C.Q.

JOHN GAY AND THE DUCHESS OF QUEENSBERRY TO THE HON.  MRS. HOWARD.

  [Amesbury] Saturday, September, 1730.

“I cannot neglect this opportunity of writing to you and begging you to be a mediator between my lady duchess and me; we having at present a quarrel about a fishing rod; and at the same time to give her your opinion whether you think it proper for her to stay here till after Christmas, for I find that neither place nor preferment will let me leave her; and when she hath been long enough in one place, prevail with her, if you can, to go to another.  I would always have her do what she will, because I am glad to be of her opinion, and because I know it is what I must always do myself.”

J.G.

“To follow one’s fancy is by much the best medicine; it has quite cured my face and left me no pain but the impossibility of being in two places at once, which is no small sorrow, since one of them would be near you.  But the boys [Lord Drumlanrig and Lord Charles Douglas] are too lean to travel as yet.  Compassion being the predominant fashion of the place, we are preserved alive with as much care as the partridges, which no one yet has had the heart to kill, though several barbarous attempts have been made.  If I could write I would for ever, but my pen is so much your friend that it will only let me tell you that I am extremely so.

“I pray it may not be difficult for my dear Mrs. Howard to forgive, as to read this provocation.  By the next I hope to write plain.”

C.Q.

ALEXANDER POPE TO JOHN GAY.

  October, 1730.

“I continue, and ever shall, to wish you all good and happiness.  I wish that some lucky event might set you in a state of ease and independency all at once, and that I might live to see you as happy as this silly world and fortune can make anyone.  Are we never to live together more as once we did?”

THE HON.  MRS. HOWARD TO JOHN GAY.

  October 3rd, 1730.

“I hear you have had a house full of courtiers, and, what is more extraordinary, they were honest people; but I will take care, agreeably to your desire, that you shall not increase the number.  I wish I could as easily gratify you in your other request about a certain person [the Duchess of Queensberry]’s health; but, indeed, John, that is not in my power.  I have often thought it proceeds from thinking better of herself than she does of anybody else; for she has always confidence to inquire after those she calls friends, and enough assurance to give them advice; at the same time, she will not answer a civil question about herself, and would certainly never follow any advice that was given her:  you plainly see she neither thinks well of their heart or their head.  I believe I have told you as much before; but a settled opinion of anything will naturally lead one into the same manner of expressing one’s thoughts.”