JOHN GAY(1685-1732)

THE LIFE OF WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.

THE THACKERAY COUNTRY.

SOME ASPECTS OF THACKERAY.

VICTORIAN NOVELISTS.

THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF LAURENCE STERNE.

THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WILLIAM BECKFORD OF FONTHILL.

THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WILLIAM COBBETT.

THE BERRY PAPERS: Being the Life and Letters of Mary and Agnes Berry.

THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF PHILIP DUKE OF WHARTON.

THE FIRST GEORGE.

"FARMER GEORGE."

"THE FIRST GENTLEMAN OF EUROPE."

AN INJURED QUEEN: CAROLINE OF BRUNSWICK.

THE BEAUX OF THE REGENCY.

SOME ECCENTRICS AND A WOMAN.

THE SOUTH SEA BUBBLE.

THE WINDHAM PAPERS. With an Introduction by the Earl of Rosebery, K.G.

THE WELLESLEY PAPERS.

BATH UNDER BEAU NASH.

BRIGHTON: ITS FOLLIES, ITS FASHIONS, AND ITS HISTORY.

ROYAL TUNBRIDGE WELLS.

John Gay was a considerable figure in the literary and social circles of his day. He was loved by Pope; Swift cared for him more than for any other man, and the letter in which Pope conveyed to him the sad tidings of Gay's death bears the endorsement: "On my dear friend Mr. Gay's death. Received December 15th [1732], but not read till the 20th, by an impulse foreboding some misfortune." Gay was on intimate terms with Arbuthnot and Lord Burlington, and Henrietta Howard, Lady Suffolk, was devoted to him and consulted him in the matter of her matrimonial troubles. He was the protégé of the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry. His "Fables" and "The Beggar's Opera" have become classics; his play "Polly" made history. Though he persistently regarded himself as neglected by the gods, it is nevertheless a fact that the fates were unusually kind to him. A Cabinet Minister made him a present of South Sea stock; Walpole appointed him a Commissioner of Lotteries; he was granted an apartment in Whitehall; Queen Caroline offered him a sinecure post in her Household. Because he thought Gay ill-used, the greatest man of letters of the century quarrelled with Lady Suffolk; for the same reason a Duchess insulted the King and wiped the dust of the Court from her shoes, and a Duke threw up his employment under the [pg viii]Crown. All his friends placed their purses and their houses at Gay's disposal, and competed for the pleasure of his company. Never was there a man of letters so petted and pampered.

It is somewhat strange that there should be no biography of a man so well-known and so much beloved. It is true that no sooner was the breath out of his body than Curll published a "Life." "Curll (who is one of the new horrors of death) has been writing letters to everybody for memoirs of his (Gay's) life," Arbuthnot wrote to Swift, January 13th, 1733: "I was for sending him some, which I am sure might have been made entertaining, by which I should have attained two ends at once, published truth and got a rascal whipped for it. I was over-ruled in this."^[1] Curll obtained no assistance from Gay's friends, and his book, issued in 1733, is at once inadequate and unreliable. Of Curll, at whose hands so many of Gay's friends had suffered, the poet had written in the "Epistle to the Right Honourable Paul Methuen, Esquire":—

Of some slight biographical value is the "Account of the Life and Writings of the Author," prefixed to the volume of "Plays Written by Mr. Gay," published 1760; but there is little fresh information in the "Brief Memoir" by the Rev. William (afterwards Archdeacon) Coxe, which appeared in 1797. More valuable is the biographical sketch by Gay's nephew, the Rev. Joseph Baller, prefixed to "Gay's Chair" (1820); but the standard authorities on Gay's life are [pg ix]Mr. Austin Dobson ("Dictionary of National Biography," Vol. XXI., 1890) and Mr. John Underwood ("Introductory Memoir" to the "Poems of John Gay" in the "Muses' Library," 1893).

Among Gay's correspondents were Pope, Swift, Lady Suffolk, Arbuthnot, the Duchess of Queensberry, Oxford, Congreve, Parnell, Cleland, Caryll and Jacob Tonson, the publisher. Unpublished letters to Caryll and Tonson, and to and from Lady Suffolk, are in the British Museum; letters which have appeared in print are to be found in the correspondence of Pope, Swift, and Lady Suffolk, in Nichols' "Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century," and in the Historical Commission's Report on the MSS. of the Marquis of Bath. Biographical information is also to be found, as well as in the works mentioned above, in Gribble's "Memorials of Barnstaple," Mrs. Delany's "Autobiography," Hervey's "Memoirs," Colley Cibber's "Apology," and Spence's "Anecdotes"; in the works and biographies of Pope, Swift, Steele, Addison, and Aaron Hill; in contemporary publications such as "A Key to 'The What D'ye Call It,'" "A Complete Key to the New Farce 'Three Hours After Marriage,'" Joseph Gay's "The Confederates"; and in numerous works dealing with dramatic productions and dramatic literature. A bibliography is printed in the "Cambridge History of English Literature" (Vol. IX., pp. 480-481; 1912); and a more detailed bibliography is being compiled by Mr. Ernest L. Gay, Boston, Mass., U.S.A., who has informed the present writer that he "has collected about five hundred editions of Gay's works, and also over five hundred playbills of his plays, running from the middle of the eighteenth century [pg x]to the middle of the nineteenth century." The most valuable criticisms of Gay as a man of letters are by Johnson in the "Lives of the Poets" and Thackeray in the "English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century." An interesting article on Gay by Mr. H.M. Paull appeared in the Fortnightly Review, June, 1912.

I am much indebted for assistance given to me during the preparation of this work by Sydney Harper, Esq., of Barnstaple, the happy possessor of Gay's chair; Professor J. Douglas Brude, of the University of Tennessee; C.J. Stammers, Esq.; and Ernest L. Gay, Esq., of Boston, Mass., U.S.A. I am especially grateful to W.H. Grattan Flood, Esq., Mus.D., who has generously sent me his notes on the sources of the tunes in "The Beggar's Opera," which are printed in the Appendix to this volume. The extracts from Gay's poetical works in this volume have been taken, by permission of the publishers, Messrs. George Routledge and Sons, Ltd., from the "Poems of John Gay," edited by Mr. John Underwood, in "The Muses' Library." Mr. John Murray has kindly allowed me to quote correspondence to and from Gay printed in the standard edition of Pope's works, edited by the late Rev. Whitwell Elwin and Professor Courthope, and published by him.

LEWIS MELVILLE. LONDON, April, 1921.

Footnotes:

The Gays were an old family, who settled in Devonshire when Gilbert le Gay, through his marriage with the daughter and heiress of Curtoyse, came into possession of the manor of Goldsworthy, in Parkham. This they held until 1630, when it passed out of their hands to the Coffins.^[1] Subsequently they were associated with the parish of Frittelstock, near Great Torrington. In the Parish Registers of Barnstaple the name appears from time to time: in 1544 is recorded the death of Richard Gaye, and later of John Gaye, "gentill man," and Johans Gay. From other sources it is known that Richard Gay was Mayor of the town in 1533, and Anthony Gay in 1638.^[2] The records of the family have not been preserved, but at some time early in the seventeenth century there was at Frittelstock one John Gay, whose second son, William, was the father of the poet.

William Gay resided at Barnstaple, and since he lived in a large house, called the Red Cross, at the corner of Joy Street, facing Holland Street, it is reasonable to assume that he was in easy circumstances. He married a daughter of Jonathan Hanmer, the leading Nonconformist divine of the town, and by her had five children. The first-born was a girl, who died in 1685; then came Katherine, born [pg 2]in 1676, who married Anthony Baller, whose son Joseph issued in 1820 the slim volume bearing the title of "Gay's Chair";^[3]in 1778, Jonathan; and three years later, Joanna, who married John Fortescue—possibly a relation of William Fortescue, afterwards Master of the Rolls, who is still remembered as a friend of Pope. The youngest child was John, the subject of this memoir, stated by his earlier biographers to have been born in 1688, but now known, from an entry in the Barnstaple Parish Register, to have been baptised in the Old Church on September 16th, 1685.

Mrs. Gay died in 1694, her husband a year later; and the custody of the four surviving orphaned children devolved upon their uncles. William Gay's brothers were John and Richard, who resided at Frittelstock; James, Rector of Meeth; and Thomas, who lived at Barnstaple. Mrs. Gay's only brother was John Hanmer, who succeeded to his father's pastoral office among the Congregational or Independent Dissenters at Barnstaple. Jonathan, the elder son of William Gay, who inherited the family property, was intended for the Church, but "severe studies not well suiting his natural genius, he betook himself to military pursuits,"^[4] and, probably about the time of his father's death, entered the army. Who took charge of the two girls is not known; but it is on record that John, after his father's death, and then in his tenth year, went to live at Barnstaple with his paternal uncle, Thomas Gay. It is interesting to note that in 1882, "among the pieces of timber carted away from the Barnstaple Parish Church [which was then undergoing restoration] has been found a portion of a pew, with the name 'John Gay,' and the date, 1695, cut upon it.... No other John Gay appears in the Parish Register."^[5]

Gay attended the Free Grammar School at Barnstaple, and among his schoolfellows there with whom he cemented [pg 3]an enduring friendship, were William Fortescue, to whom reference has been made above, and Aaron Hill.^[6] William Raynor was the headmaster when Gay first went to the Grammar School, but soon he removed to Tiverton, and was succeeded by the Rev. Robert Luck. Luck subsequently claimed that Gay's dramatic instincts were developed by taking part in the amateur theatricals promoted by him, and when in April, 1736, he published a volume of verse, he wrote, in his dedication to the Duke of Queensberry.^[7] Gay's patron and friend:—

These lines suggest that an intimacy between Gay and Luck existed long after their relations as pupil and master had ceased, but it is doubtful if this was the case. It is certainly improbable that the lad saw much of the pedagogue when he returned to Barnstaple for a while as the guest of the Rev. John Hanmer, since Luck was a bitter opponent of the Dissenters and in open antagonism to John Hanmer.

How long Gay remained at the Grammar School is not known. There are, indeed, no records upon which to base a narrative of his early years. It is, however, generally accepted that, on leaving school, he was apprenticed to a silk-mercer in London. This was not so unaccountable a proceeding then as appears to-day, for we know from Gibbon's "Memoirs" that "our most respectable families have not disdained the counting-house, or even the shop;... and in England, as well as in the Italian commonwealths, heralds have been compelled to declare that gentility is not degraded by the exercise of trade": for example, the historian's great grandfather, son of a [pg 4]country gentleman, became a linen-draper in Leadenhall Street.

Gay had no taste for trade, and did not long remain in this employment. According to one authority, "he grew so fond of reading and study that he frequently neglected to exert himself in putting oft silks and velvets to the ladies";^[8] while his nephew, the Rev. Joseph Bailer, says: "Young Gay, not being able to bear the confinement of a shop, soon felt a remarkable depression of spirits, and consequent decline of health; he was, therefore, obliged to quit that situation, and retire to Barnstaple, in the hope of receiving benefit from his native air."^[9] No doubt the mercer was willing enough to cancel the indentures of an apprentice so unsatisfactory as Gay probably was. Anyhow, Gay returned to Barnstaple, and stayed awhile with his maternal uncle, the Rev. John Hanmer.

It has been said that it was during this visit to Barnstaple that Gay began to write verses; and as most men who take to poetry began to dabble in ink in their youth, this statement may well be accepted. Only, so far no bibliographer has traced any of these early writings. Some poems, said to have been written by him in these days have been printed in the volume to which reference has already been made, "Gay's Chair: Poems never before printed, written by John Gay.... With a Sketch of his Life from the MSS. of the Rev. Joseph Bailer, his nephew. Edited by Henry Lee ... 1820," but the authenticity of these cannot definitely be accepted. A chair, said to have been the property of Gay at Barnstaple, was sold early in the nineteenth century to Henry Lee, who sent it to be repaired. "On taking out the drawer in front, which was somewhat broken," so runs the story, "I found at the back part of the chair a concealed drawer, ingeniously fastened with a small wooden bolt;... it was full of manuscript papers, some of which appeared to have [pg 5]slipped over, as I found them stuck to the bottom or seat of the chair."^[10] The poems in question are: "The Ladies' Petition to the Honorable the House of Commons," the longest and most ambitious of the pieces; "To Miss Jane Scott," "Prediction," "Comparisons," "Absence," "Fable," "Congratulation to a Newly-married Pair," "A Devonshire Hill," "Letter to a Young Lady," and "To My Chair." Of this small collection, Mr. John Underhill, who includes it in his admirable edition of Gay's poems in the "Muses' Library," writes: "The evidence in support of their authenticity is (1) the fact that they were found in a chair which was always spoken of by Gay's 'immediate descendants' as 'having been the property of the poet, and which, as his favourite easy chair, he highly valued'; and (2) that 'The Ladies' Petition' was printed nearly verbatim from a manuscript in the handwriting of the poet ... If really Gay's, they [the verses] may, we think, a great many of them, be safely regarded as the production of his youth, written, perhaps, during the somewhat extended visit to Devonshire which preceded his introduction to the literary world of Pope. The least doubtful piece, 'The Ladies' Petition' was probably 'thrown off' upon the occasion of his visit to Exeter in 1715."

If the verses are genuine, they have such biographical interest as is afforded by an allusion to a youthful love-affair. There are lines "To Miss Jane Scott":—

It is presumedly to the same young lady he was referring [pg 6]in the verses written probably shortly after he returned to London after his visit to Devonshire:—

That another girl there was may be gathered from the "Letter to a Young Lady," who was not so devoted as Jane Scott, for the poet writes:

Footnotes:

Gay's health was improved by his stay in his native town, and presently he returned to London, where, according to the family tradition, he "lived for some time as a private gentleman."^[1] Mr. Austin Dobson has pointed out that this is "a statement scarcely reconcilable with the opening in life his friends had found for him";^[2] but it may be urged against this view that Gay and his sisters had each a small patrimony.^[3] If it is assumed that he returned to the metropolis after he came of age in September, 1706, he may have been possessed of a sum of money, small, no doubt, but sufficient to provide him with the necessaries of life for some little time. When his brother, Jonathan, who had been promoted lieutenant at Cologne by Marlborough, under whom he served at Hochstadt and elsewhere, and captain by Queen Anne, committed suicide in 1709, after a quarrel with his colonel, John may have inherited some further share of the paternal estate.

