Chapter VII: Violins in France

Italy and Germany have to look back to their golden age, but it seems as if France and England had to look forward.

France and England have never yet gone beyond a doubtful silver age, but there is good reason to think that the manipulation and alchemy of time, whilst thinning out by wear and tear and loss the older gems, will not only transform the Piques and Lupôts, and perhaps the Vuillaumes and Chanots, but also the Banks, Forsters, and Fendts, and probably the Dukes and Hills, into golden quality, with very advanced prices; and so, instead of being, like Artemus Ward’s future, _behind_ them, they may still be found to have their future _before_ them.

The French work contemporaneous with the Cremona period is not nearly so interesting, nor do the makers appear to have been nearly so capable as the men who followed them towards the close of the seventeen hundreds. This is no doubt accounted for by the streams of violins pouring out of the Italian and German workshops, the superior reputation of Cremona, which drew at once the patronage of the Spanish and French Courts, and perhaps the small demand for stringed instruments in France compared with the huge demand in Italy and throughout Germany.

So there was a poor market as yet for French work.

In Italy, in the luxurious little Duchies and Principalities, as well as in the churches, and in Germany in the small Electorates, each of which supported its band and gave an indirect impetus to the churches, Reformed and Roman Catholic, violin-making flourished, and so it came to pass that Italy and Germany made for all the world.

The Cremona period in France can boast of but two considerable names, Jacques Boquay (1705-30) and Pieray (1700-25). Boquay worked on the early Cremonese model, which had already been left behind by the modified forms of Stradivari (1700 great period). His violins have not yet reached a high selling figure, but may possibly rise; they are by no means scarce; his varnish is reddish-brown, transparent, warm and soft. He reverted to the Jerome Amati type, arching even a little more than Jerome.

The quality of his tone is good, but it lacks power, which in these advanced days tells against him except for cabinet playing.

Claude Pieray (1700-25) worked in Paris, and followed the later Amati contour, but he was far enough removed from the Cremonese influence to follow a line of his own. Whilst varying, some think capriciously, the thickness of his wood, and not always securing the best quality of wood, he varnished pale red, and turned out a small and large pattern; but he evidently inclined to the larger pattern of the late Amati Strad.

A violin of Pieray’s was advertised in the sale of Tom Britton, the musical coal-heaver, as “a very beautiful violin, and _as good as a Cremona_,” which shows that even at that date the Stainer influence, then so strong in England, had not dimmed the fame of Cremona. However, it would of course have been absurd to compare him to Stainer, the affinity between Pieray and Amati being too obvious.

But the really great silver-gilt if not golden age of French violin-making dawned with Lupôt (1736-58), was extended by Pique (1788-1822), Vuillaume (1798-1875), Chanot (1801), Gand (1802), and Aldric (1792-1840), famous for his varnish; and Fent,[2] an admirable copyist, whose violins often sell as Lupôt’s copies of Strad.

The labours of these great French disciples of Cremona, copyists and occasional forgers as they were, are sufficient to decide for ever the superiority of the Strad model over all others. Their lives were chiefly occupied in reproducing the unique Antonio minutely without attempting the least modification of the ultimate Cremona form, which he had defined.

The firm of Lupôt, immortalised by Nicolas Lupôt (1758-1824), dates back to 1696 or somewhat earlier. The father and grandfather of Nicolas Lupôt resided at different times at Plombiers, Luneville, and Orleans, but Nicolas was born at Stuttgart in 1758. He returned to Orleans in 1770.

Nicolas Lupôt was a man of great discernment, and not carried away with the fashion of the times. Although during the first twenty years of his life he must have seen and heard the German model of Stainer extolled, neither his own work nor yet his father’s show any leaning towards it. His eye was enamoured with the Stradivari grand pattern, and his best violins are such loving and faithful copies of the great Antonio that many amateurs and some professional judges have been deceived by them. But Lupôt never got rid of the glassy, chippy French varnish, and although his warm orange tints are generous and the varnish has been laid on with a lavish hand, the rubbing bare by time of a Lupôt is very different from that fading away upon the fibres of a Strad, where always a subtler film protecting the wood seems to linger, a sort of mist of varnish to the end.

