Chapter XII: 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.

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.”