Richard Carte’s Claims
in Relation to the Exhibition of 1851
________________________________
Introduction
Elsewhere on this web site
Great Exhibition of 1851
we have provided a summary of the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London,
with particular emphasis on the flutes that were on display there.
Coming as it did at the very height of the mid-nineteenth century debate
regarding future design directions for the flute as an instrument, this
was without doubt one of the most significant events in flute history,
since it brought together the full range of designs which were then
competing in the marketplace and placed them in direct head-to-head
competition before an International Jury as well as the general public.
Two of the more prominent
flute exhibitors were Theobald Boehm, exhibiting on his own stand, and
the celebrated London firm of Rudall & Rose, which had held the English
patent on Boehm’s innovations with respect to the flute and other wind
instruments since 1847. Rudall & Rose appear to have focused on
co-operating with Richard Carte in the development of his 1851 Patent
model (as well as an old-fingered model called the “New Flute with
Old Fingering”). These models both used elements of Boehm’s patent
as it applied to the flute. As a result of his successful design
efforts, Carte was admitted to the firm as a full partner in 1850, and
subsequently became the sole proprietor.
At the Exhibition, Boehm
displayed flutes and an oboe which exemplified the applicability of his
innovations to a range of woodwind instruments. He was successful in
convincing the International Jury of the merits of his ideas, to the
point that he became one of the relatively small number of exhibitors
who were favored with the prestigious Council Medal for innovation.
Rudall & Rose appear to
have focused primarily on Carte’s new designs, although they did also
exhibit a standard Boehm model. They were successful in gaining a Prize
Medal for workmanship in connection with their Carte Patent models, but
failed to win any award for innovation. In particular, they were not
awarded a Council Medal for any of their products.
Notwithstanding this,
immediately following the Exhibition the firm began to mark their Carte
1851 Patent cylinder flutes with the Council Medal appellation as well
as the Prize Medal! Carte also published his claims in this regard in a
postscript to the second edition of his essay entitled “A
Sketch of the Successive Improvements made in the Flute”
(the “Sketch”), first published in 1851 to coincide with the
Exhibition.
During the present authors’
study of the Exhibition in general, this presented itself as an obvious
anomaly which appeared to us to call for in-depth examination. The
following discussion is intended to summarize the results of our
investigation.
Carte’s published claims to recognition of his 1851 Flute
Carte first published his
previously-noted “Sketch” in early 1851. This pamphlet was
basically a “sales puff” for his own newly-designed Patent flutes which
used Boehm’s metal cylinder bore and so-called “parabolic” head but with
very different mechanism and fingering. The work seems to have been
quite popular, since it soon ran into a second and then a third
edition.
When preparing the Second
Edition, which followed closely on the heels of the 1851 Exhibition,
Carte added a Postscript (as which we shall henceforth refer to
it) in which among other things he set out his own listing of the awards
gained at the Exhibition. Carte wrote as follows:
“In accordance with
these views, the Council [of Juries] awarded to M. Boehm the
highest honour it had to bestow – the Council Medal – for his
Parabola and Cylinder Flute; and they [the Jury] awarded
also, to Messrs. Rudall, Rose & Co. the only Prize Medal obtained
in England, which was for the improvement I have been enabled to
make in Boehm’s Flute as regards facility of fingering”.
Carte goes on to note:
“These prizes having
been awarded, Boehm’s Cylinder Flute is now entitled:
The Council Medal Flute
(Boehm’s Patent);
and for the sake of
distinguishing one from the other, his Cylinder Flute with my new
mechanism is entitled
The Council and Prize
Medal Flute (Boehm’s and Carte’s Patents)”
This Postscript also
appeared in the third edition of Carte’s “Sketch” published in
1855.