When Gay was one-and-twenty, ginger was hot in his mouth. Wine, woman, and song appealed to him. It is not on record that he had any love-affair, save those indicated in the verses in "Gay's Chair"; but the indelicacy of many passages in his writings suggests that he was rather intimately acquainted with the bagnios of the town. No man whose sense of decency had not been denied could [pg 8]possibly have written the verses "To a Young Lady, with some Lamphreys," and this, even after making allowance for the freedom of the early eighteenth century. He certainly frequented the coffee-houses of Covent Garden and Pall Mall. Also, he roamed about the metropolis, and became learned in the highways and byways, north and south, and east and west—a knowledge which bore excellent fruit in "Trivia."

Gay was then, as ever, a great eater. "As the French philosopher used to prove his existence by cogito, ergo sum," Congreve wrote to Pope long after, "the greatest proof of Gay's existence is edit, ergo est."^[5] He ate in excess always, and not infrequently drank too much, and for exercise had no liking, though he was not averse from a ramble around London streets. As the years passed, he became fat, but found comfort in the fact that some of his intimates were yet more corpulent. To this, he made humorous reference in "Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece":—

Gay had a passion for finery. To this foible Pope, in the early days of his acquaintance with the young man, made reference in a letter to Swift, December 8th, 1713: "One Mr. Gay, an unhappy youth, who writes pastorals during the time of Divine Service, whose case is the more deplorable, as he hath miserably lavished away all that silver he should have reserved for his soul's health, in [pg 9]buttons and loops for his coat." Gay was not only well aware of this weakness, but he deplored it, though he could never contrive to overcome it. He made allusion to it in some lines known as the "Epigrammatical Petition," addressed to Lord Oxford,^[7] in June, 1714, and also in the prologue to "The Shepherd's Week":—

Gay now renewed his acquaintance with his old schoolfellow, Aaron Hill, who, it is said, though on doubtful authority, employed him as an amanuensis when setting on foot the project of answering questions in a paper, styled the British Apollo, or, Curious Amusements for the Ingenious.^[8] The first number of this publication appeared on March 13th, 1708, and it was issued on Wednesdays and Fridays until March 16th, 1711. Gay referred to it in his pamphlet, "The Present State of Wit," published in May 1711: "Upon a review of my letter, I find I have quite forgotten the British Apollo, which might possibly have happened from its having of late retreated out of this end of the town into the country, where I am informed, however, that it still recommends itself by deciding wagers at cards and giving good advice to shopkeepers and their apprentices." Whether or no Gay ever contributed to the British Apollo, it seems likely that it was through the good offices of Hill that in May, 1708, Gay's poem, "Wine," was published by William Keble at the Black-Spread-eagle in Westminster Hall, who, about the same time, brought out a translation by Nahum Tate, the Poet Laureate, and Hill, of a portion of the thirteenth book of Ovid's "Metamorphoses."

"[pg 10]Wine," a subject on which Gay, even at the age of twenty-two, could write with some authority, secured a sufficient popularity to be paid the doubtful compliment of piracy in 1709, by Henry Hill, of Blackfriars, on whom presently the author neatly revenged himself in his verses, "On a Miscellany of Poems to Bernard Lintott," by the following reference:—

This blank-verse poem, which may have been suggested by John Philips' "Cider," published in 1708, is written in the mock-heroic strain, and although it has no particular value, shows some sense of humorous exaggeration, of which Gay was presently to show himself a master.

These are the opening lines. The concluding passage describing the tippling revellers leaving the tavern suggests, as has more than once been pointed out, the hand that afterwards wrote "Trivia."

So far as is known, Gay preserved a profound silence for three years after his publication of "Wine," and then, on May 3rd, 1711, appeared from his pen, "The Present State of Wit, in a Letter to a Friend in the Country," sold at the reasonable price of three-pence. This attracted the attention of Swift. "Dr. Freind^[9] ... pulled out a two-penny pamphlet just published, called 'The State of Wit', giving the characters of all the papers that have come out of late," he wrote in the "Journal to Stella," May 12: "The author seems to be a Whig, yet he speaks very highly of a paper called the Examiner, and says the supposed author of it is Dr. Swift. But, above all things, he praises the Tatlers and Spectators, and I believe Steele and Addison were privy to the printing of it. Thus is one treated by the impudent dogs." In this unambitious little sketch, as the author puts it, he gives "the histories and characters of all our periodical papers, whether monthly, weekly or diurnal," and it is, therefore, of value to the student of the early days of English journalism. He claimed to write without political bias: "I shall only promise that, as you know, I never cared one farthing either for Whig or Tory, so I shall consider our writers purely as they are such, without any respect to which party they belong." In "The Present State of Wit" most of the better-known periodical writers are introduced. Dr. William King is mentioned, not he who was the Archbishop of Dublin, nor he who was the Principal of St. Mary Hall, Oxford, but he of whom it was said that he "could write verses in a tavern three hours after he could not speak," who was the author of the "Art of Cookery" and the "Art of Love," and [pg 12]who in 1709 had fluttered the scientific dovecotes by parodying the "Philosophical Transactions" in the Useful Transactions in Philosophy and Other Sorts of Learning, of which, however, only three numbers were issued. John Ozell was pilloried as the author of the Monthly Amusement, which was not, as the title suggests, a periodical, but was merely a title invented to summarise his frequent appearances in print. "It is generally some French novel or play, indifferently translated, it is more or less taken notice of, as the original piece is more or less agreeable." Defoe takes his place in the gallery as the editor and principal contributor to the weekly Poor Review, that is, the Weekly Review (which was published weekly from February 19th, 1704, until 1712) which, says Gay, "is quite exhausted and grown so very contemptible, that though he has provoked all his brothers of the quill round, none of them will enter into a controversy with him."

The periodical publications of the day are passed under review: the Observer, founded in 1702 by John Tutchin, and after his death five years later, conducted by George Ridpath, editor of the Flying Post, until 1712, when it had almost entirely ceased to please, and was finally extinguished by the Stamp Tax; the weekly Examiner, set up in August, 1710, in opposition to the Whig Taller, numbering among its contributors Dr. King, St. John, Prior, Atterbury, and Freind, and managed by Swift from No. 14 (October 26th, 1710); the Whig Examiner, the first issue of which appeared on September 14th, 1710, its five numbers being written by Addison; the Medley, another Whig paper, which ran from August, 1710, to August, 1711, and was edited by Arthur Mainwaring, with the assistance of Steele, Oldmixon, and Anthony Henley (a wit and a man of fortune, to whom Garth dedicated "The Dispensary," and who distinguished himself by describing Swift as "a beast for ever after the order of Melchisedec"). The Tatter, which appeared three times a week from April 12th, 1709, to January 2nd, 1711, was of course mentioned, [pg 13]and well-deserved tributes were paid to Steele and Addison. Of Addison he wrote with appreciation, but briefly: "This is that excellent friend to whom Mr. Steele owes so much, and who refuses to have his pen set before those pieces which the greatest pens in England would be proud to own. Indeed, they could hardly add to this gentleman's reputation, whose works in Latin and English poetry long since convinced the world that he was the greatest master in Europe of those two languages." Of Steele, Gay wrote at greater length: "To give you my own thoughts of this gentleman's writings, I shall, in the first place, observe that there is a noble difference between him and all the rest of our polite and gallant authors. The latter have endeavoured to please the age by falling in with them, and encourage them in their fashionable views and false notion of things. It would have been a jest, some time since, for a man to have asserted that anything witty could be said in praise of a married state, or that devotion and virtue were any way necessary to the character of a fine gentleman. Bickerstaff ventured to tell the town that they were a parcel of fops, fools and coquettes; but in such a manner as even pleased them, and made them more than half-inclined to believe that he spoke truth. Instead of complying with the false sentiments and vicious tastes of the age—either in morality, criticism, or good breeding—he has boldly assured them that they were altogether in the wrong; and commanded them, with an authority which perfectly well became him, to surrender themselves to his arguments for virtue and good sense. It is incredible to conceive the effect his writings have had on the town; how many thousand follies they have either quite banished, or given a very great check to! how much countenance they have added to virtue and religion! how many people they have rendered happy, by showing them it was their own fault if they were not so! and, lastly, how entirely they have convinced our young fops and young fellows of the value and advantages [pg 14]of learning! He has indeed rescued it out of the hands of pedants and fools, and discovered the true method of making it amicable and lovely to all mankind. In the dress he gives it, it is a welcome guest at tea-tables and assemblies, and is relished and caressed by the merchants on the 'Change. Accordingly there is not a lady at Court, nor a banker in Lombard Street who is not verily persuaded that Captain Steele is the greatest scholar and best casuist of any man in England. Lastly, his writings have set all our wits and men of letters on a new way of thinking, of which they had little or no notion before: and, although we cannot say that any of them have come up to the beauties of the original, I think we may venture to affirm, that every one of them writes and thinks much more justly than they did some time since."

Gay's agreeable personality secured him many friends. Not later than the spring of 1711 he made the acquaintance of Henry Cromwell, whom he later described as "the honest hatless Cromwell with red breeches," by whom he was introduced to Pope, who was at this time a member of Addison's circle, and generally recognised as a rising man of letters. Pope evidently liked Gay, who was his senior by nearly three years, but was as a child in worldly wisdom. On July 15th, 1711, Pope wrote to Cromwell, "Pray give my service to all my friends, and to Mr. Gay in particular";^[10] and again, nine days later, addressing the same correspondent, he said: "My humble services, too, to Mr. Gay, of whose paper ['The Present State of Wit'] I have made mention to [Erasmus] Lewis."^[11] Gay, ever anxious to please those whom he liked and, perhaps, especially those who might be of use to him, when writing the verses, "On a Miscellany of Poems to Bernard Lintott" (which appeared in that publisher's Miscellany issued in May, 1712), eagerly took advantage to ingratiate himself with a number of people, in so far as he could do this [pg 15]by means of compliments. Gay tells the publisher that if he will only choose his authors from "the successful bards" praised by the author, then "praise with profit shall reward thy pains"; and—

but, since an author should not praise one publisher at the expense of another, he has already had a kindly word for that more celebrated publisher, Jacob Tonson—"Jacob's mighty name." It may be mentioned in passing that Gay's "Poems on Several Occasions" bear the joint imprint of Lintott and Tonson. Gay waxed eloquent in these verses, when writing of the other contributors to the Miscellany, and bestowed praise upon his brother-poets in no measured quantity:—

It was in reference to these complimentary lines (which Pope saw in manuscript) that, on December 21st, 1711, Pope wrote to Cromwell: "I will willingly return Mr. Gay my thanks for the favour of his poem, and in particular for his kind mention of me."^[14] That letter is interesting also as being the last exchanged between Pope and his old friend; and it is instructive, as showing how the acquaintance between the poets was already ripening, that Pope turned to Gay in his distress at the defection of his earlier friend. "Our friend, Mr. Cromwell, too, has been silent all this year. I believe he has been displeased at some or other of my freedoms, which I very innocently take, and most with those I think my friends," he wrote to Gay on November 13th, 1712. "But this I know nothing of; perhaps he may have opened to you, and if I know you right, you are of a temper to cement friendships, and not to divide them. I really very much love Mr. Cromwell, [pg 17]and have a true affection for yourself, which, if I had any interest in the world, or power with those who have, I should not be long without manifesting to you."^[15]

If Pope had lost the friendship of Henry Cromwell, he was certainly anxious to strengthen the bond that was beginning to be forged between himself and Gay, to whom he wrote again: "I desire you will not, either out of modesty, or a vicious distrust of another's value for you—those two eternal foes to merit—imagine that your letters and conversation are not always welcome to me. There is no man more entirely fond of good-nature or ingenuity than myself, and I have seen too much of these qualities in Mr. Gay to be anything less than his most affectionate friend and real servant."^[16] That the intimacy between the poets waxed apace is evident, for when Pope wrote "A Farewell to London in the year 1715," the concluding stanza was:—

Footnotes:

There has been preserved a letter written by Aaron Hill to Richard Savage, June 23rd, 1766, which contains information concerning the life of the poet during the next two years. "I would willingly satisfy the curiosity of your friend, in relation to Mr. Gay, if it were not easy to get much further information than I am able to give, from Mr. Budgell or Mr. Pope; to the first of whom, the beginning of his life was best known, and to the last, its afternoon and evening," Hill wrote. "As to your question, whether Mr. Gay was ever a domestic of the Duchess of Monmouth, I can answer it in the affirmative; he was her secretary about the year 1713, and continued so, till he went over to Hanover, in the beginning of the following year, with Lord Clarendon, who was sent thither by Queen Anne. At his return, upon the death of that Queen, all his hopes became withered, but Mr. Pope (who you know, is an excellent planter) revived and invigorated his bays, and indeed, very generously supported him, in some more solid improvements; for remember a letter, wherein he invited him, with a very impoetical warmth that, so long as he himself had a shilling, Mr. Gay should be welcome to sixpence of it, nay, to eightpence, if he could but contrive to live on a groat."^[1]

It is now happily possible to elaborate the information given in this letter. Owing to the kindly offices of one or other of his friends, Gay had secured the appointment of domestic secretary to the Duchess of [pg 19]Monmouth. Anne Scott, Duchess of Buccleuch in her own right, had in 1663 married the Duke of Monmouth. He was executed for high treason in 1683, and three years later his widow married Charles, third Baron Cornwallis. Though she had not long mourned her first husband, she did not forget that he was on his father's side of the blood royal, and to the end of her days she preserved a regal state, which, however, did not make her unpopular at Court. "The Princess," wrote Lady Cowper, "loved her mightily, and certainly no woman of her years ever deserved it so well. She had all the life and fire of youth, and it was marvellous to see that the many afflictions she had suffered had not touched her wit and good nature, but at upwards of three-score she had both in their full perfection." Upon this appointment Dr. Johnson commented: "By quitting a shop for such service Gay might gain leisure, but he certainly advanced little on the boast of independence." As has been seen, however, there was an interval of several years between Gay's apprenticeship and his taking up this position as the Duchess's amanuensis—for it is doubtful if he ever attained to an office more responsible than this—he secured board and lodging, a little pocket money, and no doubt ample leisure. It was necessary for Gay to earn his livelihood, for he had spent his patrimony, and the earnings of his pen were as yet negligible. Indeed, the situation was almost ideal for an impecunious young man of letters. Anyhow, Gay was delighted, and Pope not less so. "It has been my good fortune within this month past to hear more things that have pleased me than, I think, in all my time besides," Pope wrote to Gay, December 24th, 1712; "but nothing, upon my word, has been so homefelt a satisfaction as the news you tell me of yourself; and you are not in the least mistaken when you congratulate me upon your own good success, for I have more people out of whom to be happy, than any ill-natured man can boast of." Pope, now well aware of Gay's natural indolence, was careful [pg 20]in this same letter to urge him to devote himself to literary labours in his leisure hours. "I shall see you this winter with much greater pleasure than I could the last, and I hope as much of your time as your Duchess will allow you to spare to any friend will not be thought lost upon one who is as much so as any man," he added. "I must also put you in mind, though you are now secretary to this lady, you are likewise secretary to nine other ladies, and are to write sometimes for them too. He who is forced to live wholly upon those ladies' favours is indeed in as precarious a condition as any who does what Chaucer says for subsistence; but they are very agreeable companions, like other ladies, when a man only passes a night or so with them at his leisure, and away."^[2]

Gay, the most amiable of men, never resented advice, perhaps because he so rarely followed it. In this case, however, he was surprisingly amenable. During the short time he was in the service of the Duchess of Monmouth, he drove his quill with some assiduity, and, indeed, at this period of his life he, who was presently distinguished as the laziest of men, worked diligently.

