Who was Thomas Carter?

A Tale of Two Carters

When Jill Kamp found this site she promptly searched for “Thomas Carter” - a composer she’s has been researching for the past 15 years - and found him. But - there’s always a but - what she read only served to increase the confusion between Thomas Carter and Thomas Carter. Confused? Let Jill tell it in her own words, followed by two biographical articles she has provided to set the record straight once and for all. And, if you know any more about either of these two Carters, please let Jill know (  JKamp@covingtonwater.com ).

“The Thomas Carter (Charles Thomas Carter, in fact) listed in “Historic Houses and Distinguished Dubliners” was not born in 1768. Trust me on this. I’ve spent the last fifteen years researching a less famous Carter, plain ol’ Thomas Carter, and mine was born in Dublin in 1769 (some folks mistakenly list it as 1768, hence even more confusion) while yours was born in 1735. Yours did indeed write “Oh Nanny, wilt thou gang with me,” as well as “The Fair American,” “The Milesian,” “The Rival Candidates” and many other things. He was also “brought up with the choir of Christchurch” and was organist for St. Werburgh’s. Mine (the one born in 1769) is a completely different fellow, not famous for composing anything, but instead for singing a song called “Fairest Dorinda,” and for being a great friend of “Mr. Maynard” (whoever that is, I’m still searching) and for being patronized by the 5th Earl of Inchiquin and Sir William Hamilton. My Carter died in 1800 in London with people already attributing his few compositions to his more successful rival.” **

Enter The Real Thomas Carter**

Who was Thomas Carter? He didn’t compose The Rival Candidates. He wasn’t a chorister at Christ Church Cathedral. He never stooped so low as to sell forged Handel manuscripts. Instead, Thomas Carter was a composer, vocal performer and family man who has been relentlessly confused over the last 200 years with another musician of the same name (Charles Thomas Carter). What follows is an attempt to make known the story of a Dubliner whose career and life were cut short before he could realize his full musical potential.

Thomas Carter was born in Dublin in May 1769, with little else being known about his origins. He was “discovered” when he was a boy in Cork, being a chorister at that time at Cloyne Cathedral.

He left Ireland at a very early age and was patronized by Murrough O’Brien, the 5th Earl of Inchiquin, who owned the estates of Cliveden (later famous for the Astors) and Taplow Court on the Thames in Buckinghamshire. It was here, not in Ireland, that Carter spent most of his life and sought his musical fame.

At Cliveden, Taplow, and in London during the season, he had plenty of opportunity to become acquainted with all manner of English aristocracy - important to a musician looking for patronage and pupils. Among Inchiquin’s circle of friends were the 4th Earl Fitzwilliam, the Duke of Portland, James Boswell, William Wyndham, Thomas Townshend, Edmund Burke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Dr. Charles Burney, Sir William Hamilton, as well as the royal family itself.

With such connections, it wasn’t long before Carter was being written about in the London papers - with the requisite confusion with his namesake, of course.

It was probably Charles Thomas Carter who, in 1785, described as “Poor Carter,” was announced as making “an unsuccessful attempt at the musical line at Windsor from which he hoped to have attached royal favor. He has composed an anthem for the chapel there in which there is such an injudicious mixture of antient melody and modern bass that it has been forbidden to be again performed” (Gazetteer, 16 Sept, 1785).

Yet one cannot be certain, for two years later we learn, “It is not Mr. Carter who is candidate for the organist place at St. Georges, but Carter, the pianoforte performer and composer of* The Rival Candidates* (World, 5 Jan, 1787). Clearly the younger Carter was as well known as the established, more successful one - and this at the age of sixteen! It couldn’t have been good for his ego, and we can imagine he might have been impossible to live with.

To make matters worse, on March 3rd, 1786, Carter sang a vocal part in a performance of The Messiah at Drury Lane, which was attended by just about everyone who was anyone. However, when the oratorio was repeated on the 10th, Negus had taken his place. There is no mention of why Carter was replaced. Whether illness or attitude caused his departure, we’ll never know.