But Nicolas Lupôt was a great workman, and, as Hamlet modestly puts it, “indifferently honest”--that is, honest as violin copyists go. He did not imitate, he _copied_, and varnished throughout; he never aged his copies prematurely, or tried to take in buyers; he reverenced his great Cremona model too much to palm off his own work as those of the master. Of course his violins have rubbed since and aged since, but they have aged and rubbed honestly, and are every year increasing in value, and distinctly mellowing in tone and sensitive quality. The moment Nicolas Lupôt arrived in Paris, early in this century, his talents were recognised; orders flowed in, and he remained and remains without a rival in the French school.

He was appointed maker to the Paris Conservatoire, which involved the manufacture of the annual prize violin to be presented to the gold medallist of the year, and to this academic privilege we are doubtless indebted for some of his finest efforts. A violin which would annually at the time be associated with one of the chief musical events of the year, and come under the criticism of all musical Paris, would certainly call forth the mettle of one who admittedly “took the cake,” but was not without formidable rivals.

One of these rivals was Pique. He was in the habit, it is said, of buying Lupôt’s fiddles unvarnished, varnishing them, and labelling them with his own name. He had better have left the varnishing alone and contented himself with a fraudulent label. It is surprising that he should have stooped to such a device. Pique is quite a considerable person, second only to Lupôt as a maker. He must have been influenced by commercial considerations, but his dishonesty is a great tribute to the superior popularity and merit of Lupôt. Still Pique was so clever that he could have afforded to be honest.

* * * * *

François Gand, who entered as Lupôt’s pupil in 1802, was much beloved by his master. He became his best pupil, married his daughter, and succeeded to his business in the Rue Croix des Petits Champs in 1824.

Time has invented a new industry--the art of repairing--which François Gand raised to a veritable fine art (Mennégand, Kolliker, Rambeaux and W. Ebsworth Hill have since rivalled him). Pique would join and split mutilated grain in such a way that, without the aid of a microscope, the patch or closed fissure cannot be spotted. He would spend days over mending a crack; it became with him a sort of passion of ingenuity.

It was almost worth breaking a fiddle to have it mended by Gand, and his exquisite skill and profound knowledge as a repairer no doubt gave rise to the common but risky notion that an old violin was improved by being mended, as some surgeons pretend that a skilful operation will not only prolong life, but positively improve the constitution. The firm of Gand and Bernadel is still of high standing in Paris. The violins of François are useful and solidly built, but lack altogether the Italian grace and finish of his master, Lupôt.

Pique (1788-1822) is by some held to have run Lupôt very hard as a copyist of Stradivari. Pique avoids at once the error of the vulgar copyist, who cannot refrain from emphasising the peculiarities of his model, and the sin of the brazen forger, who bakes and rubs, treats with acids, and simulates the cracks and the wear and tear of time. But Pique had some conscience. He may have passed himself off as Lupôt, but at least he never posed as Stradivari.

Those conversant with Pique’s instruments observe a very high and conscientious finish throughout. Spohr, the violinist and composer, played for many years on a Lupôt, and was never tired of extolling both Lupôt and Pique. Pique died in 1822, two years before Lupôt, and his violins improve every year, and will by-and-by fetch prices second only to those of Lupôt, which are already up to £200 (1897).

A VIGNETTE OF J. B. VUILLAUME.

If I were to seek for an appropriate pendant to the figure of William Ebsworth Hill in London, I could not find a better one than Jean Baptiste Vuillaume of Paris. Yet the two men were very different;--the careful, neat, systematic enthusiast, with a shrewd eye to business, and the dreamy worker always apparently in the midst of a chaos of material, out of which he alone could select at a moment’s notice what he required; the ready purveyor of whatever sort of article happened to be wanted, and the careless distributor of his wares, who forgot what he owed his customers, and kept them waiting for months; the clever copyist, the reverent repairer, the ingenious brain for ever evolving new sorts of bows, fiddle shapes, screws; and the idolater of the old forms, who had so firmly grasped the truth that violins and all that belonged to them had culminated at Cremona before the middle of the eighteenth century, that he never aspired to invent anything new or alter anything old;--the Parisian, who made many fiddles, and died rich; the Londoner, who made few fiddles, but repaired innumerable antiques, and died with but a moderate competence. The force of contrast could go no further; nay, you can look at the two men’s faces, and see the secret of their characters writ plain enough.

