He also had a beautiful little curly second-hand ‘key bugle,’ which was also on the list of things to be accomplished on some future occasion, in fact he has unlimited confidence in the power and influence of music.  Here is his advice to the love-stricken Mr. Toots, whom he recommends to

    learn the guitar, or at least the flute; for women
    like music when you are paying your addresses to ’em,
    and he has found the advantage of it himself.

The flute was the instrument that Mr. Richard Swiveller took to when he heard that Sophy Wackles was lost to him for ever,

thinking that it was a good, sound, dismal occupation, not only in unison with his own sad thoughts, but calculated to awaken a fellow feeling in the bosoms of his neighbours.

So he got out his flute, arranged the light and a small oblong music-book to the best advantage, and began to play ‘most mournfully.’

The air was ‘Away with Melancholy,’ a composition which, when it is played very slowly on the flute, in bed, with the further disadvantage of being performed by a gentleman but imperfectly acquainted with the instrument, who repeats one note a great many times before he can find the next, has not a lively effect.

So Mr. Swiveller spent half the night or more over this pleasing exercise, merely stopping now and then to take breath and soliloquize about the Marchioness; and it was only after he ’had nearly maddened the people of the house, and at both the next doors, and over the way,’ that he shut up the book and went to sleep.  The result of this was that the next morning he got a notice to quit from his landlady, who had been in waiting on the stairs for that purpose since the dawn of day.

Jack Redburn, too (M.H.C.), seems to have found consolation in this instrument, spending his wet Sundays in ’blowing a very slow tune on the flute.’

There is one, and only one, recorded instance of this very meek instrument suddenly asserting itself by going on strike, and that is in the sketch entitled Private Theatres (S.B.S. 13), where the amateurs take so long to dress for their parts that ‘the flute says he’ll be blowed if he plays any more.’

We must on no account forget the serenade with which the gentlemen boarders proposed to honour the Miss Pecksniffs.  The performance was both vocal and instrumental, and the description of the flute-player is delightful.

It was very affecting, very.  Nothing more dismal could have been desired by the most fastidious taste....  The youngest gentleman blew his melancholy into a flute.  He didn’t blow much out of it, but that was all the better.

After a description of the singing we have more about the flute.