In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomach-aches.
The orchestra at the ‘singing-house’ provided for Jack's amusement when ashore (U.T. 5) consisted of a fiddle and tambourine; while at dances the instruments were fiddles and harps. It was the harps that first aroused Mr. Jingle's curiosity, as he met them being carried up the staircase of The Bull at Rochester, while, shortly after, the tuning of both harps and fiddles inspired Mr. Tupman with a strong desire to go to the ball. Sometimes the orchestra is a little more varied. At the private theatricals which took place at Mrs. Gattleton's (S.B.T. 9), the selected instruments were a piano, flute, and violoncello, but there seems to have been a want of proper rehearsal.
Ting, ting, ting! went the prompter's bell at eight o'clock precisely, and dash went the orchestra into the overture to the Men of Prometheus. The pianoforte player hammered away with laudable perseverance, and the violoncello, which struck in at intervals, sounded very well, considering. The unfortunate individual, however, who had undertaken to play the flute accompaniment ‘at sight’ found, from fatal experience, the perfect truth of the old adage, ‘Out of sight, out of mind’; for being very near-sighted, and being placed at a considerable distance from his music-book, all he had an opportunity of doing was to play a bar now and then in the wrong place, and put the other performers out. It is, however, but justice to Mr. Brown to say that he did this to admiration. The overture, in fact, was not unlike a race between the different instruments; the piano came in first by several bars, and the violoncello next, quite distancing the poor flute; for the deaf gentleman too-too'd away, quite unconscious that he was at all wrong, until apprised, by the applause of the audience, that the overture was concluded.
It was probably after this that the pianoforte player fainted away, owing to the heat, and left the music of Masaniello to the other two. There were differences between these remaining musicians and Mr. Harleigh, who played the title rôle, the orchestra complaining that ‘Mr. Harleigh put them out, while the hero declared that the orchestra prevented his singing a note.’
It was to the strains of a wandering harp and fiddle that Marion and Grace Jeddler danced ‘a trifle in the Spanish style,’ much to their father's astonishment as he came bustling out to see who ‘played music on his property before breakfast.’
The little fiddle commonly known as a ‘kit’ that dancing-masters used to carry in their capacious tail coat pockets was much more in evidence in the middle of last century than it is now. Caddy Jellyby (B.H.), after her marriage to a dancing-master, found a knowledge of the piano and the kit essential, and so she used to practise them assiduously. When Sampson Brass hears Kit's name for the first time he says to Swiveller:
‘Strange name—name of a dancing-master's fiddle, eh, Mr. Richard?’
We must not forget the story of a fine young Irish gentleman, as told by the one-eyed bagman to Mr. Pickwick and his friends, who,
being asked if he could play the fiddle, replied he had no doubt he could, but he couldn't exactly say for certain, because he had never tried.