Books › The violin : how to choose one, 1893 › scan 46
Scan 46
The violin : how to choose one, 1893
6 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. Printed page 42. See the scan on archive.org.
1mongrels is curious, and sometimes not so modern as one would expect. It is a mixed tone, and very puzzling to all but the trained expert. The third stage is that at which a carefully made copy of a Cremona, much worn in the varnish, and apparently dirty and rubbed with long years of use, with a dingy ticket, pretty correct in wording and dating, can be detected at a glance. Few amateurs reach that stage, and I may give a case in point. A friend of mine, in England, happened to be in a very musical city on the east coast, and saw an old-looking violin without bridge or strings lying in a second-hand book-shop; went in, asked to see it, and found inside a ticket bearing the familiar inscription—"Antonius Stradivarius Cremonensis facebat anno 1721." Wild visions of clearing £1,000 by a successful deal floated through his brain, and he tremblingly asked the price. "£30."
3"Oh, ridiculous! Who would give so much for that old thing?"
5The seller brought out an old catalogue of the auction at which he had bought the violin some years before, and showed that it had been sold along with several other Cremona violins undoubtedly genuine, the property of a medical man deceased. In this catalogue the real violins were guaranteed—this one was inserted without remark, but people in haste to grasp a grand Strad are apt to overlook trifles. The seller did not know anything about the violin except that those who had seen it had said it was worth hundreds of pounds. That settled it. After a good deal of haggling the violin changed owners, price £22. The buyer afterwards learned that the price paid for it at the auction was only £13, though some of the other instruments brought high prices. Back to the centre of England to his home he went, got it strung, and then imagined he heard "Cremona" in every whisper. A paragraph of the extraordinary windfall crept into the papers as usual, and for a time he was the happiest of men. Then he took it up to London and showed it to a violinist of some note, claiming to be an expert, who first pronounced it a real Strad, and then changed, and hurriedly wrote that he had "very grave doubts of it being genuine." At last the owner took a trip to Scotland, afraid to trust the precious gem by rail or post, and showed it to me, exclaiming, as he opened the case—"Now look at it! Isn't it lovely!" I said, without lifting it—"Yes, Mr. Sanguine, it looks very well, but it is not a Strad." Then
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