VIOLIN TARISIO
This extraordinary man, originally an obscure Italian carpenter,
at once created and answered that demand for Italian violins which
followed both in England, and to a great extent in France, the rage
for the German, and especially German of the Stainer and Klotz
pattern.
Luigi Tarisio, like W. Forster, eked out the scanty income which he
derived from making tables and benches for the peasants by playing
dance music on a very poor fiddle at village routs.
He wandered from place to place, what time the vintages were being
gathered in, and the simple folk, who turned out in their Sunday
finery for a little relaxation and merriment, doubtless regaled
the Italian carpenter with open-hearted hospitality, whilst he, in
return, mended their benches and fiddled for them at the vineyard
cabarets.
Our Charles Mathews has given in his delightful autobiography
interesting glimpses of that free, open-air, open-hearted life;
for he also, for a time, lived amongst these rustics of a favoured
clime, enjoying their simple pleasures, and contributing in his own
peculiar way, by his histrionic gifts and a somewhat free-handed
distribution of coin, to their revels and their needs.
Luigi Tarisio soon began to be dominated by the spell of his violin;
he got to notice other violins, to repair them all in the way of
trade, to possess them, not always very honestly, pitting his own
growing knowledge of their merits against the ignorance or necessity
of their owners. Gradually Tarisio the carpenter and Tarisio the
fiddler seemed to be merged in Tarisio the cunning repairer and
Tarisio the still more knowing buyer.
He bought chiefly by exchange, for money he had little or none;
but he began in the early years of this nineteenth century to lead
that nomad life--as it seemed to outsiders, the life of a common
pedlar--which enabled him to glide without suspicion into half the
sacristies and convents in Italy.
Wherever he went, bag on shoulder, and basket of tools in hand, his
cry was not “knives to grind,” nor “shoes to mend,” but “violins to
repair.”
He usually had with him a decoy violin or two, in the shape of
common fiddles in good playing order; and over a glass of lemonade
or a bottle of wine, in some local café or monasterial domicile of
priest or cathedral musician, the cunning Tarisio would view with
unaffected pity the miserable old battered Cremonas which were then
lurking in a thousand ecclesiastical nooks, split as with the “wolf,”
ill-adjusted, ill-strung, and generally out of sorts, and whipping
out his common fiddle in perfect order, would play a few notes
on each, so manifestly to the disadvantage of the Cremona that an
exchange was soon effected, and Tarisio would decamp with an Amati,
a Strad, a Joseph or Bergonzi treasure, which, after a little clever
mending, might be worth a fortune; and in this way he possessed
himself, often for a few francs, of instruments which now fetch over
£1000 in the open market--if ever they get there.
Tarisio, with the infallible instinct of a born collector and
connoisseur, in a few years was able to gauge accurately the merits
of the different great Italian makers. He knew exactly where to rank
the Amatis, and how to separate the qualities of the great Nicolo
from those of Andrea; he understood the supreme excellence of Antonio
and the power of Giuseppe, and all other grades of merit of which
even the admirers of the Cremona school in England seemed entirely
ignorant of. All Amatis at that time were lumped together, and
Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri were hardly known at all.
But Tarisio knew all this, and a good deal more, before he tossed his
heavy bag of old violins one day over his shoulder and set out, they
say, on foot, or anyhow else he could, for Paris; for what market
was there in Italy for such priceless Cremonas when their owners
were prepared to give them up for fiddles worth from five to twenty
shillings?
But why did Tarisio go to Paris? He probably judged wisely that the
Stainer craze, and the huge crop of common violins then being made
in Germany, would have killed his market nearer home. Then he must
have heard when a boy how Napoleon I. had ransacked the art treasures
of Italy, and how, under the advice of the cultivated Marquis
d’Avèze, who had narrowly enough escaped the guillotine in 1793, the
great conqueror had inaugurated a high Art Exhibition for the people.