In 1857, Carte placed an
advertisement in a number of issues of the London Times. It read
as follows:
“FLUTES – A Caution –
Messrs. Rudall, Rose, Carte & Co., Flute, clarionet and military
instrument manufacturers, 20 Charing-cross, beg to direct attention
to the following facts: - At the Great Exhibition in 1851 there were
three awards, representing three degrees of merit. The first and
highest, for flutes, was the Council’s medal, obtained by M. Boehm
for his cylinder flute, purchased, patented, and manufactured solely
by Rudall, Rose, Carte & Co. The second was the jurors’ prize
medal, obtained by Rudall, Rose & Co. for Carte’s improved Boehm
flute. The third and only other award was the honourable mention,
which was obtained by Mr. Card. See Report, class 10a. Other
articles, although favourably noticed in the Report, were not
considered of merit sufficient to entitle them to any award”.
In both his Postscript and
in his 1857 advertisement, Carte rightly points out that Boehm won a
Council Medal and Rudall & Rose took a Prize Medal. This is confirmed
by reference to the List of Awards to which he draws his readers’
attention. The List of Awards also confirms the Honourable Mention
conferred upon William Card. So far, so good.
So what’s the problem with
these apparently straightforward statements? Well, quite a lot, as we
shall see!
Firstly, Carte failed
to mention in his 1857 advertisement that, apart from Card, another
rival flute maker, Jean-Louis Tulou, also took an
Honourable Mention! A very minor point, granted, although Tulou might
not have seen it that way! Similarly, Carte’s failure to mention
several other Prize Medal winners for flutes (see below) falls into the
same category. Having mentioned Card, surely he should have gone on to
mention the other awardees for flutes apart from himself and Boehm?!? As
it is, Carte’s statement is simply incomplete.
Of far greater significance
is the very clear implication in Carte’s Postscript that his
Patent flute possessed a higher degree of merit than
Boehm’s because it was identified with both Council and
Prize medals while Boehm’s only carried one. This suggestion is made
very unambiguously through the designations applied to the two models,
and it is quite clearly false and misleading – the Awards List confirms
that Rudall & Rose took only the Prize Medal for Carte’s
Boehm patent flutes, while Boehm himself took the far more prestigious
Council Medal. More of this below.
Carte’s comment that the
double medal designation was made “for the sake of distinguishing one
from the other” appears as a paper-thin excuse in the light of the
above discussion – surely all that was necessary to distinguish between
the two models was to call one the “Boehm’s Patent Model” or the
“Council Medal Flute” and the other the “Carte’s Patent Model”
or “Prize Medal Flute”? In fact, the double application of
Boehm’s and Carte’s Patents to Carte’s flute is quite
acceptable, since it did utilize key elements of Boehm’s
Patent as well as that of Carte. It is obvious that any of these
approaches would have completely sufficed for the purpose of “distinguishing
one from the other” and would have accurately reflected the true
facts.
Hence, Carte’s use of the
need to distinguish between the two models as justification for the
application of Boehm’s award to Carte’s flute is simply
not justifiable on any credible basis. The Exhibition Jury had had the
one legitimate and, one would hope, disinterested opportunity to
objectively decide upon the relative merits of the two instruments, and
they issued the awards accordingly. In particular, only
the Jury could legitimately apply the Council Medal to Carte’s flutes,
and the official record (to which Carte himself referred) shows that
they did not do so. The subsequent application of the
Council Medal to Carte’s Patent flute by Carte and/or his business
colleagues, presumably for commercial reasons, is thus unsupported by
the official records of the Exhibition.
To add insult to injury,
and without qualification of any kind, Carte claimed that the Prize
Medal awarded to Rudall & Rose for his Patent flutes was “the only
Prize Medal obtained in England”. A review of the official List of
Awards shows that Prize Medals were won by a number of other English
musical instrument exhibitors, including the flute makers John Pask and
Cornelius Ward. Neither of these two exhibitors won their medals
specifically for flutes, but then Carte did not confine his claim to
awards for flutes. As worded, Carte’s very general and unqualified
statement is completely untrue.
So – three seemingly
obvious inconsistencies appear immediately in Carte’s claims upon the
most cursory examination. This became apparent to the present authors
immediately upon reading this material, and it was this that led us to
begin our detailed investigation into the veracity of a wider range of
Carte’s published statements.
