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Getting and spending in London and Yorkshire: a young musician’s account book for 1799–1800
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 October 2020
Abstract
In March 1799 John White was 20 years old and already an experienced professional violinist and cellist. He kept a detailed account book between March 1799 and March 1800 that provides much information about the economic and professional life of a young musician at the very end of the eighteenth century. White had showed early musical promise, and when he was 15 he attracted the patronage of the future Lord Harewood, who enabled him to take lessons from leading musical figures and appointed him as his director of music. White lived at Harewood House, near Leeds, but he spent some months of the London season each year with the Harewood family in their house in Hanover Square. The accounts show how White earned money in London by playing at private and public concerts and deputising at almost every place of musical entertainment in the capital. In Yorkshire he led orchestras in concerts and oratorio performances, took on pupils and visited Scarborough. White’s meticulous lists of his income and expenditure, from an expensive violin, a harp and harp lessons to silk stockings, waistcoats and hair ribbon, paint a fascinating picture of a young man making his way in the musical profession.
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- © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Royal Musical Association
References
1 Robert, Demaine, ‘Mr White of Leeds’, Music in the British Provinces 1690–1914, ed. Rachel, Cowgill and Peter, Holman (Aldershot, 2007), 183–93Google Scholar.
2 Referred to by White in a short speech at the convivial supper after the society’s annual concert in 1830 (Yorkshire Gazette, 8 May 1830).
3 Letter from Rev T. J. Wakefield to John Sainsbury, based on information given to him by White, which was used for the biographical entry on White in Sainsbury’s Dictionary of Musicians (1824) GB- Ge: Ms R.d.88/196, f. 2.
4 White informed Rev Wakefield that when he was appointed in 1794, he was ‘considered the only person in the county, able to undertake the situation’ (Wakefield letter, 2) If White remembered the date correctly, he must have been engaged by Edward Lascelles before he inherited the estate and fortune of his cousin Edwin Lascelles, the first Lord Harewood, upon the man’s death on 25 January 1795. Edward Lascelles did not receive the revived title of Lord Harewood until June 1796.
5 John James Ashley (1771–1815) was an organist, pianist and composer, and was also a noted singing teacher. He was one of the four musical sons of the bassoonist and conductor John Ashley.
6 A leading cellist in London, J. A. Dahmen also gave concerts in the Leeds area and in September 1795 he was offering lessons in Leeds until his return to London three months later (Leeds Intelligencer, 7 September 1795). He was also the last professional viola da gamba player in Britain until modern times. See Peter Holman, Life after Death: The Viola da Gamba in Britain from Purcell to Dolmetsch (Woodbridge, 2010), 283–7. The authors are grateful to Professor Holman for answering our queries about Dahmen, and for assistance with other points.
7 Wakefield letter, 2.
8 The finances of the Harewood household appear to be still working according to the old calendar, with the New Year beginning in late March.
9 His income totals are accurate, but there are two mistakes in the expenditure totals, leading to a final total nine shillings more than it should have been.
10 The payment of many professionals in guineas rather than pounds survived until the decimalization of British currency in 1971.
11 Leeds Intelligencer, 17 October 1796.
12 Leeds Intelligencer, 22, 29 October 1798. White’s cello teacher, Johan Dahmen, was the principal cellist and played a concerto.
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16 He bought three pairs for 18s on 1 May and one pair for 5s on 4 May.
17 Dr Roz Southey of Newcastle University has told us that the firm of Thomas Bewick and Ralph Beilby produced such cards for musicians in the north of England in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.
18 Joseph, Doane, A Musical Directory for the Year 1794 (London, [1794]), 57 Google Scholar. The cellist disappears from the Concerts of Ancient Music after 1797, but the violinists Mr Schram (i.e. S. Schram) and Mr M. Schram continued to perform there. White’s ‘Mr Schram’ is likely to be either the cellist or the older of the two violinists. Charles Schram is given in the rate books for the address of the cellist given in Doane until 1831, and in an 1802 directory ‘Christopher Schram, esq.’ is given as living there.
19 Matthews, Royal Society of Musicians, 89.
20 In the 1820s he had about 150 regular pupils each year (Wakefield letter, 4). White taught at least one professional singer, for in 1830 the leading singer at the Leeds Theatre, Miss Atkinson, was described as ‘a pupil of Mr White’ (Yorkshire Gazette, 19 June 1830). It was common for successful music teachers to have large numbers of pupils. Rayner Taylor, who was organist at Chelmsford, Essex from 1772 to 1784, later remembered that he had there an ‘immense round of teaching, both at the principal academies, and in private families’ ( Olive, Baldwin and Thelma, Wilson, ‘Rayner Taylor (1747–1825), Chelmsford’s first organist’, Transactions of the Essex Society for Archaeology and History, 34 (2004), 208-215)Google Scholar.
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27 Morning Chronicle, 26 April 1799.
28 Oracle and Daily Advertiser, 25 April 1799.
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38 Matthews, Royal Society of Musicians, 160.
39 Morning Chronicle, 7 and 9 May 1799.
40 Times, 9 May 1799. The Boyce anthem was ‘Lord, thou has been our refuge’. The programme was virtually unchanged from 1775 to 1825. See Pearce, E. H., The Sons of the Clergy 1655-1904 (London, 1904)Google Scholar.
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44 On 2 January 1800 White paid 4s 6d for carriage of ‘Gen. Ashleys Box’.
45 David, Coke and Alan, Borg, Vauxhall Gardens: a History (New Haven and London, 2011), 181 Google Scholar. Jonathan Tyers was the proprietor of Vauxhall Gardens from 1729 until his death in 1767.
46 Leeds Intelligencer, 5 August 1799.
47 Leeds Intelligencer, 12, 19, 26 August; 2 September 1799.
48 Rachel Cowgill, ‘The most musical spot for its size in the kingdom: music in Georgian Halifax’, Early Music, 28/4 (2000), 557-75. Two Harmonic Society programmes from 1794 are given on page 565.
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53 The portrait was painted for Edwin Lascelles in 1764-6. Mrs Hale was the sister-in-law of White’s employer. See Nicholas, Penny, ed., Reynolds (London, 1986), 228-30Google Scholar. Euphrosyne also features memorably in Thomas Arne’s Comus, which was premiered in 1738 and remained popular throughout the century.
54 Demaine, ‘Mr White of Leeds’, 187.
55 McVeigh, Concert Life in London, 197.