The famous bronze-gilt horses from S. Marco, Venice, the Dying
Gladiator, the Apollo Belvedere, the Cupid and Psyche from Rome, and
Raffaello’s Transfiguration itself, had been carried in triumphant
procession through the streets of Paris, and installed in a vast hall
for the benefit and instruction of the people. Of course a rage for
everything Italian was the result, and the shrewd Tarisio may have
thought, why not a rage for old Italian fiddles?
One day in the year 1827 there arrived at the shop of M. Aldric,
at that time a famous violin dealer in Paris, a travel-worn man in
ragged clothes, who had begged and fiddled his way for days and weeks
across country. He carried a huge dustman’s sack over his shoulder.
He seemed to M. Aldric a very poor sort of pedlar, grimy and unkempt
enough to claim kinship with the man who had “used somebody’s soap
sixteen years ago, since when he had used no other.”
The fashionable violin dealer was at first inclined to show him the
door, but probably something in Tarisio’s independent manner betrayed
that indefinable quality we call character, and, more in amusement or
out of pity than with any serious intent to make a deal, M. Aldric
allowed the pedlar to empty his sack of fiddles on his counter. It
is easy to imagine his astonishment at what he saw; but he seems to
have kept up his indifferent manner, not supposing the poor creature
before him could be in the least aware of the treasures he sought to
dispose of.
M. Aldric was soon undeceived.
He quickly found the tables turned upon him.
The clever French tradesman was conversing with the greatest
violin connoisseur that the world has ever seen, or in all
human probability ever will see, for no one can ever again have
Tarisio’s opportunities, even should he unite in himself Tarisio’s
extraordinary qualities.
Now, the pedlar, with all his enthusiasm and self-sacrifice, was a
man of exceeding cunning, and had that tact, quickness, affability,
and bonhomie which is well known to tourists in Italy, and has often
proved so fatal to the amateur of old laces, pottery, and objects de
vertu, or to such as may have tried to do a little fancy collecting
as they passed through the Italian towns, and haggled over bargains
in small curiosity-shops and market-places. So, with due astuteness,
the shrewd carpenter had not brought his _best_ wares on this his
first visit; he had come on a voyage of discovery, and only produced
a small pattern Nicolo Amati, and half a dozen Maggini, Ruggerii,
and such-like. He had with him no Strad, no Joseph, not even a grand
pattern Nicolo, but he had brought enough.
M. Aldric, concealing his emotion, and fervently hoping the shabby
man did not know the value of his wares, offered him a small sum for
the lot, which Tarisio refused, doubtless with those picturesque
invocations of horror to the Virgin and all the Saints which seem
necessary to the Italian who attempts to convey to a “screw” the
mingled indignation and pity excited in his generous and artistic
breast by a mean offer.
Tarisio was certainly disappointed; but he forgot that he himself had
to _create_ the market; and so at last he left, with his empty bag
indeed, but with his ragged pockets far from full.
Back to Italy, back to his monasteries and cabarets, a little
dazzled; but, with unabated energy, he recommenced his search.
He was now beginning to be known far and wide as a clever repairer
and a convenient dealer. As his stock of good, bad, and indifferent
fiddles increased he could offer a greater selection, and readily
parted with the worst ones, nicely done up, to his ignorant and
confiding but not over-wealthy Italian patrons.
When next he journeyed to Paris he met with a different reception.
Vuillaume, Thibaut, and Chanot the elder opened their privileged
doors to him, and especially Vuillaume had the acumen to see that
in Tarisio he had lighted upon what gold-diggers call a veritable
“pocket,” and gave him higher and higher prices for the harvest of
Amatis, Strads, Guarneri, and Bergonzis which now flowed steadily
into Paris through this odd medium.
