VIOLINS IN ENGLAND
It is an amusing fact that hardly a Continental writer on musical
instruments, M. Vidal excepted, has thought it worth while to give
any reasoned account of the English viol and violin-makers who have
occupied such a distinguished place in the history of the art.
I heard the other day of an American school atlas which left out all
the islands in the world as unimportant details calculated to confuse
the minds of young students. England, of course, being a small
island, was one of the first to disappear.
The names of Barak Norman, Banks, Forster, and Duke may be somewhat
confusing, but we must risk the mention of them just for the sake of
an approximate completeness.
The fact is, that in Queen Elizabeth’s time the English were really
almost a musical people. Whether the viols came across from the Low
Countries or Germany or from Italy has never seemed to me a matter
of much importance. Undoubtedly the viol and its descendants is
cloisteral, and that means Italian, since all the arts along with
Christianity spread from the great Italian centres--Rome, Florence,
Milan, Brescia; and in Elizabeth’s time Italian influence is as
marked in English music as it is in the Shakspearian drama, or in
these gorgeous brocades, silks, and tapestries that still dazzle us
behind glass at the South Kensington Museum, or in such Elizabethan
gems of Renaissance architecture as Knole and Hatfield, which seem to
touch as with the glory of a foreign world the palatial seats “of our
old nobility.”
Modern music rises in Elizabeth’s reign with Monte Verde and the
discovery of the octave and the perfect cadence.
Along with it rise the Italian singing-schools of Naples; whilst the
viols, improved to meet the new demands, culminate in the Brescian,
Maggini and the Cremonese Amati patterns (the very word Madrigala,
the hymn of the Mother of God, is Italian and cloisteral), and the
viols which accompanied such part-songs were doubtless of Italian
origin.
But, for all that, the viols were genuinely naturalised and
acclimatised in England, and for a short time it seemed as if England
were even going to lead the art of viol manufacture.
The father of Galileo the astronomer declared in 1583 that the
best lutes were at that time _made in England_, and we know that
lute-making and viol-making so invariably went together that in
France and Italy the violin-maker is to this day called a “lutier”;
and J. J. Rousseau remarks, a little loosely perhaps: “The viol
passed from the Italians to the English, who _first_ began to compose
and play harmonised pieces for it, and who imparted the knowledge to
other kingdoms.”
Mace, an old writer and quite a musical expert (1676), mentions
the viols of Ross (1598) and Smith (1633) as “old instruments” in
his day. But the movement did not go on, and I cannot for a moment
doubt that what checked the rise of music and the manufacture of
musical instruments in this country was that same Puritan craze which
snubbed art, smashed the stained glass, and mutilated our cathedrals
throughout the land.
Viols had by this time crept out of the cloister and joined hands
with the frivolous Rebek, used at fairs and pothouses. At all events,
in Cromwell’s time and the “Barebones-praise-God period,” everything
that savoured of festivity was tabooed, and the fury against art
seemed part and parcel of all sincere religion, according to the
masses at least.
To Cromwell’s honour be it set down that he was personally no
such extremist, and that he, moreover, saved for us Raffael’s
cartoons; but still music in any of its secular forms was mightily
discouraged by the Puritans, whilst in its higher religious form it
was associated with Prelacy and Papacy, and we have to wait for that
reaction in favour of the world, the flesh, and the devil, which
marked the Restoration, and which also made provision for the more
innocent as well as the more perilous delights of music in the home,
the concert room, the theatre, and the sanctuary.
In Charles I.’s band (1625) there were “eleven violins and four
viols,” so at last the violin was creeping up; but not until Charles
II.’s restoration did the full-fledged violin come in with a rush of
“four-and-twenty” fiddlers, over whom presided no less a person than
the immortal Thomas Purcell, who, in a brief span of life, achieved
his almost Mozartian fame, and died at the early age of twenty-seven,
just ten years younger than the incomparable Wolfgang Amadeus.
The King had no doubt got his notion of fiddle bands from Louis
XIII.’s “petits violons du roi”; and from the French Court, our
“merrie monarch” borrowed a good many other ideas of a less
respectable and harmless character.
The King was so seriously addicted to music that he could hardly
hear a sermon and never eat his dinner without the solatium of his
four-and-twenty fiddlers.
