CHAPTER XIV.
STELLA AND VANESSA.
It is difficult to consider Swift as a poet. So many unamiable, disagreeable, unpoetical ideas are connected with his name, that, great as he was in fame and intellectual vigour, he seems as misplaced in the temple of the muses as one of his own yahoos. But who has not heard of "Swift's Stella?" and of Cadenus and Vanessa? Though all will confess that the two devoted women, who fell victims to his barbarous selfishness, and whose names are eternally linked with the history of our literature, are far more interesting, from their ill-bestowed, ill-requited and passionate attachment to him, than by any thing he ever sung or said of them.[107] Nay, his longest, his most elaborate, and his most admired poem—the avowed history of one of his attachments—with its insipid tawdry fable, its conclusion, in which nothing is concluded, and the inferences we are left to draw from it, would have given but an ignominious celebrity to poor Vanessa, if truth and time, and her own sweet nature, had not redeemed her.
I pass over Swift's early attachment to Jane Waryng, whom he deserted after a seven years' engagement: she is not in any way connected with his literary history,—and what became of her afterwards is not known. He excused himself by some pitiful subterfuges about fortune; but it appears, from a comparison of dates, that the occasion of his breaking off with her, was his rising partiality for another.
When Swift was an inmate of Sir William Temple's family at Moor Park, he met with Esther Johnson, who appears to have been a kind of humble companion to Sir William's niece, Miss Gifford. She is said by some to have been the daughter of Sir William's steward; by others we are told that her father was a London merchant, who had failed in business. This was the interesting and ill-fated woman, since renowned as "Swift's Stella."
She was then a blooming girl of fifteen, with silky black hair, brilliant eyes, and delicate features. Her disposition was gentle and affectionate; and she had a mind of no common order. Swift sometimes employed his leisure in instructing Sir William's niece, and Stella was the companion of her studies. Her beauty, talents, and docility, interested her preceptor, who, though considerably older than herself, was in the vigour of his life and intellectual powers; and she repaid this interest with all the idolatry of a young unpractised heart, mingled with a gratitude and reverence almost filial. When he took possession of his living in Ireland, he might have married her; for she loved him, and he knew it. She was perfectly independent of any family ties, and had a small property of her own: but what were really his views or his intentions, it is impossible to guess; nor at the reasons of that most extraordinary arrangement, by which he contrived to bind this devoted creature to him for life, and to enslave her heart and soul to him for ever, without assuming the character either of a husband or a lover. He persuaded her to leave England; and, under the sanction and protection of a respectable elderly woman named Dingley, often alluded to in his humorous poems, to take up her residence near him at Laracor. Subsequently, when he became Dean of St. Patrick's, she had a lodging in Dublin. He was accustomed to spend part of every day in her society, but never without the presence of a third person; and when he was absent, the two ladies took possession of his residence, and occupied it till his return.
Two years after her removal to Ireland, and when she was in her twentieth year, Stella was addressed by a young clergyman, whose name was Tisdal; and sensible of the humiliating and equivocal situation in which she was placed, and unable to bring Swift to any explanation of his views or sentiments, she appears to have been inclined to favour the addresses of her new admirer. He proposed in form; but Swift, without in any way committing himself, contrived to prevent the marriage. Stella found herself precisely in the same situation as before, and every year increased his influence over her young and gentle spirit, as habit confirmed and strengthened the bonds of a first affection. She lived on in the hope that he would at length marry her; bearing his sullen outbreakings of temper, soothing his morbid misanthropy, cheering and adorning his life; and giving herself every day fresh claims to his love, compassion, and gratitude, by her sufferings, her virtues, her patient gentleness, and her exclusive devotion;—and all availed not! During this extraordinary connection, Swift was accustomed to address her in verse. Some of these poems, though worthless as poetry, derive interest from the beauty of her character, and from that concentrated vigour of expression which was the characteristic of all he wrote; as in this descriptive passage:—
Her hearers are amazed from whence
Proceeds that fund of wit and sense,
Which, though her modesty would shroud,
Breaks like the sun behind a cloud;
While gracefulness its art conceals,
And yet through every motion steals.
Say, Stella, was Prometheus blind,
And forming you, mistook your kind?
No; 'twas for you alone he stole
The fire that forms a manly soul;
Then, to complete it every way,
He moulded it with female clay:
To that you owe the nobler flame,
To this the beauty of your frame.
He compliments her sincerity and firmness of principle in four nervous lines:
Ten thousand oaths upon record
Are not so sacred as her word!
The world shall in its atoms end,
Ere Stella can deceive a friend!