I can remember old Hill’s dreamy gaze, peering at me with screwed-up eyes through his spectacles. You were nothing in particular to him, duke or pauper; it was your fiddle that gave you the importance or the reverse in his eyes. But look at Jean Baptiste Vuillaume’s portrait--it lies before me as I write: the jaunty embroidered and tasselled velvet skull-cap, the well-arranged black satin tie, the well-cut coat, the grave sharp look and keen eye, not dreaming at all, but taking everything in at a glance; the mouth a little aslant, as we often see it in men of speculative and ingenious minds; the firm fine nose, and the strong quiet face, but a face that betrays a mind ever alert, capable of dominating its owner’s gifts, his customers, and the market generally, whilst the man was genuinely devoted to the art and craft which made him great, and rich, and famous. Yes, the two great connoisseurs might well hang side by side in twin frames, for they are two types, united by a like enthusiasm and speciality of craft and knowledge, but differently interesting, variously unique each in his own way.

Both were hereditary violin-makers, and the tendency--I had almost said the cult--was born and bred in the blood.

Vuillaume was early saturated, in his father’s workshop at Mirecourt, with all the secrets and arts of the trade, long before he served his apprenticeship. But Paris drew the young fellow, then only nineteen, with an irresistible magnetism.

Victor Hugo, that typical Parisian of Parisians, has somewhere described the Frenchman’s inborn love of his capital, the centre to him of life, art, pleasure, movement, industry, and invention. So to Paris must your Jean Baptiste go. But to whom?--to whom but Chanot (Francis), incomparable worker, copyist, forger, suitable adept, indeed, for such a bright novice.

With Chanot, Vuillaume remained till 1821, when he went over to Lété, the organ-builder, who also dabbled in fiddles, and was glad to have at his beck and call as a foreman such a specialist, with all the experience of Mirecourt and the craft of Chanot at his back; in fact, he lost no time in taking the young man into partnership, and the partner throve so well that he married in 1828, being then just thirty years old.

Things ran smoothly with Vuillaume; his wife did not drink, or abuse him, or waste his money. His home was happy, and, in the sunshine of domestic peace, his talents expanded in the direction of that growing market which was created by the taste for old fiddles, excited by Tarisio, and supplied by the not always scrupulous skill of Chanot.

But Vuillaume went one better than Chanot. Chanot’s trick was to produce such deceptive copies or patch with counterfeit backs and bellies of his own--or to forge downright a whole antique, to be foisted upon some unwary but ill-informed enthusiast. But Vuillaume, to his honour be it said, soon discerned that the world at large could not be won by fraud, but that men were the slaves of imagination and sentiment. This timely and philosophic discovery made him famous and wealthy, almost at a bound. He loved the old Italian fiddles; he had the best opportunities of seeing them; his admirable technique enabled him to copy them accurately--to counterfeit the wear and tear, even the cracks and worm-holes, the inlaying, the rubbed varnish, the old wood; and for about five pounds, or even less, he proposed to provide people with new fiddles, which looked like old ones worth fifty or a hundred pounds.

The device succeeded beyond the dreams of avarice. Orders poured in faster than they could be executed. Just look at the old man’s face. Can you not see the shrewdness, betrayed by that slight pucker in the lip, which discovered and worked this now familiar tendency of human nature to possess what _seems_, if you can’t afford to buy what _is_ really good? It is the secret of cheap art, shoddy satsuma, coarse blue china, common silks, oleographs, and sham Palais Royal jewellery galore--every bazaar reeks with it; whilst the biggest warehouses are not above selling a made-up wine that deceives the palate, a walking-stick not ebony, only paint or stain, and furniture not really inlaid, but ditto ditto. So Vuillaume began early those amazing copies, chiefly of Stradiuarius, which even now deceive the innocent, and for a moment may even puzzle a connoisseur. Well, it was no doubt shoddy, but shoddy of the best sort; shoddy raised to a fine art, like those roses so subtly made out of silk or cambric that we might easily pop them into water to prevent them from fading.

This new-found copying industry was a delight as well as a profit to the clever French craftsman.

He loved a Cremona; he copied it as men copy the old masters again and again, till they know every touch of the immortal workman, and revel in its reproduction.

