Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) Part 18

JOHN GAY TO DEAN SWIFT.

December 1st, 1731

"You used to complain that Mr. Pope and I would not let you speak: you may now be even with me, and take it out in writing. If you do not send to me now and then, the post-office will think me of no consequence, for I have no correspondent but you. You may keep as far from us as you please; you cannot be forgotten by those who ever knew you, and therefore please me by sometimes showing I am not forgot by you. I have nothing to take me off from my friendship to you: I seek no new acquaintance, and court no favour; I spend no shillings in coaches or chairs to levees or great visits, and, as I do not want the a.s.sistance of some that I formerly conversed with, I will not so much as seem to seek to be a dependant.

"As to my studies, I have not been entirely idle, though I cannot say that I have yet perfected anything. What I have done is something in the way of those Fables I have already published.

"All the money I get is saving, so that by habit there may be some hopes (if I grow richer) of my becoming a miser. All misers have their excuses. The motive to my parsimony is independence."[7]

[Footnote 1: Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), XVII, p. 358]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., XVII, p. 342.]

[Footnote 3: Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), XVII, p. 370.]

[Footnote 4: _Ibid_., XVII, p. 382.]

[Footnote 5: Lady Suffolk's great-great-great-grandfather was Sir Henry Hobart, Chief-Justice of the Common Pleas.]

[Footnote 6: Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), XVII, p. 385.]

[Footnote 7: Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), XVII, p. 436.]

CHAPTER XIII

1732

DEATH

As time pa.s.sed Gay became less satisfied with his condition. It may have been that his health became worse; or it may be that, like to many men who are idle and make no effort to work, he became annoyed at the _ennui_ which is so often the result of an unoccupied life. Anyhow, in his letters there crept in a note of irritability, which has not previously been sounded.

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; and, indeed, upon trying all, I like them best....

"If you would advise the d.u.c.h.ess to confine me four hours a-day to my own room, while I am in the country, I will write; for I cannot confine myself as I ought."[1]

DEAN SWIFT TO JOHN GAY.

Dublin, May 4th, 1732.

"It is your pride or laziness, more than chair-hire, that makes the town expensive. No honour is lost by walking in the dark; and in the day, you may beckon a blackguard boy under a gate [to clean your shoes] near your visiting place (_experto crede_), save eleven pence, and get half a crown's-worth of health ...

"I find by the whole cast of your letter, that you are as giddy and volatile as ever: just the reverse of Mr. Pope, who has always loved a domestic life from his youth. I was going to wish you had some little place that you could call your own, but, I profess I do not know you well enough to contrive any one system of life that would please you.

You pretend to preach up riding and walking to the d.u.c.h.ess, yet from my knowledge of you after twenty years, you always joined a violent desire of perpetually shifting places and company, with a rooted laziness, and an utter impatience of fatigue. A coach and six horses is the utmost exercise you can bear; and this only when you can fill it with such company as is best suited to your taste, and how glad would you be if it could waft you in the air to avoid jolting; while I, who am so much later in life, can, or at least could, ride five hundred miles on a trotting horse. You mortally hate writing, only because it is the thing you chiefly ought to do, as well to keep up the vogue you have in the world, as to make you easy in your fortune: you are merciful to everything but money your best friend, whom you treat with inhumanity."[2]

In May was first performed at the Haymarket Theatre "Acis and Galatea,"

of which he wrote the "book" and Handel the music; but this was not work upon which he had been lately engaged--in fact, both words and music had been ready for ten years. Gay, however, did occasionally put in some time on literary work, and at his death left the "book" of an opera "Achilles," which was produced on February 10th, 1733, at the scene of his triumph with "The Beggar's Opera," the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields; "The Distrest Wife" and a farce, "The Rehearsal at Goatham,"

which last were printed, respectively, in 1743 and 1754. He was at this time composing very leisurely a second series of "Fables," which were ready for the press at the time of his death, but did not appear until 1738.

JOHN GAY TO DEAN SWIFT.

London, May 19th, 1732.

"You seemed not to approve of my writing more Fables. Those I am now writing have a prefatory discourse before each of them, by way of epistle, and the morals of them mostly are of the political kind; which makes them run into a greater length than those I have already published. I have already finished about fifteen or sixteen; four or five more would make a volume of the same size as the first. Though this is a kind of writing that appears very easy, I find it the most difficult of any I ever undertook. After I have invented one fable, and finished it, I despair of finding out another; but I have a moral or two more, which I wish to write upon.

"I have also a sort of a scheme to raise my finances by doing something for the stage: with this, and some reading, and a great deal of exercise, I propose to pa.s.s my summer.

"As for myself, I am often troubled with the colic. I have as much inattention, and have, I think, lower spirits than usual, which I impute to my having no one pursuit in life."[3]

JOHN GAY TO DEAN SWIFT.

Amesbury, July 24th, 1732.

"I shall finish the work I intended, this summer,[4] but I look upon the success in every respect to be precarious. You judge very right of my present situation, that I cannot propose to succeed by favour: but I do not think, if I could flatter myself that I had any degree of merit, much could be expected from that unfashionable pretension.

"I have almost done everything I proposed in the way of Fables; but have not set the last hand to them. Though they will not amount to half the number, I believe they will make much such another volume as the last. I find it the most difficult task I ever undertook; but have determined to go through with it; and, after this, I believe I shall never have courage enough to think any more in this way."[5]

ALEXANDER POPE TO JOHN GAY.

October 2nd, 1732.

"Every man, and every boy, is writing verses on the royal hermitage: I hear the Queen is at a loss which to prefer; but for my own part I like none so well as Mr. Poyntz's[6] in Latin. You would oblige my Lady Suffolk if you tried your muse on this occasion. I am sure I would do as much for the d.u.c.h.ess of Queensberry, if she desired it. Several of your friends a.s.sure me it is expected from you. One should not bear in mind all one's life, any little indignity one receives from a Court, and therefore I am in hopes, neither her Grace of Queensberry will hinder you, nor you decline it."

The "royal hermitage" was a building erected by Queen Caroline in the grounds of Richmond Palace, and decorated with busts of her favourite philosophers. This letter of Pope seems extraordinary, and it is a little difficult to guess what inspired the suggestion contained in it.

"This is but shabby advice," Croker has written, "considering the general tone of Pope's private correspondence, as well as his published satires, and seems peculiarly strange in the circ.u.mstances in which Gay himself and the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Queensberry, on his account, stood with the Queen. If it were not for the introduction of Lady Suffolk's name, I should have thought Pope's advice sheer irony, and a hint for a libel on the Court. The d.u.c.h.ess and Gay were offended at the proposition." It may be, however, that Pope thought it possible that such a poetical effusion as he had in mind might restore Gay to favour at Court. Gay, who received Pope's letter while he was on a visit to Orchard Wyndham, the seat of Sir William Wyndham, in Somersetshire, would do nothing in the matter, as will be seen from his reply.

JOHN GAY TO ALEXANDER POPE.

October 7th, 1732.