STELLA AND VANESSA.
The final crash of the Tory administration found Swift approaching the end
of his forty-seventh year. It found him in his own opinion prematurely
aged both in mind and body. His personal prospects and political hopes
were crushed. "I have a letter from Dean Swift," says Arbuthnot in
September; "he keeps up his noble spirit, and though like a man knocked
down, you may behold him still with a stern countenance and aiming a blow
at his adversaries." Yet his adversaries knew, and he knew only too well,
that such blows as he could now deliver could at most show his wrath
without gratifying his revenge. He was disarmed as well as "knocked down."
He writes to Bolingbroke from Dublin in despair. "I live a country life in
town," he says, "see nobody, and go every day once to prayers, and hope in
a few months to grow as stupid as the present situation of affairs will
require. Well, after all, parsons are not such bad company, especially
when they are under subjection; and I let none but such come near me."
Oxford, Bolingbroke, and Ormond were soon in exile or the tower; and a
letter to Pope next year gives a sufficient picture of Swift's feelings.
"You know," he said, "how well I loved both Lord Oxford and Bolingbroke,
and how dear the Duke of Ormond is to me; do you imagine I can be easy
while their enemies are endeavouring to take off their heads?--_I nunc et
versus tecum meditare canoros!_" "You are to understand," he says in
conclusion, "that I live in the corner of a vast unfurnished house; my
family consists of a steward, a groom, a helper in the stable, a footman,
and an old maid, who are all at board wages, and when I do not dine abroad
or make an entertainment (which last is very rare), I eat a mutton pie and
drink half a pint of wine; my amusements are defending my small dominions
against the archbishop, and endeavouring to reduce my rebellious choir.
_Perditur hæc inter misero lux._" In another of the dignified letters
which show the finest side of his nature, he offered to join Oxford, whose
intrepid behaviour, he says, "has astonished every one but me, who know
you so well." But he could do nothing beyond showing sympathy; and he
remained alone asserting his authority in his ecclesiastical domains,
brooding over the past, and for the time unable to divert his thoughts
into any less distressing channel. Some verses written in October "in
sickness" give a remarkable expression of his melancholy,--
'Tis true--then why should I repine
To see my life so fast decline?
But why obscurely here alone
Where I am neither loved nor known?
My state of health none care to learn,
My life is here no soul's concern,
And those with whom I now converse
Without a tear will tend my hearse.
Yet we might have fancied that his lot would not be so unbearable. After
all, a fall which ends in a deanery should break no bones. His friends,
though hard pressed, survived; and, lastly, was any one so likely to shed
tears upon his hearse as the woman to whom he was finally returning? The
answer to this question brings us to a story imperfectly known to us, but
of vital importance in Swift's history.
We have seen in what masterful fashion Swift took possession of great men.
The same imperious temper shows itself in his relations to women. He
required absolute submission. Entrance into the inner circle of his
affections could only be achieved by something like abasement; but all
within it became as a part of himself, to be both cherished and protected
without stint. His affectation of brutality was part of a system. On first
meeting Lady Burlington at her husband's house, he ordered her to sing.
She declined. He replied, "Sing, or I will make you. Why, madam, I suppose
you take me for one of your English hedge-parsons; sing when I tell you."
She burst into tears and retired. The next time he met her he began,
"Pray, madam, are you as proud and ill-natured as when I saw you last?"
She good-humouredly gave in, and Swift became her warm friend. Another
lady to whom he was deeply attached was a famous beauty, Anne Long. A
whimsical treaty was drawn up, setting forth that "the said Dr. Swift,
upon the score of his merit and extraordinary qualities, doth claim the
sole and undoubted right that all persons whatever shall make such advance
to him as he pleases to demand, any law, claim, custom, privilege of sex,
beauty, fortune or quality to the contrary notwithstanding;" and providing
that Miss Long shall cease the contumacy in which she has been abetted by
the Vanhomrighs, but be allowed in return, in consideration of her being
"a Lady of the Toast," to give herself the reputation of being one of
Swift's acquaintance. Swift's affection for Miss Long is touchingly
expressed in private papers, and in a letter written upon her death in
retirement and poverty. He intends to put up a monument to her memory, and
wrote a notice of her, "to serve her memory," and also, as he
characteristically adds, to spite the brother who had neglected her. Years
afterwards he often refers to the "edict" which he annually issued in
England, commanding all ladies to make him the first advances. He
graciously makes an exception in favour of the Duchess of Queensberry,
though he observes incidentally that he now hates all people whom he
cannot command. This humorous assumption, like all Swift's humour, has a
strong element of downright earnest. He gives whimsical prominence to a
genuine feeling. He is always acting the part of despot, and acting it
very gravely. When he stays at Sir Arthur Acheson's, Lady Acheson becomes
his pupil, and is "severely chid" when she reads wrong. Mrs. Pendarves,
afterwards Mrs. Delany, says in the same way that Swift calls himself "her
master," and corrects her when she speaks bad English.[41] He behaved in
the same way to his servants. Delany tells us that he was "one of the best
masters in the world," paid his servants the highest rate of wages known,
and took great pains to encourage and help them to save. But, on engaging
them, he always tested their humility. One of their duties, he told them,
would be to take turns in cleaning the scullion's shoes, and if they
objected, he sent them about their business. He is said to have tested a
curate's docility in the same way by offering him sour wine. His dominion
was most easily extended over women; and a long list might be easily made
out of the feminine favourites who at all periods of his life were in
more or less intimate relations with this self-appointed sultan. From the
wives of peers and the daughters of lord-lieutenants down to Dublin
tradeswomen with a taste for rhyming, and even scullerymaids with no
tastes at all, a whole hierarchy of female slaves bowed to his rule, and
were admitted into higher and lower degrees of favour.
