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A square, squat lady with snow white hair stepped on to the platform of the High School auditorium in Stevens Point, Wis., one evening last week and grinned a great wide grin to show that she was at home. She was Ernestine Schumann Heink, 65 years old, in Stevens Point for the first concert of her Golden Jubilee Tour.
"Why Stevens Point?" some one had asked her. "Surely to begin a fiftieth anniversary tour—?" "Vy not?" Ernestine Schumann Hemk had answered. Should she go back to Europe, to Gratz where she had given her first formal concert at the age of fifteen? Should she go back to the little Austrian town where she grew up, the homely, hard-working child of a Bohemian soldier and an Italian mother? To be sure she had earned her first money there playing dance tunes on a tinkly piano in an old restaurant where the peasants gathered on holidays. Ninety-six cents, she had made in just one evening. That, and the seven and a half cents she earned giving the restaurant keeper's daughter lessons, she put toward a piano for herself, nol much of a piano with its hammers patched with string and sealing wax, but still a piano. . . . Sh might have gone back to Dresden where she first sang in opera, to Hamburg, where Herr Heink had died and left her alone with five small children, to scrub and cook, to sing for five dollars a performance. Yes, Hamburg had its memories, but then so had Vienna and Berlin and Bayreuth. So had cities all over the U. S.
It was 1899 when she came to the Metropolitan Opera to sing for $75 a week. More children, Herr Schumann's, were added to Herr Heink's* string. At the Metropolitan she was at home, but there were the children. . . . She went into musical comedy. They lifted their hands in horror at the Metropolitan but they took her back when she was ready to come because no one else could sing Wagner as she could. She left the Metropolitan again, went touring the country in concert, into towns much smaller than Stevens Point, into army camps, schools, hospitals, East, North, South, West. No entourage traveling with her, no maid even, no road manager. Just Schumann Heink, taking an upper when she could not get a lower, hater of temperament, lover of her children, lover of soldiers the world over, of corn' beef and cabbage . . . shrewd . . . generous. . . .
"Vy not Stevens Point?" It is all the same. Everywhere she is at home. She holds the keys to numberless cities. There will be 70 concerts in all, nine in Wisconsin, then to Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, New York, Washington, D. C., Maryland, Texas, Mississippi, Florida, Virginia, Massachusetts, Missouri, a few performances at the Metropolitan sandwiched in. No entourage, not even a maid; just Schumann Heink grinning a great wide grin to show she is at home.
*Formerly every year, now every other year, this prize is awarded for deserving new compositions. In the odd years an order is given to some proven composer for a new creation.
*Mme. Schumann Heink has had eight children (six are living), five of them Herr Heink's, three Herr Schumann's; three of them daughters, five sons. Four sons fought in the U. S. army; the other, a German officer, was killed in the War.