Charles Mennegand

He is distinguished both as a maker and repairer of instruments. He entered the service of Rambaux in Paris in 1840. He has been rightly regarded as having displayed singular ability in the delicate and difficult task of " cutting" the large Italian Violoncellos and Tenors. The practice of reducing the dimensions of Cremonese instruments has happily come to be looked upon as emulative of the acts of the Goths and Vandals. It is in any case certain that numerous instruments have been operated upon with no greater skill than might have been expected at the hands of those barbarians. "These ruthless men," remarks Charles Reade, "just sawed a crescent off the top, and another off the bottom, and the result is a thing with the inner bout of a giant and the upper and lower bout of a dwarf." He rightly names this, " cutting in the statutory sense, viz., cutting and maiming," and implores the owner of an instrument in its original state to spare it, and if too large, to play on one of the value of £5, with the Cremona set before him to look at while he plays. To " cut" a Cremona, and to cut a diamond into a brilliant or a rose, are tasks equally difficult. The indifferent operator in both cases suffers more or less from the injury and annoyance his unskilfulness has occasioned. Borgis, a Venetian diamond-cutter, was employed by Shah Jehan to cut the Koh-i-nor, and in place of a reward was fined ten thousand ducats for his imperfect performance. Had it happened that some possessors of Cremonese gems had inflicted monetary or other punishment on incapable instrument-cutters, the world would have been richer in Cremonas. Mennegand was at Amsterdam for a few years, and returned to Paris in 1857.