Esther Johnson, or Stella--to give her the name which she did not receive
until after the period of the famous journals--was one of the first of
these worshippers. As we have seen, he taught her to write, and when he
went to Laracor, she accepted the peculiar position already described. We
have no direct statement of their mutual feelings before the time of the
journal; but one remarkable incident must be noticed. During his stay in
England in 1703-4 Swift had some correspondence with a Dublin clergyman
named Tisdall. He afterwards regarded Tisdall with a contempt which, for
the present, is only half perceptible in some good-humoured raillery.
Tisdall's intimacy with "the ladies," Stella and Mrs. Dingley, is one
topic, and in the last of Swift's letters we find that Tisdall has
actually made an offer for Stella. Swift had replied in a letter (now
lost), which Tisdall called unfriendly, unkind, and unaccountable. Swift
meets these reproaches coolly, contemptuously, and straightforwardly. He
will not affect unconsciousness of Tisdall's meaning. Tisdall obviously
takes him for a rival in Stella's affections. Swift replies that he will
tell the naked truth. The truth is that "if his fortune and humour served
him to think of that state" (marriage) he would prefer Stella to any one
on earth. So much, he says, he has declared to Tisdall before. He did not,
however, think of his affection as an obstacle to Tisdall's hopes.
Tisdall had been too poor to marry; but the offer of a living has removed
that objection; and Swift undertakes to act what he has hitherto acted, a
friendly though passive part. He had thought, he declares, that the affair
had gone too far to be broken off; he had always spoken of Tisdall in
friendly terms; "no consideration of my own misfortune in losing so good a
friend and companion as her" shall prevail upon him to oppose the match,
"since it is held so necessary and convenient a thing for ladies to marry,
and that time takes off from the lustre of virgins in all other eyes but
mine."
The letter must have suggested some doubts to Tisdall. Swift alleges as
his only reasons for not being a rival in earnest his "humour" and the
state of his fortune. The last obstacle might be removed at any moment.
Swift's prospects, though deferred, were certainly better than Tisdall's.
Unless, therefore, the humour was more insurmountable than is often the
case, Swift's coolness was remarkable or ominous. It may be that, as some
have held, there was nothing behind. But another possibility undoubtedly
suggests itself. Stella had received Tisdall's suit so unfavourably that
it was now suspended, and that it finally failed. Stella was corresponding
with Swift. It is easy to guess that between the "unaccountable" letter
and the contemptuous letter, Swift had heard something from Stella, which
put him thoroughly at ease in regard to Tisdall's attentions.
We have no further information until, seven years afterwards, we reach the
_Journal to Stella_, and find ourselves overhearing the "little language."
The first editors scrupled at a full reproduction of what might strike an
unfriendly reader as almost drivelling; and Mr. Forster reprinted for the
first time the omitted parts of the still accessible letters. The little
language is a continuation of Stella's infantile prattle. Certain letters
are a cipher for pet names which may be conjectured. Swift calls himself
Pdfr, or Podefar, meaning, as Mr. Forster guesses, "Poor, dear Foolish
Rogue." Stella, or rather Esther Johnson, is Ppt, say "Poppet." MD, "my
dear," means Stella, and sometimes includes Mrs. Dingley. FW means
"farewell," or "foolish wenches;" Lele is taken by Mr. Forster to mean
"truly" or "lazy," or "there, there," or to have "other meanings not
wholly discoverable." The phrases come in generally by way of
leave-taking. "So I got into bed," he says, "to write to MD, MD, for we
must always write to MD, MD, MD, awake or asleep;" and he ends, "Go to
bed. Help pdfr. Rove pdfr, MD, MD. Nite darling rogues." Here is another
scrap, "I assure oo it im vely late now; but zis goes to-morrow; and I
must have time to converse with own deerichar MD. Nite de deer Sollahs."
One more leave-taking may be enough. "Farewell, dearest hearts and souls,
MD. Farewell, MD, MD, MD. FW, FW, FW. ME, ME. Lele, Lele, Lele, Sollahs,
Lele."