Tarisio was far more than a connoisseur and dealer; he was a
singular and most whole-hearted enthusiast. As the novelist Charles
Reade (who was himself a great fiddle dealer and knew Tarisio) has
well said, “The man’s whole soul was in his fiddles. He was a great
dealer, but a greater amateur. He had gems by him which no money
would buy from him.” Mr Reade then goes on to relate how once, when a
splendid equipage rolled by him in Paris, the carpenter remarked, “He
would sooner possess one Strad than twenty such carriages.” He would
stalk the back or the belly of a valuable fiddle until he recovered
the whole, just as the Roman antiquary stalked the fragments of the
Hercules Farnese, finding the trunk in one place and the head in a
ditch miles away.
Chanot had stumbled upon the cracked belly of a Strad violin in
Spain. Ortega, the fiddle-maker, had sold the remainder, ribs and
back, to a Spanish lady, fitting them nicely with a brand-new back
made by himself! The precious belly caught Tarisio’s eye in the shop
window, and he at last worried Chanot into parting with it for 1000
francs. Off went Tarisio to Madrid, extracted from the bewildered
Ortega, who had sold the patched Strad, the required information,
interviewed the donna who possessed the patched Strad, and who,
after the fashion of the high-born Spaniard, at once said, “Sir, the
instrument is at your disposition,” which only meant that she would
part with it for a consideration, or what she considered to be the
good round sum of 4000 francs. This was a mere bagatelle for such a
treasure, which, refitted with its own belly by Vuillaume, is now
known as the Spanish Bass.
It was sold for £800, and exhibited in the south Kensington
Collection of 1872 (No. 188).
On one occasion, says Charles Reade, Tarisio was crossing the Bay of
Biscay with his famous Spanish Bass. The ship rolled; Tarisio clasped
his treasure tightly and trembled. It was a terrible gale, and for
one whole day they were in real danger. “Tarisio spoke of it to me,”
continues his friend, “with a shudder. ‘Ah! my poor Mr Reade,’ he
exclaimed, ‘the Bass of Spain was all but lost!’” As to Tarisio also
being lost, that did not seem to matter so much!
It is not too much to say that, with hardly a memorable exception,
all the great Cremonese and Brescian fiddles, which now command such
_prix fous_, have passed through the cunning hands of Luigi Tarisio
the pedlar, and most of them have at one time been benefited by the
tender and artistic skill of Vuillaume, his great patron.
When Tarisio, who by this time wore a decent coat, and no longer
carried Cremonas in a sack on his back, visited England in 1851,
he was received by the whole trade as a person of rare quality, as
indeed he was.
Mr John Hart took him to see Mr Goding’s unique collection. As
one by one the owner took his treasures out of a glass cabinet,
before ever he had got within two paces of Tarisio, he was amazed
at hearing their names called out. A glance was sufficient. Tarisio
had had them all through his hands--the “King” Guarnerius, Lafont’s
Guarnerius, the matchless Bergonzi, the Marquis de la Rosa’s
Amati, Ole Bull’s Guarnerius, the famous Serafino ’cello, called
the Beauty--all of which might never have reached Mr Goding had it
not been for the enterprise and indomitable energy of the Italian
carpenter who now stood before him.
Barring a narrow circle of dealers, it may seem strange that so
remarkable a man should not have been more widely known and esteemed
during his lifetime; but we can well understand that the restricted
circle of dealers amongst whom he moved, did not find it to their
interest to place their special Cremona “pocket” within reach of the
wealthy amateurs out of whom they themselves were busy making their
market.
Tarisio, had he been dealer first and enthusiast second, might have
done better financially; but he did not do badly, and he wanted
little except the privilege of handling Cremonas to the end of his
life and dying in their good company.
He did both. Although there was a strain of geniality about
Tarisio, he never seemed to unbend except in the company of
fellow-enthusiasts; and as he was too cautious to give himself
away to Italians, from whom he was gradually securing the spoils
which built up his fortune, fame, and immortality, the only people
who really knew Tarisio were the few foreigners like Vuillaume,
the Chanots in France, John Hart the dealer and Charles Reade the
novelist in England.
In his own land he remained to the end nothing but the quiet,
unobtrusive repairer and occasional dealer in dilapidated fiddles.
