Swift, it is plain, desired to use his influence magnificently. He hoped to make his reign memorable by splendid patronage of literature. The great organ of munificence was the famous Brothers’ Club, of which he was the animating spirit. It was founded in June, 1711, during Swift’s absence at Wycombe; it was intended to “advance conversation and friendship,” and obtain patronage for deserving persons. It was to include none but wits and men able to help wits, and, “if we go on as we begun,” says Swift, “no other club in this town will be worth talking of.” In March, 1712, it consisted, as Swift tells us, of nine lords and ten commoners.[35] It excluded Harley and the Lord Keeper (Harcourt) apparently as they were to be the distributors of the patronage; but it included St. John and several leading ministers, Harley’s son and son-in-law, and Harcourt’s son; whilst literature was represented by Swift, Arbuthnot, Prior, and Friend, all of whom were more or less actively employed by the ministry. The club was therefore composed of the ministry and their dependents, though it had not avowedly a political colouring. It dined on Thursday during the Parliamentary session, when the political squibs of the day were often laid on the table, including Swift’s famous Windsor Prophecy, and subscriptions were sometimes collected for such men as Diaper and Harrison. It flourished, however, for little more than the first season. In the winter of 1712-13 it began to suffer from the common disease of such institutions. Swift began to complain bitterly of the extravagance of the charges. He gets the club to leave a tavern in which the bill[36] “for four dishes and four, first and second course, without wine and drink,” had been 21l. 6s. 8d. The number of guests, it seems, was fourteen. Next winter the charges are divided. “It cost me nineteen shillings to-day for my club dinner,” notes Swift, Dec. 18, 1712. “I don’t like it.” Swift had a high value for every one of the nineteen shillings. The meetings became irregular: Harley was ready to give promises, but no patronage: and Swift’s attendance falls off. Indeed, it may be noted that he found dinners and suppers full of danger to his health. He constantly complains of their after-effects; and partly perhaps for that reason he early ceases to frequent coffee-houses. Perhaps too his contempt for coffee-house society, and the increasing dignity which made it desirable to keep possible applicants at a distance, had much to do with this. The Brothers’ Club, however, was long remembered by its members, and in later years they often address each other by the old fraternal title.
One design which was to have signalized Swift’s period of power, suggested the only paper which he had ever published with his name. It was a “proposal for correcting, improving, and ascertaining the English language,” published in May, 1712, in the form of a letter to Harley. The letter itself, written offhand in six hours (Feb. 21, 1712), is not of much value; but Swift recurs to the subject frequently enough to show that he really hoped to be the founder of an English Academy. Had Swift been his own minister instead of the driver of a minister, the project might have been started. The rapid development of the political struggle sent Swift’s academy to the limbo provided for such things; and few English authors will regret the failure of a scheme unsuited to our natural idiosyncrasy, and calculated, as I fancy, to end in nothing but an organization of pedantry.
One remark meanwhile occurs which certainly struck Swift himself. He says (March 17, 1712) that Sacheverel, the Tory martyr, has come to him for patronage, and observes that when he left Ireland neither of them could have anticipated such a relationship. “This,” he adds, “is the seventh I have now provided for since I came, and can do nothing for myself.” Hints at a desire for preferment do not appear for some time; but as he is constantly speaking of an early return to Ireland, and is as regularly held back by the entreaties of the ministry, there must have been at least an implied promise. A hint had been given that he might be made chaplain to Harley, when the minister became Earl of Oxford. “I will be no man’s chaplain alive,” he says. He remarks about the same time (May 23, 1711) that it “would look extremely little” if he returned without some distinction; but he will not beg for preferment. The ministry, he says in the following August, only want him for one bit of business (the Conduct of the Allies presumably). When that is done, he will take his leave of them. “I never got a penny from them nor expect it.” The only post for which he made a direct application was that of historiographer. He had made considerable preparations for his so-called History of the Last Four Years of Queen Anne, which appeared posthumously; and which may be described as one of his political pamphlets without the vigour[37]—a dull statement of facts put together by a partisan affecting the historical character. This application, however, was not made till April, 1714, when Swift was possessed of all the preferment that he was destined to receive. He considered in his haughty way that he should be entreated rather than entreat; and ministers were perhaps slow to give him anything which could take him away from them. A secret influence was at work against him. The Tale of a Tub was brought up against him; and imputations upon his orthodoxy were common. Nottingham even revenged himself by describing Swift in the House of Lords as a divine “who is hardly suspected of being a Christian.” Such insinuations were also turned to account by the Duchess of Somerset, who retained her influence over Anne in spite of Swift’s attacks. His journal in the winter of 1712-13 shows growing discontent. In December, 1712, he resolves to write no more till something is done for him. He will get under shelter before he makes more enemies. He declares that he is “soliciting nothing” (February 4, 1713), but he is growing impatient. Harley is kinder than ever. “Mighty kind!” exclaims Swift, “with a ——; less of civility and more of interest;” or as he puts it in one of his favourite “proverbs” soon afterwards—“my grandmother used to say,—
More of your lining
And less of your dining.”
