National Violin Day
By: Mindy Jarrett | December 13, 2019
Adolphe Barthelemy Dantonet’s violin, manufactured by Maline, ca. 1830. Gift of Betty Dantonet Engelmann. 2007.070.1-5
It’s national violin day! This nineteenth-century Maline belonged to Adolphe Barthelemy Dantonet (1833-1894), a former employee of the U.S. Mint. Dantonet played violin and cello for the French Opera House, and he even formed an orchestra with his fellow Mint employees.
Its gut strings were made from an alligator’s intestines; Dantonet once told a curious observer that the alligator made “the most flexible and sonorous strings for a musical instrument in the world.”[1] This made Dantonet an alligator hunter, too, though his hunting method was rather unusual:
“There was a tin case, holding about three pounds of powder, and this was sewn up into the belly of the fowl that was to serve for the bait. A wire, about the eighth of an inch in diameter, connected the tin case with the shore.”
The alligator took the bait, and Dantonet touched the wire to an electric telegraph, which sent an electric current through the wire to the baited duck.
“The effect was tremendous, for, after a terrible shock, we had hurled over our heads the throbbing remains of an enormous alligator, mingled with a rain of water and blood.”
[1] Benedict Henry Révoil, Shooting and Fishing in the Rivers, Prairies, and Backwoods of North America (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1865), 278, https://archive.org/details/shootingfishingi02rv/page/278.