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 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:--
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 Essex 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 buttered 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 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 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":--
A Hare who in a civil way,
Complied with ev'ry thing, like Gay,
Was known by all the bestial 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 beatitude, 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
passions. 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 circumstance 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 nobody's servant you may be anybody's friend,
and, as such, I embrace you in all conditions of life. While I have a
shilling 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. God 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 circumstantiated; 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 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 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:--
Thus Gay, the hare with many friends.
Twice seven long years the Court attends;
Who, under tales conveying truth,
To virtue form'd a princely youth;
Who paid his courtship with the crowd,
As far as modest pride allow'd;
Rejects a servile usher's place,
And leaves St. James's in disgrace.
Two years later he returned to the attack in "An Epistle to Mr. Gay ":--
How could you, Gay, disgrace the Muse's train,
To serve a tasteless Court twelve years in vain!
Fain would I think our female friend sincere,
Till Bob,[20] the poet's foe, possess'd her ear.
Did female virtue e'er so high ascend,
To lose an inch of favour for a friend?
Say, had the Court no better place to choose
For thee, than make a dry-nurse of thy Muse?
How cheaply had thy liberty been sold,
To squire a royal girl of two years old:
In leading strings her infant steps to guide,
Or with her go-cart amble side by side!
It is a little difficult at this time of day to understand Swift's
indignation. Gay was already in the enjoyment 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.
THE HON. MRS. HOWARD TO JOHN GAY.
October, 1727.
"I hear you expect, and have a mind to have, a letter from me, and
though I have little to say, I find I don't care that you should be
either disappointed or displeased. Tell her Grace of Queensberry I don't
think she looked kindly upon me when I saw her last; she ought to have
looked and thought very kindly, for I am much more her humble servant
than those who tell her so every day. Don't let her cheat you in the
pencils; she designs to give you nothing but her old ones. I suppose she
always uses those worst who love her best, Mrs. Herbert excepted; but I
hear she has done handsomely by her. I cannot help doing the woman this
justice, that she can now and then distinguish merit.
"So much for her Grace; now for yourself, John. I desire you will mind
the main chance, and be in town in time enough to let the opera[21] have
play enough for its life, and for your pockets. Your head is your best
friend; it could clothe, lodge and wash you, but you neglect it, and
follow that false friend, your heart, which is such a foolish, tender
thing that it makes others despise your head that have not half so good
a one upon their own shoulders. In short, John, you may be a snail or a
silk-worm, but by my consent you shall never be a _hare_ again.
"We go to town next week. Try your interest and bring the duchess up by
the birthday. I did not think to have named her any more in this letter.
I find I am a little foolish about her; don't you be a great deal so,
for if _she_ will not come, do you come without her."
* * * * *
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]:--
A mother who vast pleasure finds,
In forming of the children's minds;
In midst of whom with vast delight,
She passes many a winter's night;
Mingles in every play to find,
What bias nature gives her mind;
Resolving there to take her aim.
To guide them to the realms of fame;
And wisely make those realms their way,
To those of everlasting day;
Each boist'rous passion she'd control,
And early humanise the soul,
The noblest notions would inspire,
As they were sitting by the fire;
Her offspring, conscious of her care,
Transported hung around her chair.
Of Scripture heroes would she tell,
Whose names they'd lisp, ere they could spell;
Then the delighted mother smiles,
And shews the story in the tiles.
At other times her themes would be,
The sages of antiquity;
Who left a glorious name behind,
By being blessings to their kind:
Again she'd take a nobler scope,
And tell of Addison and Pope.
This happy mother met one day,
A book of fables writ by Gay;
And told her children, here's treasure,
A fund of wisdom, and of pleasure.
Such decency! such elegance!
Such morals! such exalted sense!
Well has the poet found the art,
To raise the mind, and mend the heart.
Her favourite boy the author seiz'd,
And as he read, seem'd highly pleas'd;
Made such reflections every page,
The mother thought above his age:
Delighted read, but scarce was able,
To finish the concluding fable.
"What ails my child?" the mother cries,
"Whose sorrows now have fill'd your eyes?"
"Oh, dear Mamma, can he want friends
Who writes for such exalted ends?
Oh, base, degenerate human kind!
Had I a fortune to my mind,
Should Gay complain; but now, alas!
Through what a world am I to pass;
Where friendship's but an empty name,
And merit's scarcely paid in fame."
Resolv'd to lull his woes to rest.
She told him he should hope the best;
That who instruct the royal race.
Can't fail of some distinguished place.
"Mamma, if you were queen," says he,
"And such a book was writ for me;
I know 'tis so much to your taste,
That Gay would keep his coach at least."
"My child, what you suppose is true,
I see its excellence in you;
Poets whose writing mend the mind,
A noble recompense should find:
But I am barr'd by fortune's frowns.
From the best privilege of crowns;
The glorious godlike power to bless,
And raise up merit in distress."
"But, dear Mamma, I long to know.
Were that the case, what you'd bestow?"
"What I'd bestow," says she, "My dear,
At least five hundred pounds a year."
[Footnote 1: Johnson: _Lives of the Poets_ (ed. Hill), III, p. 274.]
[Footnote 2: Letter to Broome, January 30th, 1724 (Pope: _Works_ (ed.
Elwin and Courthope, VIII, p. 75.))]
[Footnote 3: Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), XVII, p. 6.]
[Footnote 4: _Ibid_., XVII, p. 8.]
[Footnote 5: William Augustus (1721-1765), third son of George III;
created Duke of Cumberland, 1726.]
[Footnote 6: Ambrose Philips, the poet.]
[Footnote 7: Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), XVI, 389.]
[Footnote 8: _Ibid_., XIX. p. 283.]
[Footnote 9: _Ibid_., XVII, p. 99.]
[Footnote 10: Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), XVII, p. 94.]
[Footnote 11: To Amesbury, the principal seat of the Duke of
Queensberry.]
[Footnote 12: Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), XVII, p. 66.]
[Footnote 13: _Ibid_., XVII, p. 81.]
[Footnote 14: _Ibid_., XVII, p. 96.]
[Footnote 15: Louisa (1724-1751), the youngest of George II's children.
She married in 1743, Frederick, Prince (afterwards King) of Denmark,]
[Footnote 16: Johnson: _Lives of the Poets_ (ed. Hill), III, p. 274.]
[Footnote 17: Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), XVIII, p. 42.]
[Footnote 18: Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), XVII, p. 161.]
[Footnote 19: Mrs. Howard.]
[Footnote 20: Sir Robert Walpole.]
[Footnote 21: An allusion to "The Beggar's Opera," which Gay was then
writing.]
[Footnote 22: Printed for the first and only time in "An Account of the
Life and Writings of the Author," in _Plays Written by Mr. John Gay_,
1760.]