THE DIBDINS.
For about a hundred years the name of Dibdin was a pleasant name in the ears and eyes of the English people. The Dibdin proper, son of a silversmith, was born at Southampton in the year of the Scotch Rebellion, 1745. The event belongs almost to ancient history, but there are men not yet so very old who can remember in their childhood the once ‘tuneful Charley,’ who became for ever mute in the year 1814.
The name is a local one. There is a place called Dibden (originally Deep Dene), a place of some importance at the time of the Conquest, situated in a thickly wooded dell in Southampton Water. Charles Dibdin was Hampshire born and Hampshire bred. His father, silversmith and parish clerk, sent him to Winchester School, but he was more especially of the Winchester Cathedral choir. He was ‘intended for the Church,’ as the phrase goes, but instead of a bishop writing charges, he became a composer arranging musical scores. In the Church he probably would have written a few indifferent sermons. On and for the stage, and the world, he penned and melodised hundreds of popular songs. Some of these are as good as sermons; others are as unintelligible; there are many of them that are infinitely better. Dibdin knew as much about a ship as many curates know about religion; and now and then he got into the same sort of mess accordingly. On the whole, however, he pulled through successfully. The backbone of all his songs was ‘loyalty.’ It was like insisting on ‘faith’ in sermons. He perhaps would have been a popular preacher, had he not preferred being a popular song-writer—Tyrtæus instead of Calchas.
Charles Dibdin was neither sailor nor parson, but the family was destined to contribute both to the wide-apart professions respectively. Charles had an elder brother who took to sea and became captain of an East Indiaman. Years after, but in the same year, 1775, a son was born to each, and each son was named Thomas. The captain’s son was born at Calcutta. He was put to the law with the object of making a Lord Chancellor of him, but the young fellow turned to the Church, and did not become an archbishop. Nevertheless, he is well remembered as the Rev. Thomas Frognal Dibdin, author of the ‘Bibliomania,’ the ‘Biographical Decameron,’ and many other works of a similar nature. The Rev. Thomas died, a popular preacher, rector of St. Mary’s, Bryanstone Square, in 1847.
The Rev. Thomas’s cousin, Tom, was born in Peter Street, Holborn. You will look for street or house in vain. New Oxford Street has swept it all down. Peter Street was the third of a street which had three names. At the Holborn end it was Bow Street; at the Montague House, or Museum, end, it was Queen Street. The middle portion was Peter Street, which New Oxford Street has knocked out of existence. But for this, you might yourself have knocked at the very house door, as Mr. Garrick did, on the day of Master Tom’s christening, when Roscius was godfather, and he brought with him a hamper of wine, and Frank Aickin, as second godfather. This was ‘Tyrant Aickin,’ as Frank was called, from his having always to play the swaggering, low-mouthed Maximinus of the drama. The godson of the two actors never had the good luck in life of either of his godfathers. He never had a living that made him socially equal with his cousin the rector. The cousins were alike in one point only. Each wrote his own biography, both of which are worth the reading. Thomas Frognal Dibdin, D.D., became one of the founders of the Roxburgh Club. Tom Dibdin of Peter Street was often a guest at the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks. T. F. D. was a popular lecturer, but no lecture of his had such vogue as his cousin Tom’s song, ‘When Vulcan forged the bolts of Jove.’ Tom’s father never wrote a better.
But Tom’s father is waiting, and it is his story that has to be briefly told. After all, Charles Dibdin the elder began life, or would have begun it, with the Church—as organist. He was a candidate for the office at Bishop’s Waltham, in his native county. He was then only fourteen years of age. He was self-taught, save some elementary instruction from Mr. Fussel, the organist of Winchester Cathedral. The village judges, finding him competent, duly rejected him on account of his youth! He was looking at the ruins of the episcopal palace with a humble church officer, who told him it was built by King Stephen’s brother Henry de Blois. ‘And you are a descendant of his,’ said Charles. ‘That’s more than I ever knew before,’ replied his companion. ‘It’s quite true though,’ rejoined Dibdin; ‘are you not Henry the organ-blower?’
The outlines of Dibdin’s career are soon told. He came up to London as poor as Whittington, but with little of his luck. He earned a couple of guineas by composing ballads for music-sellers, by which they made hundreds; and he tuned pianos, and taught how to play on them. At length, wearied with this, he made his first appearance on the stage (he says) at the Richmond Theatre, on the Hill, in 1762, when he was seventeen years of age. Dibdin, however, also states that he first appeared at Birmingham, and Jesse records that Dibdin and Bannister came out originally at Marylebone Gardens. Dibdin speaks of the old Richmond house as the ‘Academy’ and the ‘Histrionic Academy.’ This was one of the names given to the theatre by Theophilus Cibber before a licence had been got to open it. Theophilus called it at first the Cephalic Snuff Warehouse. Snuff, in minute quantities, was sold at the various entrances, and admission followed gratis. It was on this stage that Dibdin is said to have made his début, as Damætas, in ‘Midas’; a thing the more difficult to believe, as ‘Midas’ was not produced in England till 1764, namely, at Covent Garden, and then Damætas was played by Fawcett.
Victor pronounced Charles Dibdin’s Mungo to be ‘as complete a low character as was ever exhibited.’ Isaac Bickerstaffe as highly praised the musical composer as Victor did the actor. ‘The music of this piece,’ he wrote in the preface to it, ‘being extremely admired by persons of the first state and distinction, it would be injustice to the extraordinary talents of the young man who assisted me in it, was I not to declare that it is, under my direction, the entire composition of Mr. Dibdin, whose admirable performance in the character of Mungo does so much credit to himself and me, as well as to the gentleman whose penetration could distinguish neglected genius, and who has taken pleasure in producing it to the public.’ Dibdin’s elder son was named after his father, the character he played, and the author of ‘The Padlock’—Charles Isaac Mungo Dibdin. The author of ‘The Thespian Dictionary,’ writing of the second son, Thomas Dibdin, adds to the fact, ‘but not acknowledged by his father!’