At this point, it is
apparent that academic rigor requires us to look more closely into the
basis for Carte’s statements quoted above. To do this, it is first
necessary to fully understand the significance of the awards so that we
may clearly understand who actually received which
award and for what! Interestingly enough, this very view
was championed at the time in a letter from an unidentified
correspondent which appeared in the October 25th, 1851
edition of the London periodical “Musical World” . The writer,
styling himself “A Constant Reader” stated that
“it is very
important that the public should understand clearly on what grounds
the [awards] decisions are founded; otherwise all
distinctions conferred on Exhibitors, be they Council Medals, or
Prize Medals, will alike lose their value”.
It appear that this precept
was not widely followed at the time, and we will now do our best to
remedy this long-standing deficiency.
The Medal criteria
Reference to the official
criteria with which the Jury was provided by the Exhibition organisers
reveals that the Prize Medal (which Rudall & Rose undoubtedly won for “Carte’s
Boehm Patent Flute”) was specifically to be conferred by the
respective Jury upon exhibitors whose offerings displayed “a
certain standard of excellence in production or workmanship”. A
vital point – there is no mention here of ideas or design
innovation. Recognition of those factors was reserved for
the Council Medal (awarded to Boehm), which was only to be
awarded by the Council of Juries (on the recommendation of individual
Juries) to those exhibitors whose offerings displayed “some
important novelty of invention or application”
(our emphasis) and was specifically not to be awarded on
the basis of “excellence of production or workmanship alone,
however eminent". This point did not escape the notice
of the above-mentioned “Musical World” correspondent, who
mentioned it specifically in his letter. The comment was actually made
at the time that some winners of the Council Medal were far inferior in
terms of workmanship to their less innovative brethren!
The crucial point to grasp
here is that in no sense could the two awards be
considered as representing any relative degree of merit.
It should now be crystal clear that they were conferred on the basis of
two entirely distinct criteria which bore no direct relationship to one
another.
It is crucial to retain the
above distinction as we review this matter in more detail. It will
suffice if we remember that, in the most simplistic terms, the Council
Medal recognised originality of ideas as demonstrated by
the exhibits while the Prize Medal recognised excellence of
execution of the items exhibited. Thus, the Council Medal
recognised intellectual achievements, while the Prize
Medal recognised manual achievements. The one recognised
original thinking, the other recognised outstanding craftsmanship. Since
an inanimate object cannot think, it follows that Council Medals were
won by individuals, not objects. No flute design could
win a Council Medal – only its inventor could do that on the basis of
his design originality. Similarly, no flute design could win a Prize
Medal - only its manufacturer, as opposed to
its designer, could do that on the basis of his manufacturing skills.
In either case, a flute
might legitimately be cited as the vehicle through which
the designer or manufacturer (who actually merited the award) had
demonstrated his skill. But the awards themselves were won by the
designers and manufacturers, not by the objects that they displayed.
The Basis for the award of the Council
Medal
Now that we are clear on
the award criteria, let us look into the basis upon which the Council
Medal won by Boehm and later applied by Carte to his own flute was
actually awarded. Starting with Boehm, his entry on the
official list of exhibitors confirms that he did not exhibit only his
flutes, but also exhibited an oboe which utilized the same general
principles as those applied to his flutes. This instrument appears to
have been the result of a collaboration between Boehm and the
French-born oboist Antoine Joseph Lavigne (1816 – 1886).
It was clearly this
demonstration by Boehm of the adaptability of his original
flute improvements to other instruments that really caught the attention
of the Jury, just as Boehm almost certainly intended that it should.
Indeed, this was probably his sole reason for exhibiting the oboe
alongside the flutes which always remained his primary personal
concern. The official citation in the List of Awards makes it
explicitly clear that Boehm received his Council medal not merely for
his new flute but for
"important scientific
improvements of the flute; and the successful application of his
principles to other wind instruments"
[our emphasis]. This is further clarified when we review the reference
to Boehm in the text of the Final Report of the Jury which precedes the
Awards List. Here we find the Jury making the following statement:
“Mr. Boehm’s
inventions
(our emphasis) may
be described as follows:-
Firstly, he has brought
the acoustical proportions of tubes and the fingerholes of wind
instruments into correct numbers and measurement, by which means
flutes, oboes, clarionets, bassoons, &c., can be theoretically
constructed. Secondly, he has invented a mechanism for the keys
which gives facility and precision to the execution, and by which
the former difficulty of reaching or stopping the holes at great
distances, or of large size, is now surmounted. As by these means
the holes can be made correct in size and position, Mr. Boehm has
acquired not only a perfection in tone and tuning never before
attained, but also a great facility in playing in those keys which
were hitherto difficult and defective in sonorousness or
intonation”.
