Books › Old violins and violin lore, 1900 › scan 225
Scan 225
Old violins and violin lore, 1900
12 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1OLD VIOLINS
3pant of the noble case had been stolen. Probably many such thefts have been committed by dishonest servants. Nothing could be easier than to substitute one fiddle for another in houses—and they are legion—where people do not know one fiddle from another, and where fiddles lie unused and unvisited in lofts and cupboards, I might almost say from generation to generation. No soloist who travels should fail to insure his treasure. Sarasate had a heavy insurance on his violin when he went to America.
5But worse than theft is mutilation. The chances are that what is stolen, unless it be stolen deliberately to cut up, will some day reappear intact; but the chances are small that a mutilated instrument will ever collect its disjecta membra.
7Still, as in the case of Tarisio's Spanish bass, that too is possible, just as the recovery of the Hercules Farnese statue, before alluded to, was possible.
9A well-known amateur whose Strad had been taken to pieces for repair and the pieces wrapped in bits of paper, on unfolding the fragments found the head missing. The loss seemed irreparable, but a day or two afterwards an old apple-woman picked it up in the gutter, and happened to take it to the very fiddle-shop charged with the repair of the Strad. That Strad head was worth just 2s.—to the old woman!
11Nothing is easier than the perpetration of a fraud by a clever copyist if he chooses to attempt it. Incredible as it may appear, Paganini was shown by Vuillaume two fiddles, one of which was his own and
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