over his Irish parishioners, and now filling the literary and Whig haunts
of the great metropolis with the terror of his merciless wit and with talk
behind his back of his eccentricities and rude manners, Swift spent the
interval between 1702 and 1710, or between his thirty-sixth and his
forty-fourth year. His position as a High-Church Whig, however, was an
anomalous one. In the first place, it was difficult to see how such a man
could honestly be in the Church at all. People were by no means strict in
those days in their notions of the clerical character; but the _Tale of a
Tub_ was a strong dose even then to have come from a clergyman. If
Voltaire afterwards recommended the book as a masterly satire against
religion in general, it cannot be wondered at that an outcry arose among
Swift's contemporaries respecting the profanity of the book. It is true,
Peter and Jack, as the representatives of Popery and Presbyterianism, came
in for the greatest share of the author's scurrility; and Martin, as the
representative of the Church of England, was left with the honours of the
story; but the whole structure and spirit of the story, to say nothing of
the oaths and other irreverences mingled with its language, were well
calculated to shock the more serious even of Martin's followers, who could
not but see that rank infidelity alone would be a gainer by the book.
Accordingly, despite all that Swift could afterwards do, the fact that he
had written this book left a public doubt as to his Christianity. It is
quite possible, however, that, with a very questionable kind of belief in
Christianity, he may have been a conscientious High-Churchman, zealous for
the social defence and aggrandisement of the ecclesiastical institution
with which he was connected. Whatever that institution was originally
based upon, it existed as part and parcel of the commonwealth of England,
rooted in men's habits and interests, and intertwined with the whole
system of social order; and, just as a Brahmin, lax enough in his own
speculative allegiance to the Brahminical faith, might still desire to
maintain Brahminism as a vast pervading establishment in Hindostan, so
might Swift, with a heart and a head dubious enough respecting men's
eternal interest in the facts of the Judaean record, see a use
notwithstanding in that fabric of bishoprics, deaneries, prebends,
parochial livings, and curacies, which ancient belief in those facts had
first created and put together. This kind of respect for the Church
Establishment is still very prevalent. It is a most excellent thing, it is
thought by many, to have a cleanly, cultured, gentlemanly man invested
with authority in every parish throughout the land, who can look after
what is going on, fill up schedules, give advice, and take the lead in all
parish business. That Swift's faith in the Church included no more than
this perception of its uses as a vast administrative and educational
establishment we will not say. Mr. Thackeray, indeed, openly avows his
opinion that Swift had no belief in the Christian religion. "Swift's," he
says, "was a reverent, was a pious spirit--he could love and could pray;"
but such religion as he had, Mr. Thackeray hints, was a kind of mad,
despairing Deism, and had nothing of Christianity in it. Hence, "having
put that cassock on, it poisoned him; he was strangled in his bands." The
question thus broached as to the nature of Swift's religion is too deep to
be discussed here. Though we would not exactly say, with Mr. Thackeray,
that Swift's was a "reverent" and "pious" spirit, there are, as he phrases
it, breakings out of "the stars of religion and love" shining in the
serene blue through "the driving clouds and the maddened hurricane of
Swift's life;" and this, though vague, is about all that we have warrant
for saying. As to the zeal of his Churchmanship, however, there is no
doubt at all. There was not a man in the British realms more pugnacious in
the interests of his order, more resolute in defending the prerogatives of
the Church of England against Dissenters and others desirous of limiting
them, or more anxious to elevate the social position and intellectual
character of the clergy, than the author of the _Tale of a Tub_. No
veteran commander of a regiment could have had more of the military than
the parson of Laracor had of the ecclesiastical _esprit de corps_; and,
indeed, Swift's known dislike to the military may be best explained as the
natural jealousy of the surplice at the larger consideration accorded by
society to the scarlet coat. Almost all Swift's writings between 1702 and
1710 are assertions of his High-Church sentiments and vindications of the
Establishment against its assailants. Thus in 1708 came forth his _Letter
on the Sacramental Test_, a hot High-Church and anti-Dissenter pamphlet;
and this was followed in the same year by his _Sentiments of a Church of
England man with respect to Religion and Government_, and by his ironical
argument, aimed at free-thinkers and latitudinarians, entitled _Reasons
against Abolishing Christianity_. In 1709 he published a graver pamphlet,
under the name of _A Project for the Advancement of Religion_, in which he
urged certain measures for the reform of public morals and the
strengthening of the Establishment, recommending in particular a scheme of
Church-extension. Thus, with all his readiness to help the Whigs
politically, Swift was certainly faithful to his High-Church principles.