Note that flutes are by no
means singled out here – the Jury is actually concerned with Boehm’s
inventions, and the word “flute” appears only once,
as just one element of a list of the various wind instruments to which
Boehm’s innovations are applicable. Neither Boehm’s exhibition flute
nor his Patent are mentioned at all. In any event, that Patent covered
only the use of metal construction for “flutes of all
descriptions, clarionets and other similar wind instruments”, the
use of a cylinder bore and so-called “parabolic” head specifically in
the construction of flutes, plus an extra key to improve the middle C
natural of the “ordinary” flute. It did not include any specific
details of the hole arrangements or bore proportions referred to by the
Jury. In fact, none of the elements of the Patent are
specifically mentioned in the above citation.
The point here is that
Boehm did not win his Council Medal merely for his silver
flute or for his Patent in relation to that instrument. The Medal was
actually awarded for his own originality of thought and his intellectual
achievement in developing an overall system
of improvements which he had demonstrated (using his oboe as well as his
flutes) to be applicable to wind instruments in general, not merely the
flute. The Jury made this abundantly clear, and Carte had the same
opportunity as anyone else, and far more reason than most, to read what
the Jury had to say.
Furthermore, the official
entry list confirms that Boehm did not rely on Rudall &
Rose to exhibit his design concepts on his behalf (although Rudall &
Rose did exhibit a standard Boehm flute on their own stand, as did Clair
Godfroy), but instead exhibited instruments of his own
manufacture (flutes and an oboe) on his own stand. He did
so in his dual capacity as “Inventor and Manufacturer” under an
entirely separate entry number from Rudall & Rose. Accordingly, Boehm
won the Council Medal as an independent exhibitor in his own right. Rudall
& Rose did not win a Medal of any kind for their rendition
of Boehm’s flute and neither they nor Carte had any part whatsoever in
his intellectual achievement in winning the Council Medal for the design
concepts represented on his flutes and his oboe.
As soon as we understand
all of this, Carte’s statement in the Postscript that the Council
Medal was “obtained by M. Boehm for his cylinder flute, purchased,
patented, and manufactured solely by Rudall, Rose, Carte & Co”.
becomes wide open to question. Firstly, the statement used by Carte
clearly implies (and was doubtless intended to imply to the uninformed)
that it was a Boehm flute manufactured by Rudall, Rose, Carte & Co.
which took the Council Medal (since they are directly associated in the
above statement with the winning flute and are cited without
qualification as the “sole manufacturers”). This of course is
completely untrue. The Council Medal was not obtained for
any product of Rudall, Rose, Carte & Co. (a firm, by the way, which did
not exist in 1851!!), but for a system of design
improvements which had been demonstrated to the Jury using instruments
(flutes and an oboe) of Boehm’s own manufacture.
Moreover, the new Boehm
flute was most definitely not “purchased, patented and
manufactured solely by Rudall, Rose, Carte & Co.” – apart from
being patented in Germany and France and manufactured in Munich by Boehm
himself, it was also being manufactured at the time by the Paris firm of
Clair Godfroy (Boehm’s French manufacturing partners, who also
exhibited Boehm Patent flutes in 1851, in the process gaining a Prize
Medal of their own which apparently escaped Carte’s notice). Carte’s
statement may have been true at the time as far as England
was concerned, but then Carte did not include that
essential qualification! As written, the statement is completely
untrue.
Furthermore, it should by
now be abundantly clear that the Council Medal was not
obtained by Boehm merely for his cylinder flute (as stated by Carte) but
for his overall system of improvements and
their demonstrated applicability to other wind instruments (using the
oboe as his other example). The Jury could not have been more specific
in making this clear. Boehm won the Medal personally for
his ideas, not merely for his flute or his oboe!! The
criteria and the Jury comments set out above surely make this obvious.
