Books › Old violins and violin lore, 1900 › scan 137
Scan 137
Old violins and violin lore, 1900
8 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1OLD VIOLINS
3grey ruins of Melrose more tenderly than the light of day.
5There were no electric lamps in those days (in 1870), consequently no patent asbestos appliances for converting the impure London gas into a specious and blazing rival.
7Mr. Hill tried to do too much. In his back shop he conducted repairs, and frequently brought his "repairs" into the front shop. I have seen him there, behind the counter, busy with gouge, knife, or scraper. When customers or applicants for advice arrived—some with cheap German fiddles which they fondly believed to be rare specimens of Cremona, others with their own good, bad, and indifferent instruments to be done up—they were received one and all with the same mild and tolerant inattention, born not of incivility, but of abstraction. Such as knew Mr. Hill in those days, knew the nearest approach we shall perhaps ever see to the great Cremona makers. I do not say that any of Mr. Hill's work (barring his exquisite repairs and carving) is likely to rank with theirs; he was an admirable maker, but he very soon left off making. When the duty on foreign violins was removed there poured into England a continuous stream of fiddles, which entirely swamped the demand for new ones of English make. Mr. Hill, following the market, turned his attention to repairing and dealing; but the art and craft atmosphere, the knowledge, the familiarity with violin constitution, the infallible intuition and single-minded love of the violin for its own sake,
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