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He hates nothing worse than being called a prodigy, says always: "It's not a question of how young I am." Mischa Elman played in a Lord Fauntleroy suit when he was 17. Menuhin demanded long pants this season, had them made by the tailor to the Italian Crown Prince. He demanded an automobile license, too, last spring, got it in California by taking a test on San Francisco's busy Market Street. That automobile license is his most treasured possession. It is the only thing he keeps in his pocket when he gives a recital.
After a recital Menuhin still asks for a strawberry ice-cream soda, but in Manhattan three years ago he wanted to do something different so his father took him to see his birthplace on University Avenue at 181st Street. He saw the nook under the stairs where his baby-carriage used to stand, the rigging on the firescape where his diapers hung, the grocery next door where a loaf of bread was snatched from his mother's hands because she could not pay immediately.
Yehudi (A Jew) Menuhin was nine months old when the family moved to San Francisco and his father started working as a day-laborer in a lumberyard until he proved himself sufficiently well-educated to get a job teaching in a Hebrew school. Moshe Menuhin and his wife liked to go to symphony concerts but there was no one to leave the baby with. One day they decided to take him with them and strangely enough young Yehudi stayed perfectly quiet. Thereafter he attended the concerts regularly, developed a great interest in Louis Persinger who sat in the first violin chair. When he was 3 he asked for a violin and his father bought him a 50¢ toy which he instantly broke to bits because it "didn't sound right."
When Yehudi was four he started studying with Louis Persinger who at the end of two years pronounced him a marvel. Thereupon Banker & Mrs. Sidney M. Ehrman offered to finance the boy's career. Large-hearted patrons usually do more harm than good. They arouse high hopes which are almost never realized.— But Yehudi was born with great imagination and great concentration, far more important than any amount of boosting. By the time he was seven all San Francisco was talking about him. At ten, a chunky, blond child in velvet knee pants, he played the Beethoven Concerto with the New York Symphony. He amazed everyone who heard him with the purity of his style and the moving way in which his innocence suited the music of Beethoven. From that moment he was taken seriously. In the audience was Banker Henry Goldman who, enraptured, bought a $60,000 Stradivarius. gave it to Yehudi as a birthday present.
Less intelligent parents might have ruined the boy. But the Menuhins were wise enough to know that Yehudi was not ready to be marketed. They allowed him only one public appearance a year until he was nine, then two a year until he was twelve. They have had able tutors for him and his sisters Hepzibah & Yaltah. He is good at mathematics and history. He knows five languages: Hebrew, which he spoke before English, French, German, Italian. He has been kept out of doors so that he could learn to swim and play tennis. Even now he goes to bed at 8:30, practices only three hours a day.