Returning to the
designations applied to Carte’s flutes in his Postscript, it
would appear that in attaching the Council Medal to his own Patent
flute, Carte was claiming that because his 1851 Patent flute used
Boehm's cylinder bore and parabolic head plus his arrangement of the
fingerholes, it was the same flute with different mechanism and was thus
in effect the “Council Medal flute” just as much as Boehm's
was!!
Of course, Carte is
(possibly deliberately) missing three key points which must by now be
obvious to any objective reader. Firstly, the Jury citation for the
Council Medal made no specific reference whatsoever to Boehm’s cylinder
bore and “parabolic” head; secondly, the Council Medal was not awarded
to Boehm for his exhibition flutes alone; and finally, the Council Medal
recognized outstanding ideas, not objects, and was thus an
intellectual award to which Boehm alone was personally
entitled. As we have taken some pains to point out, there was really no
such thing as a “Council Medal Flute”. Not only that, but the
main features of Boehm’s flute Patent (the metal cylinder bore and the
so-called “parabolic” head) were not so much as mentioned in the
official Jury citation but were instead included in the far more general
statement regarding “acoustical proportions” in a citation which
covered far more than flutes in any case!
Carte’s Patent flutes
certainly used a number of the elements noted by the Jury for which
Boehm received his award, notably the bringing of the “acoustical
proportions of tubes and the fingerholes of wind instruments into
correct numbers and measurement”
and certain elements of the
“mechanism for the keys which gives facility and precision to the
execution, and by which the former difficulty of reaching or stopping
the holes at great distances, or of large size, is now surmounted”.
However, Carte
clearly expects his readers to miss the very important point that in
that sense, his design was almost completely derivative
and hence clearly not deserving of independent recognition
from an innovation standpoint.
The only real
differences were in the details of the mechanism - Carte's mechanism
is rather different, albeit based on the general style of
mechanism and keywork pioneered by Boehm.
Carte may have expected his
readers to miss these points, but the Jury appears to have been in no
doubt whatever regarding the truth of the matter!
They recommended the award
of the Council medal to Boehm for, among other things, his
intellectual originality in designing his mechanism as
exhibited on his own products (flutes and oboe), not to
Carte for his highly derivative flute as exhibited by Rudall & Rose.
The Jury had the same opportunity to recommend the award of a Council
Medal to Carte for his intellectual achievement in creating his new
mechanism (his sole innovation) if they had chosen to do so. They
declined, and accordingly Carte had no legitimate claim whatsoever to
the attachment of a Council Medal to his own flute designs.
Hence, to suggest on the
basis of the inclusion of certain aspects of Boehm’s overall design
concept that Carte’s flute effectively merited the award of the Council
Medal for innovation (to which only an individual, not a flute, was
actually entitled, as the Jury obviously knew very well) is a very long
stretch indeed! Carte’s published inscription on his Patent flutes
clearly implies (and was doubtless intended to imply) that they merited
both medals and thus embodied a higher level
of merit than Boehm’s own designs. It should by now be objectively
apparent that this represents an extreme case of “salesman’s license” on
Carte’s part!!
Setting aside the intrinsic
merits (or rather, the lack thereof) of Carte’s claims with respect to
his Patent flutes, the double designation applied by Carte to his own
flutes by comparison with the single designation applied to Boehm’s
design certainly appears indicative of a salesman’s desire on Carte’s
part to inflate the merits of his own flute by comparison with that of
Boehm, and also represents rather shabby treatment of Boehm in
appropriating an accolade awarded to Boehm personally and denied to
Carte by the Jury. This is also reflected in the listing of the
articles displayed under the entry for Rudall & Rose in the list of
exhibitors. Carte’s Patent flutes come first and have the longest
write-up, followed by Boehm’s flute and lastly by the improved
“ordinary” flute.
