“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.