The reference to the Golden Farmer already noted is in the words, "I
warrant oo don't remember the Golden Farmer neither, Figgarkick Solly,"
and I will venture to a guess at what Mr. Forster pronounces to be
inexplicable.[42] May not Solly be the same as "Sollah," generally
interpreted by the editors as "sirrah;" and "Figgarkick" possibly be the
same as Pilgarlick, a phrase which he elsewhere applies to Stella,[43] and
which the dictionaries say means "poor, deserted creature"?
Swift says that as he writes his language he "makes up his mouth just as
if he was speaking it." It fits the affectionate caresses in which he is
always indulging. Nothing, indeed, can be more charming than the playful
little prattle which occasionally interrupts the gossip and the sharp
utterances of hope or resentment. In the snatches of leisure, late at
night or before he has got up in the morning, he delights in an imaginary
chat; for a few minutes of little fondling talk help him to forget his
worries, and anticipate the happiness of reunion. He caresses her letters,
as he cannot touch her hand. "And now let us come and see what this saucy,
dear letter of MD says. Come out, letter, come out from between the
sheets; here it is underneath, and it will not come out. Come out again, I
says; so there. Here it is. What says Pdf to me, pray? says it. Come and
let me answer for you to your ladies. Hold up your head then like a good
letter." And so he begins a little talk, and prays that they may be never
separated again for ten days, whilst he lives. Then he follows their
movements in Dublin in passages which give some lively little pictures of
their old habits. "And where will you go to-day? for I cannot be with you
for the ladies." [He is off sight-seeing to the Tower and Bedlam with Lady
Kerry and a friend.] "It is a rainy, ugly day; I would have you send for
Wales, and go to the dean's; but do not play small games when you lose.
You will be ruined by Manilio, Basto, the queen, and two small trumps in
red. I confess it is a good hand against the player. But, then, there are
Spadilio, Punto, the king, strong trumps against you, which with one rump
more are three tricks ten ace; for suppose you play your Manilio--O,
silly, how I prate and cannot get away from MD in a morning. Go, get you
gone, dear naughty girls, and let me rise." He delights again in turning
to account his queer talent for making impromptu proverbs,--
Be you lords or be you earls,
You must write to naughty girls.
Or again,--
Mr. White and Mr. Red
Write to M.D. when abed:
Mr. Black and Mr. Brown
Write to M.D. when you are down:
Mr. Oak and Mr. Willow
Write to M.D. on your pillow.
And here is one more for the end of the year,--
Would you answer M.D.'s letter
On New Year's Day you will do it better:
For when the year with M.D. 'gins
It without M.D. never 'lins.
"These proverbs," he explains, "have always old words in them; _lin_ is
leave off."
But if on new year you write nones
M.D. then will bang your bones.
Reading these fond triflings we feel even now as though we were
unjustifiably prying into the writer's confidence. What are we to say to
them? We might simply say that the tender playfulness is charming; and
that it is delightful to find the stern gladiator turning from
party-warfare to soothe his wearied soul with these tender caresses. There
is but one drawback. Macaulay imitates some of this prattle in his
charming letters to his younger sister, and there we can accept it
without difficulty. But Stella was not Swift's younger sister. She was a
beautiful and clever woman of thirty, when he was in the prime of his
powers at forty-four. If Tisdall could have seen the journal he would have
ceased to call Swift "unaccountable." Did all this caressing suggest
nothing to Stella? Swift does not write as an avowed lover; Dingley serves
as a chaperone even in these intimate confidences; and yet a word or two
escapes which certainly reads like something more than fraternal
affection. He apologizes (May 23, 1711) for not returning; "I will say no
more, but beg you to be easy till fortune takes her course, and to believe
that MD's felicity is the great goal I aim at in all my pursuits." If such
words addressed under such circumstances did not mean "I hope to make you
my wife as soon as I get a deanery," there must have been some distinct
understanding to limit their force.
But another character enters the drama, Mrs. Vanhomrigh,[44] a widow rich
enough to mix in good society, was living in London with two sons and two
daughters, and made Swift's acquaintance in 1708. Her eldest daughter,
Hester, was then seventeen, or about ten years younger than Stella. When
Swift returned to London in 1710, he took lodgings close to the
Vanhomrighs, and became an intimate of the family. In the daily reports of
his dinner, the name Van occurs more frequently than any other. Dinner,
let us observe in passing, had not then so much as now the character of a
solemn religious rite, implying a formal invitation. The ordinary hour was
three (though Harley with his usual procrastination often failed to sit
down till six), and Swift, when not pre-engaged, looked in at Court or
elsewhere in search of an invitation. He seldom failed: and when nobody
else offered he frequently went to the "Vans." The name of the daughter is
only mentioned two or three times; whilst it is perhaps a suspicious
circumstance that he very often makes a quasi-apology for his
dining-place. "I was so lazy I dined where my new gown was, at Mrs.