In all of this we see a
clear intention to promote the Carte Patent flutes over and above the
standard Boehm instrument. As far as the Jury was concerned, Carte’s
claim to innovation did not merit the level of recognition accorded to
Boehm. But this did not deter Carte in the least – he relied on the
undoubted probability that few if any of his readers would make
themselves sufficiently well-informed to spot the discrepancies in his
published claims. Indeed, it would appear that none of his immediate
rivals did so, otherwise there would surely have been considerable
criticism of his action?!? The key is that in order to understand the
truth of the matter, one first has to understand the award criteria,
which would have involved reading the “fine print” with a degree of
attention. It is of course quite possible that Carte himself did not
bother to check the true facts – as witness to his capacity for
carelessness in this regard we have only to look at his blatantly
incorrect statements regarding the
Boehm patent, which any of his rivals could have challenged
incontestably had they taken the trouble themselves to check his
statements!
Upon any objective study of
the true facts of the matter, the double award designation applied to
Carte’s Patent flute can only be viewed as a very clear attempt to
attribute an inflated degree of merit in the eyes of the 1851 Jury to
which the instrument was not in fact entitled in their eyes – the
only eyes which counted. In the final analysis, Carte’s action
in applying credit to his own flute for an award that was actually won
by Boehm personally for his intellectual innovations
scarcely supports the credibility of Carte’s stated respect for Boehm.
Carte’s Claims regarding the basis for
Rudall & Rose winning the Prize Medal
The above discussion
regarding the Council Medal brings us directly to a further point –
Carte’s claim in the Postscript that the Prize Medal was awarded
to his flute “for the improvement I have been enabled to make in
Boehm’s Flute as regards facility of fingering”. Now that the basis
for Carte’s application of the Council Medal to his own flute has
collapsed, it seems prudent that we examine the basis for the award of
the Prize Medal more closely.
We have already discussed
the criteria for the two Medal awards which could be obtained. We have
seen that the Prize Medal recognised outstanding workmanship
and production techniques while the Council Medal
recognised innovation of ideas or their application. The
two awards thus recognised two completely distinct areas
of excellence – the one manual, the other intellectual - and quite
intentionally implied no relative ranking whatsoever,
greatly easing the task of the Jury.
This award system had
actually been established at the request of the Juries themselves
specifically to recognize entirely distinct criteria and
hence to avoid any implications of relative merit!
This of course makes
complete nonsense of Carte’s previously-quoted statement in his 1857 “Times”
advertisement that
“there were three awards,
representing three degrees of merit”.
As soon as one applies the
Awards criteria discussed above to the matter under discussion, the true
situation becomes quite clear, in the present authors’ opinion at
least. The Prize Medal was to be awarded for outstanding
execution of ideas rather than for the ideas themselves. The
cited objects were only relevant as the vehicles upon
which the makers had demonstrated their skill. Carte’s
Patent flutes as manufactured by Rudall & Rose met this criterion
perfectly – the makers were utilising the then-new technique of
all-metal construction (as included in the Boehm Patent notwithstanding
Carte’s extraordinary claim to the contrary, discussed
elsewhere), and doing so to a
very high standard using a challenging showpiece. Carte’s 1851 Patent
flutes with their very elegant but rather delicate mechanism required an
extremely high standard of workmanship in order to function properly and
thus gave Rudall & Rose a perfect vehicle upon which to
demonstrate their manufacturing expertise. There can be little doubt
that they fully merited their award!
Presumably, Rudall & Rose’s
Medal-winning workmanship was applicable to all of the
flutes that they made, not only Carte’s. But by virtue of its relative
complexity, his flute undoubtedly provided them with an ideal vehicle
through which to demonstrate their skill to the Jury, and
this may perhaps explain the fact that Carte’s flutes were specifically
cited. We shall examine this matter further in a following section.
Some evidence of the
relative implications of the two Medal awards in the eyes of the Juries
(the only eyes which counted) may be gathered from the
fact that, while 2,918 Prize Medals were awarded, only 170 exhibitors
were judged to have earned the Council Medal. Clearly there were, then
as now, far fewer individuals with truly original ideas than there were
people with skilled hands! The relative proportion of awards granted in
the two categories shows that the Juries understood their business very
well indeed and were readily able to distinguish between innovation and
mere execution of ideas.
