Charles Dickens and Music | Page 6

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