Vanhomrigh's," he says, in May, 1711; and a day or two later explains that
he keeps his "best gown and periwig" there whilst he is lodging at
Chelsea, and often dines there "out of mere listlessness." The phrase may
not have been consciously insincere; but Swift was drifting into an
intimacy which Stella could hardly approve, and, if she desired Swift's
love, would regard as ominous. When Swift took possession of his deanery,
he revealed his depression to Miss Vanhomrigh, who about this time took
the title Vanessa; and Vanessa again received his confidences from
Letcombe. A full account of their relations is given in the remarkable
poem called _Cadenus and Vanessa_, less remarkable, indeed, as a poem than
as an autobiographical document. It is singularly characteristic of Swift
that we can use what, for want of a better classification, must be called
a love poem, as though it were an affidavit in a law-suit. Most men would
feel some awkwardness in hinting at sentiments conveyed by Swift in the
most downright terms; to turn them into a poem would seem preposterous.
Swift's poetry, however, is always plain matter of fact, and we may read
_Cadenus_ (which means of course _Decanus_) _and Vanessa_ as Swift's
deliberate and palpably sincere account of his own state of mind. Omitting
a superfluous framework of mythology in the contemporary taste, we have a
plain story of the relations of this new Heloïse and Abelard. Vanessa, he
tells us, united masculine accomplishments to feminine grace; the
fashionable fops (I use Swift's own words as much as possible) who tried
to entertain her with the tattle of the day, stared when she replied by
applications of Plutarch's morals; the ladies from the purlieus of St.
James's found her reading Montaigne at her toilet, and were amazed by her
ignorance of the fashions. Both were scandalized at the waste of such
charms and talents due to the want of so called knowledge of the world.
Meanwhile, Vanessa, not yet twenty, met and straightway admired Cadenus,
though his eyes were dim with study and his health decayed. He had grown
old in politics and wit; was caressed by ministers; dreaded and hated by
half mankind, and had forgotten the arts by which he had once charmed
ladies, though merely for amusement and to show his wit.[45] He did not
understand what was love; he behaved to Vanessa as a father might behave
to a daughter;
That innocent delight he took
To see the virgin mind her book
Was but the master's secret joy
In school to hear the finest boy.
Vanessa, once the quickest of learners, grew distracted. He apologized for
having bored her by his pedantry, and offered a last adieu. She then
startled him by a confession. He had taught her, she said, that virtue
should never be afraid of disclosures; that noble minds were above common
maxims (just what he had said to Varina), and she therefore told him
frankly that his lessons, aimed at her head, had reached her heart.
Cadenus was utterly taken aback. Her words were too plain to be in jest.
He was conscious of having never for a moment meant to be other than a
teacher. Yet every one would suspect him of intentions to win her heart
and her five thousand pounds. He tried not to take things seriously.
Vanessa, however, became eloquent. She said that he had taught her to love
great men through their books; why should she not love the living reality?
Cadenus was flattered and half converted. He had never heard her talk so
well, and admitted that she had a most unfailing judgment and discerning
head. He still maintained that his dignity and age put love out of the
question, but he offered in return as much friendship as she pleased. She
replies that she will now become tutor and teach him the lesson which he
is so slow to learn. But--and here the revelation ends--
But what success Vanessa met
Is to the world a secret yet.[46]
Vanessa loved Swift; and Swift, it seems, allowed himself to be loved. One
phrase in a letter written to him during his stay at Dublin, in 1713,
suggests the only hint of jealousy. If you are happy, she says, "it is
ill-natured of you not to tell me so, except 'tis what is inconsistent
with mine." Soon after Swift's final retirement to Ireland, Mrs.
Vanhomrigh died; her husband had left a small property at Celbridge. One
son was dead; the other behaved badly to his sisters; the daughters were
for a time in money difficulties, and it became convenient for them to
retire to Ireland, where Vanessa ultimately settled at Celbridge. The two
women who worshipped Swift were thus almost in presence of each other. The
situation almost suggests comedy; but unfortunately it was to take a most
tragical and still partly mysterious development.
The fragmentary correspondence between Swift and Vanessa establishes
certain facts. Their intercourse was subject to restraints. He begs her,
when he is starting for Dublin, to get her letters directed by some other
hand, and to write nothing that may not be seen, for fear of
"inconveniences." The post-office clerk surely would not be more attracted
by Vanessa's hand than by that of such a man as Lewis, a subordinate of
Harley's who had formerly forwarded her letters. He adds that if she comes
to Ireland, he will see her very seldom. "It is not a place for freedom,
but everything is known in a week and magnified a hundred times." Poor
Vanessa soon finds the truth of this. She complains that she is amongst
"strange prying deceitful people;" that he flies her and will give no
reason except that they are amongst fools and must submit. His reproofs
are terrible to her. "If you continue to treat me as you do," she says
soon after, "you will not be made uneasy by me long." She would rather
have borne the rack than those "killing, killing words" of his. She writes
instead of speaking, because when she ventures to complain in person "you
are angry, and there is something in your look so awful that it shakes me
dumb"--a memorable phrase in days soon to come. She protests that she says
as little as she can. If he knew what she thought, he must be moved. The
letter containing these phrases is dated 1714, and there are but a few
scraps till 1720; we gather that Vanessa submitted partly to the
necessities of the situation: and that this extreme tension was often
relaxed. Yet she plainly could not resign herself or suppress her passion.