Before joining the household of the Duchess, he had written "Rural Sports: A Georgic," and this was published on January 13th, 1713, by Jacob Tonson, with an inscription to Pope:—

During 1713 Gay wrote such trifles as papers on "Reproof and Flattery," and "Dress," which were printed in the Guardian on March 24th and September 21st respectively; and some verses, "Panthea," "Araminta," "A Thought on Eternity," and "A Contemplation on Night," which appeared in Steele's "Poetical Miscellany." A more ambitious work was "The Fan," which had [pg 21]occupied him during the earlier part of the year. He was greatly interested in its composition, and corresponded with Pope while it was being written. "I am very much recreated and refreshed with the news of the advancement of 'The Fan,' which I doubt not will delight the eye and sense of the fair, as long as that agreeable machine shall play in the hands of posterity," Pope wrote to him, August 23rd, 1713: "I am glad your Fan is mounted so soon, but I would have you varnish and glaze it at your leisure, and polish the sticks as much as you can. You may then cause it to be borne in the hands of both sexes, no less in Britain than it is in China, where it is ordinary for a mandarin to fan himself cool after a debate, and a statesman to hide his face with it when he tells a grave lie."^[3] Again, on October 23rd, Pope wrote: "I shall go into the country about a month hence, and shall then desire to take along with me your poem of 'The Fan.'" The most ambitious as yet of Gay's writings, there are few to-day, however, who will question the judgment of Mr. Austin Dobson, "one of his least successful efforts, and, though touched by Pope, now unreadable."

Gay had thus early a leaning to the theatre, where presently he was to score one of his greatest successes, and he wrote "The Wife of Bath," which was produced at Drury Lane on May 12th, 1713. Steele gave it a "puff preliminary" in No. 50 of the Guardian (May 8th).

Gay was now become known as a man of letters, and had made many friends. Johnson says: "Gay was the general favourite of the whole association of wits; but they regarded him as a playfellow rather than as a partner, and treated him with more fondness than respect."^[4] There is some truth in this view, but of the affection he inspired there is no doubt. To know him was to love him. Wherein exactly lay his charm it is not easy now to say; but his gentle good-nature and his utter helplessness seems [pg 22]to have appealed to those of sterner mould. The extracts already given from Pope's correspondence show the affection with which he was inspired for his brother of the pen. Pope took him so completely under his massive wing that he remarked later, "they would call him one of my éleves."^[5] Pope accepted the position, and introduced him to his circle. He made him known to Swift, and that great man loved him as he loved no other man; and to Parnell, Arbuthnot, Ford—the "joyous Ford" of "Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece"—and Bolingbroke, in all of whom he inspired an affection, which endured through life. Parnell and Pope wrote jointly to him, and while in 1714 Pope was still addressing him as "Dear Mr. Gay," Parnell had already thrown aside all formality and greeted him as "Dear Gay." His old schoolfellow, William Fortescue, cleaved to him, and they were in such constant communication that when Pope wanted to see Fortescue, it was to Gay he appealed to arrange a meeting. The terms on which Gay was with the set is shown in Pope's letter to him, written from Binfield, May 4th, 1714: "Pray give, with the utmost fidelity and esteem, my hearty service to the Dean, Dr. Arbuthnot, Mr. Ford, and to Mr. Fortescue. Let them also know at Button's that I am mindful of them."^[6] Erasmus Lewis Gay knew now, and Caryll too, and the rest of the small literary set, who, with gusto, made him welcome among them. Indeed, when the "Memoirs of Scriblerus" were in contemplation, and, indeed, begun in 1713, Gay, then comparatively unknown, was invited to take a hand in the composition with the greatest men of the day. "The design of the Memoirs of Scriblerus was to have ridiculed all the false tastes in learning, under a character of a man of capacity enough, that had dipped into every art and science, but injudiciously in each," we have been told. "It was begun by a club of some of the greatest wits of the age. Lord Oxford, [pg 23]the Bishop of Rochester, Mr. Pope, Congreve, Arbuthnot, Swift, and others. Gay often held the pen; and Addison liked it well enough, and was not disinclined to come in to it."^[7] It does not transpire whether Gay had at this time met Swift, but that soon after they were in correspondence, appears from a letter from Pope to Swift, June 18th, 1714: "I shall translate Homer by the by. Mr. Gay has acquainted you with what progress I have made in it. I cannot name Mr. Gay without all the acknowledgments which I shall owe you, on his account."^[8]

Footnotes:

The outstanding literary event in Gay's career in 1714 was the pastoral, "The Shepherd's Week," which was published by R. Burleigh on April 15th, which contained a "Proeme to the Courteous Reader," and a "Prologue to the Right Honourable the Lord Viscount Bolingbroke," which was, in fact, a dedication:—

The author then states that he had heard of the Queen's illness and how the skill of Arbuthnot had restored her to health:—

[pg 25]Such loyalty, of course, the hardest heart must touch, but loyalty in this case had its reward, and the journey to Court was well worth the pains:—

But charming as were these ladies, there was still a better sight in store for the visitor:—

It was not Bolingbroke who inspired the pastorals, though he accepted the dedication. The true history of the origin of "The Shepherd's Week" is well set out by Mr. Underhill. "These pastorals, it should be explained, were written at the instigation of Pope," he has written. "The sixth volume of Tonson's 'Miscellany' had concluded with Pope's Pastorals and begun with those of Ambrose Philips. A few years after its publication a [pg 26]writer in the Guardian^[1] (probably Tickell^[2]) discussed the Pastoral in a series of papers, and gave the most extravagant praise to Philips. 'Theocritus,' he remarked, 'left his dominions to Virgil; Virgil left his to his son Spenser; and Spenser was succeeded by his eldest born, Philips.' Pope was not mentioned, and he set himself to redress the injustice by a device of characteristic subtlety. He wrote a sixth paper, in which he continued to illustrate the true principles of pastoral poetry from Philips' practice, but in such a way as to show the judicious reader by the examples given either the absurdity of Philips or the superior merit of Pope. The article was anonymously or pseudonymously forwarded to the Guardian, and was in due course published. Philips was furious, and providing himself with a birch rod, threatened to flog Pope. The latter, not content with his ingenious revenge, prevailed upon his friend Gay to continue the warfare and to burlesque Philips' performances in a series of realistic representations of country life."^[3] Gay entered into the sport with joy—it was a game after his own heart, and one for which his talent was particularly fitted. He begins his "Proeme to the Gentle Reader" with a most palpable hit: "Great marvel hath it been (and that not unworthily) to diverse worthy wits, that in this our island of Britain, in all rare sciences so greatly abounding, more especially in all kinds of poesie highly flourishing, no poet (though other ways of notable cunning in roundelays) hath hit on the right simple eclogue after this true ancient guise of Theocritus, before this mine attempt. Other Poet travelling in this plain highway of Pastoral I know none." Presently comes an attack but little disguised on Philips: "Thou will not find my shepherdesses idly piping on oaten reeds, but milking the kine, tying up the sheaves, [pg 27]or if the hogs are astray driving them to their styes. My shepherd gathereth none other nosegays but what are the growth of our own fields, he sleepeth not under myrtle shades, but under a hedge, nor doth he vigilantly defend his flocks from wolves, because there are none, as maister Spenser well observeth:—

Yet a third extract from this satirical "Proeme" must be given, and this in connection with the language of these eclogues: "That principally, courteous reader, whereof I would have thee to be advertised (seeing I depart from the vulgar usage) is touching the language of my shepherds; which is soothly to say, such as is neither spoken by the country maiden or the courtly dame; nay, not only such as in the present times is not uttered, but was never uttered in times past; and, if I judge aright, will never be uttered in times future. It having too much of the country to be fit for the court, too much of the court to be fit for the country; too much of the language of old times to be fit for the present, too much of the present to have been fit for the old, and too much of both to be fit for any time to come. Granted also it is, that in this my language, I seem unto myself, as a London mason, who calculateth his work for a term of years, when he buildeth with old material upon a ground-rent that is not his own, which soon turneth to rubbish and ruins. For this point, no reason can I allege, only deep learned examples having led me thereunto."

All this is pretty fooling; but Gay, who in the beginning intended "The Shepherd's Week" to be merely a burlesque, according to the suggestion of Pope, was carried away by his interest in the subject-matter, and produced a poem of undoubted value as a picture of rural life in his own day. With it he won approval as an original poet in his own day, and three centuries after critics still write in praise of it.

"[pg 28]These Pastorals were originally intended, I suppose, as a burlesque on those of Philips'; but, perhaps without designing it, Gay has hit the true spirit of pastoral poetry," Goldsmith said; and Dr. Johnson wrote: "The effect of reality of truth became conspicuous, even when the intention was to show them grovelling and degraded. These pastorals became popular, and were read with delight, as just representations of rural manners and occupations, by those who had no interest in the rivalry of the poets, nor knowledge of the critical disputes."^[4] Southey, too, had a kind word to say: "In attempting the burlesque Gay copied nature, and his unexpected success might have taught his contemporaries a better taste. Few poets seem to have possessed so quick and observing an eye"^[5]; and, coming to the present critics, Mr. Austin Dobson utters commendation: "The object went far beyond its avowed object of ridicule, and Gay's eclogues abound with interesting folk-lore and closely studied rural pictures."^[6]

With all his unworldliness Gay always had an eager, if not very keen, eye on the main chance, and finding himself surrounded by men of influence, he not unnaturally, in a day when men of letters often found their reward in Government places or in sinecures, looked to his acquaintances to further his interests. Great Britain was at this time represented at the Court of Hanover by a Mission which was from 1709 in charge of the Secretary, J. D'Alais, except when Special Missions were dispatched. Lord Rivers was Minister Plenipotentiary in 1710, and Thomas Harley went there as Ambassador Extraordinary in July, 1712, and again in the following February. Henry Paget, first Lord Burton, was appointed Ambassador in April, 1714, but resigned before he set forth, and Lord Clarendon was nominated in his stead.

These tidings were confirmed to Swift by Arbuthnot, who wrote from St. James's on June 12th: "You know that Gay goes to Hanover, and my Lord Treasurer has promised to equip him. Monday is the day of departure, and he is now dancing attendance for money to buy him shoes, stockings, and linen. The Duchess [of Monmouth] has turned him off, which I am afraid will make the poor man's condition worse instead of better."^[8] As Arbuthnot reported fourteen days later, Gay received a hundred pounds from the Treasury, and "went away a happy man."^[9] Lord Clarendon, whose mission it was formally to offer to the Elector George Lewis the condolences of Queen Anne on the death of his aged mother, the Electress Sophia, the heiress-presumptive to the British throne, who had passed away on June 8th, 1714, arrived at Hanover on July 16th.

Despite Gay's forebodings, the civilities of the Court of Hanover did happily "descend so low as to the Secretary." That he was presented to the royal circle and held converse with the highest in the land, is clear from a sentence in a letter from Arbuthnot to Swift, August 13th, 1714: "I have a letter from Gay, just before the Queen's death. Is he not a true poet, who had not one of his own books to give to the Princess that asked for one?"^[10] Here it was that Gay first made the acquaintance of Henrietta Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk, with whom he was presently on a footing of intimate friendship.

Lord Clarendon stayed at Hanover even a shorter time than he had expected. On July 30th Lord Oxford was dismissed, and the white staff was given to the Duke of Shrewsbury, one of whose first acts was to recall the Tory Ambassador. Two days later Queen Anne died, and the Elector George Lewis succeeded to her throne under the style of George I. Lord Clarendon returned at once to England, and with him came Gay, saddened by the blasting of his hopes of advancement.

He was welcomed back by his friends, and received in particular an enthusiastic greeting from Pope, who wrote on September 23rd: "Welcome to your native soil! Welcome to your friend! Thrice welcome to me! whether returned in glory, blessed with Court interest, the love and familiarity of the great, and filled with agreeable hopes, or melancholy with dejection, contemplative of the changes of fortune, and doubtful for the future—whether returned a triumphant Whig or a desponding Tory, equally all hail! equally beloved and welcome to me! If happy, I am to share in your elevation; if unhappy, you have still a warm corner in my heart and a retreat at Binfield in the worst of times at your service." In this same letter Pope, always anxious to assist Gay, added: "Pardon me if I add a word of advice in the practical way. Write something [pg 34]on the King, or Prince or Princess. On whatever foot you may be with the Court, this can do no harm."^[12]

The change of Government having dashed to the ground his hopes of advancement in the diplomatic service, Gay thought that he could not do better than follow Pope's suggestion. Like the majority of men of letters of his day, and not having the independence of spirit of Swift and Pope, he hungered after a patron—a Minister might be good, but Ministers go out of office, and a member of the reigning family would be better. Remembering the kindly welcome given him at Hanover by the royal lady who was now Princess of Wales, he had indulged in a dream that a place would be offered him in her household. "Poor Gay is much where he was, only out of the Duchess [of Monmouth]'s family and service," Arbuthnot wrote to Swift, October 19th, 1714. "He has some confidence in the Princess and Countess of Picborough; I wish it may be significant to him. I advised him to make a poem upon the Princess before she came over, describing her to the English ladies; for it seems that the Princess does not dislike that. (She is really a person that I believe will give great content to everybody). But Gay was in such a grovelling condition as to the affairs of this world, that his Muse would not stoop to visit him."^[13]

No proposal, however, being made to him, Gay, following the advice of Pope and Arbuthnot, proceeded to remind the new Court of his existence, and in November published "A Letter to a Lady, occasioned by the arrival of Her Royal Highness "—the "Lady" being, it is generally assumed, Mrs. Howard. In these verses he gave the assurance that he had desired the elements to arrange for the Princess an agreeable passage to England:—

With true poetic exaggeration he extolled Caroline's virtues, and then, so that there should be no excuse for misunderstanding, said in plain terms that he had desired a post at Court, and made it perfectly clear that he was still prepared to accept such employment, if so be as it was coupled with suitable remuneration:—

Gay's protestations of delight at the accession to the throne of the House of Hanover would probably have been regarded as more sincere if, unfortunately, he had not a few months before dedicated "The Shepherd's Week" to Bolingbroke. His very outspoken hint in the "Letter to a Lady" was ignored; but Caroline, who liked eulogy as much as anyone, received him kindly; and when in February, 1715, he produced "The What D'ye Call It" at Drury Lane Theatre, she and her consort attended the first performance. But still, no place was found for him at Court. "Tell me," Swift asked him so much later as 1723, "are you not under original sin by the dedication of your Eclogue to Lord Bolingbroke?"

