Charles Dickens and Music Part 4

So he got out his flute, arranged the light and a small oblong music-book to the best advantage, and began to play 'most mournfully.'

The air was 'Away with Melancholy,' a composition which, when it is played very slowly on the flute, in bed, with the further disadvantage of being performed by a gentleman but imperfectly acquainted with the instrument, who repeats one note a great many times before he can find the next, has not a lively effect.

So Mr. Swiveller spent half the night or more over this pleasing exercise, merely stopping now and then to take breath and soliloquize about the Marchioness; and it was only after he 'had nearly maddened the people of the house, and at both the next doors, and over the way,' that he shut up the book and went to sleep. The result of this was that the next morning he got a notice to quit from his landlady, who had been in waiting on the stairs for that purpose since the dawn of day.

Jack Redburn, too (_M.H.C._), seems to have found consolation in this instrument, spending his wet Sundays in 'blowing a very slow tune on the flute.'

There is one, and only one, recorded instance of this very meek instrument suddenly a.s.serting itself by going on strike, and that is in the sketch ent.i.tled _Private Theatres_ (_S.B.S._ 13), where the amateurs take so long to dress for their parts that 'the flute says he'll be blowed if he plays any more.'

We must on no account forget the serenade with which the gentlemen boarders proposed to honour the Miss Pecksniffs. The performance was both vocal and instrumental, and the description of the flute-player is delightful.

It was very affecting, very. Nothing more dismal could have been desired by the most fastidious taste.... The youngest gentleman blew his melancholy into a flute. He didn't blow much out of it, but that was all the better.

After a description of the singing we have more about the flute.

The flute of the youngest gentleman was wild and fitful. It came and went in gusts, like the wind. For a long time together he seemed to have left off, and when it was quite settled by Mrs. Todgers and the young ladies that, overcome by his feelings, he had retired in tears, he unexpectedly turned up again at the very top of the tune, gasping for breath. He was a tremendous performer. There was no knowing where to have him; and exactly when you thought he was doing nothing at all, then was he doing the very thing that ought to astonish you most.

Yet another performer is the domestic young gentleman (_C.P._) who holds skeins of silk for the ladies to wind, and who then

brings down his flute in compliance with a request from the youngest Miss Gray, and plays divers tunes out of a very small book till supper-time.

When Nancy went to the prison to look for Oliver Twist, she found n.o.body in durance vile except a man who had been taken up for playing the flute, and who was bewailing the loss of the same, which had been confiscated for the use of the county.

The gentleman who played the violoncello at Mrs. Gattleton's party has already been referred to, and it only remains to mention Mr. Evans, who 'had such lovely whiskers' and who played the flute on the same occasion, to bring the list of players to an end.

_Hummers_

We meet with a remarkable musician in _Dombey and Son_ in the person of Harriet Carker's visitor, a scientific one, according to the description:

A certain skilful action of his fingers as he hummed some bars, and beat time on the seat beside him, seemed to denote the musician; and the extraordinary satisfaction he derived from humming something very slow and long, which had no recognizable tune, seemed to denote that he was a scientific one.

A less capable performer was Sampson Bra.s.s, who hummed

in a voice that was anything but musical certain vocal s.n.a.t.c.hes which appeared to have reference to the union between Church and State, inasmuch as they were compounded of the Evening Hymn and 'G.o.d Save the King.'

Musicians of various degrees abound in the _Sketches_. Here is Mr. Wisbottle, whistling 'The Light Guitar' at five o'clock in the morning, to the intense disgust of Mr. John Evenson, a fellow boarder at Mrs. Tibbs'. Subsequently he came down to breakfast in blue slippers and a shawl dressing-gown, whistling 'Di piacer.' Mr. Evenson can no longer control his feelings, and threatens to start the triangle if his enemy will not stop his early matutinal music. A suggested name for this whistler is the 'humming-top,' from his habit of describing semi-circles on the piano stool, and 'humming most melodiously.' There are a number of characters who indulge in the humming habit either to cover their confusion, or as a sign of light-heartedness and contentment. Prominent amongst these are Pecksniff, who, like Morfin, hums melodiously, and Micawber, who can both sing and hum. Nor must we omit to mention Miss Petowker, who 'hummed a tune' as her contribution to the entertainment at Mrs. Kenwigs'

party. Many of the characters resort to humming to conceal their temporary discomfiture, and perhaps no one ever hummed under more hara.s.sing circ.u.mstances than when Mr. Pecksniff had to go to the door to let in some very unwelcome guests, who had already knocked several times. But he was a past master in the art of dissimulation. He is particularly anxious to conceal from his visitors the fact that Jonas Chuzzlewit is in the house. So he says to the latter--

'This may be a professional call. Indeed I am pretty sure it is. Thank you.' Then Mr. Pecksniff, gently warbling a rustic stave, put on his garden hat, seized a spade, and opened the street door; calmly appearing on the threshold as if he thought he had, from his vineyard, heard a modest rap, but was not quite certain.