Two letters in 1720 are painfully vehement. He has not seen her for ten
long weeks, she says in her first, and she has only had one letter and one
little note with an excuse. She will sink under his "prodigious neglect."
Time or accident cannot lessen her inexpressible passion. "Put my passion
under the utmost restraint; send me as distant from you as the earth will
allow, yet you cannot banish those charming ideas which will stick by me,
whilst I have the use of memory. Nor is the love I bear you only seated in
my soul, for there is not a single atom of my frame that is not blended
with it." She thinks him changed, and entreats him not to suffer her to
"live a life like a languishing death, which is the only life I can lead,
if you have lost any of your tenderness for me." The following letter is
even more passionate. She passes days in sighing and nights in watching
and thinking of one who thinks not of her. She was born with "violent
passions, which terminate all in one, that inexpressible passion I have
for you." If she could guess at his thoughts, which is impossible ("for
never any one living thought like you") she would guess that he wishes her
"religious"--that she might pay her devotions to heaven. "But that should
not spare you, for was I an enthusiast, still you'd be the deity I should
worship." "What marks are there of a deity but what you are to be known
by--you are (at?) present everywhere; your dear image is always before my
eyes. Sometimes you strike me with that prodigious awe, I tremble with
fear; at other times a charming compassion shines through your
countenance, which moves my soul. Is it not more reasonable to adore a
radiant form one has seen, than one only described?"[47]
The man who received such letters from a woman whom he at least admired
and esteemed, who felt that to respond was to administer poison, and to
fail to respond was to inflict the severest pangs, must have been in the
cruellest of dilemmas. Swift, we cannot doubt, was grieved and perplexed.
His letters imply embarrassment; and, for the most part, take a lighter
tone; he suggests his universal panacea of exercise; tells her to fly from
the spleen instead of courting it; to read diverting books, and so forth;
advice more judicious probably than comforting. There are, however, some
passages of a different tendency. There is a mutual understanding to use
certain catch-words, which recall the "little language." He wishes that
her letters were as hard to read as his, in case of accident. "A stroke
thus ... signifies everything that may be said to _Cad_, at the beginning
and conclusion." And she uses this written caress, and signs herself--his
own "Skinage." There are certain "questions," to which reference is
occasionally made; a kind of catechism, it seems, which he was expected to
address to himself at intervals, and the nature of which must be
conjectured. He proposes to continue the _Cadenus and Vanessa_--a proposal
which makes her happy beyond "expression,"--and delights her by recalling
a number of available incidents. He recurs to them in his last letter, and
bids her "go over the scenes of Windsor, Cleveland Row, Rider Street, St.
James's Street, Kensington, the Shrubbery, the Colonel in France, &c. Cad
thinks often of these, especially on horseback,[48] as I am assured." This
prosaic list of names recall, as we find, various old meetings. And,
finally, one letter contains an avowal of a singular kind. "Soyez
assurée," he says, after advising her "to quit this scoundrel island,"
"que jamais personne du monde a été aimée, honorée, estimée, adorée par
votre ami que vous." It seems as though he were compelled to throw her
just a crumb of comfort here: but, in the same breath, he has begged her
to leave him for ever.
If Vanessa was ready to accept a "gown of forty-four," to overlook his
infirmities in consideration of his fame, why should Swift have refused?
Why condemn her to undergo this "languishing death,"--a long agony of
unrequited passion? One answer is suggested by the report that Swift was
secretly married to Stella in 1716. The fact is not proved, nor
disproved:[49] nor, to my mind, is the question of its truth of much
importance. The ceremony, if performed, was nothing but a ceremony. The
only rational explanation of the fact, if it be taken for a fact, must be
that Swift, having resolved not to marry, gave Stella this security that
he would, at least, marry no one else. Though his anxiety to hide the
connexion with Vanessa may only mean a dread of idle tongues, it is at
least highly probable that Stella was the person from whom he specially
desired to keep it. Yet his poetical addresses to Stella upon her birthday
(of which the first is dated 1719, and the last 1727) are clearly not the
addresses of a lover. Both in form and substance they are even pointedly
intended to express friendship instead of love. They read like an
expansion of his avowal to Tisdall, that her charms for him, though for no
one else, could not be diminished by her growing old without marriage. He
addresses her with blunt affection, and tells her plainly of her growing
size and waning beauty; comments even upon her defects of temper, and
seems expressly to deny that he loved her in the usual way.
Thou, Stella, wert no longer young
When first for thee my harp I strung,
Without one word of Cupid's darts
Of killing eyes and bleeding hearts;
With friendship and esteem possess'd
I ne'er admitted love a guest.
We may almost say that he harps upon the theme of "friendship and esteem."
