Charles Dickens and Music Part 1

Charles d.i.c.kens and Music.

by James T. Lightwood.

PREFACE

For many years I have been interested in the various musical references in d.i.c.kens' works, and have had the impression that a careful examination of his writings would reveal an aspect of his character hitherto unknown, and, I may add, unsuspected.

The centenary of his birth hastened a work long contemplated, and a first reading (after many years) brought to light an amount of material far in excess of what I antic.i.p.ated, while a second examination convinced me that there is, perhaps, no great writer who has made a more extensive use of music to ill.u.s.trate character and create incident than Charles d.i.c.kens. From an historical point of view these references are of the utmost importance, for they reflect to a nicety the general condition of ordinary musical life in England during the middle of the last century. We do not, of course, look to d.i.c.kens for a history of cla.s.sical music during the period--those who want this will find it in the newspapers and magazines; but for the story of music in the ordinary English home, for the popular songs of the period, for the average musical attainments of the middle and lower cla.s.ses (music was not the correct thing amongst the 'upper ten'), we must turn to the pages of d.i.c.kens'

novels. It is certainly strange that no one has. .h.i.therto thought of tapping this source of information. In and about 1887 the papers teemed with articles that outlined the history of music during the first fifty years of Victoria's reign; but I have not seen one that attempted to derive first-hand information from the sources referred to, nor indeed does the subject of 'd.i.c.kens and Music' ever appear to have received the attention which, in my opinion, it deserves.

I do not profess to have chronicled _all_ the musical references, nor has it been possible to identify every one of the numerous quotations from songs, although I have consulted such excellent authorities as Dr. c.u.mmings, Mr. Worden (Preston), and Mr. J.

Allanson Benson (Bromley). I have to thank Mr. Frank Kidson, who, I understand, had already planned a work of this description, for his kind advice and a.s.sistance. There is no living writer who has such a wonderful knowledge of old songs as Mr. Kidson, a knowledge which he is ever ready to put at the disposal of others. Even now there are some half-dozen songs which every attempt to run to earth has failed, though I have tried to 'mole 'em out' (as Mr. Pancks would say) by searching through some hundreds of song-books and some thousands of separate songs.

Should any of my readers be able to throw light on dark places I shall be very glad to hear from them, with a view to making the information here presented as complete and correct as possible if another edition should be called for. May I suggest to the Secretaries of our Literary Societies, Guilds, and similar organizations that a pleasant evening might be spent in rendering some of the music referred to by d.i.c.kens. The proceedings might be varied by readings from his works or by historical notes on the music. Many of the pieces are still in print, and I shall be glad to render a.s.sistance in tracing them. Perhaps this idea will also commend itself to the members of the d.i.c.kens Fellowship, an organization with which all lovers of the great novelist ought to a.s.sociate themselves.

JAMES T. LIGHTWOOD.

LYTHAM, _October, 1912._

I truly love d.i.c.kens; and discern in the inner man of him a tone of real Music which struggles to express itself, as it may in these bewildered, stupefied and, indeed, very crusty and distracted days--better or worse!

THOMAS CARLYLE.

CHAPTER I

d.i.c.kENS AS A MUSICIAN

The attempts to instil the elements of music into Charles d.i.c.kens when he was a small boy do not appear to have been attended with success. Mr. Kitton tells us that he learnt the piano during his school days, but his master gave him up in despair. Mr. Bowden, an old schoolfellow of the novelist's when he was at Wellington House Academy, in Hampstead Road, says that music used to be taught there, and that d.i.c.kens received lessons on the violin, but he made no progress, and soon relinquished it. It was not until many years after that he made his third and last attempt to become an instrumentalist. During his first transatlantic voyage he wrote to Forster telling him that he had bought an accordion.

The steward lent me one on the pa.s.sage out, and I regaled the ladies' cabin with my performances. You can't think with what feelings I play 'Home, Sweet Home'

every night, or how pleasantly sad it makes us.

On the voyage back he gives the following description of the musical talents of his fellow pa.s.sengers:

One played the accordion, another the violin, and another (who usually began at six o'clock a.m.) the key bugle: the combined effect of which instruments, when they all played different tunes, in different parts of the ship, at the same time, and within hearing of each other, as they sometimes did (everybody being intensely satisfied with his own performance), was sublimely hideous.

He does not tell us whether he was one of the performers on these occasions.

