Books › Old violins, 1905 › scan 239
Scan 239
Old violins, 1905
10 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 217. See the scan on archive.org.
1threatened with a subpoena, I replied, "I would certainly go into the box, but should have utterly to deny that I had vouched for the genuineness of the Red Knight or expressed any opinion whatever about it except that it was 'a good fiddle labelled Guarnerius,' worth perhaps £60 but not £300."
3The upshot was that I was not subpoenaed. Mr Cox refunded the money and the buyer restored the fiddle.
5No one doubts but what Mr Gillott, of steel-pen celebrity, did obtain, chiefly through Charles Reade of "Never Too Late to Mend" fame, a great many very fine fiddles, but I am afraid that Mr C. Reade was also responsible for some comparative rubbish like the Red Knight. Certainly I find a very dubious Strad tenor (one of Gillott's) labelled 140 in the South Kensington collection. As to this particular collector's specimen, if I grant him his belly and his sound-holes, it is about all that I can do—for Strad never threw that scroll nor touched with plane or chisel that back and ribs.
7I brought home from Australia a so-called Peter Guarnerius—really an excellent violin—but it was no more a Guarnerius than a Strad, and was sold far under its value as a Camillo Camilli, which it probably was. But what will you? After all, a fiddle at any given time is worth what it will fetch.
9The most impudent fraud or the most blatant delusion which has ever come under my notice was the so-called Maggini exhibited by Mr J. W. Joyce (110, South Kensington Exhibition, 1872).
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