Ld mare Bess bestrode--er, with which Sam Weller favoured a small but
select company on a memorable occasion appears to have been
overlooked by composers until Sir Frederick Bridge set it to
excellent music. It
will be remembered that Sam intimated that he was not wery much in
the habit o' singin' without the instrument; but anythin'
for a quiet life, as the man said wen he took the sitivation at the
lighthouse. Sam was certainly more obliging
than another member of the company, the 'mottled-faced' gentleman,
who, when asked to sing, sturdily and somewhat offensively declined
to do so. We also find references to other crusty individuals who
flatly refuse to exercise their talents, as, for instance, after the
accident to the coach
which was conveying Nicholas Nickleby and Squeers to Yorkshire. In
response to the call for a song to pass the time away, some protest
they cannot, others wish they could, others can do nothing without
the
book, while the 'very fastidious lady
entirely ignored the invitation to give them some little Italian
thing out of the last opera.' A somewhat
original plea for refusing to sing when asked is
given by the chairman of the musical gathering at the Magpie and
Stump (_P.P._). When
asked why he won't enliven the company he replies, 'I
only know one song, and I have sung it already, and it's a fine of
glasses round to sing the same song twice in one night.'
Doubtless he was deeply thankful to Mr. Pickwick for changing the
subject. At another gathering of a similar nature, we are told
about a man who knew a song of seven verses, but he couldn't recall
them
at the moment, so he sang the first verse seven times. There is no
record as to what the comic duets were that Sam Weller and Bob Sawyer
sang in the dickey of the coach that was taking the party to
Birmingham, and this suggests what a number
of singers of
all kinds are referred to, though no m
