The Mad Fiddler of the North, Part I

In the year of 1880, in Watertown, northern New York, a man walked into an almshouse, looked no different from other poor. The man’s dress was quite slovenly, he was clad in rough leather boots, wore flannel strips around his neck, and his hands were bandaged up too. He was half-way through his thirties, and somehow, within the next year, the man’s health would slowly decline, until his final end appeared. Most would say he was just some tramp, many wandered the north woods then, except this man may just have been the best ever with a violin. He went by the name Nick Goodall, born back in 1849, most say that he came from England, thought the details are hard to find. His father was a violinist, possessed of a workmanlike skill, but when he saw how his son played subjected him to countless drills. Like Mozart’s dad, long before him, Nick’s father put him on display, some say that he toured through Europe when only at the age of eight. Some say that his father beat him, made his childhood unhappy, but it’s known they did cross the pond at least by the 1860s. Nick’s father settled in D.C., word is Lincoln heard young Nick bow, that his father played for Ford’s Theater, when Lincoln was laid low. They say Nick was there that dark night, and what he saw drove him insane, that Nick was sent to asylums, was said to be ‘soft’ in the brain. Some say his father killed himself, that the man was pretty mad too, others that he abandoned Nick, that fate seems more likely the truth. Whatever happened, what is known is that young Nick Goodall was crazed, but that when he took out his fiddle all who listened were quite amazed. He was known as a wanderer, a dirty, homeless vagabond, northern New York were his stomping grounds, with his fiddle he went along. He liked to play at the taverns, and also at local hotels, proprietors fed and housed him because they knew Mad Nick drew well. It’s hard to explain it in words, and recording did not exist, but people heard Nick play the stings and found themselves enrapt by this. They said that he had a beauty no other man could replicate, and people would crowd into bars to hear this mad prodigy play. He would play Chopin, Listz, and Bach, Paginini, Berlioz, Brahms; yet also played popular tunes, but the things was, he just played on. Nick didn’t much pay attention to the crowds who came to see him, he played fiddle in his own world, to stop before ready was a sin... CONTINUES IN PART II.