“They played before him at his meals,” writes Anthony Wood in the
diary of his life, “as being more airy and brisk than the viols”;
and the grave Evelyn much resents the invasion of the upstart “petit
violon” and its profane intrusion. He writes in 1662: “One of his
Majesty’s chaplains preached, after which, instead of anthem or
solemn wind music accompanying the organ, was introduced a concert of
twenty-four violins between every pause, in the French fantastical
light way, better suiting a tavern or a playhouse than a church.”
’Tis an ill wind that blows nobody and nothing any good, and we
cannot doubt that his Majesty’s royal mistresses, like the Duchess
of Cleveland (Barbara Palmer), the Duchess of St Albans (Nell Gwynn,
the actress), the mother of the Duke of Monmouth (Lucy Walters), the
Duchess of Portsmouth (Louise de Querouaille, a French girl), greatly
favoured all the more frivolous diversions with which secular music,
and especially the new-fangled violin, were associated.
These ladies were bound to be musical, as music undoubtedly delighted
the “merrie monarch,” and flattered his jaded tastes by its frequent
novelty and emotional excitations.
The revellers at Whitehall soon attracted to the capital the greatest
violin players from foreign parts. The supremacy of the new violin
pattern was achieved, and the rage of virtuosity began.
Even John Evelyn succumbed to the witchery of Thomas Balzar, a Swede,
who arrived in 1656. He seems to have been the Paganini of the
period, and electrified the Court. Evelyn calls him “incomparable”;
he played off at sight the most amazing difficulties with ravishing
sweetness and “improvements”; he played a full concert on his single
instrument, so that the rest flung down their violins, acknowledging
the victory. As to worthy Mr Paul Wheeler and Mr Mell, who were the
Spohrs and De Beriots of their day, they had to hide their diminished
heads.
We are not surprised to hear after this that his Majesty installed
the great Balzar as director of his twenty-four violins, retained his
services at court, and buried him in the cloisters of Westminster
Abbey.
It will be convenient to focus our attention on English violin-making
about this time, for doubtless the arrival of these foreign players,
and the popularity of the king’s band, gave a great impetus to our
native manufacture. The supply of foreign violins, for which there
was now a growing demand abroad--_i.e._, in England and France--began
to give out as the century waned. There were plenty of old _viols_,
but no _old violins_ to fall back upon; the violin was a new product;
and, as the court set the fashion, we should naturally expect
the English viol-makers would be wide awake to the importance of
supplying the new want, and such was the case.
The Brescian and Cremonese fiddles were hardly known in England, and
what the Italians made were chiefly for home consumption.
As the English were great viol-makers in Elizabeth’s time, we may
ask: Why did they allow the Italians to take the lead in violins? Why
is the English school of violins at least fifty, and the best English
violins a hundred years later than the early Cremona _chefs-d’œuvre_?
Why is Nicolo Amati’s date 1596-1684, whilst W. Forster is 1713-1801,
Duke 1769, and Banks 1795? The answer is not far to seek: the fact
that violin manufacture was checked by the Puritan movement in
England, whilst its progress in Italy was steady and continuous,
enabled the Italians to steal a march upon us which turned us into
pupils, and pupils afar off too, when we resumed the industry. I do
not say that the superior climatic conditions and generally the art
atmosphere of the small Italian courts must not also be taken into
account; but when attention was called to improved tonal quality, and
a timbre, power, and sensibility undreamed of by the old viol-makers
became _de rigueur_, in response to the demands of virtuosity and the
advance of the musical art, Italy was bound to win; such Tyrolean
woods, such varnish, such sun, such sentiment, as was required for
the perfect evolution of the violin, could hardly be found outside
Italy. Both Spain and Germany confessed to the fact, nor could
England put it aside. Accordingly, the highest praise that was ever
given to an English maker was given to Benjamin Banks (1727-95), who
was called “The English Amati”; but to this day no one has ever been
called “The English Stradivari”!
Passing by Aireton (died in 1807), who copied Amati, but used yellow
varnish; Henry Jay (1744-77); the famous kit-makers (the kit is a
tiny instrument with normal neck and finger-board, used chiefly by
dancing-masters), the Kennedys, father and son (1730-1870), most
prolific but mediocre fabricators, chiefly of violins and tenors;
Panormo and Parker, the two first excellent eighteenth-century
makers; we make special mention of John Rayman, one of, if not the
earliest, English violin-maker. “An extraordinary Rayman” was amongst
the violins owned by Britton, the musical coal-heaver. Urquhart was
also a maker of exceptional originality.
