Books › British Violin Makers: A Biographical Dictionary of British Makers of Stringed Instruments and Bows and a Critical Description of Their Work, 1920 › scan 224
Scan 224
British Violin Makers: A Biographical Dictionary of British Makers of Stringed Instruments and Bows and a Critical Description of Their Work, 1920
4 lines. Read by computer on 29 August 2026. Printed page 180. See the scan on archive.org.
1Introduction, but I really only touched the fringe of the subject. It is a topic on which another volume might be written, and it might be written not only with advantage but with a touch of the "human" about it, by making William Ebsworth Hill the pivot on which the information turned. In addition to possessing a vast knowledge of violins, and unsurpassed skill in their restoration, he had an interesting personality. The Rev. H. R. Haweis, who knew him intimately, has given us a vivid pen picture of the old craftsman under the appropriate heading of "A Vignette of W. E. Hill" in his Old Violins (pp. 133-145). I have not the slightest doubt that the picture he draws is a faithful one, and that Hill was very different from ordinary mortals—that he was, in fact, cast in a mould by himself, and strangely unique. The description given by Beatrice Harraden of Paul Stilling is in many respects applicable to him. "Paul," she says, "was one of those strange beings born aloof, and with no mental approach to a normal condition of thought or circumstance. He had a rare gift, the passion of which had absorbed him from his earliest years. He knew the whole subtle secret of violin-making; and they said at Mirecourt, where he was sent to have his training, that he was a born fiddle-maker of unerring instinct. His birth in the nineteenth century was an injustice to him. He should have been born in the seventeenth century and taken his place at the luthier's bench side by side with Stradivari or Guarneri. But his spirit held undoubted communion with them; and life, which had denied him many privileges, had conceded to him the joy of knowing that he was indeed their fellow-craftsman and belonged by birthright to their order" (Interplay, p. 21).
3The distinguishing trait of his personality seems to have been his extraordinary intuition—"unerring instinct" is the right term for it. He knew the work of the masters, and knew it with the infallibility of direct vision. He remarked once to Haweis that there were days when he could not tell. But they were not many, and the fact that
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.