Charles Dickens and Music | Page 4

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 _Orph��e 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'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?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