3 - ‘That Good, Honest, Estimable Man … John Gray’

Summary

WRITING in 1863, the organist Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1810–76) recalled a conversation between his father, the composer Samuel Wesley, and John Gray about equal temperament:

The late Mr. Samuel Wesley advocated equal tuning, but he had never heard it. I recollect his arguing the point with that good, honest, estimable man, the late John Gray, and quoting Dr. Crotch as an advocate for equal temperament. At this moment Gray's words and manner are fresh in my memory. “Oh, no, no; ha ha! Depend upon it, that will never do! No, no, we know all about that.” His emphatic “that” meaning, as I took it, that however willing and anxious he might be to adopt every possible novelty in the construction of his organs equal temperament was not to be thought of.

Presumably this exchange took place in the 1820s or early 1830s. So it is not surprising that Gray's conversation, as recalled by Wesley, echoes the diction and manner of a character from an early novel by Charles Dickens. Coupled with the impression created by the surviving detail from a lost portrait (Plate 3.1), this (entirely fanciful) identification with the setting and deportment of the Pickwick Club may actually not to be too wide of the mark.

John Gray was born in July 1790 (above, p. 46). He was therefore still three months short of his twenty-first birthday when, on 4 April 1811, he married Jane Ann Warner Doyle. The marriage took place at St Michael, Paternoster Royal where, as noted above (pp. 47–9), William Gray maintained an annuity organ and provided an organist. Bride and bridegroom were both described as ‘of this Parish’, and the marriage was solemnised following the calling of banns, so both parties must have contrived to satisfy the residence qualification. The witnesses were ‘Mary Wheatley’ and ‘John Fisher’. Unfortunately, neither the address nor parentage of Miss Doyle is recorded, and nor is anything known of her family background.

In 1813, a son, Robert, was baptised at St Pancras (Old Church) on 25 November, and the family was recorded as living in Frederick Place. This was a terrace on the west side of Hampstead Road, a little to the south of St James's Chapel, on the opposite side.