The Polish violinist Henryk Wieniawski was facing a crisis.
After an immensely successful concert tour of London, Wieniawski was introduced by his friend Anton Rubinstein to a young woman named Isabella Hampton. The two fell deeply in love, with the young violinist writing in a letter dated November 1859, “I wish to marry a young English woman whom I love more deeply than the finest Stradivarius or Guarneri [violin].”
