Bass singers, and especially the Basso Profundos, will be glad to know that Dickens pays more attention to them than to the other voices, though it must be acknowledged that the references are of a humorous nature. 'Bass!' as the young gentleman in one of the _Sketches_ remarks to his companion about the little man in the chair, 'bass! I believe you. He can go down lower than any man; so low sometimes that you can't hear him.'
And so he does. To hear him growling away, gradually lower and lower down, till he can't get back again, is the most delightful thing in the world.
Of similar calibre is the voice of Captain Helves, already referred to on p. 62.
Topper, who had his eye on one of Scrooge's niece's sisters (_C.C._),
could growl away in the bass like a good one, and never swell the large veins in his forehead or get red in the face over it.
Dickens must certainly have had much experience of basses, as he seems to know their habits and eccentricities so thoroughly. In fact it seems to suggest that at some unknown period of his career, hitherto unchronicled by his biographers, he must have been a choirmaster.
He also shows a knowledge of the style of song the basses delighted in
at the harmony meetings in which the collegians at the Marshalsea[18] used to indulge. Occasionally a vocal strain more sonorous than the generality informed the listener that some boastful bass was in blue water or the hunting field, or with the reindeer, or on the mountain, or among the heather, but the Marshal of the Marshalsea knew better, and had got him hard and fast.
We are not told what the duet was that Dickens heard at Vauxhall, but the description is certainly vivid enough:
It was a beautiful duet; first the small gentleman asked a question and then the tall lady answered it; then the small gentleman and the tall lady sang together most melodiously; then the small gentleman went through a little piece of vehemence by himself, and got very tenor indeed, in the excitement of his feelings, to which the tall lady responded in a similar manner; then the small gentleman had a shake or two, after which the tall lady had the same, and then they both merged imperceptibly into the original air.