At last Swift, hearing that he was again to be passed over, gave a positive intimation that he would retire if nothing was done; adding that he should complain of Harley for nothing but neglecting to inform him sooner of the hopelessness of his position.[38] The dean of St. Patrick’s was at last promoted to a bishopric, and Swift appointed to the vacant deanery. The warrant was signed on April 23, and in June Swift set out to take possession of his deanery. It was no great prize; he would have to pay 1000l. for the house and fees, and thus, he says, it would be three years before he would be the richer for it; and, moreover, it involved what he already described as “banishment” to a country which he hated.
His state of mind when entering upon his preferment was painfully depressed. “At my first coming,” he writes to Miss Vanhomrigh, “I thought I should have died with discontent; and was horribly melancholy while they were installing me; but it begins to wear off, and change to dulness.” This depression is singular, when we remember that Swift was returning to the woman for whom he had the strongest affection, and from whom he had been separated for nearly three years; and moreover, that he was returning as a famous and a successful man. He seems to have been received with some disfavour by a society of Whig proclivities; he was suffering from a fresh return of ill-health; and besides the absence from the political struggles in which he was so keenly interested, he could not think of them without deep anxiety. He returned to London in October at the earnest request of political friends. Matters were looking serious; and though the journal to Stella was not again taken up, we can pretty well trace the events of the following period.
There can rarely have been a less congenial pair of colleagues than Harley and St. John. Their union was that of a still more brilliant, daring, and self-confident Disraeli with a very inferior edition of Sir Robert Peel, with smaller intellect and exaggerated infirmities. The timidity, procrastination, and “refinement” of the Treasurer were calculated to exasperate his audacious colleague. From the earliest period Swift had declared that everything depended upon the good mutual understanding of the two; he was frightened by every symptom of discord, and declares (in August, 1711) that he has ventured all his credit with the Ministers to remove their differences. He knew, as he afterwards said (October 20, 1711), that this was the way to be sent back to his willows at Laracor, but everything must be risked in such a case. When difficulties revived next year he hoped that he had made a reconciliation. But the discord was too vital. The victory of the Tories brought on a serious danger. They had come into power to make peace. They had made it. The next question was that of the succession of the crown. Here they neither reflected the general opinion of the nation nor were agreed amongst themselves. Harley, as we now know, had flirted with the Jacobites; and Bolingbroke was deep in treasonable plots. The existence of such plots was a secret to Swift, who indignantly denied their existence. When King hinted at a possible danger to Swift from the discovery of St. John’s treason, he indignantly replied that he must have been “a most false and vile man” to join in anything of the kind.[39] He professes elsewhere his conviction that there were not at this period 500 Jacobites in England; and “amongst these not six of any quality or consequence.”[40] Swift’s sincerity, here as everywhere, is beyond all suspicion; but his conviction proves incidentally that he was in the dark as to the “wheels within wheels”—the backstairs plots, by which the administration of his friends was hampered and distracted. With so many causes for jealousy and discord, it is no wonder that the political world became a mass of complex intrigue and dispute. The queen, meanwhile, might die at any moment, and some decided course of action become imperatively necessary. Whenever the queen was ill, said Harley, people were at their wits’ end; as soon as she recovered they acted as if she were immortal. Yet, though he complained of the general indecision, his own conduct was most hopelessly undecided.
It was in the hopes of pacifying these intrigues that Swift was recalled from Ireland. He plunged into the fight, but not with his old success. Two pamphlets which he published at the end of 1713 are indications of his state of mind. One was an attack upon a wild no-popery shriek emitted by Bishop Burnet, whom he treats, says Johnson, “like one whom he is glad of an opportunity to insult.” A man who, like Burnet, is on friendly terms with those who assail the privileges of his order must often expect such treatment from its zealous adherents. Yet the scornful assault, which finds out weak places enough in Burnet’s mental rhetoric, is in painful contrast to the dignified argument of earlier pamphlets. The other pamphlet was an incident in a more painful contest. Swift had tried to keep on good terms with Addison and Steele. He had prevented Steele’s dismissal from a Commissionership of Stamps. Steele, however, had lost his place of Gazetteer for an attack upon Harley. Swift persuaded Harley to be reconciled to Steele, on condition that Steele should apologize. Addison prevented Steele from making the required submission, “out of mere spite,” says Swift, at the thought that Steele should require other help; rather, we guess, because Addison thought that the submission would savour of party infidelity. A coldness followed; “all our friendship is over,” says Swift of Addison (March 6th, 1711); and though good feeling revived between the principals, their intimacy ceased. Swift, swept into the ministerial vortex, pretty well lost sight of Addison; though they now and then met on civil terms. Addison dined with Swift and St. John upon April 3rd, 1713, and Swift attended a rehearsal of Cato—the only time when we see him at a theatre. Meanwhile the ill feeling to Steele remained, and bore bitter fruit.
