exaggeration, it is a fact that John Gay was now a personage. "Mr. Gay's
fame continues; but his riches are in a fair way of diminishing; he is
gone to the Bath," Martha Blount wrote to Swift, May 7th;[23] and two
months later, with great pride, Gay told Swift, "My portrait mezzotinto
is published from Mrs. Howard's painting."[24] Indirectly, he secured
further notoriety when, in the summer, Lavinia Fenton, who had played
the heroine in the Opera, ran away with a Duke. "The Duke of Bolton, I
hear," he wrote to Swift from Bath, "has run away with Polly Peachum,
having settled £400 a year on her during pleasure, and upon disagreement
£200 a year."[25] She had played in the whole sixty-three performances
of the Opera, the forty-seventh performance being set aside for her
benefit. The sixty-third performance took place on June 19th, and that
was her last appearance on the boards of a theatre. In 1751, shortly
after the death of his wife, the Duke married her, she being then about
forty-three, and he sixty-six.[26]


[Footnote 1: Swift: _Work_ (ed. Scott), XVII, p. 157.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., XVII, p. 162.]

[Footnote 3: _See_ p. 41 of this work.]

[Footnote 4: Spence: _Anecdotes_ (ed. Singer), p. 159.]

[Footnote 5: Pope: _Works_ (ed. Elwin and Courthope), VII, p. 111.]

[Footnote 6: Boswell: _Life of Johnson_ (ed. Hill), II, p. 368.]

[Footnote 7: Spence: _Anecdotes_, p. 159.]