Books › Old violins, 1905 › scan 187
Scan 187
Old violins, 1905
14 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. Printed page 167. See the scan on archive.org.
1they were in rags, and a broad-brimmed hat somehow gave him an additionally dilapidated air.
3I am afraid he drank, for although his habits were said to be regular, the most regular of them all was his four daily visits to the public-house, where he consumed what to less experienced topers seemed an immoderate quantity of a drink called "pearl."
5When the old fellow was known to be excessively hard up, kind Mr Richard Platt, a musical professor of the town, and Dr Sellé, who has given us some of the above details, came to the rescue. But the bow-maker tired them all out, and ended at last in the Richmond Workhouse.
7I will not say whether he can be exactly cited as a frightful example of the degrading effects of liquor, for he died of bronchitis at the altogether respectable age of eighty-four.
9Indeed, he had his qualities; no bribe or stress of want could make him swerve from his sense of what was due to his art.
11His wood is as magnificent as his workmanship. He doubtless had his secret, but it was possibly one that he could not impart. He would take no apprentice, for fear he should learn the trick; and whether he could or could not teach it, he refused £1000 offered him by some one who wanted to learn it. Dodd's bows are not very uncommon; he died only in 1836, and, strange to say, these true musical wands do not run into a five-pound note yet (1898).
13John Dodd the bow-maker must not be confounded
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