James T. Lightwood - Charles Dickens and Music

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[Illustration]

TOM PINCH AT THE ORGAN.
_Frontispiece._

CHARLES DICKENS AND MUSIC

BY JAMES T. LIGHTWOOD

AUTHOR OF 'HYMN-TUNES AND THEIR STORY'

London
CHARLES H. KELLY
25-35 CITY ROAD, AND 26 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.

_First Edition, 1912_

IN PLEASANT MEMORY OF MANY HAPPY YEARS AT PEMBROKE HOUSE, LYTHAM

PREFACE

For many years I have been interested in the various musical
references in Dickens' 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 anticipated, while a
second examination convinced me that there is, perhaps, no great
writer who has made a more extensive use of music to illustrate
character and create incident than Charles Dickens. 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 Dickens for a
history of classical 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 classes (music was not the correct thing
amongst the 'upper ten'), we must turn to the pages of Dickens'
novels. It is certainly strange that no one has hitherto 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
'Dickens 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. Cummings, 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 assistance. 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
Dickens. 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 assistance in
tracing them. Perhaps this idea will also commend itself to the
members of the Dickens Fellowship, an organization with which
all lovers of the great novelist ought to associate themselves.

JAMES T. LIGHTWOOD.
LYTHAM,
_October, 1912._

I truly love Dickens; 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.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. DICKENS AS A MUSICIAN 1

II. INSTRUMENTAL COMBINATIONS 23

III. VARIOUS INSTRUMENTS: FLUTE, ORGAN, GUITAR
(AND SOME HUMMERS) 36

IV. VARIOUS INSTRUMENTS (_continued_) 56

V. CHURCH MUSIC 69

VI. SONGS AND SOME SINGERS 83

VII. SOME NOTED SINGERS 112

LIST OF SONGS, &c., MENTIONED BY DICKENS 135

INDEX OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS 164

INDEX OF CHARACTERS 165

GENERAL INDEX 169

LIST OF MUSIC TITLES, &c., FOUNDED ON
DICKENS' CHARACTERS 172

LIST OF WORKS REFERRED TO

_With Abbreviations Used_

_American Notes_ 1842 _A.N._
_Barnaby Rudge_ 1841 _B.R._
_Battle of Life_ 1848 _B.L._
_Bleak House_ 1852-3 _B.H._
_Chimes_ 1844 _Ch._
_Christmas Carol_ 1843 _C.C._
_Christmas Stories_ -- _C.S._
_Christmas Stories_--
Dr. Marigold's Prescription 1865 _Dr. M._
Going into Society 1855 _G.S._
Holly Tree 1855 _H.T._
Mugby Junction 1866 _M.J._
Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings 1863 --
No Thoroughfare 1867 _N.T._
Somebody's Luggage 1862 _S.L._
Wreck of the Golden Mary 1856 _G.M._
_Collected Papers_ -- _C.P._
_Cricket on the Hearth_ 1845 _C.H._
_Dombey & Son_ 1847-8 _D. & S._
_David Copperfield_ 1849-50 _D.C._
_Edwin Drood_ 1870 _E.D._
_Great Expectations_ 1860-1 _G.E._
_Hard Times_ 1854 _H.T._
_Haunted House_ 1859 --
_Haunted Man_ 1848 _H.M._
_Holiday Romance_ -- _H.R._
_Little Dorrit_ 1855-6 _L.D._
_Martin Chuzzlewit_ 1843-4 _M.C._
_Master Humphrey's Clock_ 1840-1 _M.H.C._
_Mystery of Edwin Drood_ 1870 _E.D._
_Nicholas Nickleby_ 1838-9 _N.N._
_Old Curiosity Shop_ 1840 _O.C.S._
_Oliver Twist_ 1837-8 _O.T._
_Our Mutual Friend_ 1864 _O.M.F._
_Pickwick Papers_ 1836-7 _P.P._
_Pictures from Italy_ 1846 _It._
_Reprinted Pieces_--
Our Bore 1852 --
Our English Watering-Place 1851 --
Our French Watering-Place 1854 --
Our School 1851 --
Out of the Season 1856 --
_Sketches by Boz_ 1835-6 _S.B._
Characters -- _S.B.C._
Our Parish -- --
Scenes -- _S.B.S._
Tales -- _S.B.T._
_Sunday under Three Heads_ 1836 --
_Sketches of Young People_ 1840 --
_Sketches of Young Gentlemen_ 1838 --
_Tale of Two Cities, A_ 1859 --
_Uncommercial Traveller_ 1860-9 _U.T._

CHARLES DICKENS AND MUSIC

CHAPTER I

DICKENS AS A MUSICIAN

The attempts to instil the elements of music into Charles
Dickens 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 Dickens 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 passage 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 passengers:

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 Dickens 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 Dickens was deeply interested,
and on which he advocated his views at length in the papers
entitled _Sunday under Three Heads_.

