The whole of the substituted passage is inserted in the margin at the bottom of the page. Again, when Mr. Dick shows David Copperfield his kite covered with manuscript, David was made to say in the proof: ‘I thought I saw some allusion to the bull again in one or two places.’ Here Dickens has struck through the words, ‘the bull,’ and replaced them with ‘King Charles the First's head.’
The original reference was to a very popular song of the period called ‘The Bull in the China Shop,’ words by C. Dibdin, Junior, and music by W. Reeve. Produced about 1808, it was popularized by the celebrated clown Grimaldi. The first verse is:
You've heard of a frog in an opera hat,
'Tis a very old tale of a mouse and a rat,
I could sing you another as pleasant, mayhap,
Of a kitten that wore a high caul cap;
But my muse on a far nobler subject shall drop,
Of a bull who got into a china shop,
With his right leg, left leg, upper leg, under leg,
St. Patrick's day in the morning.
[ 17 ] Mr. Alfred Payne writes thus: ‘Some time ago an old friend told me that he had heard from a Hertfordshire organist that Dr. W.H. Monk (editor of Hymns Ancient and Modern) adapted “Belmont” from the highly classical melody of which a few bars are given above. Monk showed this gentleman the notes, being the actual arrangement he had made from this once popular song, back in the fifties. This certainly coincides with its appearance in Severn's Islington Collection, 1854.’—See Hymn-Tunes and their Story, p. 354.
[ 18 ] The Marshalsea was a debtors' prison formerly situated in Southwark. It was closed about the middle of the last century, and demolished in 1856.
CHAPTER VII
SOME NOTED SINGERS
The Micawbers
Dickens presents us with such an array of characters who reckon singing amongst their various accomplishments that it is difficult to know where to begin. Perhaps the marvellous talents of the Micawber family entitle them to first place. Mrs. Micawber was famous for her interpretation of ‘The Dashing White Sergeant’ and ‘Little Taffline’ when she lived at home with her papa and mamma, and it was her rendering of these songs that gained her a spouse, for, as Mr. Micawber told Copperfield,
when he heard her sing the first one, on the first occasion of his seeing her beneath the parental roof, she had attracted his attention in an extraordinary degree, but that when it came to ‘Little Tafflin,’ he had resolved to win that woman or perish in the attempt.