Footnotes:

Undismayed by the failure of his first play, "The Wife of Bath," Gay made another bid for theatrical success with "The What D'ye Call It," which was performed at Drury Lane Theatre in February, 1715, and published in March of that year. In the preface Gay wrote: "I have not called it a tragedy, comedy, pastoral, or farce, but left the name entirely undetermined in the doubtful appellation of 'The What D'ye Call It' ... but I added to it 'A Tragi-Comi-Pastoral Farce,' as it contained all these several kinds of drama." Pope saw the play and wrote about it to Congreve, March 19th, 1715: "The farce of 'The What D'ye Call It' has occasioned many different speculations in the town, some looking upon it as a mere jest upon the tragic poets, others as a satire upon the late war. Mr. Cromwell, hearing none of the words, and seeing the action to be tragical, was much astonished to find the audience laugh, and says the Prince and Princess [of Wales] must doubtless be under no less amazement on the same account. Several Templars and others of the more vociferous kind of critics went with a resolution to hiss, and confessed they were forced to laugh so much that they forgot the design they came with. The Court in general has come in a very particular manner into the jest, and the three nights, notwithstanding two of them were Court [pg 37]nights, were distinguished by very full audiences of the first quality. The common people of the pit and gallery received it at first with great gravity and sedateness, and some few with tears; but after the third day they also took the hint, and have ever since been very loud in their claps. There are still sober men who cannot be of the general opinion, but the laughers are so much the majority that one or two critics seemed determined to undeceive the town at their proper cost, by writing dissertations against it to encourage them in this laudable design. It is resolved a preface shall be prefixed to the farce, in vindication of the nature and dignity of this new way of writing."^[1] The fact is that, as Johnson put it, "the images were comic and the action grave," and there were many mock-heroic passages which parodied tragedies, including Addison's "Cato" and Otway's "Venice Preserved," well-known in that day. Also it contained several ballads, of which perhaps the best is "'Twas when the seas were roaring" (Act II., Scene 8).

"The What D'ye Call It" was not a piece of much value, but it pleased the audience, and Gay was highly delighted. "Now my benefit night is over, it should be my first care to return my thanks to those to whom I am mostly obliged, and the civilities I have always received from you, and upon this occasion too, claims this acknowledgment," the author wrote to Caryll on March 3rd: "'The What D'ye Call It' met with more success than could be expected from a thing so out of the common taste of the town. It has been played already five nights, and the galleries, who did not know at first what to make of it, now enter thoroughly into the humour, and it seems to please in general better than at first. The parts in general were not so well played as I could have wished, and in particular the part of Filbert, to speak in the style of the French Gazette. Penkethman did wonders; Mrs. Bicknell performed miraculously, and there was much honour gained [pg 38]by Miss Younger, though she was but a parish child."^[2] Filbert was played by Johnson, Jonas Dock by Penkethman, Joyce ("Peascod's daughter, left upon the parish") by Miss Younger, and Kitty by Mrs. Bicknell, mentioned by the author in "Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece":—

The welcome given by the public to the play brought in its train some annoyance to the author: "I find success, even in the most trivial things, raises the indignation of scribblers," he wrote to Parnell on March 18th, "for I, for my 'What D'ye Call It' could neither escape the fury of Mr. Burnet or the German doctor. Then, where will rage end when Homer is to be translated? Let Zoilus hasten to your friend's assistance, and envious criticism shall be no more."^[3] A more biting attack than that of Thomas Burnet's Grumbler (No. 1, February 14th, 1715) or that of Philip Horneck in "The High German Doctor" was the "Key to 'The What D'ye Call It,'" written by the actor Griffin in collaboration with Lewis Theobald. About this Gay wrote to Caryll in April: "There is a sixpenny criticism lately published upon the tragedy of 'The What D'ye Call It,' wherein he with much judgment and learning calls me a blockhead and Mr. Pope a knave. His grand charge is against 'The Pilgrim's Progress' being read, which, he says, is directly levelled at Cato's reading Plato. To back this censure he goes on to tell you that 'The Pilgrim's Progress' being mentioned to be the eighth edition makes the reflection evident, the tragedy of 'Cato' being just eight times printed. He has also endeavoured to show that every particular passage of the play alludes to some fine part of the tragedy, which he says I have injudiciously and profanely abused."^[4]

Still, Gay could really afford to laugh at those who attacked or parodied him, for the play brought him, if [pg 39]not fame, at least notoriety. It also brought him some much-needed money. Pope told Caryll in March that Gay "will have made about £100 out of this farce"; and it is known that for the publishing rights Lintott gave him on February 14th £16 2s. 6d.

Gay, now a popular dramatist as well as an intimate friend of many of the leading men in literary circles, became known to people of high social rank, who, like his brethren of the pen, took him up and made a pet of him. In the summer of 1715 Lord Burlington, the "generous Burlington" of "Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece," invited him to accompany him to Devonshire, and Gay repaid the compliment by describing his "Visit to Exeter" in a poetical "Epistle to the Right Honourable the Earl of Burlington," the first lines of which are:—

During his stay in Devonshire Gay began the composition of "Trivia, or The Art of Walking the Streets of London." It was to this that Pope made allusion when writing to Caryll, January 10th, 1716: "Gay's poem [is] just on the brink of the press, which we have had the interest to procure him subscription of a guinea a book to a tolerable number. I believe it may be worth £150 to him on the whole."^[5] In addition to the subscriptions, Gay received from Lintott £43 for the copyright of the book, the copies of which were sold to the public at one shilling and sixpence each; and as, with humorous exaggeration, Arbuthnot wrote to Parnell: "Gay has got as much money by his 'Art of Walking the Streets' that he is ready to set up his equipage; he is just going to the bank to negotiate [pg 40]some exchange bills."^[6] The "Advertisement" prefaced to the poem runs:—

"The world, I believe, will take so little notice of me that I need not take much of it. The critics may see by this poem that I walk on foot, which probably may save me from their envy. I should be sorry to raise that passion in men whom I am so much obliged to, since they allowed me an honour hitherto only shown to better writers: that of denying me to be author of my own works. I am sensible this must be done in pure generosity; because whoever writ them, provided they did not themselves, they are still in the same condition. Gentlemen, if there be any thing in this poem good enough to displease you, and if it be any advantage to you to ascribe it to some person of greater merit, I shall acquaint you for your comfort, that among many other obligations, I owe several hints of it to Dr. Swift. And if you will so far continue your favour as to write against it, I beg you to oblige me in accepting the following motto:—

Whether Swift gave any direct assistance is doubtful. Mr. Austin Dobson thinks that it is not improbable that "Trivia" was actually suggested by the "Morning" and "City Shower" which Swift had previously contributed to Steele's Tatler. Probably these are among the "several hints" which Gay had in mind.

"Trivia" was published on January 26th, 1716, and was the one outstanding feature in the year in the biography of Gay. In the following March 26th there appeared a volume of "Court Poems," published by J. Roberts, who advertised them as from the pen of Pope, though the preface makes the authorship doubtful between Pope, Gay, and a Lady of quality, who was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. To the volume Lady Mary Wortley Montagu contributed "The Drawing Room," Pope "The Basset [pg 41]Table," and Gay "The Toilet." This last has been attributed to Lady Mary, and it has actually been printed among her poems; but, according to Pope, it is "almost wholly Gay's," there being "only five or six lines in it by that lady."

In 1716 Gay paid a second visit to Devonshire, and during the year he composed the "sober eclogue," "The Espousal," which probably arose out of a suggestion of Swift. "There is an ingenious Quaker^[7] in this town, who writes verses to his mistress, not very correct, but in a strain purely what a poetical Quaker should do, commending her looks and habit, etc." Swift wrote to Pope on August 30th, 1716: "It gave me a hint that a set of Quaker pastorals might succeed if our friend Gay could fancy it, and I think it a fruitful subject. Pray hear what he says. I believe farther, the pastoral ridicule is not exhausted, and that a porter, footman, or chairman's pastoral might do well; or what think you of a Newgate pastoral, among the whores and thieves there?"^[8] This letter is of especial importance in the biography of Gay, as it may well have sown in his mind the seed of "The Beggar's Opera."

About this time Gay was labouring on another play, "Three Hours After Marriage," which he wrote in collaboration with Pope and Arbuthnot. It is a sorry piece of work, and unworthy of any one, much less of the three distinguished men associated in the authorship. In the Epilogue it is written:—

but as a matter of fact one purpose of the play was, as Dr. Johnson said, "to bring into contempt Dr. Woodward, the fossilist, a man not really or justly contemptible." Woodward was the author of a "History of Fossils," and his name survives in the Woodwardian Professorship of [pg 42]Geology at Cambridge. He was introduced as Dr. Cornelius in "Martin Scriblerus":—

The bridegroom in the play is called Fossile, and there was no mistaking the intention. Dr. Woodward had many friends, and these made known their disgust in the most unmistakable manner when "Three Hours After Marriage" was produced on January 16th, 1717, at Drury Lane Theatre. It ran for seven nights. "It had the fate which such outrages deserved," Dr. Johnson has written; "the scene in which Woodward was directly and apparently ridiculed by the introduction of a mummy and a crocodile, disgusted the audience, and the performance was driven off the stage with general condemnation."^[9] The farce was not only dull, it was vulgar. And the geologist (played by Johnson) was not the only person introduced for the purpose of ridicule. Dennis was brought in as Sir Tremendous, and it was believed that Phoebe Clinket (played by Mrs. Bicknell) was intended for Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea, who, says Mr. Austin Dobson, "was alleged to have spoken contemptuously of Gay." Of this farce, Mr. Dobson writes: "It is perhaps fairer to say that he bore the blame, than that he is justly charged with its errors of taste"; and it is very probable that, while Gay generously accepted responsibility, Pope and Arbuthnot were equally culpable. "Too late I see, and confess myself mistaken in relation to the comedy; yet I do not think had I followed your advice and only introduced the mummy, that the absence of the crocodile had saved it," Gay wrote to Pope. "I cannot help laughing myself (though the vulgar do not consider it was designed to look ridiculous) to think how the poor monster and mummy were dashed at their reception; and when the [pg 43]cry was loudest I thought that if the thing had been written by another I should have deemed the town in some measure mistaken; and, as to your apprehension that this may do us future injury, do not think it; the Doctor [Arbuthnot] has a more valuable name than can be hurt by anything of this nature, and yours is doubly safe. I will, if any shame there be, take it all to myself, as indeed I ought, the notion being first mine, and never heartily approved of by you.... I beg of you not to suffer this, or anything else, to hurt your health. As I have publicly said that I was assisted by two friends, I shall still continue in the same story, professing obstinate silence about Dr. Arbuthnot and yourself."^[10]

The publication in book form of "Three Hours After Marriage" by Lintott, who paid £16 2s. 6d. for the copyright, a few days after the production, did nothing to arrest the torrent of abuse. "Gay's play, among the rest, has cost much time and long suffering to stem a tide of malice and party, that certain authors have raised against it," Pope wrote to Parnell. Amongst those foremost among the attackers was Addison, who perhaps had not forgotten or forgiven the parody of some of the lines in his play "Cato," which was introduced by Gay in "The What D'ye Call It." Gay, the most easy-going of men, was always stirred by criticism, and in this case he, with unusual energy, sat down to reply to his detractors. "Mr. Addison and his friends had exclaimed so much against Gay's 'Three Hours After Marriage' for obscenities, that it provoked him to write 'A Letter from a Lady in the City to a Lady in the Country' on that subject," so runs a passage in Spence's Anecdotes of Pope. "In it he quoted the passages which had been most exclaimed against, and opposed other passages to them from Addison's and Steele's plays. These were aggravated in the same manner that they served his, and appeared worse. Had it been published it would have made Addison appear ridiculous, [pg 44]which he could bear as little as any man. I therefore prevailed upon Gay not to print it, and have the manuscript now by me."^[11] In Spence's Anecdotes there is another passage bearing on the same matter: "A fortnight before Addison's death, ^[12] Lord Warwick ^[13] came to Gay and pressed him in a very particular manner 'to go and see Mr. Addison,' which he had not done for a great while. Gay went, and found Addison in a very weak way. He received him in the kindest manner and told him, 'that he had desired this visit to beg his pardon, that he had injured him greatly, but that if he lived he should find that he would make it up to him.' Gay, on his going to Hanover, had great reason to hope for some good preferment; but all his views came to nothing. It is not impossible but that Mr. Addison might prevent them, from his thinking Gay too well with some of the great men of the former Ministry. He did not at all explain himself, in which he had injured him, and Gay could not guess at anything else in which he could have injured him so considerably."^[14] It seems, however, more probable that Addison really had in mind the part he had taken in connection with "Three Hours After Marriage." Two critical publications, "A Complete Key to 'Three Hours After Marriage,'" and "A Letter to John Gay, Concerning his late Farce, entitled a Comedy," annoyed Gay; while Pope, too, and, in a minor degree, Arbuthnot, were attacked for their share in the farce. John Durand Breval, writing over the signature of Joseph Gay, published in 1717 "The Confederates: A Farce," in which he introduced a humorous caricature print of Pope, Gay and Arbuthnot, so that, says Professor Courthope, "Pope, at the height of his fame, found himself credited, though he seems to have had little to do with it, with the past paternity of a condemned play."^[15] Another incident, [pg 45]recorded by Professor Courthope, further angered Pope: "While he was still sore at the mishap, Colley Cibber, playing in 'The Rehearsal,' happened to make an impromptu allusion to the unlucky farce, saying that he had intended to introduce the two kings of Brentford, 'one of them in the shape of a mummy, and t'other in that of a crocodile.' The audience laughed, but Pope, who was in the house, appeared (according to Cibber's account) behind the scenes and abused the actor in unmeasured terms for his impertinence. Cibber's only reply was to assure the enraged poet that, so long as the play was acted, he should never fail to repeat the same words. He kept his promise, thus committing the first of that series of offences which, in the poet's vindictive memory, marked him down for elevation to the throne of Dulness which was rendered vacant by the deposition of King Tibbald."^[16] There is a rumour that Gay, in revenge for Cibber's banter of "Three Hours After Marriage," personally chastised the actor-dramatist,^[17] but there is nothing definitely known about this. Anyhow, Gay was so irritated by the failure of this play that he did not produce anything at a theatre during the next seven years.