Dickens 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 God, 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 button-holes.' I needn't wind
up by adding that they had gone to the wrong chamber.

It was Dickens' 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, Dickens 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 competition 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 Dickens, 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 Fanny 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 Dickens 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 shores.... 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
compass 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.' Dickens 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 Dickens,
'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 assortment 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
cocked hat, and an armchair, for the illustration
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.

On one of his explorations he met a landsman who told him
about the running down of an emigrant ship, and how he heard
a sound coming over the sea 'like a great sorrowful flute or
Aeolian harp.' He makes another and very humorous reference to
this instrument in a letter to Landor, in which he calls to mind

that steady snore of yours, which I once heard piercing
the door of your bedroom ... reverberating along the
bell-wire in the hall, so getting outside into the
street, playing Aeolian harps among the area railings,
and going down the New Road like the blast of a trumpet.

The deserted watering-place referred to in _Out of the Season_
is Broadstairs, and he gives us a further insight into its
musical resources in a letter to Miss Power written on July 2,
1847, in which he says that

a little tinkling box of music that stops at 'come'
in the melody of the Buffalo Gals, and can't play 'out
to-night,' and a white mouse, are the only amusements
left at Broadstairs.

'Buffalo Gals' was a very popular song 'Sung with great
applause by the Original Female American Serenaders.' (_c._
1845.) The first verse will explain the above allusion:

As I went lum'rin' down de street, down de street,
A 'ansom gal I chanc'd to meet, oh, she was fair to view.
Buffalo gals, can't ye come out to-night, come out to-night,
come out to-night;
Buffalo gals, can't ye come out to-night, and dance by the
light of the moon.

We find some interesting musical references and memories in
the novelist's letters. Writing to Wilkie Collins in reference
to his proposed sea voyage, he quotes Campbell's lines from
'Ye Mariners of England':

As I sweep
Through the deep
When the stormy winds do blow.

There are other references to this song in the novels. I have
pointed out elsewhere that the last line also belongs to a
seventeenth-century song.

Writing to Mark Lemon (June, 1849) he gives an amusing parody of

Lesbia hath a beaming eye,

beginning

Lemon is a little hipped.

In a letter to Maclise he says:

My foot is in the house,
My bath is on the sea,
And before I take a souse,
Here's a single note to thee.

These lines are a reminiscence of Byron's ode to Tom Moore,
written from Venice on July 10, 1817:

My boat is on the shore,
And my bark is on the sea,
But before I go, Tom Moore,
Here's a double health to thee!

The words were set to music by Bishop. This first verse had a
special attraction for Dickens, and he gives us two or three
variations of it, including a very apt one from Dick Swiveller
(see p. 126).

Henry F. Chorley, the musical critic, was an intimate friend
of Dickens. On one occasion he went to hear Chorley lecture on
'The National Music of the World,' and subsequently wrote him
a very friendly letter criticizing his delivery, but speaking
in high terms of the way he treated his subject.

In one of his letters he makes special reference to the
singing of the Hutchinson family.[5] Writing to the Countess
of Blessington, he says:

I must have some talk with you about these American
singers. They must never go back to their own country
without your having heard them sing Hood's 'Bridge
of Sighs.'

Amongst the distinguished visitors at Gad's Hill was Joachim,
who was always a welcome guest, and of whom Dickens once said
'he is a noble fellow.' His daughter writes in reference to
this visit:

I never remember seeing him so wrapt and absorbed as
he was then, on hearing him play; and the wonderful
simplicity and _un_-self-consciousness of the genius
went straight to my father's heart, and made a fast
bond of sympathy between those two great men.

_In Music Drama_

Much has been written about Dickens' undoubted powers as
an actor, as well as his ability as a stage manager, and
it is well known that it was little more than an accident
that kept him from adopting the dramatic profession. He ever
took a keen interest in all that pertained to the stage, and
when he was superintending the production of a play he was
always particular about the musical arrangements. There is in
existence a play-bill of 1833 showing that he superintended a
private performance of _Clari_. This was an opera by Bishop,
and contains the first appearance of the celebrated 'Home, Sweet
Home,' a melody which, as we have already said, he reproduced
on the accordion some years after. He took the part of Rolano,
but had no opportunity of showing off his singing abilities,
unless he took a part in the famous glee 'Sleep, gentle lady,'
which appears in the work as a quartet for alto, two tenors,
and bass, though it is now arranged in other forms.

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