Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 09.djvu/244

 to suggest the establishment of the Literary Fund.

A mezzotint portrait of Carver, from a picture in Dr. Lettsom's possession, is the frontispiece of the ‘Travels,’ 3rd edit. He was somewhat above the middle stature, with a muscular frame. He was a very agreeable and picturesque writer, as the story of his adventures shows. But there is one stain on his character; at the time of his marriage in England he had a wife and five children living in America.

The deed found by Dr. Lettsom (now lost) was dated 1 May 1767, the day of the ‘long talk’ in the cave. It bore the totems—beaver and serpent—of two great chiefs, and the Indians are made to speak, in English, of the grantee as ‘our good brother Jonathan,’ whence possibly came the name of the Americans collectively. The heirs by his first wife transferred part of their rights in 1794 to Edward Houghton of Vermont for 50,000l. After careful inquiry the land commissioners dismissed the claim in 1825. Dr. Hartwell Carver's claim in 1848 for ‘a hundred miles square’ met with the same fate, as did also that of Carver's grandsons, Groom and King. Martha, one of the daughters by the English wife, was brought up by Sir Richard and Lady Pearson. She eloped with a sailor, and a few days after their marriage conveyed her rights to a London firm for a sum of money and a tenth of the profits. The agent sent out to get a confirmatory grant from the Indians was murdered in New York, and the scheme collapsed. George III is said to have approved the grant, and Dr. Samuel Peters, an episcopal minister, who had purchased some rights in 1806, testified to the committee in 1825 that the king had given Carter 1,371l. 13s. 8d., and ordered a frigate and transport-ship with a hundred and fifty men to proceed with him to take possession, but the battle of Bunker's Hill had prevented it. In 1839 Lord Palmerston stated in parliament that no trace of a ratification of the Carver grant was to be found in the Record Office.

There is a Carver town and Carver county in South-eastern Minnesota; and Carver river is the name of a branch of the St. Peter's. The Carver centenary was celebrated by the Minnesota Historical Society on 1 May 1867, the hundredth anniversary of the council and treaty of Carver with the Indians at ‘ Carver's Cave,’ which is now within the suburbs of the important city of St. Paul. The proceedings were published at the expense of George W. Fehnestock of Philadelphia.

Carver's description of the funeral of a ‘brave’ suggested Schiller's ‘Song of a Nadowessie Chief,’ of which both Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer and Sir John Herschel have given translations.

 CARVER, ROBERT (d. 1791), landscape and scene painter, was a native of Ireland and the son of Richard Carver, an historical and landscape painter of some merit, who painted an altar-piece at Waterford. Robert Carver received instruction from his father, and exhibited several small pictures in water-colours in Dublin with some success. He also painted scenes for the Dublin Theatre, which attracted so much attention that Garrick commissioned him to paint one for Drury Lane Theatre, and eventually invited him to take up his residence in London as scene-painter to that theatre. Carver was a friend of his compatriot, Spranger Barry, and when that actor quarrelled with Garrick, and transferred himself with a rival company to Covent Garden Theatre, Carver followed in his train, and continued to paint scenes for that theatre in conjunction with John Inigo Richards, R.A., and other artists. One of his scenes was known as the ‘Dublin Drop,’ and is described as follows by the painter Edward Dayes: ‘The scene was a representation of a storm on a coast, with a fine piece of water dashing against some rocks, and forming a sheet of foam truly terrific; this, with the barren appearance of the surrounding country, and an old leafless tree or two, were the materials that composed a picture which would have done honour to the first artist, and will be remembered as the finest painting that ever decorated a theatre.’ Besides scene-painting, Carver obtained great success as a landscape-painter, and from 1765 to 1790 exhibited numerous landscapes in oil and water-colours at the exhibitions of the Incorporated Society of Artists. He was a fellow of this society, and in 1772 was appointed director. He also exhibited at the Free Society of Artists, and later on at the Royal Academy. His pictures always excited attention and favourable criticism, and in the newspapers of the time he is spoken of as the ‘ingenious and celebrated Mr. Carver.’ He particularly excelled in atmospheric effects, such as those of the early dawn. Generally the same qualities which brought him so much success in scene-painting were apparent in his smaller pictures. 