Charles Dickens and Music Part 6

[10] _The Public Life of Mr. Tulrumble_, 1837.

CHAPTER IV

VARIOUS INSTRUMENTS (continued)

Many musical instruments and terms are mentioned by way of ill.u.s.tration. Blathers, the Bow Street officer (_O.T._), plays carelessly with his handcuffs as if they were a pair of castanets. Miss Miggs (_B.R._) clanks her pattens as if they were a pair of cymbals. Mr. Bounderby (_H.T._), during his conversation with Harthouse,

with his hat in his hand, gave a beat upon the crown at every division of his sentences, as if it were a tambourine;

and in the same work the electric wires rule 'a colossal strip of music-paper out of the evening sky.'

Perhaps the most extraordinary comparison is that inst.i.tuted by Mrs. Lirriper in reference to her late husband.

My poor Lirriper was a handsome figure of a man, with a beaming eye and a voice as mellow as a musical instrument made of honey and steel.

What a vivid imagination the good woman had! Her descriptive powers remind us of those possessed by Mrs. Gamp in speaking of the father of the mysterious Mrs. Harris.

As pleasant a singer, Mr. Chuzzlewit, as ever you heerd, with a voice like a Jew's-harp in the ba.s.s notes.

There are many humorous references to remarkable performances on various instruments more or less musical in their nature. During the election at Eatanswill the crier performed two concertos on his bell, and shortly afterwards followed them up with a fantasia on the same instrument. d.i.c.kens suffered much from church bells, and gives vent to his feelings about them in _Little Dorrit_, where he says that

Maddening church bells of all degrees of dissonance, sharp and flat, cracked and clear, fast and slow, made the brick-and-mortar echoes hideous.

In his _Pictures from Italy_ he wrote thus:

At Genoa the bells of the church ring incessantly, not in peals, or any known form of sound, but in horrible, irregular, jerking dingle, dingle, dingle; with a sudden stop at every fifteenth dingle or so, which is maddening.... The noise is supposed to be particularly obnoxious to evil spirits.

But it was these same bells, which he found so maddening, that inspired him with the t.i.tle of a well-known story. He had chosen a subject, but was at a loss for a name. As he sat working one morning there suddenly rose up from Genoa

the clang and clash of all its steeples, pouring into his ears, again and again, in a tuneless, grating, discordant jerking, hideous vibration that made his ideas spin round and round till they lost themselves in a whirl of vexation and giddiness, and dropped down dead.... Only two days later came a letter in which not a syllable was written but 'We have heard THE CHIMES at midnight, Master Shallow,' and I knew he had discovered what he wanted.[11]

Yet, in spite of all this, d.i.c.kens shows--through his characters--a deep interest in bells and bell-lore. Little Paul Dombey finds a man mending the clocks at Dr. Blimber's Academy, and asks a mult.i.tude of questions about chimes and clocks; as, whether people watched up in the lonely church steeples by night to make them strike, and how the bells were rung when people died, and whether those were different bells from wedding-bells, or only sounded dismal in the fancies of the living; and then the precocious small boy proceeds to give the astonished clockmaker some useful information about King Alfred's candles and curfew-bells.

As Smike and Nicholas tramp their long journey to Portsmouth they hear the sheep-bells tinkling on the downs. To Tom Pinch journeying Londonwards 'the bra.s.s work on the harness was a complete orchestra of little bells.'

What a terror the bells are to Jonas Chuzzlewit just before he starts on his evil journey! He hears

the ringers practising in a neighbouring church, and the clashing of their bells was almost maddening. Curse the clamouring bells! they seemed to know that he was listening at the door, and to proclaim it in a crowd of voices to all the town! Would they never be still? They ceased at last, and then the silence was so new and terrible that it seemed the prelude to some dreadful noise.

The boom of the bell is a.s.sociated with many of the villains of the novels. f.a.gin hears it when under sentence of death.

Blackpool and Carker hear the accusing bells when in the midst of planning their evil deeds.