Pamphilon (1685) was a fair and excellent workman, high model,
moderate tone, with quite splendid varnish. “Peter Walmsley, at Ye
Golden Harp in Piccadilly,” good copyist of Stainer and an excellent
maker, we are bound to notice on account of his early date and more
solid reputation.
“Barak Norman” worked and sold fiddles at St Paul’s Churchyard
(1683-1740). His label runs thus, with a ✠ and crown above it,
similar to the labels of Del Gesù, some of which he may have seen:
“Barak Norman and Nathaniel Cross, at the Bass Viol in S. Paul’s
Churchyard, London, fecit 1702.”
Mr Walter Brooksbank of Windermere had one of the Cross viol da
gamba, in which, after the style of the early bell founders, the
instrument is supposed thus to speak for itself. “Nathaniel Cross
wrought my back and belly” (the scroll and sides being by Barak
Norman).
Meares, about whom little to speak of is known, except that he was
probably a pupil of Rayman’s, is reputed to have taught Barak Norman.
Meares is known to have adopted the Brescian model. He was probably
the earliest English maker of violoncellos. He retains some of
the decorative use of purfling, which rapidly went out as the new
violins came in. He runs his purfle into his monogram with attendant
flourishes. Meares made at first chiefly viols, after that tenors of
excellent quality.
His violins are much esteemed. He was a close copyist of Maggini.
Three of his viols were exhibited in the South Kensington Loan
Collection of 1872, but one of them, dated 1690, had been cut down.
It remained for Stradiuarius, in the dawning year of the eighteenth
century, to discover and fix the model of the bass viol that needed
no cutting down.
The musical world owes a debt of eternal gratitude to the Forster
family; there were four of them.
“Great-grandfather John (1683), maker of spinning-wheels and violins.
“Grandfather William, _the_ Forster, commonly called ‘Old Forster.’
“Father William, No. 2, who also made spinning-wheels.
“William, No. 3 (1764-1824).”
His sons, the two brothers William (1733-1824), and Simon Andrew
(1731-1869).
The second Forster (1739-1807), William, called “Old Forster,” bears
off the palm.
Born in the north, a native of Brampton, he made his market, like his
father, out of the spinning-wheel industry of Cumberland, but he was
a many-sided man, a great repairer of viols, and afterwards a maker
of violins, the greatest maker in the north--the greatest maker in
all England.
He commended his violins to the public by playing on them himself. He
was not beneath playing at country dances and on village greens.
We may be sure he never lost an opportunity of parting, for a
consideration, with the violin he played upon--since naturally,
people would often be seized with a desire to possess themselves of
an instrument which they had heard discourse such excellent music and
to the purpose.
Indeed, I have sometimes known professors in these days who would so
cunningly play to their pupils that they have been able to palm off
for considerable sums quite inferior instruments.
How much more easy must it have been for the man who made them,
and made none but the best, and played them on occasions when his
purchasers’ spirits were high and their dispositions yielding, to
dispose of his exceptional wares.
About 1759 Forster seems to have concluded that Cumberland was played
out, and, sighing for new worlds to conquer, he came south. He was
quite a young man, but in the great whirlpool of London, as it was
even then, he seems to have sunk so low as cattle-driving, but that
is in itself a tribute to his versatility and pluck. Presently he
sets up in the Commercial Road, East, but finding there neither
demands for spinning-wheels nor fiddles, takes to gunstock-making,
till he at last “strikes ile” with one Beck, of Tower Hill, and there
makes such fiddles that Beck grows fat while Forster remains lean.
Unable to get his wages raised, he leaves Beck in 1762, and sets up
at Duke’s Court, a site now occupied by the National Gallery.
For about ten years Forster adopted the high Stainer pattern, then
so popular in England, and attracted the patronage of amateurs like
Colonel West. Afterwards he set up in St Martin’s Lane, and then
went to 348 Strand. He had by this time attracted the attention of
royalty, and the Duke of Cumberland, George III.’s son, is said even
to have once dined with him off black pudding.
Old Forster’s versatility and enterprise is still further shown by
his opening communications with the great Joseph Haydn, and it is
chiefly to him that England owes the introduction and publication of
Haydn’s immortal Symphonies.