How Gay managed to exist through the three years after the production of "Three Hours After Marriage" is one of the stumbling blocks for the biographer. Of literary achievement during this period his life was barren. It is true that when he was abroad or in the country he was a guest, but even with this his expenses must have amounted to something. As he earned nothing by his pen, unless his friends provided him with money as well as giving him hospitality, it looks as if some relative must have died and left him a small sum. "As for Gay," Pope wrote to Caryll, June 7th, 1717, "he is just on the wing for Aix-la-Chapelle, with Mr. Pulteney, the late Secretary (at War)."^[18] Pulteney who had resigned office when there was a split in the Ministry, had in December, 1714, married a very beautiful [pg 46]woman, Anne Maria Gumley, daughter of a wealthy glass manufacturer. With them Gay went abroad for some months, and perhaps the solution of the problem above stated, is that while he went nominally as their guest, he was actually paid a salary as companion or secretary.

It is evident from Gay's "Epistle to the Right Honourable William Pulteney, Esq." (published in 1717) that the party stayed some while at Paris, for therein is an account of that city, an account in which the author betrays a sad insularity; and he was certainly at Aix in November. "I should not forget to acknowledge your letter sent from Aix. You told me that writing was not good with the waters, and I find since, you are of my opinion, that it is as bad without the waters. But, I fancy, it is not writing, but thinking, that is so bad with the waters; and then you might write without any manner of prejudice if you write like our brother poets of these days." Pope wrote to him on November 8th: "... That Duchess [of Hamilton],^[19] Lord Warwick, Lord Stanhope, Mrs. Bellenden, Mrs. Lepell, and I cannot tell who else, had your letters ... I would send my services to Mr. Pulteney, but that he is out at Court, and make some compliment to Mrs. Pulteney, if she was not a Whig."^[20]

From this letter it is evident that Gay was becoming well known in fashionable circles, and it is also clear that he had friends in the Court circle. "Gay is well at Court, and more than ever in the way of being served than ever.... Gay dines daily with the Maids of Honour," Pope had written to Martha Blount in December, 1716; and Gay, who would rather have had a place in the Household with nothing to do and no responsibility than anything else in the world, was not the man to refrain from endeavouring to improve the occasion. Mrs. Howard he had first met at Hanover, and in London contrived to turn the acquaintanceship into friendship. Knowing Gay's [pg 47]character and his ambition, it is probably doing him no injustice to say that he was first drawn to the lady by the belief that she might further his aims. However, it is only fair to say that he soon came to like her for herself, and long after he was convinced that she could be of no service to him he remained a very loyal and intimate friend. He was taken entirely into her confidence, as will presently be seen, and she even called him in to assist her when she was conducting an elaborate and stilted epistolatory flirtation with Lord Peterborough. It was most probably she who introduced him to Mrs. Bellenden, Mrs. Lepell, and the other ladies of the Court. Of Mrs. Howard and Gay, Dr. Johnson wrote: "Diligent court was paid to Mrs. Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk, who was much beloved by the King and Queen, to engage her interest for his promotion; but solicitations, verses, and flatteries were thrown away; the lady heard them and did nothing." This, however, is manifestly unfair, for it is now known that Mrs. Howard's influence was negligible.

To the ladies of the Court and others of Pope's friends, Gay paid tribute in "Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece":—

Gay was now on intimate terms with Lord Harcourt, whom he presently introduced into "Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece":—

and early in 1718 he visited him, first at Cockthorpe and then at Stanton Harcourt, at which latter seat Pope was staying, working on the fifth volume of the "Iliad." In the following year Gay again crossed the Channel, possibly for the second time with the Pulteneys, but the only record of this trip is to be found in the following letter:—

Footnotes:

Gay in 1720 was in his thirty-fifth year, and he had commenced author some twelve years before this date. During this period his output had been very small, and his success not conspicuous. As a dramatist he had been a complete failure—his first play, "The Wife of Bath," was still-born, and the others, "The What D'ye Call It" and "Three Hours After Marriage," had practically been hooted off the stage, and had brought him in their train a considerable degree of unpopularity. Of his poems, the only ones of any marked merit were "The Shepherd's Week," and "Trivia," and even these were unambitious, though not without merit. Gay now bethought him of collecting his poems, published and unpublished, and they were issued in two quarto volumes early in 1720, with the joint imprint of Jacob Tonson and his old publisher, Bernard Lintott, and with a frontispiece by William Kent.

The "Poems on Several Occasions," as the collection was styled, were issued by subscription. His friends supported him admirably. Lord Burlington and Lord Chandos each put down his name for fifty copies, Lord Bathurst for ten copies; in all Gay made more than [pg 51]£1,000 by the publication. To this success he alluded in his "Epistle to the Right Honourable Paul Methuen, Esq."^[1]

What to do with the thousand pounds—a sum certainly far larger than any of which he had ever been possessed—Gay had not the slightest idea. He had just enough wisdom to consult his friends. Erasmus Lewis, a prudent man of affairs, advised him to invest it in the Funds and live upon the interest; Arbuthnot advised him to put his faith in Providence and live upon the capital; Swift and Pope, who understood him best, advised him to purchase [pg 52]an annuity. Bewildered by these divergent counsels, he did none of these things. Just when he was confronted with the necessity of making up his mind, Pope's friend, James Craggs the younger, of whom he wrote in "Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece":—

made him a present of some stock of the South Sea Company, at the same time, no doubt, telling him that in all probability it would rise in value. Here was a chance, dear to the heart of this hunter after sinecures, of getting something for nothing—or next to nothing. With his thousand pounds he purchased more South Sea stock. At what price Gay bought it is impossible to say, but it is not unlikely that Craggs' present was made in April, 1720, when the first money-subscription was issued at the price of £300 for each £100 stock. The poet's good fortune was at this moment in the ascendant. A mania for speculation burst over the town, and everybody bought and sold South Sea stock. In July it was quoted at £1,000. If Gay had then sold out he would have realised a sum in the neighbourhood of £20,000. His friends implored him to content himself with this handsome profit, but in vain. As Dr. Johnson put it, "he dreamed of dignity and splendour, and could not bear to obstruct his own fortune."^[2] He who a few months ago had been practically penniless, could not now bring himself to be satisfied with an income of about a thousand a year. Realising that it was impossible entirely to overcome his obduracy, his friends then begged him at least to sell so much as would produce even a hundred a year in the Funds, "which," Fenton said to him, "will make you sure of a clean shirt and a shoulder of mutton every day." Gay was not to be moved from his resolve to become a great capitalist. Arguments were of no avail. The wilful man finally had his way. Almost from the moment he refused to yield to his friends' entreaties the price of South Sea stock declined rapidly. [pg 53]The "Bubble" burst, and in October South Sea stock was unsaleable at any price. Gay lost not only his profit but his capital, and was again reduced to penury.

Gay spoke his mind about the "Bubble" in "A Panegyrical Epistle to Mr. Thomas Snow, Goldsmith, near Temple Bar: Occasioned by his Buying and Selling of the Third Subscriptions, taken in by the Directors of the South Sea Company, at a thousand per cent," which was published by Lintott in 1721:—

One of the immediate results of the disaster was Gay's inability to fulfil his obligations to one of the publishers of his "Poems on Several Occasions":—

The loss of his fortune was, of course, a very severe blow to Gay, but as ever, his friends gathered round him. Instead of being angry with him for his folly—but no one of his friends was ever angry with him—they looked upon him, and treated him, just as a spoilt child who had disobediently tried to get over a hedge and had scratched himself in the endeavour. They put their heads together to find "something" for him. Gay, of course, was not easy to deal with; it was difficult to make him listen to reason. He could not be brought to believe that it was not his due to receive something for nothing. He had been secretary to Lord Clarendon's brief Mission to Hanover; why had not diplomacy something to offer him? The Princess of Wales had asked for a copy of a set of his verses; was there no place for him at Court? He had praised members of the Royal Family in verse; was there somewhere—somehow—a sinecure in the Household for him? It seems that Gay really could not understand the position. Could not Mrs. Howard do something in his interest? Could not the friends of Pope do aught to secure that little post? Or Lord Burlington, or Lord Bathurst, or William Pulteney, or some one of the rest? [pg 55]He became petulant, and it is a tribute to his charm that not one of these persons was ever disgusted with him, but continued to feed him, keep him, and pet him, and made their friends and their friends' friends do likewise. In fact, this delightful, whimsical, helpless creature leant upon all who were stronger, and each one upon whom he leant loved him to his dying day.

Gay's health, which was never robust, gave way under his bitter disappointment, and in 1721 he went in the early autumn to Bath, where Mrs. Bradshaw wrote to Mrs. Howard, September 19th: "He is always with the Duchess of Queensberry." In the following year he was again ill, and went again to recuperate at the Somersetshire watering place.

[pg 56]This was certainly ungrateful of Gay, but allowance may perhaps be made for him on the ground that he was, as Coxe has written, "of a sanguine disposition, was easily raised and as easily depressed. He mistook the usual civilities of persons of distinction for offers of assistance, and argued from the common promises of a Court certain preferment." He accordingly always suffered from mortification, about which he was prone to discourse. This was a foible well known to his friends, and even Pope could not refrain from gently chaffing him: "I wish you joy of the birth of the young Prince,^[5] because he is the only prince we have from whom you have had no expectations and no disappointments."^[6]

Gay's friends, who had persistently been on the look-out to help him, at last met with some small measure of success. "I am obliged to you for your advice, as I have been formerly for your assistance in introducing me into business," Gay wrote to Swift from London, February 3rd, 1723. "I shall this year be Commissioner of the State Lottery, which will be worth to me a hundred and fifty pounds. And I am not without hopes that I have friends that will think of some better and more certain provision for me."^[8] In addition to this post, the Earl of Lincoln [pg 58]was persuaded to give him an apartment in Whitehall. The Commissionship and the residence to some small extent soothed Gay's ruffled vanity, and were beyond question convenient.

During the summer of 1723 Gay, still troubled with the colic, went to Tunbridge Wells, where he carried on a vigorous correspondence with Mrs. Howard.

Footnotes:

During 1723 Gay wrote a tragedy, "The Captives," which at the end of the year he read to the royal circle at Leicester House. "When the hour came," Johnson has recorded, "he saw the Princess [of Wales] and her ladies all in expectation, and, advancing with reverence, too great for any other attention, stumbled at a stool, and, falling forward, threw down a weighty Japanese screen. The Princess started, the ladies screamed, and poor Gay, after all the disturbance, was still to read his play."^[1] "The Captives" was produced at Drury Lane Theatre in January, 1724, and according to the Biographica Dramatica was "acted nine nights with great applause," the third, or author's night, being by the command of the Prince and Princess of Wales. According, however, to Fenton, "Gay's play had no success. I am told he gave thirty guineas to have it acted on the fifth night."^[2] When it was published, Gay prefaced it with the following dedication:—

Of what Gay did, or where he went during 1724, next to nothing is known. Presumably he spent most of his time in his apartment at Whitehall, eating much and drinking more than was good for him, and, to judge by results, writing nothing. The only trace of him during 1724 is in the following letter:—

There is no mention of Gay during the first nine months of the year 1724, after which it has been possible to gather scant information. Apparently, encouraged by the kindly interest displayed by the Princess of Wales, Gay, still obsessed with his desire for a place, went frequently to Court. "I hear nothing of our friend Gay, but I find the Court keep him at hard meat. I advised him to come over here with a Lord-Lieutenant,"^[3] Swift wrote to Pope, September 29th, 1725. To this Pope replied on October 15th: "Our friend Gay is used as the friends of Tories are by Whigs, and generally by Tories too. Because he had humour he was supposed to have dealt with Dr. Swift; in like manner as when anyone had learning formerly, he was thought to have dealt with the devil. He puts his whole trust at Court in that lady whom I described to you."^[4] "That lady," presumably was Mrs. Howard. But Gay, unable to secure the interest of the politicians, and getting weary of waiting on his friends, suddenly bethought himself of making a direct appeal to royalty. "Gay is writing tales for Prince William,"^[5] Pope wrote to Swift on December 10th. "Mr. Philips^[6] will take this [pg 68]very ill for two reasons, one that he thinks all childish things belong to him, and the other because he will take it ill to be taught that one may write things to a child without being childish." Than which last few prettier compliments have been paid to Gay.

Though they had long been in correspondence, Swift and Gay had not yet met. Swift, of course, had often in his mind a visit to London—he admitted the temptation, but resisted it. "I was three years reconciling myself to the scene, and the business to which fortune had condemned me, and stupidity was what I had recourse to,"^[7] he had written to Gay from Dublin, January 8th, 1723. "Besides, what a figure should I make in London, while my friends are in poverty, exile, distress, or imprisonment, and my enemies with rods of iron?" At last, however, in March, 1726, he did come to London, and he was the guest of Gay, whom he subsequently referred to as "my landlord at Whitehall." He saw much of Gay. "I have lived these two months past for the most part in the country, either at Twickenham with Mr. Pope, or rambling with him and Mr. Gay for a fortnight together. Yesterday Lord Bolingbroke and Mr. Congreve made up five at dinner at Twickenham,"^[8] Swift wrote to Tickell from London on July 7th. Like the rest, Swift came to love Gay dearly, and Gay was no whit less attracted to the great man, who promised on his next visit to stay again in Whitehall. "My landlord," he wrote in a letter addressed jointly to Pope and Gay, October 15th, 1726, "who treats me with kindness and domesticity, and says that he is laying in a double stock of wine."^[9] Swift had been introduced to Mrs. Howard—it may be by Gay—and she too wished to entertain him. "I hope you will get your house and wine ready, to which Mr. Gay and I are to have access when you are at Court; for, as to Mr. Pope, he is not [pg 69]worth considering on such occasions,"^[10] he wrote to her from Dublin, February 1st, 1727.