But, as we have said, a High-Church Whig was an anomaly which the Whigs
refused to comprehend. Latitudinarians, Low Churchmen, and Dissenters, did
not know what to make of a Whiggism in state-politics which was conjoined
with the strongest form of ecclesiastical Toryism. Hence, in spite of his
ability, Swift was not a man that the Whigs could patronise and prefer.
They were willing to have the benefit of his assistance, but their favours
were reserved for men more wholly their own. Various things were, indeed,
talked of for Swift--the secretaryship to the proposed embassy of Lord
Berkeley in Vienna, a prebend of Westminster, the office of
historiographer-royal; nay, even a bishopric in the American colonies: but
all came to nothing. Swift, at the age of forty-three, and certified by
Addison as "the greatest genius of the age," was still only an Irish
parson, with some 350_l._ or 400_l._ a year. How strange if the plan of
the Transatlantic bishopric had been carried out, and Swift had settled in
Virginia!
Meanwhile, though neglected by the English Whigs, Swift had risen to be a
leader among the Irish clergy, a great man in their convocations and other
ecclesiastical assemblies. The object which the Irish clergy then had at
heart was to procure from the Government an extension to Ireland of a boon
granted several years before to the clergy of England: namely, the
remission of the tax levied by the Crown on the revenues of the Church
since the days of Henry VIII. in the shape of tenths and first-fruits.
This remission, which would have amounted to about 16,000_l._ a year, the
Whigs were not disposed to grant, the corresponding remission in the case
of England not having been followed by the expected benefits. Archbishop
King and the other prelates were glad to have Swift as their agent in this
business; and, accordingly, he was absent from Ireland for upwards of
twelve months continuously in the years 1708 and 1709. It was during this
period that he set London in a roar by his famous Bickerstaff hoax, in
which he first predicted the death of Partridge, the astrologer, at a
particular day and hour, and then nearly drove the wretched tradesman mad
by declaring, when the time was come, that the prophecy had been
fulfilled, and publishing a detailed account of the circumstances. Out of
this Bickerstaff hoax, and Swift's talk over it with Addison and Steele,
arose the _Tatler_, prolific parent of so many other periodicals.
The year 1710 was an important one in the life of Swift. In that year he
came over to London, resolved in his own mind to have a settlement of
accounts with the Whigs, or to break with them for ever. The Irish
ecclesiastical business of the tenths and first-fruits was still his
pretext, but he had many other arrears to introduce into the account.
Accordingly, after some civil skirmishing with Somers, Halifax, and his
other old friends, then just turned out of office, he openly transferred
his allegiance to the new Tory administration of Harley and Bolingbroke.
The 4th of October, not quite a month after his arrival in London, was the
date of his first interview with Harley; and from that day forward till
the dissolution of Harley's administration by the death of Queen Anne, in
1714, Swift's relations with Harley, St. John, and the other ministers,
were more those of an intimate friend and adviser than a literary
dependent. How he dined almost daily with Harley or St. John; how he
bullied them, and made them beg his pardon when by chance they offended
him--either, as Harley once did, by offering him a fifty-pound note, or,
as St. John once did, by appearing cold and abstracted when Swift was his
guest at dinner; how he obtained from them not only the settlement of the
Irish business, but almost everything else he asked; how he used his
influence to prevent Steele, Addison, Congreve, Rowe, and his other Whig
literary friends, from suffering loss of office by the change in the state
of politics, at the same time growing cooler in his private intercourse
with Addison and poor Dick, and tending more to young Tory writers, such
as Pope and Parnell; how, with Pope, Gay, Arbuthnot, Harley, and St. John,
he formed the famous club of the _Scriblerus_ brotherhood, for the satire
of literary absurdities; how he wrote squibs, pamphlets, and lampoons
innumerable for the Tories and against the Whigs, and at one time actually
edited a Tory paper called the _Examiner_: all this is to be gathered, in
most interesting detail, from his epistolary journal to Stella, in which
he punctually kept her informed of all his doings during his long three
years of absence. The following is a description of him at the height of
his Court influence during this season of triumph, from the Whiggish, and
therefore somewhat adverse, pen of Bishop Kennet:--
"When I came to the antechamber [at Court] to wait before prayers,
Dr. Swift was the principal man of talk and business, and acted as
master of requests. He was soliciting the Earl of Arran to speak to
his brother, the Duke of Ormond, to get a chaplain's place
established in the garrison of Hull for Mr. Fiddes, a clergyman in
that neighbourhood, who had lately been in jail, and published
sermons to pay the fees. He was promising Mr. Thorold to undertake
with my lord-treasurer that, according to his petition, he should
obtain a salary of 200_l._ per annum as minister of the English
church at Rotterdam. He stopped F. Gwynne, Esq., going in with the
red bag to the Queen, and told him aloud he had something to say to
him from my lord-treasurer. He talked with the son of Dr. Davenant,
to be sent abroad, and took out his pocket-book, and wrote down
several things as _memoranda_ to do for him. He turned to the fire,
and took out his gold watch, and, telling him the time of day,
complained it was very late. A gentleman said he was too fast. 'How
can I help it,' says the Doctor, 'if the courtiers give me a watch
that won't go right?' Then he instructed a young nobleman that the
best poet in England was Mr. Pope (a Papist), who had begun a
translation of Homer into English verse, for which he must have them
all subscribe; 'for,' says he, 'the author shall not begin to print
till I have a thousand guineas for him.' Lord-treasurer, after
leaving the Queen, came through the room, beckoning Dr. Swift to
follow him: both went off just before prayers."