The shrewd old man doubtless saw the profit which lay hid in a scheme
which would popularise the greatest _writer_ for stringed instruments
who ever lived, and he had not miscalculated.
The same cleverness which prompted him to give the English a dose of
the Stainer model when Stainer was the rage, prompted him to revert
to the later Amati grand pattern as he reached his ripe maturity. He
also changed his varnish before the close of his life, and is said
to have found the secret of solving amber with the assistance of the
chemist Delaporte, who invented some stuff known as the Verins Martin.
Amongst his patrons were George III., who, as Prince of Wales, was
fond of playing the violoncello, probably one of “Old Forster’s,”
and who, when he asked Haydn, who had been listening to him, how he
thought he played, received the altogether diplomatic reply, “Vy,
your ’ighness do play like a Brince.”
Peter Pindar (Dr Walcot) and Bartolozzi the engraver were also
amongst Forster’s patrons. He made but four double-basses, and his
tenors and ’cellos are thought better of than his violins. They are
steadily rising in value. He died in the same year as Haydn (1808).
His son William already suffered much from the foreign competition,
which was just beginning to tell, the duty which protected the
English manufactures having been removed.
William made some very good instruments, but they do not equal his
father’s; and he made a great deal of rubbish for the trade besides.
There was no doubt a certain erratic vein in the Forster family,
which in Old Forster took the shape of amazing versatility and
profitable enterprise, but which in his son and grandson degenerated
into speculative eccentricity. The son went in for buying grocery,
and invested in other bad businesses. The grandson turned out very
unmanageable, but clever and many-sided; he worked for a time with
Thomas Kennedy, but got away from him and went in for play-acting,
sometimes taking a turn in the orchestra at the violoncello desk. He
made about fifteen instruments altogether, two or three of which only
approached the Forster high level. He died in 1824, suddenly, whilst
still quite a young man.
His brother Simon made a large number of violins--tenors and ’cellos;
they are those signed S. A. Forster, but they do not rank very high.
He was the first to write a history of the violin, and has deserved
well of all succeeding writers, who quote him with a touching
simplicity of faith, as though, forsooth, because the first, he must
needs be the best authority.
At the name of Benjamin Banks all tenor and ’cello players lift their
hats; for although the later importation into England of Cremonas
has somewhat obscured our countryman’s fame, his splendid work--even
surpassed, as some think, by his sons James and Henry--is bound to
hold the market again; and a name extolled by the great virtuoso
Lindley, whose favourite instrument was a Banks, is not likely to be
neglected by Lindley’s successors, even though they may be the happy
possessors of Stradivari basses.
Benjamin Banks (1727-1795) was a contemporary of Old Forster
(1713-1801), but there is no reason to suppose that the two
artificers ever met or materially interfered with each other; for
Banks worked at Salisbury, whilst Forster worked in London, and no
express trains bore fiddles or fiddle-buyers swiftly to and fro in
those days.
Benjamin Banks copied Nicolo Amati very closely; but Mr Sandys
speaks of a rare long-shaped violoncello of his quite of the Stainer
pattern, with the round-topped Stainer sound-holes. This was none
other than the great Lindley’s famous instrument which so nearly
escaped destruction in a coach accident. The passengers had a bad
shaking and a bad spill, and Lindley and his violoncello among them;
but the rare enthusiast, in the midst of the confusion, had but
one thought. He flew to his ’cello-case, and was found seated in a
ditch, quietly playing away to assure himself that his beloved was
uninjured.
Mr Lucas had an excellent Benjamin Banks violin, but Banks tenors
and violoncellos are more esteemed. Banks made no double-basses;
his varnish is yellow-brown, of excellent quality, but badly laid
on, that on his bellies being often clotted, so that, in technical
parlance, it is said to kill the grain.
The Earl of Pembroke, who presumably knew no better, ordered a
violoncello of Banks to be made entirely out of an old cedar-tree,
which had been blown down in his lordship’s park (Wilton). It was, as
might have been foreseen, a great failure in tone. Of course Banks
made it “right enough,” and pocketed the money, but it is doubtful
whether the Earl ever got his money’s worth.
I remember a very carefully made violin, all of silver, another
expensive freak of ignorance and eccentricity; doubtless it sounded
like a tin kettle, and was musically of no use whatever. Some of us
may have heard an ingenious itinerant violinist playing on a tin
biscuit-box with similar results.