By 1788, Carter was in Italy, furthering his musical education. The Earl of Inchiquin, who had no son of his own, had paid for Carter to study music in Naples. He arrived with a letter of introduction at Sir William Hamilton’s Palazzo Sessa, where he was probably welcomed as a guest. Carter could have been a member of Hamilton’s private “Band of Musick” organized from the “two or three among his servants who could make up a quartet when required, with Emma singing Handel.”

He undoubtedly got to know Emma quite well, and this before she met Admiral Lord Nelson and became even more famous as his plump, vulgar and beautiful mistress.

It was in Naples that Carter became celebrated for the way he sang the ballad Sally in Our Alley. He was also known for a capriccio commencing with the words Fairest Dorinda, in which “he united all the elegancies of musical science with the most humorous comic expression.”

When finally he finished his musical studies, he journeyed to India, where he conducted the musical department in the theatre at Calcutta. This position didn’t last long. Like most of the British in India, he fell victim to disease, or a “liver complaint,” and was forced to return to England to regain what was left of his health.

In 1793 (and probably in London) he married Mary Wells, one of the daughters of the Rev. Mr. Richard Wells of Cookham, Berkshire. Mary had been all of twelve when Carter had left for Italy, for he’d most likely known her whilst living with Inchiquin at Taplow Court.

When Carter returned from his adventures in Italy, wiser for his brush with death and presumably less arrogant, he found Mary grown into a young woman - and a wealthy one, at that. Mary’s father was Inclosure Commissioner for Taplow, a landowner of some standing and an acquaintance of Lord Inchiquin’s. One can assume Mary came with a dowry - money enabling Carter to pursue his career regardless of patronage and to publish his compositions himself. It was a good position for a composer to be in.

Yet even if he’d wed Mary for her money, in the end it was a happy marriage. Carter fathered at least two children. The names he gave them are not surprising for a man who spent his whole life being confused with a rival. It wasn’t the fashion in 1795 to give children more than two Christian names. Yet Carter’s children got three: Dorinda Elizabeth Lushington Carter (born 27 Jan. 1795), and Richard Thomas Hannah Carter (born 26 Jan. 1796).

The source of the names, too, is unusual. Rather than grandparents or great-grandparents, Dorinda is named after the song Carter was famous for singing. Lushington originates with Stephen Rumbold Lushington of Norton Court, Faversham, Kent, who had been a music pupil of Carter’s and was a neighbor in Bedford Square. (Jane Austen described Lushington as having “a lovely [singing] voice, quite delightful.”)

As well as after Mary’s father and Thomas himself, Richard is most likely named after Richard Thomas Burney (son of music historian Dr. Charles Burney) who had been packed off to India after committing some unnamed crime. In Calcutta, Burney had been Head Master of the Orphan School at Kidderpore, and it was probably during Carter’s time in Bengal that the two became friends.

Both children were baptized at Old Church, Saint Pancras, the family residing between present-day Gower Street and Tottenham Court Road.

Carter did not live long to enjoy the pleasures of a domestic life, or to gain much success as a composer. He died of liver disease [hepatitis?] on the 8th of November, 1800, being just thirty-one. He passed away in London the day before Admiral Lord Nelson returned to a hero’s welcome, having won the Battle of the Nile. With Carter having spent so much time in Naples with Emma and Sir William Hamilton, undoubtedly he would’ve wished to live to see it - the 18th-century version of a ticker-tape parade - but it wasn’t to be. *

Gentleman’s Magazine* had this to say about Carter’s death: “In Thornhaugh Street, Mr. Thomas Carter, a victim, in early life, to the ravages of the liver complaint. This gentleman, in whom the Harmonists and various musical societies have lost ‘the choicest feather of their wing,’ was perhaps better known as the inseparable companion of Mr. Maynard of Doctors’ Commons. Those who had the good fortune to hear their duets may well boast of having heard not only the flow of soul, but the perfection of harmony. Mr. Carter, who had only attained his 32nd year [sic], has left an amiable widow … He fulfilled the duties of husband and father with the warmest affection and strictest honour, and his widow has to bewail the loss of a man whose whole happiness was centered in his family; his children are too young to know the misfortune they have sustained, but she must ever regret the severest privation which human nature is destined to experience” (Gentleman’s Magazine, December, 1800).

