Life and Letters of John Gay (1685-1732) | Page 4

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 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":--
The Welsh girl is pretty. The English girl fair, The Irish deem'd witty, The French débonnaire;
Though all may invite me, I'd value them not; The charms that delight me I find in a SCOT.
It is presumedly to the same young lady he was referring in the verses written probably shortly after he returned to London after his visit to Devonshire:--
ABSENCE.
Augustus, frowning, gave command. And Ovid left his native land; From Julia, as an exile sent. He long with barb'rous Goths was pent.
So fortune frown'd on me, and I was driven From friends, from home, from Jane, and happy Devon! And Jane, sore grieved when from me torn away;-- loved her sorrow, though I wish'd her--GAY.
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:
Begging you will not mock his sighing. And keep him thus whole years a-dying! "Whole years!"--Excuse my freely speaking. Such tortures, why a month--a week in? Caress, or kill him quite in one day, Obliging thus your servant, JOHN GAY.
[Footnote 1: Risdon: Survey of Devon (1811), p. 243.]
[Footnote 2: Gribble: Memorials of Devonshire.]
[Footnote 3: Gay's Chair, p. 12.]
[Footnote 4: Gay's Chair, p. 13.]
[Footnote 5: Notes and Queries, N.S. VI, 488, December 16th, 1882, from the North Devon Herald of December 7th.]
[Footnote 6: Aaron Hill (1685-1750), dramatist and journalist.]
[Footnote 7: Charles Douglas, third Duke of Queensbury and second Duke of Dover (1698-1777), married Catherine, second daughter of Henry Hyde, Earl of Clarendon and Rochester.]
[Footnote 8: Ayre: Pope, pp. 11, 97.]
[Footnote 9: Gay's Chair, p. 13.]
[Footnote 10: Gay's Chair, p. 5.]
CHAPTER II
1706-1712
GAY COMMENCES AUTHOR
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