Benjamin’s scrolls are not very elegant, but that does not affect
his tone. Benjamin had a very good idea of his own importance, and
probably, too, a suspicion of the extent to which his name would be
taken in vain after his death. He tried to make this more difficult
by not only varying his labels in about four different ways, but also
stamping his instruments in several places with his own peculiar
seal, B.B.
Benjamin’s sons fell far below their father, but the old man left
quite a number of white unvarnished instruments in a cellar when the
business was sold, all of which were duly completed and sent forth
with his name, to which, however, they have but a partial right; for,
as his sons worked with him, it is by no means certain that every
fiddle in Bank’s shop at the time of his death was made by Benjamin
_père_.
Duke (1754-69) was remarkable as having largely contributed to create
in England the Stainer furore which so confused the judgment of
amateurs in this country, and retarded for at least fifty years the
triumph of the Stradivari grand pattern. In reality the best Dukes
are on the Amati pattern, but they are few in number, and though
there are innumerable fraudulent Dukes about, a real Duke is seldom
seen. The fraudulent Dukes exaggerate the high bellies and deep
grooving of the earlier Amati, and thus pass for Stainer pattern.
Duke’s varnish is also of a yellow or yellow-brown hue. It is not
likely that Duke’s reputation will increase, though the rarity of
genuine Dukes and the plentiful number of counterfeits may still run
up a few real specimens to fancy prices.
I cannot close this brief survey of the old English makers without
a mention of Bernard Fendt (1756-1832). He was originally a Swiss
cabinet-maker, but coming to London, went into business with Thomas
Dodd, for whom, and with whom, he began to make violins. Fendt soon
got hold of another cabinet-maker, a compatriot, and Dodd took him
also into the business. These two clever artificers soon raised
Dodd’s business to great prosperity, and Dodd thus had the honour of
putting his own name in their violins. All he had done, however, was
to varnish them, but he did that superlatively well, so that Dodd’s
varnish became as famous as Dodd’s bows.
Fendt afterwards left Dodd and worked for John Betts, who was famous
for his imitations of Amati, which he said paid better than making
fiddles with his own name in them. Many of his best imitations were
made by Fendt, who has thus created the reputation of two makers
besides himself. His son, who died only in 1851, would have equalled
his father had he not been seduced by the vicious practice of
prematurely aging his violins, thus pandering to the taste for old
fiddles at the expense of the fiddles themselves--for it is notorious
that such frauds do not improve by age.
A VIGNETTE OF W. E. HILL.
Dark--yes, to my eyes very dark; but the light in William Ebsworth
Hill’s old shop in Wardour Street was good enough for him; a greater
glare might have flouted those hundreds of old brown fiddles,
and dusty débris of fiddles, which that very moderately sized
establishment was hung, lined, strewn, and littered o’er with.
So the dim light, relieved on foggy days with a casual gas-jet, or
even a candle-end, seemed better than the garish sunlight for that
dusky brood--even as the moonbeam, according to Sir Walter Scott,
touched the grey ruins of Melrose more tenderly than the light of
day.
There 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.
Mr 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, as a thing of beauty, wonder,
mystery, more than enough to monopolise a lifetime of devotion--this
is what made Mr Ebsworth Hill the spiritual heir of the grand old
fiddle-makers. “Why,” he said to me once, “talk about not knowing
the touch of this or that maker? I know the sort of tools Stradivari
or Joseph used. I can see the mark of a special favourite knife here
or gouge there. I know which way he used to cut and slice, and how
he held his tool for such and such a kind of finish. I can see ’em
at work, and the handling of one is no more like another’s than the
touch of one painter is like another’s.”
When you took a fiddle in to show Mr Hill, you had to wait Mr Hill’s
good time; he seldom answered immediately he was spoken to, but would
look up dreamily through his spectacles without laying down his file
or knife, and let off some such dogmatic and oracular sentence as:
“You want to know how I can tell a fiddle. Well, I don’t know how I
can tell; and there are days when I don’t trust my judgment--days I
can’t see, for instance. I leave off looking at fiddles for a day
or two; and when I come back I take up this fiddle and that, and
just at first I can’t see anything--those fiddles tell me nothing;
it’s a peculiar state of mind--just as a player or a surgeon’s hand
gets out, so a judge’s eye gets out. I know exactly when I see and
when I can’t see, and when I can’t see I hold my tongue; and I know
exactly how much I can see, but I don’t tell everybody.” The casual
visitor could make very little of old Hill at first. There was a
curious sort of inner otherwhereness--to coin a word--about him. Some
people found him very trying indeed. You never knew whether he heard
what you said; but when at last he favoured you with a remark, you
discovered that he had not only heard your words, but that he had
accurately gauged _you_.