“I have completed,” remarked Vuillaume in his declining years, “three thousand instruments, all sold, all paid for, and the money spent, and it affords me great satisfaction.”

Like Ebsworth Hill, Jean Baptiste loved to do it all himself. Every instrument was varnished carefully by his own hands, and many are made throughout by him.

But what is the actual merit of Vuillaume’s violins? Fine work, yes; admirable counterfeits, yes; but the great expectations raised by the appearances are unfortunately not always answered by the tone. His best are good, and will run into forty pounds, perhaps more; but his worst are dear at five pounds. Nor can Vuillaume pretend to rival in power his great French predecessors, Pique or Lupôt, who copied, but without registering the defects of age, accident, and decay, which are so cleverly reproduced in Vuillaume’s typical specimens.

It is an exaggeration to say that Vuillaume baked his fiddles; but he treated the wood chemically in various ways, besides reproducing cracks and even worm-holes; and this artificial age put upon his planks not only fails to carry the mellowness and timbre of wood grown naturally old, but seems actually to impair instead of improving its quality, and this is but too apparent as the instruments recede in time farther and farther from the hand of the too cunning artificer.

There are, however, a few fine quartets of instruments, one of which, made for the Comte de Chimay, was lately exposed to public view in Messrs Hill’s windows in Bond Street. These are varnished equally throughout, and no attempt at aging the wood or tampering with the surface is visible. The work throughout is charming and finished, as in the best Cremonese models, and the only wonder is, that as everything about them is so good, the tone is not better; still, everything is relative. But Vuillaume claims to be judged by a high standard, and so we judge him.

Vuillaume’s ingenious brain was ever devising improvements and novelties, but few of them have turned out successes.

He made a violin tenor, but it never came into use, it being too cumbrous. He made a steel bow; but, although hollow, it was found to be too heavy. He made a sourdine tailpiece which acted on the bridge, but it has never superseded the usual simple dummy contrivance. He made a self-hairing bow, which is still sold by Mr Withers; but most violinists prefer to pay a small sum and get their bows haired, just as most men prefer to get themselves shaved--it is less trouble, and does not cost much.

Apart from his undoubted finish as a workman, and skill as a copyist, Jean Baptiste Vuillaume’s title to fame will rest largely on his connection with Tarisio. As we have seen, he not only dealt with him living, but bought all the violins found in the bedroom along with the peasant carpenter’s lifeless body.

His possession of the Messie, which he kept in a glass case, and never allowed any one to touch, was a source of great anxiety to him during the Paris Commune in 1870.

He writes to Madame Alard, his daughter, who married the celebrated violinist of that name: “In my last I spoke to you of Alard’s violin and my Messie, and of certain valuables I have here. I do not know what to do with them, for if one survives, one will be able to recover the valuables when the hubbub is over; and some _sous_ can be buried, but violins cannot be buried.” And again: “Where ought I to place all these in case of pillage?”

He referred chiefly to his violins, and old medals received in the Paris Exhibition from 1827 to 1855, and the Great Exhibition medal in London, 1851.

Later on we are relieved by reading: “I have found quite a safe hiding-place protected from fire, _et puis à la grace de Dieu_!”

All went well with the treasures, and in 1875, when he died, the Messie fell to the joint share of his only two children, Jeanne and Claire. Jeanne (Madame Alard) bought out Claire’s interest for five hundred pounds, the violin at that time being valued at one thousand. In 1890 Messrs Hill bought it for Mr R. Crawford for the unprecedented figure of two thousand pounds, the largest sum ever given by a dealer for a single instrument. Mr Charles Reade valued it at six hundred, but that was several years ago, when a first-class Strad could be obtained for about three hundred and twenty pounds. Prices have run up since then, and (like “Charley’s Aunt”[3] as we write) are “still running”!

Down to the end of his life Vuillaume was a great dealer, and he hurried over to London when quite an old man to attend the sale of Mr Gillot’s fiddles. He mistook the date, and arrived a day after the sale. He came into Mr Hill’s shop in Wardour Street, and gave vent to his disappointment. Mr Hill, whom he always visited when in London, had bought several instruments, and had a second deal with Vuillaume then and there, much to the Frenchman’s gratification. It is interesting to catch this glimpse of the two greatest dealers and artificers of the age face to face for one moment, and in such friendly and characteristic relations.