Then he tells his visitors 'I do a little bit of Adam still.'

He certainly had a good deal of the old Adam in him.

_Clarionet_

The clarionet is a.s.sociated with the fortunes of Mr. Frederick Dorrit, who played the instrument at the theatre where his elder niece was a dancer, and where Little Dorrit sought an engagement. After the rehearsal was over she and her sister went to take him home.

He had been in that place six nights a week for many years, but had never been observed to raise his eyes above his music-book.... The carpenters had a joke that he was dead without being aware of it.

At the theatre he had no part in what was going on except the part written for the clarionet. In his young days his house had been the resort of singers and players. When the fortunes of the family changed his clarionet was taken away from him, on the ground that it was a 'low instrument.' It was subsequently restored to him, but he never played it again.

Of quite a different stamp was one of the characters in _Going into Society_, who played the clarionet in a band at a Wild Beast Show, and played it all wrong. He was somewhat eccentric in dress, as he had on 'a white Roman shirt and a bishop's mitre covered with leopard skin.' We are told nothing about him, except that he refused to know his old friends. In his story of the _Seven Poor Travellers_ d.i.c.kens found the clarionet-player of the Rochester Waits so communicative that he accompanied the party across an open green called the Vines,

and a.s.sisted--in the French sense--at the performance of two waltzes, two polkas, and three Irish melodies.

_Ba.s.soon_

A notable ba.s.soon player was Mr. Bagnet, who had a voice somewhat resembling his instrument. The ex-artilleryman kept a little music shop in a street near the Elephant and Castle. There were

a few fiddles in the window, and some Pan's pipes and a tambourine, and a triangle, and certain elongated sc.r.a.ps of music.

It was to this shop that Bucket the detective came under the pretence of wanting a second-hand 'wiolinceller' (see p. 29). In the course of conversation it turns out that Master Bagnet (otherwise 'Woolwich') 'plays the fife beautiful,'

and he performs some popular airs for the benefit of his audience. Mr. Bucket also claims to have played the fife himself when a boy, 'not in a scientific way, but by ear.'

_Bagpipes_

Two references to the bagpipes deserve notice. One is in _David Copperfield_, where the novelist refers to his own early experiences as a shorthand reporter. He has no high opinion of the speeches he used to take down.

One joyful night, therefore, I noted down the music of the parliamentary bagpipes for the last time, and I have never heard it since; though I still recognize the old drone in the newspapers.

In _O.M.F._ (II.) we read of Charley Hexam's fellow pupils keeping themselves awake

by maintaining a monotonous droning noise, as if they were performing, out of time and tune, on a ruder sort of bagpipe.

The peculiar subdued noise caused by a lot of children in a school is certainly suggestive of the instrument.

_Trombone_

Little is said about the trombone. We are told, in reference to the party at Dr. Strong's (_D.C._), that the good Doctor knew as much about playing cards as he did about 'playing the trombone.' In 'Our School' (_R.P._) we are told a good deal about the usher who 'made out the bills, mended the pens, and did all sorts of things.'

He was rather musical, and on some remote quarter-day had bought an old trombone; but a bit of it was lost, and it made the most extraordinary sounds when he sometimes tried to play it of an evening.

In a similarly dismembered state was the flute which d.i.c.kens once saw in a broker's shop. It was 'complete with the exception of the middle joint.'

This naturally calls to mind the story of the choir librarian who was putting away the vocal parts of a certain funeral anthem. After searching in vain for two missing numbers he was obliged to label the parcel

'His body is buried in peace.' Two parts missing.

_Organ_

The references to the organ are both numerous and interesting, and it is pretty evident that this instrument had a great attraction for d.i.c.kens. The gentle Tom Pinch (_M.C._), whom Gissing calls 'a gentleman who derives his patent of gentility direct from G.o.d Almighty,' first claims our attention. He used to play the organ at the village church 'for nothing.' It was a simple instrument, 'the sweetest little organ you ever heard,'

provided with wind by the action of the musician's feet, and thus Tom was independent of a blower, though he was so beloved that