But although he failed as an instrumentalist he took delight in hearing music, and was always an appreciative yet critical listener to what was good and tuneful. His favourite composers were Mendelssohn--whose _Lieder_ he was specially fond of[1]--Chopin, and Mozart. He heard Gounod's _Faust_ whilst he was in Paris, and confesses to having been quite overcome with the beauty of the music. 'I couldn't bear it,'

he says, in one of his letters, 'and gave in completely. The composer must be a very remarkable man indeed.' At the same time he became acquainted with Offenbach's music, and heard _Orphee aux enfers_. This was in February, 1863. Here also he made the acquaintance of Auber, 'a stolid little elderly man, rather petulant in manner.' He told d.i.c.kens that he had lived for a time at 'Stock Noonton' (Stoke Newington) in order to study English, but he had forgotten it all. In the description of a dinner in the _Sketches_ we read that

The knives and forks form a pleasing accompaniment to Auber's music, and Auber's music would form a pleasing accompaniment to the dinner, if you could hear anything besides the cymbals.

He met Meyerbeer on one occasion at Lord John Russell's. The musician congratulated him on his outspoken language on Sunday observance, a subject in which d.i.c.kens was deeply interested, and on which he advocated his views at length in the papers ent.i.tled _Sunday under Three Heads_.

d.i.c.kens was acquainted with Jenny Lind, and he gives the following amusing story in a letter to Douglas Jerrold, dated Paris, February 14, 1847:

I am somehow reminded of a good story I heard the other night from a man who was a witness of it and an actor in it. At a certain German town last autumn there was a tremendous _furore_ about Jenny Lind, who, after driving the whole place mad, left it, on her travels, early one morning. The moment her carriage was outside the gates, a party of rampant students who had escorted it rushed back to the inn, demanded to be shown to her bedroom, swept like a whirlwind upstairs into the room indicated to them, tore up the sheets, and wore them in strips as decorations. An hour or two afterwards a bald old gentleman of amiable appearance, an Englishman, who was staying in the hotel, came to breakfast at the _table d'hote_, and was observed to be much disturbed in his mind, and to show great terror whenever a student came near him. At last he said, in a low voice, to some people who were near him at the table, 'You are English gentlemen, I observe. Most extraordinary people, these Germans. Students, as a body, raving mad, gentlemen!' 'Oh, no,' said somebody else: 'excitable, but very good fellows, and very sensible.' 'By G.o.d, sir!' returned the old gentleman, still more disturbed, 'then there's something political in it, and I'm a marked man. I went out for a little walk this morning after shaving, and while I was gone'--he fell into a terrible perspiration as he told it--'they burst into my bedroom, tore up my sheets, and are now patrolling the town in all directions with bits of 'em in their b.u.t.ton-holes.' I needn't wind up by adding that they had gone to the wrong chamber.

It was d.i.c.kens' habit wherever he went on his Continental travels to avail himself of any opportunity of visiting the opera; and his criticisms, though brief, are always to the point. He tells us this interesting fact about Carrara:

There is a beautiful little theatre there, built of marble, and they had it illuminated that night in my honour. There was really a very fair opera, but it is curious that the chorus has been always, time out of mind, made up of labourers in the quarries, who don't know a note of music, and sing entirely by ear.

But much as he loved music, d.i.c.kens could never bear the least sound or noise while he was studying or writing, and he ever waged a fierce war against church bells and itinerant musicians. Even when in Scotland his troubles did not cease, for he writes about 'a most infernal piper practising under the window for a compet.i.tion of pipers which is to come off shortly.' Elsewhere he says that he found Dover 'too bandy'

for him (he carefully explains he does not refer to its legs), while in a letter to Forster he complains bitterly of the vagrant musicians at Broadstairs, where he 'cannot write half an hour without the most excruciating organs, fiddles, bells, or glee singers.' The barrel-organ, which he somewhere calls an 'Italian box of music,' was one source of annoyance, but bells were his special aversion. 'If you know anybody at St.

Paul's,' he wrote to Forster, 'I wish you'd send round and ask them not to ring the bell so. I can hardly hear my own ideas as they come into my head, and say what they mean.' His bell experiences at Genoa are referred to elsewhere (p. 57).

How marvellously observant he was is manifest in the numerous references in his letters and works to the music he heard in the streets and squares of London and other places. Here is a description of Golden Square, London, W. (_N.N._):

Two or three violins and a wind instrument from the Opera band reside within its precincts. Its boarding-houses are musical, and the notes of pianos and harps float in the evening time round the head of the mournful statue, the guardian genius of the little wilderness of shrubs, in the centre of the square....

