BURNETT, Henry (b Alverstoke 12 November 1811; d Titchfield, Hants 7 February 1893)
BURNETT, Mrs [née DICKENS, Frances Elizabeth] (b Portsmouth 28 October 1810; d Islington 2 September 1848)
Mr Burnett has a story of which I don’t care to get into the personal details. He was a minor London tenor, who became a fairly prominent Manchester tenor, and who has been written about ad infinitum because he was, for a while, the husband of Miss Fanny Dickens, sister to Charles of that ilk. Being a Dickens scholar is a career in itself, so I’ll simply stick to Henry and ignore the ramifications of the Dickens connection, which have been done to death by one writer or another. None of whose books I have read.
Henry began his singing as Master Burnett. I see him as, presumably, a late soprano, performing at Lucombe’s Library etc in Brighton, in 1826-7. Not earlier, apparently, though the Dickensians say otherwise (with what source?). From 1832 to 1836, he attended the Royal Academy of Music, where Fanny Dickens was also studying. It was a rich period in the Academy’s history with students including Charlott Ann Birch, Stretton, Adeline Cooper, Margaret Postans, Fanny Wyndham and others, but Henry and Fanny both held their place among these successful singers.
I first see the adult Henry in public at the Society of British Musicians in 1834-5 (German Reed’s ‘Go forget me’) and in various RAM-related concerts (Beethoven 9th, duets with W Seguin and Mrs Aveling Smith, Last Judgment), including one mounted by Fanny and her pianist colleague, Miss Foster, 29 April 1836, at Willis’s Rooms, with Margaret Postans-Shaw topping the bill. At Madame Bonnias’s concert he ‘sang ‘Bendemeer’s Stream’ very sweetly’.
In 1837, Henry went on the stage, appearing at the Colosseum in a burletta entitled The Trophy alongside Manvers, Giubilei and the Misses Smith. The Misses Smith were connected with Braham’s St James’s Theatre, which was connected with Charles Dickens …Anyway, 13 September 1837, Burnett and Fanny were wed.
Henry moved on to the St James’s, where the second tenor was … Mr Bennett … leaving room for some mix-ups. However, he seems to have taken over in the Dickens/Hullah Village Coquettes and played there in The Ambassadress (Benedict), Ron o’ the Fen (Edgar de Courcey) and The Devil’s Opera (Signor Herman). He filled the season at the English Opera House (July 1838) (St Clair in The Grey Doublet with ‘When first I heard thy voice’ by Frank Romer, Andrea in The Evil Eye, Signor Hermann in The Devil’s Opera, Lorenzo in Fra Diavolo) and then moved on to Covent Garden (Lorenzo in Fra Diavolo, Lorenzo in The Cabinet, Fiorello in Marriage of Figaro, Holloway in Barbara, Singing Witch in Macbeth, Minstrel in Cymbeline, William Tell, ‘The Breeze is hush’d’ by W F Lockwood) through into 1839. At Christmas, I spot the couple singing in the Mozart mass at the Sardinian Chapel. Then it was back to the English Opera House, where Frazer was now lead tenor (Captain Rowland in Freaks and Follies), …
At which stage, so the Dickensian researchers tell us, Henry got godly qualms about the theatre, and left London for Manchester.
Whether it was a good move religiously, I know not, but it was a good move professionally. From being a small fish in the London music and theatre world, Henry went to being one of the handful of principal concert and oratorio tenors in Lancashire. Although, in theory, they had come to town not for that purpose, but ‘to teach music on the Wilhem principle’, the same principle which Hullah was to turn to such good account. They offered a course of no less than 60 lessons …
As a performer, Henry found approbation from the Manchester critics and work with just about all the local choral societies. Fanny, who even pulled out, ill, of their debut concert (30 November 1841), performed rather less and more often, actually, at the keyboard.
As a teacher, Henry became attached to the Manchester Athenaeum, where he appeared regularly in concert, teaming with all the local stars – the Misses Leach and Hardman, Misses Kenneth and Stott, and Mrs Sunderland, Mrs Winterbottom, Anna Ablomowicz, the Rafters et al – singing in such pieces as Alexander’s Feast, The Seasons, The First Walpurgisnacht, Elijah et al, and delivering ballads from ‘Annie Laurie’ to ‘The Pilgrim of Love’ to ‘O Erin my Country’.
Fanny died in 1848, their crippled nine year-old son Henry Augustus in 1849, and thereafter Henry’s name disappeared from the concert lists. I haven’t found him as a public performer again.
He remarried, Miss Sarah Hargreaves, had some more children, and apparently faded away into South-of-England music teaching.
A rather pale career for a once promising tenor. I’m afraid God was to blame. One way and another.
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