His action was often unexpected and sometimes alarming. I one day
entered his shop with a friend who had a fiddle which he much
prized, and indeed it was a really valuable instrument, but needed
overhauling.
We both stood in front of the counter, and old Hill was bending over
a scroll that he was fitting on to a new neck. I addressed him on
behalf of my friend, but he took no notice whatever; he remained
absorbed in his delicate adjustments; and no Prince of the blood
would have fared any better than we did until he had finished what he
was about. Again I mentioned my friend’s name: “Mr ---- has brought
you his fiddle to look at by my advice. Perhaps you can tell him what
ought to be done.” Hill looked up, nodded, eyed my friend through his
spectacles with cold interest, and then resumed his work. I had to
rouse him a second time before he seemed to grasp the fact that my
anxious friend had taken his precious Cremona from its case and was
standing with it in his hand ready for the magician’s inspection.
At last Hill laid down his tool, and taking the instrument in his
hands, gave it one quick glance and a couple of taps; he then
deliberately looked in its astonished owner’s face, tore off the
finger-board, loosened the neck, and drove a knife under the belly.
The fiddle was soon in pieces, and he threw the loose fragments aside
in a heap, took up his repairs again, and said he would attend to the
matter by-and-by, and the gentleman need not stop; and we got no more
out of old Hill that day, who immediately became reabsorbed in his
work.
I shall never forget the rueful and amazed look with which my poor
friend beheld the tearing to pieces of his Cremona, but I touched him
on the arm, and seeing that Hill was in no mood for talk, got him
out of the shop, assuring him that it was all right, and that the
great repairer had shown more interest than usual in his valuable
instrument, or he would never have torn it to pieces then and there;
and with such words I strove to comfort my perplexed and anxious
friend.
I am bound to add that although Hill kept him waiting several months,
when the fiddle came back its owner was more than satisfied, and
declared that he then heard his Cremona for the first time.
Mr William Ebsworth Hill came of a family of violin-makers and
violin-players. Joseph Hill, who was born 1715, was proud to trace
his descent from the “Mr Hill” mentioned in Pepys’ Diary as being
employed to alter his lute and viall.
Joseph was a prolific and excellent violin-maker, and carried on
business in the early part of the eighteenth century at the sign of
the Harp and Flute in the Haymarket.
He had five sons; all made violins and three played professionally,
whilst the other two, like the present four brothers Hill in Bond
Street, followed their father’s vocation alone. The third son, Lockey
Hill, was the father of Henry Lockey Hill, who became in his turn
the father of William Ebsworth Hill, known in the middle of this
century as Mr Hill of Wardour Street. Hill’s father, Henry Lockey,
an excellent violin-maker, died in 1835. The Hills seem prolific in
sons, and Lockey left four sons. Henry distinguished himself as an
admirable quartet player, and well do I remember the splendid tone of
his Barak Norman tenor at Willis’ Rooms as far back I think as 1848,
when, with Sainton, Piatti, and Cooper--one of the best, as it was
almost the earliest string quartet cast in London--he assisted in
delighting and educating a select public in the mysteries of chamber
music, which has been since so freely expounded by Ella’s Musical
Union and the Monday Popular Concerts.
Berlioz always spoke of Henry Hill in terms of the highest praise; he
even went so far as to say that he considered him one of the first
performers in Europe.
It is seldom that a tenor player ever comes in for direct
commendation. He acts as a sort of go-between to violoncello and
violin; but his individual efforts, although so important to the
combined effect, are usually lost sight of between the grand work of
the bass and the brilliant lead and musical embroideries of the first
and second violins.
There are too few concertos or strong parts written for the poor
tenor, the Cinderella of the establishment, which is regrettable when
one thinks of the glorious violas of Maggini and the Amati. Mr Hill’s
Barak Norman is now the property of Mr Doyle.
