Books › The fiddle fancier's guide; a manual of information regarding violins, violas, basses and bows of classical and modern times, together with biographical notices and portraits of the most famous performers of these instruments, 1892 › scan 141
Scan 141
The fiddle fancier's guide; a manual of information regarding violins, violas, basses and bows of classical and modern times, together with biographical notices and portraits of the most famous performers of these instruments, 1892
2 lines. Read by computer on 29 August 2026. Printed page 127. See the scan on archive.org.
1the pens of the late Gustave Chouquet and Antoine Vidal, and which is adopted by all others with the addition of a grandfather, whom these gentlemen do not mention, is to the effect that Claude Vuillaume, born in Mirecourt in 1771, according to Chouquet, and in 1772, according to Vidal, was a violin maker in that town, and the first known member of the family; that he trained his four sons in the business, who continued it under his direction; that he was a maker of trade instruments, etc., etc., and had used as his trade mark, "Au roi David, Paris," branded in the backs. I am now informed that this Claude Vuillaume was not a violin maker at all, but was what we would call the "carrier," between Mirecourt and Nancy. There may be people alive in both places at the present time who will remember the old man quite well—he died in 1834—and who could confirm this, I daresay, if it were necessary. Assuming, for the nonce, that he was even a dealer in cheap instruments in Mirecourt, what a strange fancy it was to start a "violin" ancestry in this way! And if he was not a violin dealer, and had nothing whatever to do with the business, except as the carrier of the goods from one town to the other, what a lurid light the circumstance throws on the eagerness to establish by some means a connection—if even only a nominal one—between an undoubtedly talented personality, and the glorious old shop in Cremona. It is very unpleasant to have one's confidence in the accuracy of biographical detail shaken in this fashion, and although it appears that his brother, Claude Vuillaume, never made any such pretensions and laughed at the idea when the subject was broached in
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