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ENGLISH SONG AND BALLAD MUSIC. |
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In his "Wish," he recommends Whigs and Tories to agree; and, if they will follow his advice,—" Then shall we see a glorious scene,
And so, God save the King and Queen."
and, among his works, there are other songs of the same class, besides an entire Musical Entertainment " on the happy nuptials of the Princess Royal of England with the Prince of Orange," performed at the theatre in Goodman's Fields, in 1734.
Much error and mis-statement has been mixed up with the enquiry into the history of " God save the King," not only as regards Carey, but nearly everything else connected with it.
Carey is said to have been a Jacobite. This was a guess which his works utterly disprove. He is said to have been the natural son of George Savile, Marquis of Halifax. Henry Carey certainly named one of his sons " Savile," but the Marquis died in 1695, and Carey speaks of his " parents " as living in 1713. Probably his mother then kept a school, as we find in the edition of his poems printed in that year, " A Pastoral Eclogue on the Divine Power of God, spoken by two young ladies, in the habits of shepherdesses, at an entertainment performed at Mrs. Carey's school, by several of her scholars." Carey is said to have " put a period to a life which had been led without reproach," when at the advanced age of eighty, by suicide. I do not deny the suicide, since it is stated by Hawkins, who is a good authority for fact, although he wrote thirty years later. Hawkins may have had the means of knowing; but it is not so stated in the newspapers of the time. For instance, in The Daily Post, 5th Oct., 1743, " Yesterday morning, Mr. H. Carey, well known to the musical world for his droll compositions, got out of bed from his wife, in perfect health, and was soon after found dead. He has left six children behind him." On the 17th Nov., of the same year, the performances at Drury Lane were for the benefit of the widow and four small children of the late H. Carey. If any further proof of his age, .than the four small children, be necessary, it will be found in the prefaces to his Poems on several Occasions, which are rather three distinct books than three editions of the same. In that of 1713, he hopes the reader will conceive no prejudice against him on account of his age (i.e., youth), and that critics will not, " by unlimited detraction, obstruct the hopes of his parents and the end of his education." The songs in this collection were either written to old tunes, or set to music by other composers ; but in the next edition, that of 1720, he particularizes eleven songs as having music composed by himself. The verses are there again entitled " the offsprings of his youthful genius." In the third edition, 1729, he addresses Geminiani and Roseingrave as his instructors in music. Geminiani arrived in London in 1714; Roseingrave commenced teaching in London after 1720. If Carey was eighty years of age at the time of his death, he must have been taking lessons at sixty. These are specimens of the difficulties to be encountered by those who are content to take evidence at second-hand. |
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