William Ebsworth Hill, our great repairer, connoisseur, and dealer
all in one, was born in 1817. He was educated at the Borough Road
School, under the well-known Dr Lancaster, but it is certain that
he went early to the bench, for at the age of fourteen we find him
employed in cutting bridges in his father’s workshop.
For this purpose he used only a bradawl and a knife, and towards the
end of his life he returned to bridge-cutting, and has left many
beautiful specimens. His sons have a collection of two hundred, and
no two of the same pattern; they have also reverently preserved
under glass his simple tools. He worked with extraordinary rapidity,
equalled by his fastidious finish. He preferred the commonest
tools, so only they were of the finest metal. He used to scorn the
mechanical labour-saving appliances which now enable workmen to turn
out hundreds instead of dozens of fiddles, and he heartily despised
artificers who needed an elaborate plant before they could produce
anything decent. A good maker, he was wont to say, could make a
fiddle “with a knife and fork.” Mr Hill’s skill in bridge-making on
one occasion misled so eminent a judge as Monsieur Fétis, of the
Brussels Conservatoire. In 1851, the Prince Consort having expressed
a wish to hear a concert of old instruments, a viol d’amore which
was to be played by Ebsworth’s brother, Henry Hill, required a new
bridge, which Ebsworth very quickly made. I remember hearing Hill
perform on this viol d’amore with seven strings, at one of Monsieur
Julien’s Popular Concerts at the old Surrey Gardens. The elaborate
arpeggios were most fascinating, and unlike anything I ever listened
to before or have ever heard since. In due time the viol d’amore,
which had been lent by the Brussels Conservatoire, was returned,
and Monsieur Fétis, who was the Principal, and engaged at that time
in writing his valuable monograph on Stradivari, was very much bent
upon hunting up old bridges. He happened to pitch upon the viol
d’amore bridge, which he declared to be a highly interesting specimen
of the artistic work of the great Cremona period. Mr Alfred Hill,
one of Ebsworth Hill’s sons, happened to be at Brussels, and his
attention was called to Monsieur Fétis’ eulogium on the antique viol
d’amore bridge. “That,” says Mr Alfred to Monsieur Victor Mahillon
the curator, “is not an old bridge; it was cut by my father.” An
incredulous smile overspread the worthy curator’s face, which was
quickly changed into a look of apologetic admiration and surprise
when Mr Hill, junior, turning up the bridge, pointed to “W. E. Hill”
stamped upon it.
Ebsworth Hill’s father died in 1835, and not long afterwards
Ebsworth, wishing to perfect himself in the technique of his art,
went to study under the accomplished maker Charles Harris, of Oxford.
About 1838 he set up for himself in St George’s Road, Southwark.
Mr Woolhouse, the well-known collector, was one of his earliest
patrons; but his fame soon spread, and he found he had more work than
he could well manage. He was also much resorted to as one of the few
men whose judgment on a violin admitted of no appeal, and who could
be trusted to give an honest opinion.
From Southwark, Hill went to Wardour Street, which for many years
was as much the violin quarter in London as the Rue Croix des Petits
Champs is in Paris. It was there, when I was little more than a
boy, that I first made Mr Hill’s acquaintance. I used to take him
my fiddles, and I was always drawn to the young boys, his sons, who
frequented their father’s shop, and had the profoundest sense of
his importance and ability. It is not too much to say that Arthur,
Alfred, William, and Walter Hill have enjoyed unique opportunities
from their earliest childhood, and have not failed to qualify
themselves assiduously for the high position that the firm of Hill &
Sons now holds in the violin world.
The boys inherited violin tendencies. They were steeped from
childhood in violin tradition. They had special chances for seeing,
handling, and diagnosing most of the great violins now extant. No
time or money was spared by their father on the boys’ education, and
certainly no boys ever made a better use of their privileges.
Alfred and Walter went to Mirecourt, to study all that could be
taught in the most scientific and celebrated workshop in the world.
Arthur stayed at home and kept his eye in, being always in close
attendance on his father, and never missing an opportunity of
acquiring a new fact, or a fiddle, old or new, which was likely to
bring grist to the mill or credit to the firm.