Gay had become more and more on good terms with the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, especially with the Duchess, who treated him as a sort of pet lap-dog. "Since I wrote last," Gay told Swift in a letter dated September 16th, 1726, "I have been always upon the ramble. I have been in Oxfordshire with the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, and at Petersham, and wheresoever they would carry me; but as they will go to Wiltshire^[11] without me on Tuesday next, for two or three months, I believe I shall then have finished my travels for this year, and shall not go further from London than now and then to Twickenham."^[12] It was as well that Gay remained in London, else probably his "Fables" would never have appeared. Gay, who had begun to compose the "Fables" in 1725, was, according to the habit of the man, not to be hurried. "I have of late been very much out of order with a slight fever, which I am not yet quite free from," he wrote to Swift in October, 1726. "If the engravers keep their word with me I shall be able to publish my poems soon after Christmas." But of course the engravers did not keep their word. Swift, a more energetic person, became almost fractious at the repeated delays in the publication, and wrote to Pope on November 17th: "How comes Gay to be so tedious? Another man can publish fifty thousand lies sooner than he can publish fifty fables."^[13] And still there were delays. "My Fables are printed," he told Swift on February 18th, 1727; "but I cannot get my plates finished, which hinders the publication. I expect nothing and am likely to get nothing."^[14] At last, in the spring, the volume appeared, with the imprint of J. Tonson and J. Watts, and with this dedication: "To His Highness [pg 70]William Duke of Cumberland these new Fables, invented for his amusement, are humbly dedicated by His Highness's most faithful and most obedient servant, John Gay."

Gay, of course, expected some reward for this courtier-like attention to the son of the Prince and Princess of Wales, and the poet and his friends again believed that his future was assured when they heard that Her Royal Highness had said, or at least was reported to have said, that she should "take up the hare"—an allusion to the "Fable" of "The Hare and Many Friends":—

On June 12th, 1727, George I. died, and Gay felt sure that at last the hour had struck when the "place" so long and diligently sought, would be bestowed on him. The new Queen did not, indeed, forget him; she did what in his eyes was far worse, she offered him the sinecure post of Gentleman Usher to the Princess Louisa,^[15] then two years old, with a salary of £200 a year. Gay's disappointment was bitter, and for a person usually so placid, his indignation tremendous. What ground for hope he had had, he, as Dr. Johnson has said, "had doubtless magnified with all the wild expectation and vanity,"^[16] "The Queen's family is at last settled," Gay wrote bitterly to Swift on October 22nd, "and in the list I was appointed Gentleman Usher to the Princess Louisa, the youngest Princess, which, upon account that I am so far advanced in life, I had declined accepting, and have endeavoured, in the best manner I could, to make my excuses by a letter to her Majesty. So now all my expectations are vanished and I have no [pg 71]prospect, but in depending wholly upon myself and my own conduct. As I am used to disappointments I can bear them, but as I can have no more hopes I can no more be disappointed, so that I am in a blessed condition."^[17] Pope, than whom no man loved Gay better, could not bring himself to sympathise with his irate brother poet.

Swift could not forgive the Court for the offer, Mrs. Howard for not exerting her influence to get a better post for her protégé. "I desire my humble service to Lord Oxford, Lord Bathurst, and particularly to Miss Blount, but to no lady at Court. God bless you for being [pg 73]a greater dupe than I. I love that character too myself, but I want your charity," he wrote to Pope, August 11th, 1729; but Pope replying on October 9th said: "The Court lady^[19] I have a good opinion of. Yet I have treated her more negligently than you would do, because you will like to see the inside of a Court, which I do not ... after all, that lady means to do good and does no harm, which is a vast deal for a courtier."

More than once Swift took up his pen to avenge his friend for the slight that he considered had been passed upon him. In "A Libel on the Rev. Mr. Delany and His Excellency Lord Cartaret," he wrote in 1729:—

Two years later he returned to the attack in "An Epistle to Mr. Gay ":—

It is a little difficult at this time of day to understand Swift's indignation. Gay was already in the enjoyment [pg 74]of a sinecure of £150 a year; he was offered another of £200 a year—for the post of Gentleman-Usher involved no duties save occasional attendance at Court, and to this the poet had shown himself by no means averse. A total gift of £350 a year for nothing really seems rather alluring to a man of letters, and it is difficult to understand why Gay refused the offer, unless it was, as the editors of the standard edition of Pope's Correspondence suggest: "The affluent friends who recommended Gay to reject the provisions were strangers to want, and with unconscious selfishness they thought less of his necessities than of venturing their spleen against the Court."

Swift, unable effectively to vent his anger on Caroline, chose to regard Mrs. Howard as the cause of the mortification of his friend. Mrs. Howard, however, not only had nothing to do with the offer of the place of Gentleman-Usher to Gay, the patronage being directly in the Queen's hands, but, as has been indicated, was unable to secure for him, or anyone else, a place at Court of any description. Certainly she was in blissful ignorance of having given offence, for as Gay wrote to the Dean so late as February 15th, 1728: "Mrs. Howard frequently asks after you and desires her compliments to you."

All the matters affected not a whit the relations between Mrs. Howard and Gay; against her he had no ill-feeling, and their correspondence continued on the same lines of intimacy as before.

Gay was not the man to keep his feelings of disappointment to himself, and his feelings were so widely known that at the time the following copy of verses was handed about in manuscript ^[22]:—

Footnotes:

The opera to which allusion is made in Mrs. Howard's letter of October, 1727, was "The Beggar's Opera," upon which Gay had been actively engaged for some time past, and which was then nearing completion. "You remember," Gay wrote to Swift, October 22nd, 1727, "you were advising me to go into Newgate to finish my scenes the more correctly. I now think I shall, for I have no attendance to hinder me; but my opera is already finished."^[1] To which Swift replied from Dublin on November 27th: "I am very glad your opera is finished, and hope your friends will join the readers to make it succeed, because you are ill-used by others."^[2]

It was natural that Swift should be especially interested in "The Beggar's Opera," because the first suggestion of it had come from Swift in a letter to Pope, written as far back as August 30th, 1716^[3] "Dr. Swift had been observing once to Mr. Gay, what an odd pretty sort of thing a Newgate Pastoral might make," Pope once remarked. "Gay was inclined to try at such a thing for some time, [pg 79]but afterwards thought it would be better to write a comedy on the same plan. This was what gave rise to 'The Beggar's Opera.' He began on it, and when first he mentioned it to Swift, the Doctor did not much like the project. As he carried it on, he showed what he wrote to both of us; and we now and then gave a correction, or a word or two of advice; but it was wholly of his own writing. When it was done neither of us thought it would succeed. We showed it to Congreve, who, after reading it over, said: 'It would either take greatly or be damned confoundedly."^[4]

Dilatory as Gay always was, he contrived to finish his opera by about the end of the year. "John Gay's opera is just on the point of delivery," Pope wrote to Swift in January, 1728. "It may be called, considering its subject, a jail-delivery. Mr. Congreve, with whom I have commemorated you, is anxious as to its success, and so am I. Whether it succeeds or not, it will make a great noise, but whether of claps or hisses I know not. At worst, it is in its own nature a thing which he can lose no reputation by, as he lays none upon it."^[5] Not only Swift, Pope, and Congreve were doubtful as to the opera's chance of success. Colley Cibber refused it for Drury Lane Theatre, and even when it was accepted by John Rich for his theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, Quin had such a poor opinion of it, that he refused the part of Captain Macheath. Very sound was the judgment of Rich, immortalised by Pope in "The Dunciad" (Book III, lines 261-264):—

and the opera, to repeat a well-known mot of the day, "made Gay rich and Rich gay."

"[pg 80]The Beggar's Opera" was produced on January 29th, 1728, with the following cast:—

At the first performance the fate of the opera hung for some time in the balance. Quin is recorded as having said that there was a disposition to damn it, and that it was saved by the song, "O ponder well! be not severe!" the audience being much affected by the innocent looks of Polly, when she came to those two lines which exhibit at once a painful and ridiculous image—

Pope, too, and the rest of Gay's friends were present. "We were all at the first night of it, in great uncertainty of the event; till we were very much encouraged by hearing the Duke of Argyll, who sat in the next box to us, say: "It will do—it must do!—I see it in the eyes of them," he said. "This was a good while before the first act was over, and so gave us ease soon; for the Duke (besides his own good taste) has a more particular knack than any one now living, in discovering the taste of the public. He was quite right in this, as usual, the good nature of the audience appeared stronger and stronger every set, and ended in a clamour of applause."^[7]

The success of the opera was due to many causes. Some liked it for its barely veiled allusions on politicians. "Robin [pg 81]of Bagshot, alias Gorgon, alias Bluff Bob, alias Carbuncle, alias Bob Booty," was very obviously intended for Walpole and his "dear charmers" for his wife and Molly Skerrett. It may well be believed that the song, "How happy could I be with either" brought down the house; and the highwayman must have evoked a hearty laugh with—

Certainly the songs had much to do in the matter of pleasing the audience. As a literary work, "The Beggar's Opera" has no great claims, but there is a spontaneous humour about it that has charm. But it was the milieu that, acting on the hint thrown out years before by Swift, Gay chose that appealed to the public taste. Highwaymen and women of the town are not romantic figures, but Gay made the highwaymen handsome and lively, and the women of the town beautiful and attractive, and over them all he cast a glamour of romance and sentimentalism. Even Newgate seemed a pleasing place, for in this fantasy the author was careful to omit anything of the horrors of a prison in the early eighteenth century. Gay, in fact, did for the stage with "The Beggar's Opera" what, a century later Bulwer Lytton and Harrison Ainsworth did for the reading public with "Ernest Maltravers," "Jack Sheppard," and the rest.

The morality of the opera was much discussed. Swift took the field, and wrote in its favour in the Intelligencer (No. 3):—

"It is true, indeed, that Mr. Gay, the author of this piece, has been somewhat singular in the course of his fortune, for it has happened that after fourteen years attending the Court, with a large stock of real merit, a modest and agreeable conversation, a hundred promises, and five hundred friends, he has failed of preferment, and upon a very weighty reason. He lay under the suspicion of having written a libel, or lampoon, against a great minister. It [pg 82]is true, that great minister was demonstratively convinced, and publicly owned his conviction, that Mr. Gay was not the author; but having lain under the suspicion, it seemed very just that he should suffer the punishment; because in this most reformed age, the virtues of a prime minister are no more to be suspected than the chastity of Cæsar's wife.

"It must be allowed, that 'The Beggar's Opera' is not the first of Mr. Gay's works, wherein he has been faulty with regard to courtiers and statesmen. For, to omit his other pieces, even in his 'Fables,' published within two years past, and dedicated to the Duke of Cumberland, for which he was promised a reward, he has been thought somewhat too bold upon the courtiers. And although it be highly probable he meant only the courtiers of former times, yet he acted unwarily, by not considering that the malignity of some people might misinterpret what he said to the disadvantage of present persons and affairs.

"But I have now done with Mr. Gay as a politician and shall consider him henceforth only as the author of 'The Beggar's Opera,' wherein he has, by a turn of humour entirely new, placed vices of all kinds in the strongest and most odious light, and thereby done eminent service, both to religion and morality. This appears from the unparalleled success he has met with. All ranks, parties, and denominations of men, either crowding to see his opera, or reading it with delight in their closets; even Ministers of State, whom he is thought to have most offended (next to those whom the actors represented) appear frequently at the theatre, from a consciousness of their own innocence, and to convince the world how unjust a parallel, malice, envy, and disaffection to the Government have made.

"I am assured that several worthy clergymen in this city went privately to see 'The Beggar's Opera' represented; and that the fleering coxcombs in the pit amused themselves with making discoveries, and spreading the names of those gentlemen round the audience.

"[pg 83]I shall not pretend to vindicate a clergyman who would appear openly in his habit at the theatre, with such a vicious crew as might probably stand round him, at such comedies and profane tragedies as are often represented. Besides, I know very well, that persons of their function are bound to avoid the appearance of evil, or of giving cause of offence. But when the Lords Chancellors, who are Keepers of the King's Conscience; when the Judges of the land, whose title is reverend; when ladies, who are bound by the rules of their sex to the strictest decency, appear in the theatre without censure; I cannot understand why a young clergyman, who comes concealed out of curiosity to see an innocent and moral play, should be so highly condemned; nor do I much approve the rigour of a great prelate, who said, 'he hoped none of his clergy were there.' I am glad to hear there are no weightier objections against that reverend body, planted in this city, and I wish there never may. But I should be very sorry that any of them should be so weak as to imitate a Court chaplain in England, who preached against 'The Beggar's Opera,' which will probably do more good than a thousand sermons of so stupid, so injudicious, and so prostitute a divine.

"In this happy performance of Mr. Gay, all the characters are just, and none of them carried beyond nature, or hardly beyond practice. It discovers the whole system of that commonwealth, or that imperium in imperio of iniquity established among us, by which neither our lives nor our properties are secure, either in the highways, or in public assemblies, or even in our own houses. It shows the miserable lives, and the constant fate, of those abandoned wretches: for how little they sell their lives and souls; betrayed by their whores, their comrades, and the receivers and purchasers of those thefts and robberies. This comedy contains likewise a satire, which, without enquiring whether it affects the present age, may possibly be useful in times to come; I mean, where the author [pg 84]takes the occasion of comparing the common robbers of the public, and their various stratagems of betraying, undermining and hanging each other, to the several arts of the politicians in times of corruption....

"Upon the whole, I deliver my judgment, that nothing but servile attachment to a party, affectation of singularity, lamentable dulness, mistaken zeal, or studied hypocrisy, can have the least reasonable objection against this excellent moral performance of the celebrated Mr. Gay."

