So stood matters when the Doctor went to London, an: 1710, on his errand of obtaining the First Fruits for the Irish Church from the Crown--and he chosen all others to this, for his commanding talent and presence, though then but forty-two years of age, and many dignitaries older, yet not wiser. It created much envy.
I missed him, and yet took a sad ease in his going. 'Twas the easier to talk with Dingley, to play at ombre with the Dean and Mrs Walls; for when he was in presence, my heart waited upon his speech, and he wounded with many a word and look he thought not on. And he writ often in the form of a Journal to Dingley and me, saying:--
"I will write something every day to MD, and when it is full, will send it; and that will be pretty, and I will always be in conversation with MD, and MD with Presto."
'T was near a year since his going when Mrs Coleburn came to Dublin, full of London talk, and her friendship with the great Dr Swift, the hope of the Tories. Indeed, it made her a great woman with the clergy in Dublin, that she knew so much of his sayings and doings, and in what high company he was got, and the clutter he made in London. Much was true, as I knew under his own hand. Much was idle twattle and the giddiness of a woman that will be talking. Now, one day, she visited me, dressed out in the last London mode, and talked as I knotted, and presently says she:--
"And, Mrs Johnson, what will be said, the Doctor being made a Bishop as he now looks for, if he bring home a fine young bride from London? Sure he lives at Mrs Vanhomrigh's, so often is he there; and Hessy is as pretty a girl as eye can see, in her young twenties and a bit of a fortune to boot. I have ever said the Doctor was not on the market for nothing. He is not the man for a portionless beauty. Hath he wrote of this? for all the tongues are wagging, and the lady in such a blaze with the tender passion that she can't by any means smother it."
"Doctor Swift hath often writ of Mrs Vanhomrigh and her hospitalities," says I, smiling. "Also of the charming Miss V. Her name is no stranger here."
So I baffled the woman, and could see her petty malice dumbed. I held the smile on my face like a mask.
"Well, 'tis a charming creature, and the Doctor commends her wit in all quarters; and 't is certain lie should be a judge, for he tutors her in Latin. There's many a man would gladly tutor the seductive Miss Hessy."
When she took leave, I writ to the kind Patty Holt in London. When her reply returned, 't was but to confirm Mrs Coleburn. Then I turned over all his letters--yet did not need--for mention of this woman, and found but three, though of the mother and her house he writ in almost every letter, but making somewhat too light of it. 'Twas a raging pain that he should be her tutor--I had thought that was mine only and not to recur--a memory stored where neither rust nor moth might touch it. Well--what could I but hate the girl? And to hate is a bitter thing: it saps the life and breaks the strength, and so no escape night or day. I must then fancy his letters cooling, and later says Dingley unprompted:--
"The Doctor is took up with his fine friends and his business. La!--for sure he writes not as he did, but is plaguey busy. Two simple women can't expect so much of his time that duchesses go begging for."