Let us see, by a few pickings from the journal to Stella, in what manner
the black-browed Irish vicar, who was thus figuring in the mornings at
Court as the friend and confidant of Ministers, and almost as their
domineering colleague, was writing home from his lodging in the evenings
to the "dear girls" at Laracor.
_Dec. 3, 1710._ "Pshaw, I must be writing to those dear saucy brats
every night whether I will or no, let me have what business I will,
or come home ever so late, or be ever so sleepy; but it is an old
saying and a true one, 'Be you lords or be you earls, you must write
to naughty girls.' I was to-day at Court, and saw Raymond [an Irish
friend] among the beefeaters, staying to see the Queen; so I put him
in a better station, made two or three dozen bows, and went to
church, and then to Court again to pick up a dinner, as I did with
Sir John Stanley: and then we went to visit Lord Mountjoy, and just
left him; and 'tis near eleven at night, young women, and methinks
this letter comes very near to the bottom," &c. &c.
_Jan. 1, 1711._ Morning. "I wish my dearest pretty Dingley and Stella
a happy new year, and health, and mirth, and good stomachs, and
_Fr's_ company. Faith, I did not know how to write _Fr_. I wondered
what was the matter; but now I remember I always write _Pdfr_ [by
this combination of letters, or by the word _Presto_, Swift
designates himself in the Journal] * * Get the _Examiners_, and read
them; the last nine or ten are full of reasons for the late change
and of the abuses of the last ministry; and the great men assure me
that all are true. They were written by their encouragement and
direction. I must rise, and go see Sir Andrew Fountain; but perhaps
to-morrow I may answer _M.D.'s_ [Stella's designation in the Journal]
letter: so good morrow, my mistresses all, good morrow. I wish you
both a merry new year; roast beef, minced pies, and good strong beer;
and me a share of your good cheer; that I was there or you were here;
and you're a little saucy dear," &c. &c.
_Jan. 13, 1711._ "O faith, I had an ugly giddy fit last night in my
chamber, and I have got a new box of pills to take, and I hope shall
have no more this good while. I would not tell you before, because it
would vex you, little rogues; but now it is better. I dined to-day
with Lord Shelburn," &c. &c.
_Jan. 16, 1711._ "My service to Mrs. Stode and Walls. Has she a boy
or a girl? A girl, hmm!, and died in a week, hmmm!, and was poor
Stella forced to stand for godmother?--Let me know how accounts
stand, that you may have your money betimes. There's four months for
my lodging; that must be thought on too. And zoo go dine with Manley,
and lose your money, doo extravagant sluttikin? But don't fret. It
will just be three weeks when I have the next letter: that is,
to-morrow. Farewell, dearest beloved _M.D._, and love poor, poor
Presto, who has not had one happy day since he left you, as hope to
be saved."
_March 7, 1711._ "I am weary of business and ministers. I don't go to
a coffee-house twice a month. I am very regular in going to sleep
before eleven. And so you say that Stella's a pretty girl; and so she
be; and methinks I see her just now, as handsome as the day's long.