Steele and Addison had to a great extent retired from politics, and during the eventful years 1711-12 were chiefly occupied in the politically harmless Spectator. But Steele was always ready to find vent for his zeal; and in 1713 he fell foul of the Examiner in the Guardian. Swift had long ceased to write Examiners or to be responsible for the conduct of the paper, though he still occasionally inspired the writers. Steele, naturally enough, supposed Swift to be still at work; and in defending a daughter of Steele’s enemy, Nottingham, not only suggested that Swift was her assailant, but added an insinuation that Swift was an infidel. The imputation stung Swift to the quick. He had a sensibility to personal attacks, not rare with those who most freely indulge in them, which was ridiculed by the easy-going Harley. An attack from an old friend—from a friend whose good opinion he still valued, though their intimacy had ceased; from a friend, moreover, whom in spite of their separation he had tried to protect; and, finally, an attack upon the tenderest part of his character, irritated him beyond measure. Some angry letters passed, Steele evidently regarding Swift as a traitor, and disbelieving his professions of innocence and his claims to active kindness; whilst Swift felt Steele’s ingratitude the more deeply from the apparent plausibility of the accusation. If Steele was really unjust and ungenerous, we may admit as a partial excuse that in such cases the less prosperous combatant has a kind of right to bitterness. The quarrel broke out at the time of Swift’s appointment to the deanery. Soon after the new dean’s return to England, Steele was elected member for Stockbridge, and rushed into political controversy. His most conspicuous performance was a frothy and pompous pamphlet called the Crisis, intended to rouse alarms as to French invasion and Jacobite intrigues. Swift took the opportunity to revenge himself upon Steele. Two pamphlets—The importance of the “Guardian” considered, and The Public Spirit of the Whigs (the latter in answer to the Crisis)—are fierce attacks upon Steele personally and politically. Swift’s feeling comes out sufficiently in a remark in the first. He reverses the saying about Cranmer, and says that he may affirm of Steele, “Do him a good turn, and he is your enemy for ever.” There is vigorous writing enough, and effective ridicule of Steele’s literary style and political alarmism. But it is painfully obvious, as in the attack upon Burnet, that personal animosity is now the predominant instead of an auxiliary feeling. Swift is anxious beyond all things to mortify and humiliate an antagonist. And he is in proportion less efficient as a partizan, though more amusing. He has, moreover, the disadvantage of being politically on the defensive. He is no longer proclaiming a policy, but endeavouring to disavow the policy attributed to his party. The wrath which breaks forth, and the bitter personality with which it is edged, were far more calculated to irritate his opponents than to disarm the lookers-on of their suspicions.
Part of the fury was no doubt due to the growing unsoundness of his political position. Steele in the beginning of 1714 was expelled from the House for the Crisis; and an attack made upon Swift in the House of Lords for an incidental outburst against the hated Scots in his reply to the Crisis, was only staved off by a manœuvre of the ministry. Meanwhile Swift was urging the necessity of union upon men who hated each other more than they regarded any public cause whatever. Swift at last brought his two patrons together in Lady Masham’s lodgings, and entreated them to be reconciled. If, he said, they would agree, all existing mischiefs could be remedied in two minutes. If they would not, the ministry would be ruined in two months. Bolingbroke assented: Oxford characteristically shuffled, said “all would be well,” and asked Swift to dine with him next day. Swift, however, said that he would not stay to see the inevitable catastrophe. It was his natural instinct to hide his head in such moments; his intensely proud and sensitive nature could not bear to witness the triumph of his enemies, and he accordingly retired at the end of May, 1714, to the quiet parsonage of Upper Letcombe in Berkshire. The public wondered and speculated; friends wrote letters describing the scenes which followed, and desiring Swift’s help; and he read, and walked, and chewed the cud of melancholy reflection, and thought of stealing away to Ireland. He wrote, however, a very remarkable pamphlet, giving his view of the situation, which was not published at the time; events went too fast.