Mr Millar of Bath (tenor)

 

MILLAR, Thomas Francis (b London, c 1801; d Haydock Lunatic Asylum 12 June 1868)

 

London-born tenor Thomas Millar made himself a thirty-year career as a vocalist, more than twenty of those years labelled, with good reason, as ‘of Bath’.

 

As the Quarterly Review remarked, in the mid-1820s, ‘The most polished audiences, out of the metropolis, this country boasts, it has hitherto been considered, were to be found in the city of Bath, whither the fashionable world has long resorted …’ and ‘the Bath concerts were, at this period, some of the best Britain offered’.

 

Thomas Millar moved from London to Bath in 1823, made his home there, and became, thereafter, the unchallenged ‘first tenor of the Bath concerts’, and a central personality in the city’s musical life.

Episodically, he ventured to London, and appeared there in the theatre, in oratorio and in concert. However, his well modulated but not very voluminous voice could not compete with the richer and more dramatic organs of the big London stars, and he returned each time to his own fief, as ‘first tenor’, teacher, songwriter, music publisher and local celebrity.

 

Coached by the bass-player and singer John Addison, of the English Opera House and Ancient Concert orchestras, Millar began his singing career as a boy soprano. I spot him singing for the Caledonian Society at the Freemasons Tavern in 1815 ('The Birds of Invermay'), and in 1816, performing his teacher’s ‘Arise, thou bright sun of Britain’ ‘written in Honour of the nuptials of Princess Charlotte of Wales and Leopold of Saxe Coburg’ and ‘sung at the most fashionable festive parties’.

He gave his ‘first performance as a tenor’ at the Choral Fund concert of 1817 (3 February) and was subsequently engaged for the Covent Garden oratorios, while in 1818, he was amongst the supporting soloists for the Huddersfield Musical Festival. However, he seems to have been little seen thereafter until, in 1822, he was announced for a theatrical debut at Drury Lane.

 

‘By the character Mr Millar has chosen for his debut on Wednesday night we perceive his pretensions are very modest. We remember him when a boy, and have heard him with much delight; if he retains the chaste and impressive manner in which he then sang, he cannot fail to please...’ commented The Morning Post. The role in question was Dermot in The Poor Soldier and, on 16 October, it was announced as ‘his first performance’. He evidently made little impression, for at the second performance his name was not mentioned, and the ‘second performance of Mr Keeley’ got the billing.

Over the years that followed, Mr Millar’s name appeared regularly in the bills at Bath, at Bristol, at Margate, Broadstairs and Worthing (playing Love in a Village with Miss George). Mr Millar ‘of the Bath Theatre’ had found his niche.

 

In 1830 (30 January), however, courtesy of William Hawes, he visited London once again for the oratorio series at Covent Garden. Hawes chose both his tenors – the other was ‘Mr Bennett of Manchester’ – from the provinces, and the press weighed the one against the other with different preferences. The Morning Post admired the ‘taste and ability’ of Millar, and wrote ‘Mr Bennett made poor work of 'Comfort ye' and 'Thy rebuke'. Mr Millar would have sung them better: he possesses a more musician-like style and sings more correctly in tune ...’. The Drama retorted ‘Mr Millar (our new Braham) no doubt passes for a great singer at Bath. It would be wise of him to return thither…’ and nodded ‘Mr Bennett is a better singer with less pretension’. It was Bennett who would go on to have the metropolitan career as a star tenor: Mr Millar had to be content with Bath, Bristol and Liverpool. But not yet.

For Mr Millar had been engaged not only for the oratorios, but for the operatic season (md: Hawes) at the English Opera House. He made ‘his first appearance on the London stage’ (the bills preferred to forget the earlier venture) on 5 July 1830 as Don Ottavio to the Don Giovanni of his Bristol compere Henry Phillips, and did well enough. His ‘Il mio tesoro’ was encored on opening night and the press judged him neatly as ‘a quiet, careful and agreeable singer’ ‘[he has] a very sweet though not very powerful voice, perfect intonation and a good style of singing’. He played, thereafter, some performances of The Vampire, Sir Leinster Leybrooke in The Irish Girl, and as Belville in Rosina whilst Sinclair took the other tenor parts. In 1831, he returned for a second summer season of opera, as Count Arwed in The Sorceress (‘a pretty tenor voice but in its management he seems to be not so happy as diligent study would make him’), Andrea in The Evil Eye (18 August)  and as Lorimer in the little The Picturesque. In 1832 he played in Arnold’s English Opera Company at the Olympic (Rosina, No Song No Supper).

Whilst Mr Hawes went to work advertising ‘the whole of Mr Millar’s vocal compositions’ – the now sizeable bulk of songs which his protégé had turned out over the past years – Millar returned to Bath and Bristol where, during the season, he sang as part of the support programme to Paganini on his concert tour. 

However, in 1833 Hawes, Arnold and Millar got a tad too ambitious. The English Opera House produced a piece entitled The Convent Belle, words said to be by J Haynes Bayley, one of Millar’s preferred lyricists, and score by Millar. Millar himself took the leading role of Baron Wildenstein opposite Mrs Waylett, with John Reeve and Mrs Charles Jones in support. It was a disaster (‘a more low and miserable affair it as never been our lot to witness’) and Millar’s music critically slaughtered (‘as much wanting in character as the words were deficient in meaning’) putting a permanent end to any ambitions he may have had as a theatrical composer. When the ‘new Scottish operetta’ Jessie the Flower of Dumblane (Lord Dumblane) went the same way, Millar returned to Bathwick, to his concerts and oratorios.