It seems he had removed to Milan, where he was quite safely hidden,
along with his fiddles, up in an attic at the top of a second-class
restaurant in the Via Legnano Porta Tegnaglia.
No one was ever allowed to enter his room. He locked himself in, and
he locked himself out. They saw him going up and down the staircase,
and that is all they saw of him.
One day in 1854 Tarisio dragged himself up those stairs for the
last time. Whether he had any premonition of his end, none may
know--certainly no one was with him when he died--only it was noticed
that he locked himself in, but came out no more; nor had he gone down
to the restaurant for any of the necessaries of life.
At last the neighbours thought it time to ascertain what was taking
place in that mysterious attic. They seemed to have watched his
strange movements closely, but their efforts to find out who he was
and how he lived had been hitherto fruitless, as he made a point of
carrying on his particular and nomadic business at a distance from
his abode. They were not going to be baulked any longer, so they
knocked, but there was no answer.
At last they broke open the door, and a strange and piteous sight
burst upon them. There, on a squalid couch, lay the pedlar, quite
dead.
Around him all seemed chaos--piles of fiddle-boxes, fiddles in and
out of cases, tenors, ’cellos, violins in pieces and violins whole.
Half a dozen Strads there; a Gasparo (afterwards Mr Bennett’s), a
Ruggieri (Mr T. R. Bradson’s); about a hundred Italian fiddles, by
different makers.
Here, too, was found the “Messie” or “Messiah.”
These trophies created little enthusiasm at the time, but to the joy
of the relatives, two nephews, who had been hunted up with difficulty
by the municipal authorities, a sealed packet was found containing
valuable securities and a considerable amount of gold.
The rest is matter of common history.
The instant his friend and patron Vuillaume heard of the magician’s
death he hurried to Milan, and visited the nephews at their farmhouse.
“Where are the fiddles?”
“At Milan; but we have six here.”
On the spot Vuillaume opened the cases. The first contained a
splendid Strad, the second a Joseph del Gesù, the third a Carlo
Bergonzi, the fourth and fifth two Guadagninis, and the last the
famous Messiah, preserved by Count Cozio de Salabue, intact until
1824, when it was bought by Tarisio.
Vuillaume came to terms with the nephews for these six, and then lost
not a moment in visiting the famous attic at Milan, where he found
246 more, which he bought at once for £3166, leaving the astonished
heirs no doubt laughing in their sleeves, under the impression that
the _gobe-mouche_ of a Frenchman had been nicely hi-diddle-diddled by
the wily Italians.
When we remember that a couple only of these gems would realise now
more than the sum Vuillaume paid for the lot, we may well remember
the proverb, “He laughs best who laughs last.”
A VIGNETTE OF PAGANINI.
I have advisedly steered clear in this collector’s volume of
violin-players and violin-music, excepting in so far as they acted
or reacted in any way upon the violin and its progress towards
perfection. From this point of view, the growth of music appears to
be responsible for the definition and survival (as the fittest) of
the violin, violoncello, and double bass; and virtuosity is certainly
responsible for the lengthening of the violin-neck and finger-board,
the strengthening of the sound-bar to resist an increased
string-tension, and the lengthening of the bow. But virtuosity can
claim nothing more than these trifling details. The Strad pattern
of 1684 to 1700 has remained completely unaffected by the feats,
vagaries, or demands of soloists.
In this the grand pattern violin stands out in sharp and singular
contrast to the old grand pianoforte. The imperious demands of Liszt
and Thalberg, Rubinstein and his followers, have compelled a series
of improvements in strength, sonority, delicate mechanism, and
sensibility, undreamed of by the old firms, and only perfected by the
later Erards, Broadwoods, Collards, and Steinways. But not a single
substantial improvement has been made in the violin since the last
one left the hand of the great Antonio at Cremona, and not even a
trifling modification of any sort has been adopted or applied to the
grand violin of the golden period for at least a century. The excuse
then for introducing the name and portrait of Paganini into this
book is not because he reacted in the least degree upon the art of
violin-making, but because he accepted it as an absolutely finished
art, and asked for nothing which he found not in Strad and Joseph.