Of course, if "The Beggar's Opera" is taken as irony, there is really nothing at all to be said against it; but the majority of any audience do not understand irony, and to many the whole thing seemed vicious, an approval of vice, and even an incitement to wrong-doing. Dr. Herring, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, preached against the Opera in, it is said, Lincoln's Inn Chapel, and censured it as giving encouragement not only to vice but to crimes, by making a highwayman the hero and dismissing him at last unpunished. In the Preface to Dr. Herring's "Sermons," it is added that "several street-robbers confessed in Newgate that they raised their courage at the playhouse by the songs of Macheath."^[8] Others certainly shared the views of the clergyman. When on September 15th, 1773, at the Old Bailey, fifteen prisoners were sentenced to death, forty to transportation, and eight to a whipping, it is recorded that the magistrate, Sir John Fielding, "informed the Bench of Justices that he had last year written to Mr. Garrick concerning the impropriety of performing 'The Beggar's Opera,' which never was represented without creating an additional number of real thieves,"^[9] and that to this effect he not only wrote to Garrick at Drury Lane Theatre, but also to Colman at Covent Garden Theatre. "Mr. Colman's compliments to Sir John Fielding," the latter replied, "he does not think his the only house in Bow Street where thieves are hardened and encouraged, [pg 85]and will persist in offering the representation of that admirable satire, 'The Beggar's Opera.'"^[10] Sir John Hawkins, Chairman of the Middlesex Bench of Justices, also held the view that the Opera was harmful, and in 1776, wrote: "Rapine and violence have been gradually increasing since its first representation."^[11] Dr. Johnson took a saner view, and one that was subsequently supported by Sir Walter Scott, and is generally accepted to-day. "Both these decisions are surely exaggerated," he wrote in reference to the opinions expressed by Swift and Dr. Herring. "The play, like many others, was plainly written only to divert, without any moral purpose, and is therefore likely to do good; nor can it be conceived, without more speculation than life requires or admits, to be productive of much wit. Highwaymen and housebreakers seldom frequent the playhouse or mingle in any elegant diversion; nor is it possible for anyone to imagine that he may rob as safely because he sees Macheath reprieved upon the stage."^[12] And again, he said: "I do not believe that any man was ever made a rogue by being present at its representation. At the same time I do not deny that it may have some influence by making the character of a rogue familiar and in some degree pleasing."^[13]

The success of the piece was immense, and its vogue tremendous. "The famous 'Beggar's Opera' appeared upon the stage early in the ensuing season; and was received with greater applause than was ever known: besides being acted in London sixty-three nights without interruption, and renewed the next season with equal applause, it spread into all the great towns of England; was played in many places to the thirtieth and fortieth time; and at Bath and Bristol fifty times," wrote the anonymous editor of the 1760 edition of Gay's plays.

"[pg 86]The ladies carried about with them the favourite songs of it in fans, and houses were furnished with it in screens.... The person who acted Polly, till then obscure, became all at once the favourite of the town; her pictures were engraved and sold in great numbers; her life written; books of letters and verses to her published, and pamphlets made even of her sayings and jests. Furthermore, it drove out of England, for that season, the Italian opera, which had carried all before it for several years."^[14] According to Richard's account book, the opera ran at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields for sixty-two (not sixty-three) nights, of which thirty-two nights were in succession, and these thirty-two performances realised the total sum of £5,351, Gay's share amounting to £693.^[15] Swift, who was always anxious that Gay should do as well as possible, wrote to Pope on March 5th: "I hope he [Gay] does not intend to print his Opera before it is acted; for I defy all your subscriptions to amount to eight hundred pounds, and yet I believe he lost as much more, for want of human prudence."^[16] The advice, however, came too late, for Gay had already sold the copyright of the "Fables" and "The Beggar's Opera" for ninety guineas. The opera was published on February 14th, 1728.

Gay was in these days the happiest man in the world. His play was successful, he was making money, and he had had his little dig at Walpole. "John Gay ... is at present so employed in the elevated airs of his Opera ... that I can scarce obtain a categorical answer ... to anything," Pope wrote to Swift in February, "but the Opera succeeds extremely, to yours and my extreme satisfaction, of which he promises this post to give you a full account."^[17]

Pope and Swift were keenly interested in Gay's triumph, and in their correspondence are many references to the piece. "Mr. Gay's Opera has been acted near forty days running, and will certainly continue the whole season," Pope wrote to Swift, March 23rd, 1728. "So he has more than a fence about his thousand pounds; he will soon be thinking of a fence about his two thousand. Shall no one of us live as we would wish each other to live? Shall he have no annuity, you no settlement on this side, and I no prospect of getting to you on the other?"^[22]

Colley Cibber, in his "Apology" said that "Gay had more skilfully gratified the public taste than all the brightest authors that ever wrote before him," and although this was undoubtedly a piece of friendly exaggeration, it is a fact that John Gay was now a personage. "Mr. Gay's fame continues; but his riches are in a fair way of diminishing; he is gone to the Bath," Martha Blount wrote to Swift, [pg 91]May 7th;^[23] and two months later, with great pride, Gay told Swift, "My portrait mezzotinto is published from Mrs. Howard's painting."^[24] Indirectly, he secured further notoriety when, in the summer, Lavinia Fenton, who had played the heroine in the Opera, ran away with a Duke. "The Duke of Bolton, I hear," he wrote to Swift from Bath, "has run away with Polly Peachum, having settled £400 a year on her during pleasure, and upon disagreement £200 a year."^[25] She had played in the whole sixty-three performances of the Opera, the forty-seventh performance being set aside for her benefit. The sixty-third performance took place on June 19th, and that was her last appearance on the boards of a theatre. In 1751, shortly after the death of his wife, the Duke married her, she being then about forty-three, and he sixty-six.^[26]

Footnotes:

The success of "The Beggar's Opera" heartened Gay, as a first great success heartens any man. At once he conceived the idea of following up this triumph with another opera, but, before actually getting to work, he took things easily. In March he stayed at Cashiobury with Pulteney, visiting from there Lord Bathurst and the Bolingbrokes. Shortly after he went to Bath, where he found many friends, including Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough.

"I suppose Mr. Gay will return from the Bath with twenty pounds more flesh and two hundred pounds less in money," Swift wrote to Pope on July 16th. "Providence never designed him to be above two-and-twenty, by this thoughtlessness and cullibility. He has as little foresight of age, sickness, poverty, or loss of admirers, as a girl of fifteen."^[3] From this it may be deduced that Gay, whenever he was free from an attack of colic, persevered in the pleasures of the table and of his favourite quadrille.

Gay was naturally greatly elated by the success of "The Beggar's Opera." This recompensed him for the neglect, or, as undoubtedly he regarded it, the ingratitude of the Court, and, what pleased him as much, it filled his purse, which he always liked to fill, apparently for the joy of emptying it as soon as possible. Also, it greatly enhanced his reputation: from a writer of minor importance, he now took his place as a personage. After a long apprenticeship, he had at length "arrived."

Thus encouraged, he promptly composed a sequel to "The Beggar's Opera," which he called by the name of the heroine of that piece, that is to say, "Polly." The best summary of "Polly" has been given by Mr. Paull, in his interesting paper on Gay^[6]:—

"Macheath has been transported across the herring-pond ... [pg 96]He succeeds in escaping from the plantations, and has become the leader of a band of pirates, under an assumed name, and disguised as a black man. Jenny Driver is now his mistress (presumably he has forgotten her treachery in 'The Beggar's Opera'). Polly sails across the ocean to find him, but is entrapped by Mrs. Trapes, a procuress, who sells her to Ducat, a rich merchant. Mrs. Ducat, who is jealous, helps Polly to escape; she assumes a boy's dress and continues her search for Macheath. She is captured by the pirates, and she and Macheath meet, neither recognising the other. The pirates are attacking the English settlement; the Indians are helping the settlers. At first the pirates are successful, and the young Indian Prince is captured, but ultimately they are defeated, Polly herself capturing Macheath, who is condemned to death by the Indian Prince. Then she learns from Jenny Driver who the pirate chief is, and his life is promised her as her reward; but his execution has already taken place, and she has to console herself with the hand of the Indian Prince, who has fallen in love with her. Even this skeleton will show that the novelty and unity of design which counted for so much in 'The Beggar's Opera' are changed for intricacy of plot. There is no cohesion in the story: there is no reason why the catastrophe should be brought about in one way rather than another; what interest there is turns on an improbable story rather than on the development of character. Evidently Gay reckoned largely on the opportunities he had afforded himself for satire on the Court, and for contrasting the noble and untutored savage with the man tainted by the vices of civilisation."

"Polly" was accepted for production by Rich at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields: the subsequent proceedings are but told by the author himself in his Preface, dated March 25th, 1729, to the printed version of the book of the opera:—

"After Mr. Rich and I were agreed upon terms and [pg 97]conditions for bringing this piece on the stage, and that everything was ready for a rehearsal, the Lord Chamberlain sent an order from the country to prohibit Mr. Rich to suffer any play to be rehearsed upon his stage till it has been first of all supervised by his Grace. As soon as Mr. Rich came from his Grace's secretary (who had sent for him to receive the before-mentioned order) he came to my lodgings and acquainted me with the orders he had received.

"Upon the Lord Chamberlain's coming to town I was confined by sickness, but in four or five days I went abroad on purpose to wait upon his Grace, with a faithful and genuine copy of this piece, excepting the errata of the transcriber.

"As I have heard several suggestions and false insinuations concerning the copy, I take this occasion in the most solemn manner to affirm, that the very copy I delivered to Mr. Rich was written in my own hand, some months before at the Bath, from my own first foul blotted papers; from this, that for the playhouse was transcribed, from whence Mr. Steele, the prompter, copied that which I delivered to the Lord Chamberlain; and, excepting my own foul blotted papers, I do protest I know of no other copy whatsoever, than those I have mentioned.

"The copy which I gave into the hands of Mr. Rich had been seen before by several persons of the greatest distinction and veracity, who will do me the honour and justice to attest it; so that not only by them, but by Mr. Rich and Mr. Steele, I can (against all insinuation or positive affirmation) prove in the most clear and undeniable manner, if occasion required, what I have here upon my own honour and credit asserted. The Introduction, indeed, was not shown to the Lord Chamberlain, which, as I had not then settled, was never transcribed in the playhouse copy.

"It was on Saturday morning, December 7th, 1728, that I waited upon the Lord Chamberlain. I desired to have the honour of reading the Opera to his Grace, but he [pg 98]ordered me to leave it with him, which I did upon expectation of having it returned on the Monday following; but I had it not till Thursday, December 12th, when I received it from his Grace with this answer, 'that it was not allowed to be acted, but commanded to be suppressed.' This was told me in general, without any reason assigned, or any charge against me, of my having given any particular offence.

"Since this prohibition, I have been told, that I am accused, in general terms, of having written many disaffected libels and seditious pamphlets. As it hath ever been my utmost ambition (if that word may be used on this ocasion) to lead a quiet and inoffensive life, I thought my innocence in this particular would never have required a justification; and as this kind of writing is what I have ever detested, and never practised, I am persuaded so groundless a calumny can never be believed but by those who do not know me. But as general aspersions of this sort have been cast upon me, I think myself called upon to declare my principles; and I do, with the strictest truth, affirm that I am as loyal a subject, and as firmly attached to the present happy establishment, as any of those who have the greatest places or pensions. I have been informed too, that, in the following play, I have been charged with writing immoralities; that it is filled with slander, and calumny against particular great persons, and that Majesty itself is endeavoured to be brought into ridicule and contempt.

"As I knew every one of these charges was in every point absolutely false and without the least grounds, at first I was not at all affected by them; but when I found they were still insisted upon, and that particular passages, which were not in the play, were quoted, and propagated to support what had been suggested, I could no longer bear to lie under those false accusations; so, by printing it, I have submitted and given up all present views of profit which might accrue from the stage; which undoubtedly will be some satisfaction to the worthy gentlemen [pg 99]who have treated me with so much candour and humanity, and represented me in such favourable colours.

"But as I am conscious to myself, that my only intention was to lash, in general, the reigning of fashionable vices, and to recommend and set virtue in as amiable light as I could; to justify and vindicate my own character, I thought myself obliged to print the Opera without delay, in the manner I have done.

"As the play was principally designed for representation, I hope, when it is read, it will be considered in that light; and when all that hath been said against it shall appear to be entirely misunderstood or misrepresented; if, some time hence, it should be permitted to appear on the stage, I think it necessary to acquaint the public that, as far as a contract of this kind can be binding, I am engaged to Mr. Rich to have it represented upon his theatre."

It cannot be denied that there was adequate ground for the Lord Chamberlain's veto. In "The Beggar's Opera" Gay had beyond all question lampooned Walpole, and in "Polly" he returned to the attack, there being no doubt that in the opening scene, Ducat, the West Indian planter, was intended for the Minister. The production might well have led to disturbances if both political parties had been represented at the first performance. Walpole was the least vindictive of men, as witness his generous attitude towards Sunderland and the other ministers involved in the scandal of the South Sea "Bubble," but he may well have thought that Gay was going too far. Gay himself was harmless, but, as Walpole knew, the author, either consciously or unconsciously, was acting for the Opposition party; and Walpole, when he thought it worth while, had a short and effective way with his political enemies.