We can read the characters of some by the way they ring a bell. The important little Mr. Bailey, when he goes to see his friend Poll Sweedlepipe (_M.C._) 'came in at the door with a lunge, to get as much sound out of the bell as possible,'

while Bob Sawyer gives a pull as if he would bring it up by the roots. Mr. Clennam pulls the rope with a hasty jerk, and Mr. Watkins Tottle with a faltering jerk, while Tom Pinch gives a gentle pull. And how angry Mr. Mantalini is with Newman Noggs because he keeps him

'ringing at this confounded old cracked tea-kettle of a bell, every tinkle of which is enough to throw a strong man into convulsions, upon my life and soul,--oh demmit.'

The introduction of electric bells has been a great trial to those who used to vent their wrath on the wire-pulled article or the earlier bell-rope, which used not infrequently to add unnecessary fuel by coming incontinently down on the head of the aggrieved one. What a pull the fierce gentleman must have given whose acquaintance Mr. Pickwick made when he was going to Bath! He had been kept waiting for his b.u.t.tered toast, so he (Captain Dowler)

rang the bell with great violence, and told the waiter he'd better bring the toast in five seconds, or he'd know the reason why.

d.i.c.kens rang far more changes on the bells than there is s.p.a.ce to enumerate; but I have shown to what extent he makes their sound a commentary on innumerable phases of life. A slight technical knowledge of bell phraseology is found in _Barnaby Rudge_ (7), where he mentions the variations known as a 'triple bob major.' Finally there is an interesting reference in _Master Humphrey's Clock_ to a use of the bell which has now pa.s.sed into history. Belinda says in a postscript to a letter to Master Humphrey, 'The bellman, rendered impatient by delay, is ringing dreadfully in the pa.s.sage'; while in a second PS. she says, 'I open this to say the bellman is gone, and that you must not expect it till the next post.'

In the old days it was the custom for the letter-carriers to collect letters by ringing a bell.

There is no doubt that a most extraordinary, certainly a most original, musical effect is that secured by Mr. George (_B.H._), who had just finished smoking.

'Do you know what that tune is, Mr. Smallweed?' he adds, after breaking off to whistle one, accompanied on the table with the empty pipe.

'Tune,' replies the old man. 'No, we never have tunes here.'

'That's the "Dead March" in _Saul_. They bury soldiers to it, so it's the natural end of the subject.'

Surely a highly original way of bringing a conversation to a close!

This march is referred to in _Our Mutual Friend_, where Mr. Wilfer suggests that going through life with Mrs. Wilfer is like keeping time to the 'Dead March' in _Saul_, from which singular simile we may gather that this lady was not the liveliest of companions.

Several other instruments are casually mentioned. Mr. Hardy (_S.B.T._ 7) was a master of many accomplishments.

He could sing comic songs, imitate hackney coachmen and fowls, play airs on his chin, and execute concertos on the Jew's harp.

The champion 'chin' performer of the early Victorian period was Michael Boai, 'The celebrated chin melodist,' who was announced to perform 'some of his admired pieces' at many of the places of entertainment. There is another reference to this extraordinary way of producing music in _Sketches by Boz_, where Mrs. Tippin performed an air with variations on the guitar, 'accompanied on the chin by Master Tippin.' To return to Mr. Hardy, this gentleman was evidently deeply interested in all sorts and degrees of music, but he got out of his depth in a conversation with the much-travelled Captain Helves. After the three Miss Briggses had finished their guitar performances, Mr. Hardy approached the Captain with the question, 'Did you ever hear a Portuguese tambourine?'

'Did _you_ ever hear a tom-tom, sir?' sternly inquired the Captain, who lost no opportunity of showing off his travels, real or pretended.

'A what?' asked Hardy, rather taken aback.

'A tom-tom.'

'Never.'

'Nor a gum-gum?'

'Never.'

'What _is_ a gum-gum?' eagerly inquired several young ladies.

The question is unanswered to this day, though Hardy afterwards suggests it is another name for a humbug.

When d.i.c.kens visited the school where the half-time system was in force, he found the boys undergoing military and naval drill. A small boy played the fife while the others went through their exercises. After that a boys' band appeared, the youngsters being dressed in a neat uniform. Then came a choral cla.s.s, who sang 'the praises of a summer's day to a harmonium.' In the arithmetical exercises the small piper excels (_U.T._ 29).

Wise as the serpent is the four feet of performer on the nearest approach to that instrument.

This was written when the serpent was practically extinct, but d.i.c.kens would be very familiar with the name of the instrument, and may have seen and heard it in churches in his younger days.