When the Dean paid his last visit to London, an: 1726, he writ thus in a letter directed to Mrs Dingley, but for her and me:--
"Farewell, my dearest lives and delights I love you better than ever, as hope saved, and ever will. I can count on nothing but MD's love and kindness, and so, farewell, dearest MD. Presto."
So he signs himself, and so it seems the old screen will still be kept up and the letters to me wrote to her also, and in the child's talk that pleaseth him, lest any in the world suspect the famous divine hath a man's heart. But hath he? This I have not known, nor shall. Let me tell my own heart yet again how deep my debt to him, remembering the sickly child of Moor Park, to whom he brought not alone learning but companionship, and all the joy known to her childhood. For it pleased Dr Swift, then a young man, to condescend to a child's humours, to solace her solitary hours, forsook as she was of her mother's company, and not alone to teach her to write, but all store of knowledge. And Dr Swift hath since been pleased to acknowledge that, having instilled in this poor child the principles of honour and virtue, she hath not swerved from them in any passage of her life.
Yet have I not? Again I question my heart. 'T is the most I can hope that the woman hath repaid the child's debt. On this I will be judged.
A keen remembrance begins not much before the age of eight, nor can I recall a time when I did not love him. My mother's time was took up in making her court to my Lady Giffard, sister to our benefactor, Sir William Temple; and Rebecca Dingley's (a kinswoman of the Temples) in making her court to all; and the child Esther might run as she pleased, chid only when she was remembered.
And this young man took pity on her. I remember very well Dr Swift's face in youth. 'Twas extraordinary handsome and commanding, the eyes blue and piercing, the features strong, and a something that very early distinguisht him from others, so that great persons coming of errands to Sir William Temple were not seldom drawn into intercourse with his secretary.
Mr Swift was not then so prudent as he became later. What need with a child? He permitted his fancy to range in all he said; and seated by the lake at Moor Park, with this child at his knee looking up into his face, he would discourse of things in heaven and earth, forgetting his hearer. For he who could charm all charmed himself no less, and often hath said to me laughing:--
"There's no company so good as Jonathan Swift's--and he himself would choose it before all others!"
Of this I am not certain, for the Dean hath been and is very partial to the company of the great and famous of either sex.
'Twas thus, sitting by the lake and gazing down the great perspective cut in the trees, he saw the peasants going homeward up the hill, no greater than ants, and looking into my eyes (from which and my name he called me Star, and later, Stella), he said:--