John Gay

“ 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. ”

“ 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.... ”

“ John Gay had his faults as a man and as a poet, and it were easy finding fault with him in both capacities. But
"Poor were the triumph o'er the timid hare;"
and he was, by his own shewing, as well as Queen Caroline's, "the Hare with many friends." Let us, instead, drop a "tear over his fate," and pay a tribute, short, but sincere, to his true, though limited genius. ”

“ JOHN GAY TO DEAN SWIFT.
London, February 3rd, 1723.
"As for the reigning amusements of the town, it is entirely music; real fiddles, bass-viols and hautboys; not poetical harps, lyres and reeds. There's nobody allowed to say, I sing, but an eunuch or an Italian woman. Everybody is grown now as great a judge of music, as they were in your time of poetry, and folks that could not distinguish one tune from another now daily dispute about the different styles of Handel, Bononcine, and Attilio. People have now forgot Homer and Virgil and Cæsar, or at least they have lost their ranks. ”

“ 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.
JOHN GAY TO ALEXANDER POPE.
August 2nd, 1728. ”

“ 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. ”

“ JOHN GAY TO DEAN SWIFT.
Amesbury, July 4th, 1730.
"I have left off wine and writing; for I really think, that man must be a bold writer, who trusts to wit without it.
"I took your advice; and some time ago took to love, and made some advances to the lady you sent me to in Soho, but met no return; so I have given up all thoughts of it, and have now no pursuit or amusement.
"A state of indolence is what I do not like; it is what I would not choose. I am not thinking of a Court or preferment, for I think the lady I live with is my friend, so that I am at the height of my ambition. ”

“ 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." ”

“ John Gay was the son of William Gay, fourth son of John Gay of Frithelstock. William had married the daughter of a Dissenting preacher named Hanmer, in Barnstaple, and there John was born on 30 June, 1685. William Gay died when John was but ten years old, [Pg 415] and he was brought up by his mother in Ivy Street, Barnstaple, and sent to school to Robert Luck, a would-be poet, who wrote Latin and English verses, in one of which, “The Female Phæton,” he depicted the career and lapse of a fast young lady of fashionable life. ”

“ John Gay, was first produced at the theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, in 1728, and was so successful that it made “Gay rich and Rich (the lessee) gay.” This encouraged Gay to write a sequel to it, entitled “Polly,” which was produced in 1729, but met with far less approbation. ”

“ 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.
JOHN GAY TO DEAN SWIFT.
Bath, May 16th, 1728. ”

“ In vain he had been bidden to sell and to realize. He had visions of wealth, and held on to be accidentally an honester man than if he had enriched himself by that delusive scheme; but he nearly sunk beneath his disappointment, and his health was endangered. Hope and the Muse restored him to more life and to more disappointment. He then wrote 'The Captive,' obtained an appointment to read it to the Princess of Wales, stumbled, like Cæsar, over a stool; the princess screamed, the omen was a true one—'The Captive' pined and died. ”

“ God is a better friend than a Court: even any honest man is a better. I promise you my entire friendship in all events."
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.
JOHN GAY TO ALEXANDER POPE.
[Feb. or March, 1729.]
"My melancholy increases, and every hour threatens me with some return of my distemper, nay, I think I may rather say I have it on me. ”

“ 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]
DEAN SWIFT TO JOHN GAY.
Dublin, March 28th, 1728.
"We have your opera for sixpence, and we are as full of it pro modulo nostro as London can be ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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]
JOHN GAY TO DEAN SWIFT.
From the Duke of Queensberry's,
Burlington Gardens. ”

“ THE HON. MRS. HOWARD TO JOHN GAY.
August, 1723.
"After you have told me that you hate writing letters, it would be very ungrateful not to thank you for so many as you have written for me. Acting contrary to one's inclinations, for the service of those one likes, is a strong proof of friendship; yet, as it is painful, it ought never to be exacted but in case of great necessity. As such I look upon that correspondence in which I have engaged you. ”

“ JOHN GAY TO THE COUNTESS OF SUFFOLK.
July 8th, 1731.
"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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Pope wrote to Swift, on April 2nd, 1733, "that death is only terrible to us as it separates us from those we love; but I really think those have the worst of it who are left by us, if we are true friends. I have felt more (I fancy) in the loss of Mr. Gay, than I shall suffer in the thought of going away myself into a state that none of us can feel this sort of losses. I wished vehemently to have seen him in a condition of living independent, and to have lived in perfect indolence the rest of our days together, the two most idle, most innocent, undesigning poets of our age." ”

“ 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. ”

“ DEAN SWIFT TO JOHN GAY.
Dublin, January 8th, 1723.
"Although I care not to talk to you as a divine, yet I hope you have not been the author of your colic. Do you drink bad wine or keep bad company?... I am heartily sorry you have any dealings with that ugly distemper, and I believe our friend Arbuthnot will recommend you to temperance and exercise ...
"I am extremely glad he [Pope] is not in your case of needing great men's favour, and could heartily wish that you were in his. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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:—
JOHN GAY TO THE HON. MRS. HOWARD.
[Bath, 1724.]
"Since I came to the Bath I have written three letters; the first to you, the second to Mr. Pope, and the third to Mr. Fortescue. Every post gives me fresh mortification, for I am forgot by everybody. Dr. Arbuthnot and his brother went away this morning, and intend to see Oxford on their way to London. ”

“ DEAN SWIFT TO JOHN GAY.
Dublin, June 29th, 1731.
"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. ”

“ JOHN GAY TO DEAN SWIFT.
March 13th, 1732.
"I find myself dispirited for want of having some pursuit. Indolence and idleness are the most tiresome things in the world. I begin to find a dislike to society. I think I ought to try to break myself of it, but I cannot resolve to set about it. I have left off almost all my great acquaintance, which saves me something in chair hire, though in that article the town is still very expensive. Those who were your old acquaintance are almost the only people I visit ”

“ JOHN GAY TO DEAN SWIFT.
Whitehall, February 15th, 1728.
"I have deferred writing to you from time to time, till I could give you an account of 'The Beggar's Opera.' It is acted at the playhouse in Lincoln's Inn Fields with such success that the playhouse has been crowded every night. To-night is the fifteenth time of acting, and it is thought it will run a fortnight longer. I have ordered Motte [18] to send the play to you the first opportunity. ”