His gratitude for her care of him is pathetically expressed; he admires
her with the devotion of a brother for the kindest of sisters; his plain
prosaic lines become poetical, or perhaps something better; but there is
an absence of the lover's strain which is only not, if not, ostentatious.
The connexion with Stella, whatever its nature, gives the most
intelligible explanation of his keeping Vanessa at a distance. A collision
between his two slaves might be disastrous. And, as the story goes (for we
are everywhere upon uncertain ground), it came. In 1721 poor Vanessa had
lost her only sister,[50] and companion: her brothers were already dead,
and, in her solitude, she would naturally be more than ever eager for
Swift's kindness. At last, in 1723, she wrote (it is said) a letter to
Stella, and asked whether she was Swift's wife.[51] Stella replied that
she was, and forwarded Vanessa's letter to Swift. How Swift could resent
an attempt to force his wishes, has been seen in the letter to Varina. He
rode in a fury to Celbridge. His countenance, says Orrery, could be
terribly expressive of the sterner passions. Prominent eyes--"azure as the
heavens" (says Pope)--arched by bushy black eyebrows, could glare, we can
believe from his portraits, with the green fury of a cat's. Vanessa had
spoken of the "something awful in his looks," and of his killing words. He
now entered her room, silent with rage, threw down her letter on the table
and rode off. He had struck Vanessa's death-blow. She died soon
afterwards, but lived long enough to revoke a will made in favour of
Swift, and leave her money between Judge Marshal and the famous Bishop
Berkeley. Berkeley, it seems, had only seen her once in his life.
The story of the last fatal interview has been denied. Vanessa's death,
though she was under thirty-five, is less surprising when we remember that
her younger sister and both her brothers had died before her; and that her
health had always been weak, and her life for some time a languishing
death. That there was in any case a terribly tragic climax to the
half-written romance of _Cadenus and Vanessa_ is certain. Vanessa
requested that the poem and the letters might be published by her
executors. Berkeley suppressed the letters for the time; and they were not
published in full until Scott's edition of Swift's works.
Whatever the facts, Swift had reasons enough for bitter regret if not for
deep remorse. He retired to hide his head in some unknown retreat;
absolute seclusion was the only solace to his gloomy, wounded spirit.
After two months he returned to resume his retired habits. A period
followed, as we shall see in the next chapter, of fierce political
excitement. For a time too he had a vague hope of escaping from his exile.
An astonishing literary success increased his reputation. But another
misfortune approached which crushed all hope of happiness in life.
In 1726 Swift at last revisited England. He writes in July that he has for
two months been anxious about Stella's health, and as usual feared the
worst. He has seen through the disguises of a letter from Mrs. Dingley.
His heart is so sunk that he will never be the same man again, but drag on
a wretched life till it pleases God to call him away. Then in an agony of
distress he contemplates her death; he says that he could not bear to be
present; he should be a trouble to her, and the greatest torment to
himself. He forces himself to add that her death must not take place at
the deanery. He will not return to find her just dead or dying. "Nothing
but extremity could make me so familiar with those terrible words applied
to so dear a friend." "I think," he says in another letter, "that there is
not a greater folly than that of entering into too strict a partnership or
friendship with the loss of which a man must be absolutely miserable; but
especially [when the loss occurs] at an age when it is too late to engage
in a new friendship." The morbid feeling which could withhold a man from
attending a friend's deathbed, or allow him to regret the affection to
which his pain was due, is but too characteristic of Swift's egoistic
attachments. Yet we forgive the rash phrase, when we read his passionate
expressions of agony. Swift returned to Ireland in the autumn, and Stella
struggled through the winter. He was again in England in the following
summer; and for a time in better spirits. But once more the news comes
that Stella is probably on her deathbed; and he replies in letters which
we read as we listen to groans of a man in sorest agony. He keeps one
letter for an hour before daring to open it. He does not wish to live to
see the loss of the person for whose sake alone life was worth preserving.
"What have I to do in the world? I never was in such agonies as when I
received your letter, and had it in my pocket. I am able to hold up my
sorry head no longer." In another distracted letter, he repeats in Latin
the desire that Stella shall not die in the deanery, for fear of malignant
misinterpretations. If any marriage had taken place, the desire to conceal
it had become a rooted passion.
Swift returned to Ireland to find Stella still living. It is said that in
the last period of her life Swift offered to make the marriage public, and
that she declined, saying that it was now too late.[52] She lingered till
January 28, 1728. He sat down the same night to write a few scattered
reminiscences. He breaks down; and writes again during the funeral, which
he is too ill to attend. The fragmentary notes give us the most authentic
account of Stella, and show, at least, what she appeared in the eyes of
her lifelong friend and protector. We may believe that she was intelligent
and charming; as we can be certain that Swift loved her in every sense but
one. A lock of her hair was preserved in an envelope in which he had
written one of those vivid phrases by which he still lives in our memory:
"_Only a woman's hair_." What does it mean? Our interpretation will depend
partly upon what we can see ourselves in a lock of hair. But I think that
any one who judges Swift fairly will read in those four words the most
intense utterance of tender affection, and of pathetic yearning for the
irrevocable past strangely blended with a bitterness springing not from
remorse, but indignation at the cruel tragi-comedy of life. The destinies
laugh at us whilst they torture us; they make cruel scourges of trifles,
and extract the bitterest passion from our best affections.
