Swift has been accused, however, of a like brutality to servants. Dr. Johnson, in commenting upon his "perpetual tyrannick peevishness," relates how Swift, when dining with the Earl of Orrery, said of one of the servants, “That man has, since we sat at table, committed fifteen faults." But Swift, who always prided himself on exact discipline in his own household, was at the time of this remark near enough insanity to take a childish delight in his accurate observation. His own servants, like the poor of his parish, loved him as they feared him; and they willingly put up with his little foibles, such as calling them back, in one instance, from a journey already begun, to "please to close the door." A good instance of the sly humor with which he reproved and corrected them is the story that he once sent out some overdone meat with orders that it should be done a little less." But how can I?" asked the cook. "Then be careful next time," said Swift, "to commit a fault which can be remedied." For a time, then, Swift was in great favor with the Tory leaders. In 1710-11 he ran the Examiner, a political sheet, strong because he saw what was on every one's lips and said it clearly and concisely. In 1713, however, the Tories went out of power. Swift, whose humor had always bordered on irony, became despondent, wrote more venomously, and resented bitterly personal attacks. From this time on his mockery of human ambitions grew more violent. He did not become a bishop; his desire for complete power was never satisfied; he felt defeated. The climax of his life had been reached, and the catastrophe hurried after. Finally, the Deanery of St. Patrick's, with a debt of £1000, was held out to him, and he accepted it, not as a just reward, but as a forlorn hope; not in the spirit of enthusiasm, but in that of ingratitude and despair. He returned to England in 1714, to try again, but with no success; and with Anne's death all chances of preferment for the Tory were at an end. Such was the bright period of this man's life, — bright only in contrast to the gloom of later years. Soon after returning to Ireland he took up the cause of the Irish with vigorous zeal. England was at fault, in his mind, wholly so. There was in him nothing of the calm rebuke of Addison, nothing of the gentle merriment of Steele, nothing of the spiteful ridicule of Pope. Still speaking "the plain truth," he spoke it with an irony sharper than plainness, — a bruising, unrelenting irony. Among the Irish poor, however, he was a great man, honored for his fearlessness, loved for his generosity. When still a struggling parson he gave a tithe of his income to charity; when Dean, he gave a third, sometimes a half. His thrift was never at the expense of his starving, down-trodden countrymen. So unhesitatingly did they believe in him, in fact, that once when people had left their work on account of a predicted eclipse, Swift had only to say, in order to bring them back to work, that the eclipse had been postponed by order of the Dean of St. Patrick's. Sir Robert Walpole, who threatened to arrest Swift for his bold writings, was advised not to do it "unless you have ten thousand men behind the warrant." During one of Swift's visits to London in the days of Laracor he met a young lady named Hester Vanhomrigh. There was no doubt a good deal of affection on Swift's part, but it was largely that of a teacher to a pupil, as he tried to show in his poem, Cadenus and Vanessa. But Vanessa took the matter much more seriously, wrote him many letters, and finally followed him to Ireland. There the question of Stella's relation to Swift arose. Vanessa wrote to Stella, who showed the letter to Swift. There is a story that he took the letter in a rage, threw it down on the table before Miss Vanhomrigh, and stalked out silently. Much has been made, too, of the romantic manner of Vanessa's death, which occurred soon afterwards, but it has been pointed out that both her brothers and her younger sister had died before her and that her own health had always been weak. It is unfair, spectacular, to accuse Swift of "killing" her by his brutality. Before considering the much mooted question, Swift's relation to Stella, it is well to notice his general attitude towards women. There is plenty of evidence that he held strong theories against a man's marrying before his fortune was secure, that he had, in fact, a horror of it. He determined, moreover, never to marry unless he could marry young. The inconsistency of his addresses to Varina, when he was decidedly poor, is repeated often enough in the lives of poor young men to be in no sense remarkable. This theory of his in regard to marriage, furthermore, was backed up by his disgust at the neglect of women who had passed the limits of youth and beauty; in an age when woman was too often treated as a mere commodity, he did much to exalt her position, to assert the necessity of her companionship, whether she was old or young, a wife or a friend. Such a view, at first glance, conflicts strangely with what often appears to be his brutal treatment of certain women, such as Lady Burlington or Vanessa; Thackeray calls him a "bully," "who made women cry and guests look foolish." But on examination it develops that he thought more highly of women than did most of his contemporaries, and that his occasional outbursts were accountable to his irony's momentarily getting the better of him or to his contempt for the amenities of society. What Swift's Journal to Stella, written chiefly in the years 1710-13, is full of playfully affectionate expressions. Here is an example: "I assure oo it im vely late now; but zis goes to-morrow; and I must have some time to converse with own deerichar MD. Nite de deer Sollahs." And again : "And now let us see what this saucy, dear letter of MD says. says Pdf to me, pray? says it. Come and let me answer to you for your ladies. Hold up your head, then, like a good letter." It must be remembered that at Moor Park Stella had been a mere girl, Swift's pupil. What he writes is perhaps no more than playfulnessespecially in Swift, whose great, lonely mind must have craved relief in a little "sublime foolishness." There is no proof, furthermore, that Stella ever lived alone with Swift. If she lived in the same house in Ireland a thing highly improbable, for any length of time at least Mrs. Dingley was there too. There is certainly nothing remarkable in the fact that two women one old and the other no longer young should live in great intimacy with a clergyman of middle age. When Vanessa asked Stella whether she was married to Swift, Stella said "Yes," but this can 1 There are various hypothetical explanations of Swift's "little language." MD = my dear; Sollahs = Sirrah(?); Pdf (Podefar) = Swift, possibly Poor, dear, foolish Rogue. hardly be taken as proof; it must be remembered that the same Stella, when she heard that Swift had written beautifully about Vanessa, remarked, "We all know the Dean could write beautifully about a broom-stick." 1 Swift himself, who nowhere intimates that they were married, frequently emphasizes the platonic nature of their friendship: "Thou, Stella, wert no longer young When first for thee my harp I strung, I ne'er admitted love a guest." There are many witnesses on both sides. It looks as if Swift, by the time Stella came to Ireland, had fully made up his mind not to marry; or, if he did marry, as if he wanted to keep the marriage a secret. Stella was at all events not displeased with whatever arrangements were made. It is, moreover, wholly unfair to suspect Swift of foul play. Few men in his day were so scrupulously moral as he; so much did he detest profligacy and uncleanness, indeed, that his mockery of vice becomes a morbid interest. Whatever his connection with Stella, then, Swift was for thirty years devoted to her. What little sympathy crept into his lonely existence was from her; and those who forget or ignore his long, unbroken affection for the person who was his pupil and friend miss wholly the tragedy of his life. On hearing of her illness, while he was in London in 1726, he wrote to a friend: "This was a person of my own rearing and instructing from childhood, who excelled in every good 1 Swift wrote for Lady Berkeley his Meditations upon a Broom-Stick, published in 1704. |