Sherlock Holmes and the case of the forged Stradivari is great and we here at Palmer Street Properties near Ohio University like a good book.
In 1887, Arthur Conan Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet, was published after a long period of rejections. The detective finally made his debut that November in the Beeton’s Christmas Annual – the story narrated as always by his faithful assistant Dr. John Watson.
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Long before any mention of the deerstalker, pipe or magnifying glass, Watson informed us of Holmes’s love of his violin. That he could play difficult pieces I knew well, because at my request he has played me some of Mendelssohn’s Lieder, and other favorites. When left to himself, however, he would seldom produce any music or attempt any recognized air. We later discover in The Adventure of the Cardboard Box (1893) that this violin is a Stradivari, the Italian hallmark of violin perfection. Few readers will have More recent version. The McGovan books came out between 1878 and 1884, which heavily overlaps with Doyle’s own time in the city (1876 to 1881). This makes it highly probable that Doyle was familiar with the series at the very least. Very interesting indeed .
McGovan book is Traced and Tracked, or, A Memoire of a City Detective (1884). It includes a short tale called The Romance of a Real Cremona. Also about McGovan’s investigation of the theft of a Stradivari from a stately home near Edinburgh. During the investigation, McGovan interviews the owner, a Mr. Cleffton. He asks about the value. Another similarity is that in both stories, the violins passed through the hands of a pawnbroker. In real life, it was very common for fake instruments. They would move through pawnbrokers as a way of removing the identity of the forger or reseller. To be sure, scraping violins appear elsewhere in Victorian literature. But, in short, the very strong implication exists in both the Real Cremona. Also the Doyle books is that the Stradivari’s are not genuine. They are products of the Victorian forgery trade.
