John Hobart Caunter (21 June 1792 – 14 November 1851) was an English cleric and writer. Serving briefly in India as a cadet, he entered the Church and served as the Incumbent Minister of Portland Chapel in Marylebone, London, for 19 years. His writings primarily focused on Biblical subjects and on India, his best-known work being a collection of tales, The Romance of History. India (1836).
Life
John Hobart was born at the rectory of Dittisham, a village in South Devon where his maternal grandfather John Hutchings was the rector. Hobart's family were Devonshire gentry; he was the second son of George Caunter of Staverton and Harriett Georgina, née Hutchings, of Dittisham. His middle (and primary) name came from his godfather, Lord Hobart. Hobart's father went to the East when his son was one year old and became acting superintendent of Prince of Wales Island – today Penang, Malaysia. His wife soon joined him and died there in childbirth in 1798, while Hobart stayed in England. His uncle Robert Sparke Hutchings, who became deacon at Dittisham in 1803 and rector in 1805, was his guardian; Hobart later described him as having "a heart perfection scarce could mend" and as being the source of "most of what I know".
Caunter was educated at the Royal College, Jersey. He was then sent to the East India Company Military Seminary which in 1809 had opened in Addiscombe, Surrey, and went to India as a cadet to the 34th Foot. On his way there he took up a short residence at British-controlled Madeira in 1810. He probably arrived in India in the latter part of 1811, his commission as ensign being dated 25 October of that year. He resigned from the Bombay establishment of the East India Company on 21 January 1814 and sailed back to England, stopping in Mauritius, where his brother George Henry Caunter was a government official.
While a minor he wrote poems that were collected in The Cadet, published in London in 1814; in the preface he cautions that the title poem paints India "in no very flattering colours". He goes on to state in the third person that he left England "chiefly induced by the dear idea of meeting a father, whom, since the earliest period of infancy, he had but once seen : — shortly after his arrival he heard of his death : — he discovered, much to his disappointment, nothing on the Continent of Asia to interest him". Almost his only pleasure, he says, was in reading. The title poem contrasts his disillusionment with India with his recollection of England, "that lov'd Isle where Freedom's children dwell", and of his childhood, which is sketched in idyllic terms. His disappointment as reported in The Cadet did not stop him, however, from writing extensively about India later.
Matriculating at Peterhouse College, Cambridge in 1817, Caunter obtained the degree of Bachelor of Divinity in 1828. He was ordained a deacon in York in 1824 and a priest in London in 1827, becoming Perpetual Curate of Portland Chapel, at different times also called St Paul's Chapel, in Foley Place, Marylebone (1825–44). He was, according to the entry on him in Alumni Cantabrigienses, "[w]ell-known in London as the fashionable preacher of his day." From 1844 to 1846 he was Rector of Hailsham, Sussex. In 1845 a young woman, Elizabeth Taylor, brought an action against Caunter, alleging that he had promised to marry her within a certain time and had failed to do so. She claimed £3,000 in damages. Caunter had previously paid for her education for some years. The counsel for the defendant stated the action had arisen from a "serious misunderstanding" between the parties. On the arrangement that the case be kept out of the papers, a verdict was taken by consent for £750 plus £177 in costs. Newspaper reports appeared regardless.
From 1846 to 1848 Caunter had a lease on the proprietary chapel, St. James Episcopal, at Kennington. In this period he suffered from ill health, causing him to give up the Kennington chapel. From 1848 he served as Curate at Prittlewell, Essex. In 1850 he was arrested and appeared before the Court for Relief of Insolvent Debtors in Lincoln's-Inn. He explained that he had paid most of the damages he had been required to pay Elizabeth Taylor. However, in 1846 he had resigned his well-paid Hailsham curacy as a result of a pledge, and his income had since suffered due to the publicity about the case. He declared that his writings did not bring him any income as they were not on popular subjects, and he and his wife (whom he had married in 1845) had no fortune. Caunter arranged with the opposing creditor and was discharged.
When appearing before the court in December 1850, Caunter was stated to be "late of Prittlewell", although other sources state he held the Prittlewell curacy until his death. In 1847 and days before his death in 1851, he was awarded financial assistance from the Royal Literary Fund, a benevolent fund assisting published British writers in financial difficulties. Shortly after his death the fund assisted his widow.Royal Literary Fund: Case File: Mr John Hobart Caunter, and Mrs Caroline Caunter, his widow He died at his residence at 21 Edward-street, Portman-square in Marylebone on 14 November 1851 "after a long and painful illness", having caught malaria fever, and was laid to rest in All Souls' Cemetery in Kensal Green.London Metropolitan Archives; London, England; London Church of England Parish Registers; Reference Number: DL/T/041/019
Caunter was Domestic Chaplain to the Earl of Thanet. He bore arms Barry of six, or and gules, thirteen bezants counter-changed 3, 2, 3, 2, 3. His crest was a naked arm erect, couped at the elbow holding a branch ppr. His motto was "Quam non torret hyems" ("Which winter does not nip with cold", referring to the branch which forms part of the crest).