Do you know what? When I am writing in our language [a kind of
baby-language of endearment used between him and Stella, and called
'the little language'] I make up my mouth just as if I was speaking
it. I caught myself at it just now. * * Poor Stella, won't Dingley
leave her a little daylight to write to Presto? Well, well, we'll
have daylight shortly, spite of her teeth; and zoo must cly Zele, and
Hele, and Hele aden. Must loo mimitate _Pdfr_, pay? Iss, and so la
shall. And so leles fol ee rettle. Dood Mollow. [You must cry There
and Here and Here again. Must you imitate _Pdfr_, pray? Yes, and so
you shall. And so there's for the letter. Good morrow.]"
And so on, through a series of daily letters, forming now a goodly octavo
volume or more, Swift chats and rattles away to the "dear absent girls,"
giving them all the political gossip of the time, and informing them about
his own goings-out and comings-in, his dinings with Harley, St. John, and
occasionally with Addison and other old Whig friends, the state of his
health, his troubles with his drunken servant Patrick, his
lodging-expenses, and a host of other things. Such another journal has,
perhaps, never been given to the world; and but for it we should never
have known what depths of tenderness and power of affectionate prattle
there were in the heart of this harsh and savage man.
Only on one topic, affecting himself during his long stay in London, is he
in any degree reserved. Among the acquaintanceships he had formed was one
with a Mrs. Vanhomrigh, a widowed lady of property, who had a family of
several daughters. The eldest of these, Hester Vanhomrigh, was a girl of
more than ordinary talent and accomplishments, and of enthusiastic and
impetuous character; and, as Swift acquired the habit of dropping in upon
the "Vans," as he called them, when he had no other dinner engagement, it
was not long before he and Miss Vanhomrigh fell into the relationship of
teacher and pupil. He taught her to think and to write verses; and, as
among Swift's peculiarities of opinion, one was that he entertained what
would even now be called very advanced notions as to the intellectual
capabilities and rights of women, he found no more pleasant amusement, in
the midst of his politics and other business, than that of superintending
the growth of so hopeful a mind.
"His conduct might have made him styled
A father, and the nymph his child:
The 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."
But, alas! Cupid got among the books.
"Vanessa, not in years a score,
Dreams of a gown of forty-four;
Imaginary charms can find
In eyes with reading almost blind;
She fancies music in his tongue,
Nor farther looks, but thinks him young."
Nay, more: one of Swift's lessons to her had been that frankness, whether
in man or women, was the chief of the virtues, and
"That common forms were not design'd
Directors to a noble mind."
"Then," said the nymph,
"I'll let you see
My actions with your rules agree;
That I can vulgar forms despise,
And have no secrets to disguise."
She told her love, and fairly argued it out with the startled tutor,
discussing every element in the question, whether for or against--the
disparity of their ages, her own five thousand guineas, their similarity
of tastes, his views of ambition, the judgment the world would form of the
match, and so on; and the end of it was that she reasoned so well that
Swift could not but admit that there would be nothing after all so very
incongruous in a marriage between him and Esther Vanhomrigh. So the matter
rested, Swift gently resisting the impetuosity of the young woman, when it
threatened to take him by storm, but not having the courage to adduce the
real and conclusive argument--the existence on the other side of the
channel of another and a dearer Esther. Stella, on her side, knew that
Swift visited a family called the "Vans"; she divined that something was
wrong; but that was all.
That Swift, the Mentor of ministers, their daily companion, at whose
bidding they dispensed their patronage and their favour, should himself be
suffered to remain a mere vicar of an Irish parish, was, of course,
impossible. Vehement and even boisterous and overdone as was his zeal for
his own independence--"If we let these great ministers pretend too much,
there will be no governing them," was his maxim; and, in order to act up
to it, he used to treat Dukes and Earls as if they were dogs--there were
yet means of honourably acknowledging his services in a way to which he
would have taken no exception. Nor can we doubt that Oxford and St. John,
who were really and heartily his admirers, were anxious to promote him in
some suitable manner. An English bishopric was certainly what he coveted,
and what they would at once have given him. But, though the bishopric of
Hereford fell vacant in 1712, there was, as Sir Walter Scott says, "a lion
in the path." Queen Anne, honest dowdy woman,--her instinctive dislike of
Swift strengthened by the private influence of the Archbishop of York, and
that of the Duchess of Somerset, whose red hair Swift had
lampooned--obstinately refused to make the author of the _Tale of a Tub_ a
bishop. Even an English deanery could not be found for so questionable a
Christian; and in 1713 Swift was obliged to accept, as the best thing he
could get, the Deanery of St. Patrick's in his native city of Dublin. He
hurried over to Ireland to be installed, and came back just in time to
partake in the last struggles and dissensions of the Tory administration
before Queen Anne's death. By his personal exertions with ministers, and
his pamphlet entitled _Public Spirit of the Whigs_, he tried to buoy up
the sinking Tory cause. But the Queen's death destroyed all; with George
I. the Whigs came in again; the late Tory ministers were dispersed and
disgraced, and Swift shared their fall. "Dean Swift," says Arbuthnot,
"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." He returned, with rage and grief in his heart, to Ireland, a
disgraced man, and in danger of arrest on account of his connexion with
the late ministers. Even in Dublin he was insulted as he walked in the
streets.
