Scan 558
The violin: its famous makers and their imitators, 1909
6 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. Printed page 480. See the scan on archive.org.
1evening all further steps for the recovery of my Guarneri. I passed a sleepless night, in a state of mind such as, in my hitherto fortunate career, had been wholly unknown to me. Had I not lost my splendid Guarneri, the exponent of all the artistic excellence I had till then attained, I could have lightly borne the lost of the rest. On the following morning the police sent to inform me that an empty trunk and a Violin-case had been found in the fields behind the gardens. Full of joy I hastened thither, in the hope that the thieves might have left the Violin in the case, as an object of no value to them; but, unfortunately, it did not prove so. The bow of the Violin, a genuine Tourte, secured in the lid of the case, had remained undiscovered."—Spohr's Autobiography.
3SPOHR AND THE COLLECTOR.
5When Louis Spohr was in London in 1820, he tells us, in his Autobiography, he received a letter couched in the following terms: "Mr. Spohr is requested to call upon Dr. —— to-day at four o'clock." "As I did not know the name of the writer," he proceeds to relate, "nor could ascertain from the servant the purpose for which my attendance was requested, I replied, in the same laconic tone, 'At the hour named I am engaged, and cannot come.' The next morning the servant reappeared, bearing a second and more polite note;
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