Books › Old violins and violin lore, 1900 › scan 132
Scan 132
Old violins and violin lore, 1900
10 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1VIOLINS IN ENGLAND
3but four double-basses, and his tenors and 'cellos are thought better of than his violins. They are steadily rising in value. He died in the same year as Haydn (1808). His son William already suffered much from the foreign competition, which was just beginning to tell, the duty which protected the English manufactures having been removed.
5William made some very good instruments, but they do not equal his father's; and he made a great deal of rubbish for the trade besides.
7There was no doubt a certain erratic vein in the Forster family, which in Old Forster took the shape of amazing versatility and profitable enterprise, but which in his son and grandson degenerated into speculative eccentricity. The son went in for buying grocery, and invested in other bad businesses. The grandson turned out very unmanageable, but clever and many-sided; he worked for a time with Thomas Kennedy, but got away from him and went in for play-acting, sometimes taking a turn in the orchestra at the violoncello desk. He made about fifteen instruments altogether, two or three of which only approached the Forster high level. He died in 1824, suddenly, whilst still quite a young man.
9His brother Simon made a large number of violins—tenors and 'cellos; they are those signed S. A. Forster, but they do not rank very high. He was the first to write a history of the violin, and has deserved well of all succeeding writers, who quote him with a touching simplicity of faith, as though,
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