The Lost Stradivarius | Page 2

his promise to look after my
brother, and had secured him an excellent first-floor sitting-room, with
a bedroom adjoining, having an aspect towards New College Lane.
I shall pass over the first two years of my brother's residence at Oxford,
because they have nothing to do with the present story. They were
spent, no doubt, in the ordinary routine of work and recreation common
in Oxford at that period.
From his earliest boyhood he had been passionately devoted to music,
and had attained a considerable proficiency on the violin. In the autumn
term of 1841 he made the acquaintance of Mr. William Gaskell, a very
talented student at New College, and also a more than tolerable
musician. The practice of music was then very much less common at
Oxford than it has since become, and there were none of those societies
existing which now do so much to promote its study among
undergraduates. It was therefore a cause of much gratification to the

two young men, and it afterwards became a strong bond of friendship,
to discover that one was as devoted to the pianoforte as was the other to
the violin. Mr. Gaskell, though in easy circumstances, had not a
pianoforte in his rooms, and was pleased to use a fine instrument by
D'Almaine that John had that term received as a birthday present from
his guardian.
From that time the two students were thrown much together, and in the
autumn term of 1841 and Easter term of 1842 practised a variety of
music in John's rooms, he taking the violin part and Mr. Gaskell that
for the pianoforte.
It was, I think, in March 1842 that John purchased for his rooms a piece
of furniture which was destined afterwards to play no unimportant part
in the story I am narrating. This was a very large and low wicker chair
of a form then coming into fashion in Oxford, and since, I am told,
become a familiar object of most college rooms. It was cushioned with
a gaudy pattern of chintz, and bought for new of an upholsterer at the
bottom of the High Street.
Mr. Gaskell was taken by his uncle to spend Easter in Rome, and
obtaining special leave from his college to prolong his travels; did not
return to Oxford till three weeks of the summer term were passed and
May was well advanced. So impatient was he to see his friend that he
would not let even the first evening of his return pass without coming
round to John's rooms. The two young men sat without lights until the
night was late; and Mr. Gaskell had much to narrate of his travels, and
spoke specially of the beautiful music which he had heard at Easter in
the Roman churches. He had also had lessons on the piano from a
celebrated professor of the Italian style, but seemed to have been
particularly delighted with the music of the seventeenth-century
composers, of whose works he had brought back some specimens set
for piano and violin.
It was past eleven o'clock when Mr. Gaskell left to return to New
College; but the night was unusually warm, with a moon near the full,
and John sat for some time in a cushioned window-seat before the open
sash thinking over what he had heard about the music of Italy. Feeling

still disinclined for sleep, he lit a single candle and began to turn over
some of the musical works which Mr. Gaskell had left on the table. His
attention was especially attracted to an oblong book, bound in soiled
vellum, with a coat of arms stamped in gilt upon the side. It was a
manuscript copy of some early suites by Graziani for violin and
harpsichord, and was apparently written at Naples in the year 1744,
many years after the death of that composer. Though the ink was
yellow and faded, the transcript had been accurately made, and could
be read with tolerable comfort by an advanced musician in spite of the
antiquated notation.
Perhaps by accident, or perhaps by some mysterious direction which
our minds are incapable of appreciating, his eye was arrested by a suite
of four movements with a basso continuo, or figured bass, for the
harpsichord. The other suites in the book were only distinguished by
numbers, but this one the composer had dignified with the name of
"l'Areopagita." Almost mechanically John put the book on his
music-stand, took his violin from its case, and after a moment's tuning
stood up and played the first movement, a lively Coranto. The light of
the single candle burning on the table was scarcely sufficient to
illumine the page; the shadows hung in the creases of the leaves, which
had grown into those wavy folds sometimes observable in books made
of