Little Tafflin

Little Tafflin is a favorite ballad of Mrs. Micawber’s whose place in the novel rests on a small but telling domestic performance and Mr. Micawber’s account of their courtship. The song turns an evening of tea and conversation into a recollection of the moment he says he resolved to win her.

Performance in the Micawber Household

During a friendly visit with David Copperfield and Traddles, Mrs. Micawber makes tea and sings two ballads associated with her earlier life: The Dashing White Sergeant and Little Tafflin. She had been famous for singing both while living under her parents’ roof. David recalls her voice as small, thin, and flat, describing it as the very table-beer of acoustics—a comic measure of its modest musical quality rather than of the importance the songs hold for the couple.

The performance follows a conversation about the Micawbers’ hoped-for changes in their circumstances. Mr. Micawber has described possible future homes and assured his guests that there would always be a room for Traddles and a place at table for David. Mrs. Micawber’s singing gives the scene a familiar, hospitable intimacy; while serving tea, she also asks David in a whisper about D.’s appearance, keeping his romantic concerns within the evening’s domestic talk.

The Song as Courtship Memory

Mr. Micawber attaches a particular significance to Little Tafflin. He recalls that The Dashing White Sergeant first attracted his attention when he heard Mrs. Micawber sing beneath her parents’ roof, but that Little Tafflin settled his determination: he had resolved to win her or perish in the attempt. The distinction belongs to his own retrospective telling: one song catches his attention, while the other marks the moment his courtship became a declared resolve.

The novel gives no lyrics or account of the ballad’s subject. Its narrative meaning instead comes from the memory Mr. Micawber supplies and from the contrast between his grand language of romantic determination and the unassuming setting in which he tells the story: tea, bread and butter, songs, and preparations to leave.

Narrative Role

Little Tafflin briefly connects Mrs. Micawber’s former family life with her married life. The ballad is presented as something she carried from her parents’ home into the Micawbers’ shared history, while Mr. Micawber turns hearing it into a landmark in his account of how he chose her. That remembered resolve lends the song a courtship significance independent of its sound or lyrics, neither of which the passage develops.

The scene also presents the couple’s recollections through different details: Mrs. Micawber performs the song, while Mr. Micawber explains what it meant to him. Little Tafflin therefore serves less as a standalone musical episode than as the occasion for a compact story about attraction and determination, told amid the ordinary rituals of hospitality.