Books › Old violins, 1905 › scan 237
Scan 237
Old violins, 1905
12 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 215. See the scan on archive.org.
1turned—it was thought hardly worth a serious inquiry; it "was all to pieces" or "only an old fiddle"; and, indeed, I have before now seen such with the belly off converted into serviceable dustpans.
3Credulity has succeeded to ignorance, and now any one who has any sort of shabby-looking fiddle fancies he has got a rare Cremona!
5He will advertise it unblushingly in the halfpenny papers, bring it gravely to supposed judges, and make a favour of even showing it to a dealer.
7Nothing will shake the confidence of these simple folk in their spurious wares; they will bring out a common brown German dated Maggini, and you point out that Maggini never dated his instruments; they suppose you to be envious. Or they show you a Stainer rashly dated fifty years after that maker's death (such an one was lately brought to me), with a label so recent that you wonder at the brazen fraud. As to the good and tolerably deceptive French copies of Strad, their name is legion, and for a moment a person fairly conversant with fiddles may be deceived by such a subtle and withal honest copyist as Lupôt, but to the eye of the experienced dealer the varnish is quite enough. The varnish that chips off instead of rubbing away, thus leaving the raw wood more exposed than permeated, is not Cremona varnish.
9Of course as to the new labels in modern type I have nothing to say. No one but a complete fool in fiddles could be taken in by them.
11Still, when all gross cases are put aside, there is an
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.