Sounds of gruff voices practising vocal music invade the evening's silence, and the fumes of choice tobacco scent the air. There, snuff and cigars and German pipes and flutes, and violins and violoncellos, divide the supremacy between them. It is the region of song and smoke. Street bands are on their mettle in Golden Square, and itinerant glee singers quaver involuntarily as they raise their voices within its boundaries.

We have another picture in the description of Dombey's house, where--

the summer sun was never on the street but in the morning, about breakfast-time.... It was soon gone again, to return no more that day, and the bands of music and the straggling Punch's shows going after it left it a prey to the most dismal of organs and white mice.

_As a Singer_

Most of the writers about d.i.c.kens, and especially his personal friends, bear testimony both to his vocal power and his love of songs and singing. As a small boy we read of him and his sister f.a.n.n.y standing on a table singing songs, and acting them as they sang. One of his favourite recitations was Dr. Watts'

'The voice of the sluggard,' which he used to give with great effect. The memory of these words lingered long in his mind, and both Captain Cuttle and Mr. Pecksniff quote them with excellent appropriateness.

When he grew up he retained his love of vocal music, and showed a strong predilection for national airs and old songs. Moore's _Irish Melodies_ had also a special attraction for him. In the early days of his readings his voice frequently used to fail him, and Mr. Kitton tells us that in trying to recover the lost power he would test it by singing these melodies to himself as he walked about. It is not surprising, therefore, to find numerous references to these songs, as well as to other works by Moore, in his writings.

From a humorous account of a concert on board ship we gather that d.i.c.kens possessed a tenor voice. Writing to his daughter from Boston in 1867, he says:

We had speech-making and singing in the saloon of the _Cuba_ after the last dinner of the voyage. I think I have acquired a higher reputation from drawing out the captain, and getting him to take the second in 'All's Well' and likewise in 'There's not in the wide world'[2]

(your parent taking the first), than from anything previously known of me on these sh.o.r.es.... We also sang (with a Chicago lady, and a strong-minded woman from I don't know where) 'Auld Lang Syne,' with a tender melancholy expressive of having all four been united from our cradles. The more dismal we were, the more delighted the company were. Once (when we paddled i'

the burn) the captain took a little cruise round the compa.s.s on his own account, touching at the Canadian Boat Song,[3] and taking in supplies at Jubilate, 'Seas between us braid ha' roared,' and roared like ourselves.

J.T. Field, in his _Yesterdays with Authors_, says: 'To hear him sing an old-time stage song, such as he used to enjoy in his youth at a cheap London theatre ... was to become acquainted with one of the most delightful and original companions in the world.'

When at home he was fond of having music in the evening. His daughter tells us that on one occasion a member of his family was singing a song while he was apparently deep in his book, when he suddenly got up and saying 'You don't make enough of that word,' he sat down by the piano and showed how it should be sung.

On another occasion his criticism was more pointed.

One night a gentleman visitor insisted on singing 'By the sad sea waves,' which he did vilely, and he wound up his performance by a most unexpected and misplaced embellishment, or 'turn.' d.i.c.kens found the whole ordeal very trying, but managed to preserve a decorous silence till this sound fell on his ear, when his neighbour said to him, 'Whatever did he mean by that extraneous effort of melody?' 'Oh,' said d.i.c.kens, 'that's quite in accordance with rule. When things are at their worst they always take a _turn_.'

Forster relates that while he was at work on the _Old Curiosity Shop_ he used to discover specimens of old ballads in his country walks between Broadstairs and Ramsgate, which so aroused his interest that when he returned to town towards the end of 1840 he thoroughly explored the ballad literature of Seven Dials,[4] and would occasionally sing not a few of these wonderful discoveries with an effect that justified his reputation for comic singing in his childhood. We get a glimpse of his investigations in _Out of the Season_, where he tells us about that 'wonderful mystery, the music-shop,'

with its a.s.sortment of polkas with coloured frontispieces, and also the book-shop, with its 'Little Warblers and Fairburn's Comic Songsters.'

Here too were ballads on the old ballad paper and in the old confusion of types, with an old man in a c.o.c.ked hat, and an armchair, for the ill.u.s.tration to Will Watch the bold smuggler, and the Friar of Orders Grey, represented by a little girl in a hoop, with a ship in the distance. All these as of yore, when they were infinite delights to me.