 

However, he did take from London a wife. On 25 July 1835, Millar married Louise Rivière (b London 1 January 1815), one of the daughters of artist Daniel Valentine Rivière, and a sister to the more celebrated Ann Rivière, better to be known as ‘Anna Bishop’. Louise, herself a vocalist of more modest pretensions, would make a ‘first appearance in public’ at Clifton Church, in a concert alongside her husband, in March 1838, but she would spend most of the next fifteen years, between concert engagements and a position as a church vocalist at the Pierrepont Chapel, producing and raising a vast family of something like a dozen children. Thomas, Louisa Henrietta, Annette Eliza, John, Catharine Susan and Mary Isabella, Theresa Agnes, Henry, Ellen, Joseph Benedict, Cecilia  …

 

Over the years that followed. ‘Mr Millar of Bath’ appeared regularly in concert, turned out a regular flood of vocal music, published his flood of vocal music, gave singing lessons, founded the Anacreontic Society of Bath, and generally confirmed his place in British provincial musical life.

‘New songs by Millar (of Bath): ‘The Village Bells’ as sung by Mr Millar with great success, it being called for a third time at the Liverpool concerts, Bath, Clifton and Chester…’

 

But London would call again, and when it did it was to the highest places. In 1842 (1 April), Mr Millar sang principal tenor alongside Miss Lucombe, Miss Dolby and Messrs Young and Phillips in a performance by the Sacred Harmonic Society at Exeter Hall. In 1847, he was included in the programme of the revered Concert of Ancient Music. His solo was cut after the rehearsal, but he took part in a trio.  One paper judged him the best tenor -- after Braham -- that Britain had to offer, others ignored him, or dismissed him as ‘sweet but feeble’, but neither engagement had any follow up.

But when Mr Millar was billed, in Bath and in Bristol, he could (and did) now bill himself as being ‘of the Ancient Concert and Exeter Hall’.

 

By the 1850s, the Millars were less in view. In 1852 Millar, established now in Cornwall (‘publisher and music-seller, dealer and chapman’) was adjudged bankrupt. They then moved to 7 Ivy Street, Birkenhead, and they took part as supporting soloists in the 1854 Liverpool Festival, sang at the opening of St George’s Hall, in the concerts of the Liverpool Musical Union and in the Philharmonic Hall oratorios. I spot them in 1855 giving a concert at the Avenham Institution of Preston (18 April), in 1856, singing in the Liverpool Saturday Evening concerts, along with ‘Master Millar’ performing his father’s ‘The Sailor Boy’, and at the People’s Concerts in Birkenhead. And in October 1857 at a concert for the Catholic Blind Asylum and with the Scarisbricks and little Miss Wynne at Christmas …

In 1857 (20 April, Mr, Mrs and Miss Annette, the Scarisbricks and Henry Phillips) and for some years thereafter, he gave concerts at Birkenhead’s Craven Rooms. ‘The well-known resident professor’. In the 1858 edition, he sang, as did the Misses Millar, and Mr Millar jr played piano. ‘Though his voice is evidently affected by the ravages of time…’, he sang his own ‘As light o’er the waters breaking’. The Scarisbricks and Edith Wynne completed the line-up. But no Mrs Millar.

 

I see him, still, giving his ‘annual’ in 1861, in 1862, singing ‘three or four songs’ at the Birkenhead Saturday Evening Entertainments for The Working Classes, and what I presume is his son rather than he ‘presiding at the pianoforte’ for Ryalls and Mrs Sunderland at the local Saturday concerts …

 

And then…?

 

It is not often that I lose one of my vocalists in Britain. But I don’t know what exactly became of the Millar family. They evidently stayed in the north, where I see that our vocalist, ‘Thomas Francis Millar’, died in Haydock Lunatic Asylum in 1868.

But what became of Mrs Millar. Last sighting 1857. And all those children?  I know Benedict died aged two, and both Theresa Agnes (Mrs Thomas Elsey Bland, d Norfolk 25 January 1927) and Louisa Henrietta (Mrs George Britton Halford, d Inverloch, Australia 18 December 1910) married and bred, Louisa jr left nine children ... but that still leaves nine more. In the 1861 census, several of them are farmed out on the Rivière family, or in the care of daughter Annette Eliza (‘professor of music’, d Liverpool 13 March 1919) in Birkenhead, in a fashion that seems to say that mother is dead. Or gone. Or something. 

 

A bit more digging shows that Cecilia became Mrs George Edward Parsons and also went Australiawards (d 1937), Mary Isabella (Mrs William Redgrave Bullen) died in Lancashire in 1904 having produced ten children...  That leaves seven …

 

The family historians say that Louisa Riviere Millar died in 1889. However, they equate Louisa with a Bristol-born lady keeping a shop in Bedminster in the 1881 census with a lunatic son whose seems to be named Miller with an ‘e’ whose father was a flax-dresser Christian-named Joseph … I think I’ll just leave the whole thing there .. trust not in family historians…

 

I didn’t expect ‘Mr Millar of Bath’ to be opaque. He was such a predictable and orderly and unexceptional man and singer. But he just fades away… and … the lunatic asylum?