It is a great help to be able to afford to have some one with you in opera life. Home surroundings are the most conducive to good work, and it is hard to make a home alone; but you do not absolutely need any one, if this is not possible. My "morals" were never in danger—no "infamous proposals" were made to me by agent, conductor or director. In my first engagement, one or two of the giddier members of the company had affairs with young officers—in no case a flagrant scandal, as with a married man. Their relations to each other in the theatre were all that could be demanded. The most exaggeratedly correct behaviour was exacted from me. One day in Metz, for example, we went for a walk in the country with the lyric baritone, a nice little chap, who was a great friend of ours. It was a lovely, frosty day in autumn, and we were walking fast through a forest road, when we passed a carriage with the very prim wife of an officer sitting in it. The next day, an acquaintance of ours told us, as a joke, that the same woman had said that afternoon to her, "I thought you told me that Fräulein Howard was a lady?" "So she is," said our friend. "Oh, no," said the other, "she can't be. I saw her and her sister walking with one of the singers from the theatre, and they were behaving very badly." "What were they doing?" asked our friend. "They were all three holding on to his stick!" said she, in a horrified tone!
I went abroad to learn my business and I learned it. There is much talk about it not being necessary to go abroad to prepare oneself for an operatic career, but the time has not yet come in America when the student can find the same opportunity to practice, or work out on the stage her beginner's faults. In Europe you can do this in blissful semi-obscurity. I hope and believe the time will come when a girl will not have to go through all I went through in order to develop her talent, but may do it in her own country. But the wonderfulness of Europe for those whose eyes are open cannot yet be replaced by America, and a real artist will surely flower more perfectly on that side of the water.
To those who go I can only say that I hope they may have the tremendous advantage of fairy god-parents, as I had, and perhaps a sister Marjorie.
After the season closed at Covent Garden I met the manager of the new Century Opera, soon to be opened in New York. He offered me a long contract, and I finally decided to return to America. I saw a photograph of Edward Kellogg Baird in a musical paper at this time, and read of his connection with the enterprise. I said to myself, "That is the type of man I shall marry—if I ever do marry."
I came to the Century, met my husband, E. K. B., and worked with him for the success of the opera, which lay very near our hearts; but the war and other unfortunate circumstances proved too much to overcome, and we were forced to suspend. I finally attained the Metropolitan Opera, which I find the most absorbingly interesting house with which I have ever been connected, and which is the greatest school of all.
REPERTOIRE
THE END