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Scan 66
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
2 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 52. See the scan on archive.org.
1but that must be a typographical error—reported, it is to be presumed to Vuillaume, or somebody else who was the latter's informant, that Joseph Guarnerius lived a very irregular life, that he was idle, negligent, fond of wine and pleasure, and that his wife, a Tyrolese, was very unhappy with him, although she had often helped him in his work—another vague hint of a lady violin maker. Bergonzi added that Guarnerius had been shut up for several years in prison for some cause then unknown, and that he died in 1745. Other traditions have it that while in prison the gaoler's daughter procured for him wood and some miserable tools, with which, she assisting him, he made those violins of his last period which in this country are called "prison violins," and in France "violons de la servante." It is also said that she bought the varnish, sometimes from one fiddle-maker and sometimes from another, and that she took out the finished instruments and hawked them about, selling them for what she could get, in order to procure for Guarnerius money wherewith to buy some prison comforts. The reader will observe, doubtless, that this story is sufficiently minute in those details which help to account for the bad quality of these latest fiddles, and that it is extremely vague in every other respect. It has, however, been accepted and commented upon as not improbable. This Bergonzi was not a contemporary of Joseph del Jesu, but his father must have been, and it is, of course, just possible that the story is true. It must, however, have been an offence of some importance that consigned Guarnerius to prison for several years, and one would think that some record of a crime of such magnitude as to merit so severe a punish-
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