[Illustration: NICOLO PAGANINI]
Now this is important and interesting, because Paganini was the
greatest of all players in this culminating century of the musical
art--a man admittedly unsurpassed in the opinion of violin experts
like John Ella, Cipriani Potter, Onry, and others, who, for forty
years after his death, listened to all the phenomenal violinists of
an age which boasts of Ernst, Joachim, Wieinawski, and Sarasate and
Ysaye. As it has not been possible to produce the face and figure of
any of these great old makers, with the one exception of Lupôt, who
belongs at best to the silver age, I have thought it worth while to
glorify their work by reproducing the grand though eccentric face
and figure of the one man who has invested their _chef-d’œuvres_
with that romantic glamour, that almost unearthly prestige which the
violin alone amongst instruments can lay claim to.
Paganini’s favourite violin, a Joseph Guarnerius, lies in its case
under glass to this hour, open for all eyes to inspect, in the Town
Hall at Genoa, his native town, to which he has bequeathed it. His
dying directions, that no one should ever play upon it, recall
Shakespeare’s curse upon those who should move his bones. The great
musician’s orders have not been quite so scrupulously observed as
those of the immortal bard of Avon. In “My Musical Life” will be
found my “Homage à Paganini,” together with a woodcut of Danton’s
very fine bust, given to me by John Ella, who played in the orchestra
among the violins when first Paganini visited England.
Nothing is so ephemeral as the fame of an orator, actor, or musician,
unless they leave books or music behind them. Henceforth the
phonograph may do something to give future generations some idea of
the fascination which lived and died with them; but no phonograph
will ever give us even a faint echo of Siddons’ declamation or
Paganini’s playing; these are alike buried with the generation which
they charmed and electrified. But in Leigh Hunt’s description of
Paganini’s performance we have something like a pictorial phonograph,
if I may hazard the hibernianism, of the “Pale Musician’s” mighty
personality and power. Somewhere between the forties and fifties,
I remember, as a very young boy, standing awestruck before a thin,
gaunt, dislocated wax effigy of Paganini in an ill-fitting dresscoat,
with wild dreamy eyes and arm uplifted high--just as Leigh Hunt
describes him--before his bow came down like a crash of thunder on
the strings; but let the lively and graphic essayist who heard him,
speak for himself:--
“Paganini, the first time I saw and heard him, and the first time
he struck a note, seemed literally to strike it, to give it a blow.
The house was so crammed that, being among the squeezers in the
standing-room at the side of the pit, I happened to catch the first
glance of his face, through the arm akimbo of a man who was perched
up before me, which made a kind of frame for it; and there, on
the stage in that frame, as through a perspective glass, were the
face bent and the raised hand of the wonderful musician, with the
instrument at his chin, just going to commence, and looking exactly
as I described him--
--‘His hand,
Loading the air with dumb expectancy,
Suspending ere it fell a nation’s breath,
He smote, and clinging to the serious chords,
With godlike ravishment drew forth a breath
So deep, so strong, so fervid thick with love,
Blissful yet laden as with twenty prayers,
That Juno yearned with no diviner soul
To the first burthen of the lips of Jove.
Th’ exceeding mystery of the loveliness
Sadden’d delight, and with his mournful look
Dreary and gaunt, hanging his pallid face
’Twixt his dark flowing locks, he almost seem’d
Too feeble, or to melancholy eyes
One that has parted with his soul for pride
And in the sable secret lived forlorn.’
To show the depth and identicalness of the impression which he made
upon everybody, foreign or native, an Italian, who stood near me,
said to himself after a sigh, ‘_O Dio!_’ and this had not been said
long when another person in the same manner exclaimed, ‘_O Christ!_’
Musicians pressed forward from behind the scenes to get as close to
him as possible, and they could not sleep at night for thinking of
him.”