In summary, the Prize Medal
was won (and doubtless very fairly won) by Rudall & Rose for their
undoubtedly fine execution of Carte’s design. The Award
criteria make it abundantly clear that innovation did not enter into the
matter, and hence Carte himself did not win any award at
all for his highly derivative design.
Carte’s claim to have won
the Prize Medal “for
the improvement I have been enabled to make in Boehm’s Flute as regards
facility of fingering”
can only be regarded as
completely spurious.
If any doubt remained that
Carte’s design was not the basis for the award of the
Prize Medal, it is only necessary to review the rest of the Prize Medal
awards on the official List to which Carte referred but which he failed
to quote in full after making a start with Card. Apart from the awards
to Carte’s fellow London flute-makers Pask and Ward (albeit not
specifically for their flutes), Prize Medals specifically for
flutes were in fact won by no less than three other makers –
Buffet and Clair Godfroy of Paris (the latter for his own rendition of
the Boehm flute, among others!) and Eisenbrandt of Baltimore, USA.
None of these makers
exhibited any innovative designs, focusing instead upon high-quality
renditions of existing designs. It follows that these other awards were
not for any design innovations developed by the makers in
question, any more than Rudall & Rose’s award was for Carte’s design.
All of these awards, like that gained by Rudall & Rose,
were won by the makers for the fine workmanship displayed
in their exhibits. If innovation of design had come into the matter of
the Prize Medal awards, the exhibits of the other flute makers with
their essentially standard designs would not have qualified.
Carte’s Double Standard with respect to
the Boehm flute
Now that we have clarified
both the Council Medal and Prize Medal situations at the 1851
Exhibition, it is perhaps time to reflect upon another aspect of this
rather unsatisfactory affair. The record shows unarguably that Carte
was quite comfortable with the notion of the transfer of an award from
one instrument to another, even if that instrument did not actually win
the award. Given our understanding at this point that the Prize Medal
was awarded strictly for workmanship and that Rudall &
Rose’s workmanship was presumably applied uniformly to all
of their products, it must now be obvious that Carte could far more
legitimately have applied the Prize Medal designation to his firm’s
rendition of the standard Boehm flute (along with the Council Medal
which he did apply) than he could apply the Council Medal to his own
flute.
In fact, the only
legitimate basis for Carte not acting in this manner would
be if Rudall & Rose did not make the Boehm
instrument to the same high standard, reserving their “Prize
Medal” standard of workmanship for Carte’s Patent flutes. Otherwise,
Carte’s cavalier approach to the appropriation of Medal honors should
surely have worked both ways, and Boehm’s flute should have been equally
entitled to the same double designation!
It is extremely difficult
for the present authors to believe that a firm with the reputation of
Rudall, Rose, Carte & Co. would have deliberately applied a double
standard of workmanship to their products. Hence their failure to attach
the Prize Medal for workmanship to their other products (including
Boehm’s flute) while assigning credit in the other direction can only be
viewed as a deliberate strategy intended to attach an inflated degree of
merit to Carte’s design by comparison with Boehm’s flute which the 1851
Jury obviously felt that it did not deserve. In effect, Carte was quite
flagrantly reversing the findings of the Jury and hoping that no-one
would notice! Until now, he has been justified in his hopes. On the
face of it, pure salesmanship with little attention paid to the true
facts.
The only
alternative to this very unsatisfactory finding is that the firm was
quite deliberately applying a double standard of workmanship to their
products. Hardly consistent with the reputation for quality that they
had so painstakingly built up over the years!
At this point it is worth
pausing to note that, although it was less mechanically complex (and
hence less prone to regulation problems) than the Carte design, the
standard Boehm flute nonetheless offered a very comparable degree of
construction challenge to that posed by Carte’s flutes. This was
certainly reflected in the case of the Prize Medals awarded to Clair
Godfroy for their full range of flutes, including their
rendition of their own most complex model, the Boehm cylinder flute.