For twelve years--that is, from 1714 to 1726--Swift did not quit Ireland.
At his first coming, as he tells us in one of his letters, he was
"horribly melancholy;" but the melancholy began to wear off; and, having
made up his mind to his exile in the country of his detestation, he fell
gradually into the routine of his duties as Dean. How he boarded in a
private family in the town, stipulating for leave to invite his friends to
dinner at so much a head, and only having two evenings a week at the
deanery for larger receptions; how he brought Stella and Mrs. Dingley from
Laracor, and settled them in lodgings on the other side of the Liffey,
keeping up the same precautions in his intercourse with them as before,
but devolving the management of his receptions at the deanery upon Stella,
who did all the honours of the house; how he had his own way in all
cathedral business, and had always a few clergymen and others in his
train, who toadied him, and took part in the facetious horse-play of which
he was fond; how gradually his physiognomy became known to the citizens,
and his eccentricities familiar to them, till the "Dean" became the lion
of Dublin, and everybody turned to look at him as he walked in the
streets; how, among the Dean's other oddities, he was popularly charged
with stinginess in his entertainments and a sharp look-out after the wine;
how sometimes he would fly off from town, and take refuge in some
country-seat of a friendly Irish nobleman; how all this while he was
reading books of all kinds, writing notes and jottings, and corresponding
with Pope, Gay, Prior, Arbuthnot, Oxford, Bolingbroke, and other literary
and political friends in London or abroad: these are matters in the
recollection of all who have read any of the biographies of Swift. It is
also known that it was during this period that the Stella-and-Vanessa
imbroglio reached its highest degree of entanglement. Scarcely had the
Dean located Stella and Mrs. Dingley in their lodging in Dublin when, as
he had feared, the impetuous Vanessa crossed the Channel to be near him
too. Her mother's death, and the fact that she and her younger sister had
a small property in Ireland, were pretext enough. A scrap or two from
surviving letters will tell the sequel, and will suggest the state of the
relations at this time between Swift and this unhappy and certainly very
extraordinary, woman:--
_Swift to Miss Vanhomrigh: London, Aug. 12, 1714._ "I had your letter
last post, and before you can send me another I shall set out for
Ireland. * * * If you are in Ireland when I am there, I shall see you
very seldom. It is not a place for any freedom, but where everything
is known in a week, and magnified a hundred degrees. These are
rigorous laws that must be passed through; but it is probable we may
meet in London in winter; or, if not, leave all to fate."
_Miss Vanhomrigh to Swift: Dublin, 1714_ (_some time after August_).
"You once had a maxim, which was to act what was right, and not mind
what the world would say. I wish you would keep to it now. Pray, what
can be wrong in seeing and advising an unhappy young woman? I cannot
imagine. You cannot but know that your frowns make my life
unsupportable. You have taught me to distinguish, and then you leave
me miserable."
_Miss Vanhomrigh to Swift: Dublin, 1714._ "You bid me be easy, and
you would see me as often as you could. You had better have said as
often as you could get the better of your inclinations so much, or as
often as you remembered there was such a one in the world. If you
continue to treat me as you do, you will not be made uneasy by me
long. It is impossible to describe what I have suffered since I saw
you last. I am sure I could have bore the rack much better than those
killing, killing words of yours. Sometimes I have resolved to die
without seeing you more; but those resolves, to your misfortune, did
not last long; for there is something in human nature that prompts
one to find relief in this world. I must give way to it, and beg
you'd see me, and speak kindly to me; for I am sure you'd not condemn
any one to suffer what I have done, could you but know it. The reason
I write to you is because I cannot tell it to you should I see you.
For, when I begin to complain, then you are angry; and there is
something in your looks so awful that it strikes me dumb."