The prohibition being largely an affair of party, or at least being so regarded, a battle royal ensued. "Polly" could not be performed in public, but, there being no censorship of books, it could be printed. Gay's friends, therefore, [pg 100]decided that the Opera should be published by subscription. To a man and a woman the Opposition rallied round the author. The Duchess of Queensberry "touted" for him everywhere, even at Court. The King at a Drawing-room asked what she was doing. "What must be agreeable, I am sure," she replied, "to anyone so humane as your Majesty, for it is an act of charity, and a charity to which I do not despair of bringing your Majesty to contribute." This, of course, was a gratuitous piece of impertinence—for the Lord Chamberlain acts as the official mouthpiece of the Sovereign—and it could not be overlooked. Another story is: The Duchess was so vehement in her attempt to have the embargo removed from Gay's play, that she offered to read it to His Majesty in his closet, that he might be satisfied there was no offence in it. George II escaped from this dilemma by saying, he should be delighted to receive her Grace in his closet, but he hoped to amuse her better than by the literary employment she proposed.^[7]

Whatever the true story, the day after the Duchess's interview with the King (February 27th, 1729), William Stanhope, the Vice-Chamberlain, carried to the Duchess a verbal message not to come to Court; whereupon she sat down and wrote a letter for him to take to his Majesty. "The Duchess of Queensberry," so ran her reply, "is surprised and well pleased that the King hath given her so agreeable a command as to stay from Court, where she never came for diversion, but to bestow a great civility on the King and Queen; she hopes by such an unprecedented order as this is, that the King will see as few as he wishes at his Court, particularly such as are to think or speak truth. I dare not do otherwise, and ought not, nor could have imagined that it would not have been the very highest compliment that I could possibly pay the King to endeavour to support truth and innocence in his house, particularly when the King and Queen both told me that they had not read Mr. Gay's play. I have certainly [pg 101]done right, then, to stand by my own words rather than his Grace of Grafton's, who hath neither made use of truth, judgment, nor honour, through this whole affair, either for himself or his friends."^[8] Stanhope read this, and begged the Duchess to reflect before sending it. She consented to write another letter, did so, and handed it to him. He chose the first. The Duke of Queensberry supported his wife, and although the King pressed him to remain, resigned his office of Admiral of Scotland—though Gay wrote to Swift,^[9] "this he would have done, if the Duchess had not met with this treatment, upon account of ill-usage from the Ministers," and that this incident "hastened him in what he had determined." The affair created an immense sensation in Court circles. "The Duchess of Queensberry is still the talk of the town. She is going to Scotland," Mrs. Pendarves wrote to Mrs. Anne Granville, March 14th, 1729.... "My Lady Hervey told her the other day that 'now she was banished, the Court had lost its chief ornament,' the Duchess replied, 'I am entirely of your mind.' It is thought my Lady Hervey spoke to her with a sneer, if so, her Grace's answer was a very good one."^[10]

One of the immediate results of the campaign was that the apartments that had been granted to Gay in Whitehall, which belonged to the Crown, had, by order, to be surrendered. On the other hand, two large editions, amounting to 10,500 copies, of "Polly, An Opera: being the Second Part of 'The Beggar's Opera.' Written by Mr. Gay. With the Songs and Basses engraved on Copper-plates," were printed in 1729, and from the sale Gay derived between £1,100 and £1,200.^[11] In 1777 Colman produced "Polly" in a revised version, but it failed to attract.

There was an end of Gay's hopes of Court preferment, [pg 102]that was clear to every one. It was not unexpected. "I wish John Gay success in his pursuit," Bolingbroke had written to Swift in June, 1727, "but I think he has some qualities which will keep him down in the world."^[12] When the worst was known, Arbuthnot wrote to Swift on the following November 30th: "There is certainly a fatality upon poor Gay. As for hope of preferment [at St. James's], he has laid it aside. He has made a pretty good bargain (that is, a Smithfield one) for a little place in the Custom-house, which was to bring him in about a hundred a year. It was done as a favour to an old man, and not at all to Gay. When everything was concluded, the man repented, and said he would not part with his place. I have begged Gay not to buy an annuity upon my life; I am sure I should not live a week."^[13]

It may be that Gay thought that he might in time live down the disfavour at Court in which he had been involved by the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry and his other partisans. He may even have had a momentary hope, in 1730, when the office of Poet-Laureate was vacant that the position might be offered to him, who had written "Fables" for a young Prince. When Colley Cibber was appointed, Gay probably had it brought home to him that his day as a courtier had passed for good and all. Certainly he is credited, though on what authority is not known, with a share in the burlesque, "Ode for the New Year [1731]. Written by Colley Cibber, Esq.," in which his disappointment is vented in somewhat coarse expression. This begins,

[pg 103]The King is attacked, and there is a disgraceful reference to the Queen:—

That Gay was furious there is no question, and he attacked Walpole in one of the second series of his "Fables" (which appeared posthumously in 1738), entitled "The Vulture, the Sparrow, and Other Birds," which concluded:

The animus is evident, and it is clear that Gay's sense of humour had entirely deserted him. A man who had been a hanger-on at Court for more than ten years, and bidding diligently all the time for a sinecure, could but arouse laughter when, discarded at length by those in power, he says proudly, "I court no favour, ask no place."

Footnotes:

With the composition of "Polly," the literary life of Gay came practically to an end, although he survived until December 4th, 1732. During these four years he worked not at all, save occasionally on the second series of "Fables."

After the prohibition of "Polly," Gay, who had been ill during 1728, had a severe attack of fever, during which he was attended by the faithful Arbuthnot, and carefully tended by the Duchess of Queensberry.

Gay gradually got well. "I am glad to hear of your recovery, and the oftener I hear it, the better, when it becomes easy to you to give it," Pope, who remained a regular correspondent, wrote to him in January, 1729. But, though Gay was better in health, his spirits were low.

Both Swift and Pope remained faithful to Gay, and in their correspondence there are many allusions to him. "Mr. Gay," wrote Swift to Pope, "is a scandal to all lusty young fellows with healthy countenances; and, I think, he is not intemperate in a physical sense. I am told he has an asthma, which is a disease I commiserate more than deafness, because it will not leave a man quiet either sleeping or waking."^[1]

In consequence of this hubbub about "Polly," Gay became a notorious character, as Arbuthnot in a letter to Swift (March 19th, 1729) remarks very humorously. "John Gay, I may say with vanity, owes his life, under God, to the unwearied endeavours and care of your humble [pg 110]servant; for a physician who had not been passionately his friend could not have saved him," he wrote. "I had, besides my personal concern for him, other motives of my care. He is now become a public person, a little Sacheverell; and I took the same pleasure in saving him, as Radcliffe did in preserving my Lord Chief Justice Holt's wife, whom he attended out of spite to her husband, who wished her dead.

"The inoffensive John Gay is now become one of the obstructions to the peace of Europe, the terror of Ministers, the chief author of the Craftsmen, and all the seditious pamphlets which have been published against the Government. He has got several turned out of their places; the greatest ornament of the Court [the Duchess of Queensberry] banished from it for his sake; another great lady [Mrs. Howard] in danger of being chasée likewise; about seven or eight Duchesses pushing forward, like the ancient circumcelliones in the Church, who shall suffer martyrdom upon his account at first. He is the darling of the City. If he should travel about the country he would have hecatombs of roasted oxen sacrificed to him. Since he became so conspicuous, Will Pulteney hangs his head to see himself so much outdone in the career of glory. I hope he will get a good deal of money by printing his play ['Polly']; but I really believe he would get more money by showing his person; and I can assure you, this is the very identical John Gay whom you formerly knew, and lodged in Whitehall, two years ago."^[3]

Gay was now the avowed protégé of the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, so he spent the greater part of his closing years either at their country seat, Middleton Stoney, Amesbury, in Wiltshire, or at their London house in Burlington Gardens.

Gay, who really asked nothing better than to be a pet of the great in this world, was happy enough. In May, 1729, he went to Scotland with the Duke of Queensberry, [pg 111]and his only trouble was that the success of "Polly" made it attractive to unscrupulous booksellers. "He has about twenty lawsuits with booksellers for pirating his book,"^[4] Arbuthnot wrote to Swift on May 8th. In the following month, the same correspondent, reports, "Mr. Gay is returned from Scotland, and has recovered his strength of his journey."^[5]

It was an amusement of the Duchess of Queensberry and of Gay to write joint letters. They thoroughly loved fooling, and frequently indulged together in that pleasant pastime.

Footnotes:

There are few or no details to be discovered about Gay at this time, except such deductions as can be drawn from his correspondence.

Earlier in the year Gay had revised his earliest play "The Wife of Bath," which had been produced unsuccessfully at Drury Lane Theatre on May 12th, 1713, and the new version was staged on January 19 of this year [pg 116]at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. "My old vamped play has got me no money, for it had no success," the author wrote to Swift in the letter of March 3rd; to which Swift replied from Dublin sixteen days later: "I had never much hopes of your vamped play, although Mr. Pope seemed to have, and although it were ever so good; but you should have done like the parsons, and changed your text—I mean, the title, and the names of the persons. After all, it was an effect of idleness, for you are in the prime of life, when invention and judgment go together."

From this letter it will be seen that Gay was endeavouring to make some return to his host and hostess for their kindness in looking after him by acting as a private secretary to the Duchess. But it may be taken for granted that his duties were merely nominal, and it may equally be taken for granted that his assistance was of little value, and only accepted nominally in order to lessen the weight [pg 117]of the obligation under which they thought—probably erroneously—he might be suffering. Why Gay should have led a life of dependence unless he liked it, it is not easy to see, for when he died about thirty months later, he left the then not inconsiderable sum of £6,000. Gay, who never did to-day what could by any possibility be postponed, neglected, of course, to make a will. As he died intestate, his fortune was divided between his surviving sisters, Katherine Bailer and Joanna Fortescue.

Gay until the end kept up his correspondence with Mrs. Howard, and his letters to her are often delightful reading, especially when he had nothing in particular to say, or when he was able to poke kindly fun at his hostess and protectress.

Footnotes:

DEAN SWIFT TO JOHN GAY.

"Your situation is an odd one. The Duchess is your treasurer, and Mr. Pope tells me you are the Duke's. And I had gone a good way in some verses on that occasion, prescribing lessons to direct your conduct, in a negative way, not to do so and so, etc., like other treasurers; how to deal with servants, tenants, or neighbouring squires, which I take to be courtiers, parliaments, and princes in alliance, and so the parallel goes on, but grew too long to please me."^[1]

JOHN GAY TO DEAN SWIFT.

"Since I have got over the impediment to a writer, of water drinking, if I can persuade myself that I have any wit, and find I have inclination, I intend to write; though, as yet, I have another impediment: for I have not provided myself with a scheme. Ten to one but I shall have a propensity to write against vice, and who can tell how far that may offend? But an author should consult his genius, rather than his interest, if he cannot reconcile them."^[2]

[pg 127]JOHN GAY TO DEAN SWIFT.

"When I was in town (after a bashful fit, for having writ something like a love-letter, and in two years making one visit), I writ to Mrs. Drelincourt, to apologise for my behaviour, and received a civil answer, but had not time to see her. They are naturally very civil: so that I am not so sanguine as to interpret this as any encouragement. I find by Mrs. Barber that she interests herself very much in her affair; and, indeed, from everybody who knows her, she answers the character you first gave me....

"You used to blame me for over-solicitude about myself. I am now grown so rich, that I do not think myself worth thinking on."^[3]

DEAN SWIFT TO JOHN GAY.

"You are the silliest lover in Christendom. If you like Mrs. [Drelincourt], why do you not command her to take you? If she does not, she is not worth pursuing; you do her too much honour; she has neither sense nor taste, if she dares to refuse you, though she had ten thousand pounds.

"I cannot allow you rich enough till you are worth £7,000, which will bring you £300 per annum, and this will maintain you, with the perquisite of spunging, while you are young, and when you are old will afford you a pint of port at night, two servants, and an old maid, a little garden, and pen and ink—provided you live in the country. And what are you doing towards increasing your fame and your fortune? Have you no scheme, either in verse or prose? The Duchess should keep you at hard meat, and by that means force you to write."^[4]

[pg 128]THE COUNTESS OF SUFFOLK TO JOHN GAY.

"To prevent all further quarrels and disputes, I shall let you know that I have kissed hands for the place of Mistress of the Robes. Her Majesty did me the honour to give me the choice of Lady of the Bedchamber, or that, which I find so much more agreeable to me, that I did not take one moment to consider of it. The Duchess of Dorset resigned it for me; and everything as yet promises more happiness for the latter part of my life than I have yet had a prospect of. Seven nights' quiet sleep, and seven easy days have almost worked a miracle upon me; for if I cannot say I am perfectly well, yet it is certain even my pain is more supportable than it was. I shall now often visit Marble Hill; my time is become very much my own, and I shall see it without the dread of being obliged to sell it to answer the engagement I had put myself under to avoid a greater evil. Mr. H[oward] took possession of body and goods, and was not prevailed upon till yesterday to resign the former for burial. Poor Lord Suffolk took so much care in the will he made, that the best lawyers say it must stand good. I am persuaded it will be tried to the uttermost.

"I have at this time a great deal of business upon my hands, but not from my Court employment. You must take as a particular favour. The Duchess of Queensberry shall hear from me soon: she has a most extraordinary way of making her peace; but she does tell truth, and I told a lie when I said I hated her; for nothing is more true than that I love her most sincerely. However, I put it into your hands to tell her what you think proper; and if she can but feel half for me that I should for her under the same circumstances, it will be punishment sufficient for what I have suffered from her neglect of me. I shall certainly see Highclere this summer, and shall expect some people to meet me there. I hope the chairs will be done, [pg 129]for I do not know whether I ought to expect to be preferred before them. If you find her inclined to think me wrong in any particular, desire her to suspend her judgment till then; and if not to please me, to satisfy her own curiosity, she may come. I have taken care of what you desired me. I have done my best; I hope, for my sake, it will succeed well, for I shall be more concerned, I dare say, if it should not than you would be."

JOHN GAY TO THE COUNTESS OF SUFFOLK.

"Your letter was not ill-bestowed, for I found in it such an air of satisfaction that I have a pleasure every time I think of it. I fancy (though by her silence she seems to approve of your Ladyship's conduct) the Duchess will meet you at Highclere; for those that have a real friendship cannot be satisfied with real relations; they want to inquire into the minutest circumstances of life, that they may be sure things are as happy as they appear to be, and that is a curiosity that is excusable.

"I do not like lawsuits; I wish you could have your right without them, for I fancy there never was one since the world began, that, besides the cost, was not attended with anxiety and vexation. But as you descended from lawyers,^[5] what might be my plague, perhaps may be only your amusement. Nobody but yourself hath let us know anything about you. Judge, then, how welcome your ladyship's letter was to me. I find this change of life of yours is a subject that I cannot so well write upon; it is a thing that one cannot so well judge of in general. But as for your Ladyship's conduct in this juncture, my approbation goes for nothing, for all the world knows that I am partial.

"When you have a mind to make me happy, write to me, for of late I have had but very little chance, and only [pg 130]chance, of seeing you. If ever you thought well of me, if ever you believed I wished you well, and wished to be of service to you, think the same of me, for I am the same, and shall always be so.

"Mr. Pope, I fear, is determined never to write to me. I hope he is well. If you see Miss Blount or Mr. Pope, I beg them to accept my compliments."

JOHN GAY TO DEAN SWIFT.