It was very affecting, very.  Nothing more dismal could have been desired by the most fastidious taste.  The gentleman of a vocal turn was head mute, or chief mourner; Jinkins took the bass, and the rest took anything they could get....  If the two Miss Pecksniffs and Mrs. Todgers had perished by spontaneous combustion, and the serenade had been in honour of their ashes, it would have been impossible to surpass the unutterable despair expressed in that one chorus:  ’Go where glory waits thee.’  It was a requiem, a dirge, a moan, a howl, a wail, a lament, an abstract of everything that is sorrowful and hideous in sound.

The song which the literary boarder had written for the occasion, ‘All hail to the vessel of Pecksniff, the sire,’ is a parody of Scott’s ’All hail to the chief who in triumph advances,’ from the Lady of the Lake.

Two words that by themselves have a musical meaning are ‘Chaunter’ and ‘Drums’; but the Chaunter referred to is one of Edward Dorrit’s creditors, and the word means ’not a singer of anthems, but a seller of horses.’  To this profession also Simpson belonged, on whom Mr. Pickwick was ‘chummed’ in the Fleet prison.  A ‘drum’ is referred to in the description of the London streets at night in Barnaby Rudge, and signifies a rout or evening party for cards; while one where stakes ran high and much noise accompanied the play was known as a ‘drum major.’

In Our Bore (R.P.) this sentence occurs: 

He was at the Norwich musical festival when the extraordinary echo, for which science has been wholly unable to account, was heard for the first and last time.  He and the bishop heard it at the same moment, and caught each other’s eye.

Dr. A.H.  Mann, who knows as much about Norwich and its festivals as any one, is quite unable to throw any light on this mystic remark.  There were complaints about the acoustics of the St. Andrew’s Hall many years ago, but there appears to be no historic foundation for Dickens’ reference.  It would certainly be interesting to know what suggested the idea to him.

There is a curious incident connected with Uncle Dick, whose great ambition was ‘to beat the drum.’  It was only by a mere chance that his celebrated reference to King Charles’s head got into the story.  Dickens originally wrote as follows (in Chapter 14, D.C.): 

‘Do you recollect the date,’ said Mr. Dick, looking earnestly at me, and taking up his pen to note it down, ’when the bull got into the china warehouse and did so much mischief?’

In the proof Dickens struck out all the words after ‘when,’ and inserted in their place the following: 

    ‘King Charles the First had his head cut off?’

    I said I believed it happened in the year sixteen
    hundred and forty-nine.