From what has been said it may have been inferred, and not
erroneously, that Ebsworth Hill was not, financially speaking,
a business man--though he did all his own business. For years
everything that came into the shop passed through his hands; he
made every repair, doctored every fiddle, adjusted every screw,
regulated or replaced every sound-bar and sound-post, and even strung
the fiddles for his clients with his own hand--in short, he did or
closely superintended everything; division of labour, to the extent
to which it is now carried, being a thing unknown in those early days.
That such a system could not bring in large profits was obvious. Hill
had many bad debts; his memory for fiddles was infallible, but his
memory for accounts shocking, and he was cheated right and left.
His fame was so widespread that orders poured in which could not be
executed; and when the old man’s apparently inexhaustible powers of
work began to give out, the sons, who had watched proceedings for
years and slowly qualified themselves for every department, came in
and broke up the one-man system--not before financially confusion was
becoming worse confounded. They trained their workmen, distributed
the work, kept proper accounts for the first time, and in a few
years built up what is, perhaps, when considered in all its branches,
the largest individual violin-dealing industry in the world.
Mr Hill was a man of striking appearance: thin, spare, with light
hair, and moustache early gone grey; blue-grey eyes, very keen; a
thoughtful face, often lighted up with a whimsical smile--for the man
was full of humour, though mostly of a genial sort.
He was very much more of an all-round man than people who merely
conversed with him on violins would suppose. Highly educated, in the
usual sense of the word, he was certainly not; but he had a great
acquaintance with human nature, and an extraordinary insight into
character.
His sly remarks on men and their manners, including their morals,
were a perpetual feast to all who were admitted to his intimacy. In
his own special line he was without a rival. He did not always say
what he knew, but he never said what he did not know.
He was frequently appealed to in doubtful cases, but was greatly
opposed to litigation, and it was difficult to extract from him any
opinion likely to lead to it.
Once in the witness-box he was what the lawyers call a dangerous
customer. His manner was perfectly quiet, assured, and straightforward.
He was absolutely decided, and would never budge from his opinion, and
under pressure of cross-examination often raised a laugh at the expense
of counsel.
His sons have treasured many of his wise and witty sayings. On one
occasion he refused to sell to a customer who already owed more than
he could pay. Hill remarked dryly when the gentleman had left the
shop, “That man’s complaint is wind in the pockets.” Of an amateur
who was proud of showing off his style on his fiddles, Hill, looking
up from his work, would say with a comical twinkle, “Hark, now, he’s
doing the lovely.”
The manner was often worth more than the matter.
His memory was as extraordinary as Tarisio’s. On one occasion a claim
was brought against a railway company for sixty pounds’ damage to the
belly of a violoncello. The company demanded a valuation, and damages
to be assessed by Hill. The claimant at last angrily submitted.
Hill reported on the instrument, which he repaired for about thirty
shillings. Five pounds he thought would be very liberal damages. The
owner was furious, and would not even accept fifteen guineas. Mr Hill
was at last called up, and made the following unpleasant statement:
“This instrument does not belong to this man at all. It is one of the
instruments belonging to her Majesty, and used by the members of the
private band.” The _soi-disant_ owner was perfectly dumbfounded, but
was obliged to confess that he had actually borrowed the instrument
when employed as deputy in the Queen’s Band several years before, and
had never restored it. Mr Hill had only seen it once before.
A violin, said to be by F. Panormo, was sold as such by a dealer in
Pentonville Road. It came into Hill’s hands many years afterwards,
who was asked to take it in part payment for another violin. He said:
“This fiddle was not made by Panormo; it was made by my father about
the year 1812 for my brother Henry, and owing to the difficulty of
getting good foreign wood, my father made the back and ribs from
English maple. It could not possibly have a good tone, but I should
like to have it, and will allow £10 for it.” Mr Hill immediately
proceeded to remove the belly. On the inside was written in pencil,
“Made for my son Henry in the year 1812.”
Mr Hill led an extremely abstemious life. His only relaxations were
reading and long walks on Sundays. Towards the close of his life he
found himself surrounded by his sons, superintending a large staff
of workmen, and his workshops at Hanwell, adjoining his country
home, are well known. For some years before he died the direction of
affairs had practically passed into the hands of his sons, whom he
had so admirably trained to succeed him, and to them is entirely due
the present great commercial prosperity of the firm.
William Ebsworth Hill sank gradually from senile exhaustion of brain
power, and died in 1895, aged seventy-seven.