Swift was left alone. Before we pass on we must briefly touch the problems
of this strange history. It was a natural guess that some mysterious cause
condemned Swift to his loneliness. A story is told by Scott (on poor
evidence) that Delany went to Archbishop King's library about the time of
the supposed marriage. As he entered Swift rushed out with a distracted
countenance. King was in tears, and said to Delany, "You have just met the
most unhappy man on earth; but on the subject of his wretchedness you must
never ask a question." This has been connected with a guess made by
somebody that Swift had discovered Stella to be his natural sister. It can
be shown conclusively that this is impossible; and the story must be left
as picturesque but too hopelessly vague to gratify any inference whatever.
We know without it that Swift was unhappy; but we know nothing of any
definite cause.
Another view is that there is no mystery. Swift, it is said, retained
through life the position of Stella's "guide, philosopher and friend," and
was never anything more. Stella's address to Swift (on his birthday,
1721), may be taken to confirm this theory. It says with a plainness like
his own that he had taught her to despise beauty and hold her empire by
virtue and sense. Yet the theory is in itself strange. The less love
entered into Swift's relations to Stella, the more difficult to explain
his behaviour to Vanessa. If he regarded Stella only as a daughter or a
younger sister, and she returned the same feeling, he had no reason for
making any mystery about the woman who would not in that case be a rival.
If, again, we accept this view, we naturally ask why Swift "never admitted
love a guest." He simply continued, it is suggested, to behave as teacher
to pupil. He thought of her when she was a woman as he had thought of her
when she was a child of eight years old. But it is singular that a man
should be able to preserve such a relation. It is quite true that a
connexion of this kind may blind a man to its probable consequences; but
it is contrary to ordinary experience that it should render the
consequences less probable. The relation might explain why Swift should be
off his guard; but could hardly act as a safeguard. An ordinary man who
was on such terms with a beautiful girl as are revealed in the _Journal to
Stella_ would have ended by falling in love with her. Why did not Swift?
We can only reply by remembering the "coldness" of temper to which he
refers in his first letter: and his assertion that he did not understand
love, and that his frequent flirtations never meant more than a desire for
distraction. The affair with Varina is an exception: but there are grounds
for holding that Swift was constitutionally indisposed to the passion of
love. The absence of any traces of such a passion from writings
conspicuous for their amazing sincerity, and (it is added) for their
freedoms of another kind, has been often noticed as a confirmation of this
hypothesis. Yet it must be said that Swift could be strictly reticent
about his strongest feelings--and was specially cautious, for whatever
reason, in regard to his relation with Stella.[53]
If Swift constitutionally differed from other men, we have some
explanation of his strange conduct. But we must take into account other
circumstances. Swift had very obvious motives for not marrying. In the
first place, he gradually became almost a monomaniac upon the question of
money. His hatred of wasting a penny unnecessarily began at Trinity
College, and is prominent in all his letters and journals. It coloured
even his politics, for a conviction that the nation was hopelessly ruined
is one of his strongest prejudices. He kept accounts down to halfpence,
and rejoices at every saving of a shilling. The passion was not the
vulgar desire for wealth of the ordinary miser. It sprang from the
conviction stored up in all his aspirations that money meant independence.
"Wealth," he says, "is liberty; and liberty is a blessing fittest for a
philosopher--and Gay is a slave just by two thousand pounds too
little."[54] Gay was a duchess's lapdog: Swift, with all his troubles, at
least a free man. Like all Swift's prejudices, this became a fixed idea
which was always gathering strength. He did not love money for its own
sake. He was even magnificent in his generosity. He scorned to receive
money for his writings; he abandoned the profit to his printers in
compensation for the risks they ran, or gave it to his friends. His
charity was splendid relatively to his means. In later years he lived on a
third of his income, gave away a third, and saved the remaining third for
his posthumous charity,[55]--and posthumous charity which involves present
saving is charity of the most unquestionable kind. His principle was that
by reducing his expenditure to the lowest possible point, he secured his
independence and could then make a generous use of the remainder. Until he
had received his deanery, however, he could only make both ends meet.
Marriage would therefore have meant poverty, probably dependence, and the
complete sacrifice of his ambition.
