(By permission of The Air Council)
Conductor, Flight-
Lieutenant R. P. O'DONNELL , M.V.O.,
Director of Music, Royal Air Force
PERCY MANCHESTER (tenor)
Charles Dibdin was connected for many years with one or other of the London theatres and composed many stage pieces, of which more than one is still occasionally heard. The greater part of the music in Lionel and Clarissa, for instance, was his, and The Waterman, The Ephesian Matron, and The Quaker are not by any means forgotten. But one of his most interesting enterprises was an entertainment in which he not only wrote the words and composed the music, but sang, recited and played, providing the whole evening's programme himself, under the title ' The Whim of the Moment '. It was for this that many of his best-known songs were written. ' Tom Bowling most popular of them all, was composed as a sincere expression of grief on the death of Dibdin's eldest brother, whose name really was Tom. He was skipper of a merchantman on the Indian Service.
Charles himself once had it in mind to pay a visit to India, and, to raise the necessary money, made a concert tour throughout most of England. His account of the tour, published in 1788 as ' The Musical Tour of Mr. Dibdin ', was the only result; although he actually embarked for India, stormy weather decided 'him to abandon the project, and he went no farther than Torbay.