Works
Caunter's obituary in The Annual Register notes that he "had considerable literary reputation". A brief obituary in Harper's Magazine stated: "Eighteen years ago this gentleman's appearances in the world of ephemeral literature were frequent—and fairly successful." Caunter was on intimate terms with authors such as Caroline Norton, with whom he edited The Court Magazine and Belle Assemblée, William Godwin, Frances Sargent Osgood, Basil Hall, John Galt and others. According to magazine The Torch, Caunter "was usually consulted by Mr. Churton [his publisher Edward Churton (1812–1885)] in all his literary undertakings." Caunter was especially prolific in the 1830s, writing fiction and non-fiction on a variety of subjects in a range of genres. He contributed reviews, stories and serials to such general-interest magazines as The Athenaeum and The Gentleman's Magazine. In this decade he helped Mary Shelley place her stories and articles in journals, and he is likely to have assisted her with her unfinished biographical memoir of her father, Life of William Godwin.
His play St. Leon: A Drama. In Three Acts (1835) is based loosely on William Godwin's 1799 Gothic novel St. Leon. It revolves around St. Leon, a French nobleman of fallen fortune living near Madrid, who receives from supernatural spirits the ingredients for creating gold and a potion of eternal life. He is forbidden from divulging the source of his new-found wealth, and it is precisely his secrecy that attracts the suspicion and hostility of family members, friends and the Spanish Inquisition. Caunter dedicated the play to the actress Frances Maria Kelly, stating that without her approbation it would not have been printed. Caunter's novel The Fellow Commoner (1836) first appeared partially as a serial in The Court Magazine under the title 'Remarkable escapes of a predestinated rogue'. It is a picaresque novel with Christian theology mixed in about James (Jemmy) Dillon, a London youth from a dysfunctional background who is orphaned and is taught by an elderly protectress to believe that he is predestined to heaven. Dillon embarks on a career as a wandering thief, and a gipsy girl from an equally dysfunctional background, Phœbe Burrows, becomes his romantic interest. A German translation, Der Spiessgesell, was published in 1837 and an American edition in 1840.
Caunter's most substantial poetic work is The Island Bride. In Six Cantos (1830), a tragic poem in 397 Spenserian stanzas about the tragic fate of two lovers on an island in the Indian Ocean. According to the author's preface, the poem's groundwork was provided by an encounter he had on arriving in Mauritius on his way back to England from India: "there was an old man, with silvery locks, residing on a small estate a few miles distant from the town of Port Louis, who was an object of universal sympathy, having become deranged in consequence of the loss of an only daughter."
Caunter's voluminous religious writings include a two-volume commentary on the first five books of the Bible from a poetic perspective (The Poetry of the Pentateuch, 1839) and an annotated edition of the Bible (1840). Caunter's Familiar Lectures to Children (1835), his abridgement of Lectures to Children (1834) by the American theologian John Todd, appeared in a Dutch translation between 1835 and 1839, which was characterised by its publisher as a "very popular work for children".
In 1870, Caunter was rumoured in the literary magazine Notes and Queries to have been the author of the humorous novel Peter Priggins, the College Scout (London and Paris, 1841), an anonymous work that was initially serialised in the New Monthly Magazine. However, this novel is generally ascribed to Joseph Thomas James Hewlett.
Writings on India
Caunter became best known for The Romance of History. India, which first appeared in three volumes in 1836. It was part of a series, The Romance of History, in which different writers offered tales of adventure and romance set – besides India – in England, France, Spain and Italy. Caunter's work consists of 15 romanticised retellings of episodes from the early Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent. Each story is preceded by a historical summary. The book served as the basis for Aitihasik Upanyas (1857) by the Bengal writer Bhudev Mukhopadhyay, which consists of a story, 'Saphal svapna', based closely on Caunter's story 'The Traveller's Dream', as well as the first historical novel written in Bengal, Anguriya Binimay, based on Caunter's story 'The Mahratta Chief'. Another Bengal writer, Krishna Kamal Bhattacharya, borrowed from Caunter's story 'The Pariah' for his novel Durakankher Britha Bhraman (1858).
Between 1834 and 1840 a luxury leather-bound series of seven volumes appeared, The Oriental Annual, or Scenes in India, some of the volumes being titled The Oriental Annual – Lives of the Moghul Emperors, Eastern Legendary Tales and Oriental Romances and Caunter's and Daniell's Oriental Annual or scenes in India. Part of the series presents biographies of the conquerors Timur, Babur, Humayun and Akbar. Other volumes purport to be an account by Caunter of his travels in India with the painter and printmaker William Daniell (1769–1837), with engravings on the basis of drawings and pictures made by Daniell for the first five volumes and, for the final two, engravings by Thomas Bacon, F.S.A, from drawings by other artists. Volumes from this series were presented to Princess Victoria of Kent, the later Queen Victoria, by her mother in 1834, 1835 an 1836 and are currently in the collection of Kensington Palace. A French translation in three volumes by P.J. Auguste Urbain appeared from 1834 to 1836.