Two months later he was playing
at the Queen's Hall, and musical London lay at his feet.
He had something of the personality of Paganini, as you remember,
except that he was a smaller man; long, gaunt, yellowish hands
and the face of a haggard Mephistopheles. The critics quarrelled
about him, as critics only quarrel about real genius, and while
one school proclaimed that Tcheriapin had discovered an entirely
new technique, a revolutionary system of violin playing, another
school was equally positive in declaring that he could not play
at all, that he was a mountebank, a trickster, whose proper place
was in a variety theatre.
There were stories, too, that were never published--not only
about Tcheriapin, but concerning the Strad, upon which he played.
If all this atmosphere of mystery which surrounded the man had
truly been the work of a press agent, then the agent must have
been as great a genius as his client. But I can assure you that
the stories concerning Tcheriapin, true and absurd alike, were
not inspired for business purposes; they grew up around him like
fungi.
I can see him now, a lean, almost emaciated figure with slow,
sinuous movements and a trick of glancing sideways with those
dark, unfathomable, slightly oblique eyes.
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