Henry Carey (writer)

[citation needed] Carey did not make the claim himself, but he did use "Savile" as the name of three of his male children, and these corresponded to the births of Halifax's own three sons.

His biography in The Gentleman's Magazine also stated that Carey received a "generous annuity" from the Savile family, but that seems less likely and remains unconfirmed.

Indeed, his first profession, according to Richard Hawkins, was as a music teacher in a boarding school for the middle gentry, a position he held while also working as an author, so these two Careys are the most likely candidates for at least his surrogate, if not his biological, parents.

According to Laetitia Pilkington, friend of Jonathan Swift's and other Tory wits, Carey worked as a "subaltern" to James Worsdale later in his life, in 1734, when he was best paid and most famous.

His first accredited work was a weekly publication of a serialized romance fictions entitled Records of Love in January through March 1710.

This work was aimed at a female readership and was written with a clear expectation of an intelligent, educated, and populous set of readers.

The theatrical seasons of 1723 and 1724 were dominated by pantomime and spectacle plays in London (inducing a young William Hogarth to satirize the abandonment of drama for puppets), and Carey provided the music to some of these productions.

When, therefore, Pope satirized the theatrical vacuity of the pantomime stage in The Dunciad, he was aiming not at the musicians and composers, but rather at the replacement of drama with spectacle.

His poem, Namby Pamby (1725), satirized Ambrose Philips, a frequent and famous target of Alexander Pope's wrath.

Philips had written a series of odes to "all persons", from Robert Walpole to the mother in the nursery, and the latter provided the occasion for Carey to exaggerate.

Carey was, after Namby Pamby, a well-known figure among those opposed to Robert Walpole, and the poem had been praised by Alexander Pope (as "Sally in our Alley" had been by Joseph Addison).

Carey was an admirer and subscriber to the operas of Handel, but, like John Gay and Alexander Pope, thought that the operatic stars were absurd.

In the same year, Carey may have been the first to sing "God Save the King" at a Patriot Whig meeting, and there is some reason to attribute the song to him.

The Bath Chronicle of 13 August 1795 recounted: The uncertainty concerning the author of the words and music of "God save the King", has been removed by the testimony of Mr. [John Christopher] Smith, of Bath, who says that Mr. Henry Carey... came to him with the words and melody of the song in question, desiring him to correct the bass, which Mr. Smith told him was not proper; and at Mr. Carey’s request, Mr. Smith wrote down another in correct harmony.The earliest published version of God Save the King (for two voices) seems to date from the early 1740s.

He had previously satirized the exoticism and emptiness of the English public's love of prima donna singers and castrati, but in 1737, he adapted The Dragon of Wantley from a Lincolnshire folk ballad into a full mock-opera.

The play, with music by John Frederick Lampe, punctured the vacuous operatic conventions and pointed a satirical barb at Robert Walpole and his taxation policies.

The play debuted at the Haymarket, where its coded attack on Walpole would have been clear, but its long run occurred after it moved to Covent Garden, which had a much greater capacity for staging.

He had another popular success in 1739 with Nancy, or, The Parting Lovers, a patriotic play about a sailor leaving his beloved to fight against the Spanish.

While the anonymous account in The Gentleman's Magazine says that Carey had an annuity, he left a pregnant second wife (Sarah, whom he married between 1729 and 1733) and three dependent children, and both Hawkins and The London Stage say that he was despondent over financial difficulties.

Grief over the death of his son is another possible explanation of his suicide, and Suzanne Aspden speculates that Carey suffered from paranoia, while others have suspected that he had depression or other maladies.

He had an extraordinary gift with melody and wordplay, and later authors, such as Edward Lear, would cite Carey as a predecessor for his tongue twisters and nonsense verse in Namby Pamby and Chrononhotonthologos.

In the Macaulay-dominated view of literary history of the early 20th-century, Carey was represented as a balladeer whose fundamental moroseness was proven by his shameful suicide, and his plays, now devoid of topicality, were set as broad entertainments.