do all the justice and service I can for a friend,
so I am sure you will think I am well employed."[2]

* * * * *

From this letter it will be seen that Gay was endeavouring to make some
return to his host and hostess for their kindness in looking after him
by acting as a private secretary to the Duchess. But it may be taken for
granted that his duties were merely nominal, and it may equally be taken
for granted that his assistance was of little value, and only accepted
nominally in order to lessen the weight of the obligation under which
they thought--probably erroneously--he might be suffering. Why Gay
should have led a life of dependence unless he liked it, it is not easy
to see, for when he died about thirty months later, he left the then not
inconsiderable sum of L6,000. Gay, who never did to-day what could by
any possibility be postponed, neglected, of course, to make a will. As
he died intestate, his fortune was divided between his surviving
sisters, Katherine Bailer and Joanna Fortescue.

Gay until the end kept up his correspondence with Mrs. Howard, and his
letters to her are often delightful reading, especially when he had
nothing in particular to say, or when he was able to poke kindly fun at
his hostess and protectress.

JOHN GAY TO THE HON. MRS. HOWARD.

May 9th, 1730.

"It is what the Duchess never would tell me--so that it is impossible
for me to tell you--_how she does_: but I cannot take it ill, for I
really believe it is what she never really and truly did to anybody in
her life. As I am no physician and cannot do her any good, one would
wonder how she could refuse to answer this question out of common
civility; but she is a professed hater of common civility, and so I am
determined never to ask her again. If you have a mind to know what she
hath done since she came here, the most material things that I know of
is, that she hath worked a rose, and milked a cow, and those two things
I assure you are of more consequence, I verily believe, than hath been
done by anybody else.

"Mrs. Herbert was very angry with her Grace the night before she left
the town, that she could part with her friends with such an indecent
cheerfulness; she wishes she had seen you at the same time, that she
might have known whether she could have carried this happy indifference
through, or no. She is grown a great admirer of two characters in
Prior's poems, that of "Sauntering Jack and Id