Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) Part 8

[Footnote 2: _Lives of the Poets_ (ed. Hill), III, p. 273.]

[Footnote 3: _B.M._, Add. MSS., 28275, f. 8.]

[Footnote 4: Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), XVI, p. 385.]

[Footnote 5: George William, born November 2nd, 1717, died February 6th, 1722.]

[Footnote 6: _Works_ (ed. Elwin and Courthope), VII, p. 422.]

[Footnote 7: Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), XVI, 390.]

[Footnote 8: Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), XVI, p. 398.]

[Footnote 9: Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), XVI, p. 297.]

[Footnote 10: Probably a letter from Lord Peterborough to Mrs. Howard.]

[Footnote 11: Probably a copy of a letter from Mrs. Howard to Lord Peterborough].

CHAPTER VII

1724-1727

"THE CAPTIVES"--THE FIRST SERIES OF "FABLES"--GAY AND THE COURT--POPE, SWIFT AND MRS. HOWARD.

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 j.a.panese 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:--

TO HER ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCESS OF WALES.

"Madam,

"The honour I received from your Royal Highness in being permitted to read this play to you before it was acted, made me more happy than any other success that could have happened to me. If it had the good fortune to gain your Royal Highness's approbation, I have often been reflecting to what to impute it, and I think it must have been the catastrophe of the fall, the rewarding virtue and the relieving the distressed. For that could not fail to give some pleasure in fiction, which, it is plain, gives you the greatest in reality, or else your Royal Highness would not (as you always have done) make it your daily practice.

"I am, Madam, "Your Royal Highness's most dutiful and most humbly devoted servant, "JOHN GAY."

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:--

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. The talk of the Bath is the marriage of Lord Somerville and Mrs. Rolt. She left the Bath yesterday. He continues here but is to go away to-day or to-morrow; but as opinions differ I cannot decide whether they are married or no. Lord Ess.e.x gives a private ball in Hamson's great room to Mrs. Pelham this evening, so that in all probabilities some odd bodies being left out, we shall soon have the pleasure of being divided into fractions. I shall return to London with Lord Scarborough, who hath not as yet fixed his time of leaving the Bath. Lord Fitzwilliam this morning had an account that a ticket of his was come up 500. Lady Fitzwilliam wonders she has not heard from you, and has so little resolution that she cannot resist b.u.t.tered rolls at breakfast, though she knows they prejudice her health.

"If you will write to me you will make me cheerful and happy, without which I am told the waters will have no good effect. Pray have some regard to my health, for my life is in your service."

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 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 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 d.u.c.h.ess of Queensberry, especially with the d.u.c.h.ess, 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 Oxfords.h.i.+re with the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Queensberry, and at Petersham, and wheresoever they would carry me; but as they will go to Wilts.h.i.+re[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 William Duke of c.u.mberland these new Fables, invented for his amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 a.s.sured 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":--

A Hare who in a civil way, Complied with ev'ry thing, like Gay, Was known by all the b.e.s.t.i.a.l train, Who haunt the wood, or graze the plain.

Her care was never to offend.

And ev'ry creature was her friend.

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 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.

ALEXANDER POPE TO JOHN GAY.

October 6th, 1727.

"I have many years ago magnified, in my own mind, and repeated to you, a ninth beat.i.tude, added to the eight in the Scripture: "Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed. I could find in my heart to congratulate you on this happy dismission from all Court dependance. I dare say I shall find you the better and the honester man for it many years hence; very probably the healthfuller, and the cheerfuller into the bargain. You are happily rid of many cursed ceremonies, as well as of many ill and vicious habits, of which few or no men escape the infection, who are hackneyed and trammelled in the ways of a Court. Princes, indeed, and Peers (the lackies of Princes) and Ladies (the fools of Peers) will smile on you the less; but men of worth and real friends will look on you the better. There is a thing, the only thing which kings and queens cannot give you, for they have it not to give--liberty, which is worth all they have, and which as yet Englishmen need not ask from their hands. You will enjoy that, and your own integrity, and the satisfactory consciousness of having not merited such graces from Courts as are bestowed only on the mean, servile, flattering, interested and undeserving. The only steps to the favour of the great are such complacencies, such compliances, such distant decorums, as delude them in their vanities, or engage them in their pa.s.sions. He is their greatest favourite who is the falsest; and when a man, by such vile graduations arrives at the height of grandeur and power, he is then at best but in a circ.u.mstance to be hated, and in a condition to be hanged for serving their ends. So many a Minister has found it."

"I can only add a plain uncourtly speech," Pope wrote again to Gay ten days later. "While you are n.o.body's servant you may be anybody's friend, and, as such, I embrace you in all conditions of life. While I have a s.h.i.+lling you shall have sixpence, nay, eightpence, if I can contrive to live upon a groat." But if Pope took the matter calmly, Swift, on the other hand, completely lost his temper and wrote as if voluntary attendance at Court made it obligatory upon the Queen to provide for the courtier.

DEAN SWIFT TO JOHN GAY.

Dublin, November 27th, 1727.

"I entirely approve your refusal of that employment, and your writing to the Queen. I am perfectly confident you have a firm enemy in the Ministry. G.o.d forgive him, but not till he puts himself in a state to be forgiven. Upon reasoning with myself, I should hope they are gone too far to discard you quite, and that they will give you something; which, although much less than they ought, will be (as far as it is worth) better circ.u.mstantiated; and since you already just live, a middling help will make you just tolerable. Your lateness in life (as you so soon call it) might be improper to begin the world with, but almost the eldest men may hope to see changes in a Court. A Minister is always seventy; you are thirty years younger; and consider, Cromwell did not begin to appear till he was older than you."[18]

Swift could not forgive the Court for the offer, Mrs. Howard for not exerting her influence to get a better post for her protege. "I desire my humble service to Lord Oxford, Lord Bathurst, and particularly to Miss Blount, but to no lady at Court. G.o.d bless you for being 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 pa.s.sed upon him. In "A Libel on the Rev. Mr.