His London Journal.
We know all about those days of his in London—days of expectancy. He has told us:
“The ministry are good hearty fellows. I use them like dogs, because I expect they will use me so. They call me nothing but Jonathan. I said I believed they would leave me Jonathan, as they found me; and that I never knew a minister do anything for those whom they make companions of their pleasures; and I believe you will find it so, but I care not.”
And to whom does he talk so confidentially, and tell all the story of those days? Why, to Hester Johnson. It is all down in Stella’s journal—written for her eye only; and we have it by purest accident. It was begun in 1710—he then in his forty-third year, and she in her thirtieth.
She has kept her home over in Ireland with Mrs. Dingley—seeing him on every visit there, and on every day, almost, of such visits; and, as her sweetest pasturage, feeding on letters he writes other times, and lastly on this Stella journal, “for her dear eyes,” at the rate of a page, or even two pages a day, for some three years.
All his London day’s life comes into it. Let us listen:
“Dined at the chop-house with Will Pate, the learned woollen draper, then we sauntered at china-shops and book-sellers; went to the tavern; drank 2 pints of white wine; never parted till ten. Have a care of those eyes—pray—pray, pretty Stella!
“So you have a fire now, and are at cards at home; I think of dining in my lodgings to-day on a chop and a pot of ale.
“Shall I? Well, then, I will try to please M. D. [‘M. D.’ is ‘my dear;’ or ‘my dears,’ when it includes, as it often does, Mrs. Dingley]. I was to-night at Lord Masham’s; Lord Dupplin took out my little pamphlet, the Secretary read a good deal of it to Lord Treasurer; they all commended it to the skies; so did I.
“I’ll answer your letter to-morrow; good night, M. D. Sleep well.”
Again:
“I have no gilt paper left, so you must be content with plain. I dined with Lord Treasurer.
“A poem is out to-day inscribed to me: a Whiggish poem and good for nothing. They teased me with it.”
“I am not yet rid of my cold. No news to tell you: went to dine with Mrs. Vanhomrigh, a neighbor. [Then a long political tale, and] Good night, my dear little rogues.”
’Tis a strange journal; such a mingling of court gossip, sharp political thrusts, lover-like, childish prattle, and personal details. If he is sick, he scores down symptoms and curatives as boldly as a hospital nurse; if he lunches at a chop-house, he tells cost; if he takes in his waistcoat, he tells Stella of it; if he dines with Addison, he tells how much wine they drank; if a street beggar or the Queen shed tears, they slop down into that Stella journal; if she wants eggs and bacon, he tells where to buy and what to give; if Lady Dalkeith paints, he sees it with those great, protuberant eyes of his, and tells Stella.
There is coarseness in it, homeliness, indelicacies, wit, sharp hits, dreary twaddle, and repeated good-nights to his beloved M. D.’s, and—to take care of themselves, and eat the apples at Laracor, and wait for him. No—I mistake; I don’t think he ever says with definiteness Stella must wait for him. I should say (without looking critically over the journal to that end) that he cautiously avoided so positive a committal. And she?—ah! she, poor girl, waits without the asking. And those indelicacies and that coarseness? Well, this strange, great man can do nothing wrong in her eyes.
But she does see that those dinings at a certain Mrs. Vanhomrigh’s come in oftener and oftener. ’Tis a delightfully near neighbor, and her instinct scents something in the wind. She ventures a question, and gets a stormy frown glowering over a page of the journal that puts her to silence. The truth is, Mrs. Vanhomrigh[113] has a daughter—young, clever, romantic, not without personal charms, who is captivated by the intellect of Mr. Swift; all the more when he volunteers direction of her studies, and leads her down the flowery walks of poetry under his stalwart guidance.
Then the suspicious entries appear more thickly in the journal. “Dined with Mrs. Vanhomrigh”—and again: “Stormy, dined with a neighbor”—“couldn’t go to court, so went to the Vans.” And thus this romance went on ripening to the proportions that are set down in the poem of “Cadenus and Vanessa.” He is old, she is young.
“Vanessa, not in years a score,
Dreams of a gown of forty-four;
Imaginary charms can find
In eyes with reading almost blind.
…
Cadenus, common forms apart,
In every scene had kept his heart;
Had sigh’d and languished, vowed and writ,
For pastime or to show his wit.”
But this wit has made conquest of her; she
“——called for his poetic works:
[Cupid] meantime in secret lurks;
And, while the book was in her hand,
The urchin from his private stand
Took aim, and shot with all his strength
A dart of such prodigious length,
It pierced the feeble volume through,
And deep transfixed her bosom too.”
This is part of his story of it, which he put in her hands for her reading;[114] and which, like the Stella journal, only saw the light after the woman most interested in it was in the ground.