Charles Dickens and Music

e 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 Ac

tempt to become an instrumentalist. During his first transatlantic v

' cabin with my performances. You can't think with what feelings I p

llowing description of the musical

fect of which instruments, when they all played different tunes, in different parts of the ship, at the same time, and within he

er he was one of the perf

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 Orphée aux enfers. This was in Febr

music, and Auber's music would form a pleasing accompaniment

s outspoken language on Sunday observance, a subject in which Dickens was deeply interested,

ives the following amusing story in a letter to

d 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'h?te, 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 somebo

mself of any opportunity of visiting the opera; and his criticisms, though br

honour. There was really a very fair opera, but it is curious that the chorus has been always, time out

rtly.' 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

is letters and works to the music he heard in the streets and squares of Lond

f 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, an

e in the description o

as soon gone again, to return no more that day, and the bands of music and the stragglin

a S

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

r 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 t

we gather that Dickens possessed a tenor voice. W

king 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

song, such as he used to enjoy in his youth at a cheap London theatre ... was to bec

ber of his family was singing a song while he was apparently deep in his book, when he suddenly got up an

on his criticism

ment, 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, 'W

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

nd an armchair, for the illustration to Will Watch the bold smuggler, and the Friar of Orders Grey, represented by

and how he heard a sound coming over the sea 'like a great sorrowful flute or Aeolian harp.' He makes

berating along the bell-wire in the hall, so getting outside into the street, playing Aeol

tairs, and he gives us a further insight into its musical resources in

elody of the Buffalo Gals, and can't play 'out to-night,' an

applause by the Original Female American Serenaders.' (c

n' down de stree

c'd to meet, oh, sh

e out to-night, come out t

me out to-night, and danc

ist's letters. Writing to Wilkie Collins in reference to his proposed

I s

gh th

tormy wind

ovels. I have pointed out elsewhere that the las

(June, 1849) he give

ath a be

inn

a littl

r to Macli

is in th

is on

re I tak

single no

f Byron's ode to Tom Moore, writ

is on th

ark is o

e I go, T

ouble heal

ial attraction for Dickens, and he gives us two or three variation

o hear Chorley lecture on 'The National Music of the World,' and subsequently wrote him a very fri

ce to the singing of the Hutchinson family. 5

gers. They must never go back to their own country with

was always a welcome guest, and of whom Dickens once said 'he is

y; and the wonderful simplicity and un-self-consciousness of the genius went straigh

usic

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 alrea

roughfare we find this direction: 'Boys enter and sing "God Save the Queen" (or any school devotional hymn).' At Obenreizer

at St. James's Theatre, London, on December 6, 1836. The following year it was being performed at Edinburgh when a fire broke out in the theatre, and the instrumental scores together with the music of the concerted pie

sed the material for The Village Coquettes. Braham, the celebrated tenor, had a part in it. Dickens says in a letter to H

6 will want another song when the piece is in rehea

produced in 1761, and which held the stage for many years. There is a reference to this song in Sketches by Boz, when Miss Evans and h

his time, and suggested the tune (if any) to which they were to be sung. In addition

r, one being the 'Quack Doctor's Proclamation,' to the tune of 'A Cob

ong but an old story,' which was to be sung to the tune of the 'Great Sea Snake.' This wa

from his h

ry stitc

at ten kno

ths came t

nal, while Blandois' song in Little Dorrit, 'Who passes by this road so lat

nnexion with any song. Perhaps the best known are those which 'my lady Bowle

love our o

quire and h

our dail

now our prop

method of teaching singing which his friend Hullah introduced into England, or it may be a reference to

riting on the fly-leaf in order that there might be no mistake as to

lesworth

and is m

my dwell

t is my s

us at least two variants of this. In Edwin Dr

apsea is

is his

's his dwel

's his oc

ng the authorship of the words to Job-but then lit

uttle is

and is m

is my dwel

sed be c

e Teetotal Excursion, an original Comic Song by Boz, sung at the London Con

sidering his dislike of bells in general, it is rather surprising that two other suggestions were English Bells and Weekly Bells, but the final choice was All the Year Round. Only once does he make use of a musician's name in his novels, and that is in Great Expectat

? There's a charming piece of music, by Ha

like it

the Wiltshire Labourers.' It was written after reading a speech at one of the night meetings of the wives of a

by Thy Pr

ite the r

er came at

e's thirs

upon this g

bdurate,

me drop of

ho starv

unding name of Rinaldo di Velasco ill befits the giant Pickleson (Dr. M.), who had a little head and less in it. As it was essential that the Miss Crumptons of Minerva House should have an Italian master for their pupils, we find

written in 1850), which is a strong condemnation of pre-Raphaelism in art, he attacks a similar movement in regar

to fix its Millennium (as its name implies) before the date of the first regular musical composition known to have been achieved in England. As this institution has not yet commenced active operations, it remains to be seen whether the Royal

phrase in writing to his friend Wills (October 8

s paper in particular, which was a 'little bit' too personal. It is all ri

ckens wrote this, the paragraph makes interesting reading no

ure and Art' (1853) he makes special refe

s Irish

Mo

mes of Catnac and of Pitts, names that will entwine themselves with costermongers and barrel-organs, when

and in 1845 and 1846, and were received with great enthusiasm. Their songs were on subjects connected with Temperance and Anti-Slavery. On one occasion Judson, one of the number, was singing the 'Humbugged Husband,' which he us

first production of Mendelssohn's 'Hear

shed his Grammar of

. Lehmann's Dickens