If under these circumstances Swift had become engaged to Stella upon
Temple's death, he would have been doing what was regularly done by
fellows of colleges under the old system. There is, however, no trace of
such an engagement. It would be in keeping with Swift's character, if we
should suppose that he shrank from the bondage of an engagement; that he
designed to marry Stella as soon as he should achieve a satisfactory
position, and meanwhile trusted to his influence over her, and thought
that he was doing her justice by leaving her at liberty to marry if she
chose. The close connexion must have been injurious to Stella's prospects
of a match; but it continued only by her choice. If this were in fact the
case, it is still easy to understand why Swift did not marry upon becoming
dean. He felt himself, I have said, to be a broken man. His prospects were
ruined, and his health precarious. This last fact requires to be
remembered in every estimate of Swift's character. His life was passed
under a Damocles' sword. He suffered from a distressing illness which he
attributed to an indigestion produced by an over-consumption of fruit at
Temple's when he was a little over twenty-one. The main symptoms were a
giddiness, which frequently attacked him, and was accompanied by deafness.
It is quite recently that the true nature of the complaint has been
identified. Dr. Bucknill[56] seems to prove that the symptoms are those of
"Labyrinthine vertigo," or Ménière's disease, so called because discovered
by Ménière in 1861. The references to his sufferings, brought together by
Sir William Wilde in 1849,[57] are frequent in all his writings. It
tormented him for days, weeks, and months, gradually becoming more
permanent in later years. In 1731 he tells Gay that his giddiness attacks
him constantly, though it is less violent than of old; and in 1736 he says
that it is continual. From a much earlier period it had alarmed and
distressed him. Some pathetic entries are given by Mr. Forster from one of
his note-books:--"Dec. 5 (1708).--Horribly sick. 12th.--Much better,
thank God and M.D.'s prayers.... April 2nd (1709).--Small giddy fit and
swimming in the head. M.D. and God help me.... July, 1710.--Terrible fit.
God knows what may be the event. Better towards the end." The terrible
anxiety, always in the background, must count for much in Swift's gloomy
despondency. Though he seems always to have spoken of the fruit as the
cause, he must have had misgivings as to the nature and result. Dr.
Bucknill tells us that it was not necessarily connected with the disease
of the brain, which ultimately came upon him; but he may well have thought
that this disorder of the head was prophetic of such an end. It was
probably in 1717 that he said to Young of the _Night Thoughts_, "I shall
be like that tree; I shall die at the top." A man haunted perpetually by
such forebodings might well think that marriage was not for him. In
_Cadenus and Vanessa_ he insists upon his declining years with an emphasis
which seems excessive even from a man of forty-four (in 1713 he was really
forty-five) to a girl of twenty. In a singular poem called the _Progress
of Marriage_ he treats the supposed case of a divine of fifty-two marrying
a lively girl of fashion, and speaks with his usual plainness of the
probable consequences of such folly. We cannot doubt that here as
elsewhere he is thinking of himself. He was fifty-two when receiving the
passionate love-letters of Vanessa; and the poem seems to be specially
significant.
This is one of those cases in which we feel that even biographers are not
omniscient; and I must leave it to my readers to choose their own theory,
only suggesting that readers too are fallible. But we may still ask what
judgment is to be passed upon Swift's conduct. Both Stella and Vanessa
suffered from coming within the sphere of Swift's imperious attraction.
Stella enjoyed his friendship through her life at the cost of a partial
isolation from ordinary domestic happiness. She might and probably did
regard his friendship as a full equivalent for the sacrifice. It is one of
the cases in which, if the actors be our contemporaries, we hold that
outsiders are incompetent to form a judgment, as none but the principals
can really know the facts. Is it better to be the most intimate friend of
a man of genius or the wife of a commonplace Tisdall? If Stella chose, and
chose freely, it is hard to say that she was mistaken, or to blame Swift
for a fascination which he could not but exercise. The tragedy of Vanessa
suggests rather different reflections. Swift's duty was plain. Granting
what seems to be probable, that Vanessa's passion took him by surprise,
and that he thought himself disqualified for marriage by infirmity and
weariness of life, he should have made his decision perfectly plain. He
should have forbidden any clandestine relations. Furtive caresses--even on
paper, understandings to carry on a private correspondence, fond
references to old meetings, were obviously calculated to encourage her
passion. He should not only have pronounced it to be hopeless, but made
her, at whatever cost, recognize the hopelessness. This is where Swift's
strength seems to have failed him. He was not intentionally cruel; he
could not foresee the fatal event; he tried to put her aside, and he felt
the "shame, disappointment, grief, surprise," of which he speaks on the
avowal of her love. He gave her the most judicious advice, and tried to
persuade her to accept it. But he did not make it effectual. He shrank
from inflicting pain upon her and upon himself. He could not deprive
himself of the sympathy which soothed his gloomy melancholy. His affection
was never free from the egoistic element which prevented him from acting
unequivocally as an impartial spectator would have advised him to act, or
as he would have advised another to act in a similar case. And therefore
when the crisis came the very strength of his affection produced an
explosion of selfish wrath; and he escaped from the intolerable position
by striking down the woman whom he loved, and whose love for him had
become a burden. The wrath was not the less fatal because it was half
composed of remorse, and the energy of the explosion proportioned to the
strength of the feeling which had held it in check.