This being the case, one is forced to wonder why the Prize
Medal for excellence of workmanship was specifically awarded to Rudall &
Rose for “Carte’s Boehm Patent Flute” and not, as in the case of
Godfroy, for their full range of Boehm-based flutes.
The logical presumption is
that the firm had invested a great deal more effort in making their
“Exhibition” examples of Carte’s flute than they had with respect to
their rendition of Boehm’s model! Otherwise, surely the award for
excellence of workmanship would have been granted for “silver flutes
on Boehm’s Patent”?!? Buffet, for example, received his Prize Medal
for the manufacturing excellence of his entire exhibit, of
which flutes were only one component, implying a uniform standard of
excellence. Eisenbrandt and Godfroy received their workmanship awards
for “flutes” without qualification regarding the specific model,
again implying a certain uniformity of quality.
By contrast, the Prize
Medal awards to other makers such as Pask and Ward as well as Rudall &
Rose singled out the specific components of their exhibits which had
convinced the Jury that such an award was due to the makers concerned.
The implication of noticeably variable quality of execution between the
various components of the individual exhibits is surely very clear. It
would seem that the Jury members were very wide awake indeed. It
would be extremely interesting to have the opportunity of comparing
Rudall & Rose’s “Exhibition” versions of their Boehm and Carte models.
A further point to note is
the fact that if the Prize Medal designation was to be legitimately
applied to the production version of Carte’s flute, that
version should by rights have been made to the same standard as the
example which was on display at the Exhibition. Again, it would be
interesting to have the opportunity to determine if this was the case.
There is of course one
other possibility. The Rudall & Rose exhibits may indeed have been to a
uniform standard, and the Jury may have been ready to award the Prize
Medal to Rudall & Rose for “flutes”, just as they did in the
cases of Godfroy and Eisenbrandt, or for “silver flutes on Boehm’s
Patent”. This would speak far more positively to the commitment of
the firm to a uniform standard of quality.
However, such an outcome
would not have suited Carte at all – all of his associated actions show
that he was clearly out to promote his own Patent design over that of
Boehm. It thus seems quite possible that the highly persuasive and
business-minded Carte may have somehow persuaded the Jury to recognise
his flute specifically in citing the award to Rudall &
Rose. The only credible alternative to this is to presume
that Rudall & Rose, abetted by their new partner Carte, deliberately
presented a noticeably higher quality rendition of Carte’s flutes than
they did of Boehm’s. Neither approach reflects much credit on those
involved when it came to protecting the interests of their associate
Boehm.
Summary
Well, there we have it!
Not a particularly satisfactory finding, but it is truly difficult to
objectively view Carte’s claims with respect to the awards at the 1851
Exhibition as being anything other than an extreme stretching of the
facts to breaking point for the purposes of salesmanship. The only
credible alternative is to attribute a truly extraordinary ignorance of
the facts to Carte, a view which would be very much at odds with his
obvious level of intelligence and with the opportunities that he
undoubtedly had to become well informed.
In any case, as we have
pointed out in
Historical Veracity,
the motivation for false statements of this kind is immaterial if we are
concerned with establishing historical facts – all that matters is the
facts themselves and the correction of errors.
Overall, Carte’s published
claims to the basis for the recognition of his Patent flutes at the 1851
Exhibition can be readily shown to be completely without foundation
outside of the realm of salesmanship. Unless he was remarkably
ill-informed himself, Carte must have known this perfectly well, and it
would seem that he was relying on the undeniable probability that few if
any of his readers would be sufficiently familiar with, or take the
trouble to make themselves familiar with, the award criteria so as to be
able to challenge him. In this belief, history has proved him right
until now – even his rivals appear to have swallowed his story without
taking the trouble to check it out, just as they accepted his obvious
gaffes regarding the Boehm patent.
As with so many of these
studies of ours, some readers might now be saying “Who cares?!? It was
all a long time ago anyway!!” Our answer is that anything that can
shed light upon the character and credibility of the individuals upon
whose writings we are dependent in large part for our information on
this period is of value since it helps us to judge the credibility of
those writings and evaluate the interactions between individuals. On
this basis, it is clear that any statements that Carte may have made in
connection with the promotion of his business interests must be treated
with caution.
|