Of all the compositions sporting the authorship of Thomas Carter, only three can be safely attributed to the man born in 1769: a piano sonata, Op. 26, c1800, Goodman White and Gaffer Grey, Op. 24, c1796, and Canzonet for One or Two Voices, Op. 25, c1799. One can’t help but think there were many others, mistakenly attributed to Charles Thomas Carter. Hopefully someday the younger Carter will receive his due. **

Meet Charles Thomas Carter**

Irish composer Charles Thomas Carter was born in Dublin c1735. He was, according to John O’Keefe’s Recollections, “brought up in the choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, and was organist of Werburgh Church. Any music he had never seen before, placed before him, upside down, he played it off on the harpsichord.”

Carter remained at St. Werburgh’s Church from Dec. 1751 (?) to Sept. 1769. About 1772 he settled in London, made a name as a composer of songs for the public gardens and soon began to write for the stage also.

The Rev. Henry Bate wrote for him “from no motive of literary variety, but in order to introduce to the world a young musical composer, whose taste he conceived might do honour to his profession,” the libretto of a comic opera The Rival Candidates, which was successfully produced at Drury Lane Theatre on 1 Feb. 1775, kept the stage for ten years and also reached the U.S.A.

This was followed by Isaac Jackman’s two-act opera The Milesian (20 March 1777) and Pilon’s The Fair American (18 May 1782) at the same theatre. For this work Carter received no payment, and Pilon had to abscond to avoid the consequences.

In 1783 Carter composed the epilogue song for Mrs. Cowley’s comedy* A Bold Stroke for a Husband*, and in 1787 he was appointed musical director of the newly founded Royalty Theatre in Well-Close Square (on the site of the old Goodman’s Fields theatre) where he produced four musical pieces*, The Birthday, or Arcadian Contest*, True-Blue (a new setting of Carey’s Nancy), The Constant Couple, and The Constant Maid, or Poll of Plympton in 1787 and 1788.

Subsequently Carter was for a time director of the Earl of Barrymore’s private theatre at Wargrave; a pantomime, Blue Beard, and some songs introduced into Colman and Arnold’s The Surrender of Calais date from that period (1791). When We’re Married, a song from the last, was introduced by Mrs. Bland.

Carter’s final work for the stage, the comic opera Just in Time, (the book of which was by Thomas Hurlstone), was produced at Covent Garden on 10 May 1792. Carter himself contributed some verses for a song in the last act. This work was produced at Covent Garden for Munden’s benefit, with Incledon in the principal character.

Carter also wrote some harpsichord music (12 Familiar Sonatinas, Op.6, and others) of which the variations on* Carillons de Dunquerque* (c1785) appeared in a modern pianoforte edition in 1938.

The first collection of his Vauxhall songs came out in 1773; it contains the well-known O Nanny Wilt Thou Gang With Me (words from Percy’s Reliques, 1765) which was very popular for many years, as were his “sea-fight and hunting” songs (such as Tally Ho, Stand by Your Guns, Ye Sportsmen Give Ear, etc.), which were singled out by his contemporaries for special praise.

A final collection of Songs, Duos, Trios, Catches, Glees and Canons, Op.27, was published in 1801.

Charles Thomas Carter was undoubtedly a clever musician, but his improvidence and carelessness were such that he was in perpetual difficulties. An improbable story of his having forged a Handel manuscript and sold it for twenty guineas appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine after his death, and has been often repeated by his biographers.

He died in London on Friday, 12 Oct. 1804.

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