on the Rhine did not bring them closer at all. As far as Clara