The life of the household of dependents at Moor Park, where young Swift attended Sir William’s pleasure in the library, while the Johnsons and Dingleys, the waiting-gentlewomen of a system which now lingers only in courts, hung about my lady, her relatives, gossips, servants, is to us extremely difficult to realize, and still more to understand. This little cluster of secondary personages, scarcely at all elevated above the servants, with whom they sometimes sat at table, and whose offices they were always liable to be called on to perform, yet who were all conscious of gentle blood in their veins, and a relationship more or less distinct with the heads of the house, is indeed one of the most curious lingerings of the past in the eighteenth century. When we read in one of Macaulay’s brilliant sketches, or in Swift’s own words, or in the indications given by both history and fiction, that the parson,—perhaps at the great house,—humble priest of the parish, found his natural mate in the waiting-maid, it is generally forgotten that the waiting-maid was then in most cases quite as good as the parson: a gently bred and well-descended woman, like her whom an unkind but not ignoble fate made into the Stella we all know, the mild and modest star of Swift’s existence. It was no doubt a step in the transition from the great medieval household, where the squire waited on the knight with a lowliness justified by his certainty of believing himself knight in his turn, and where my lady’s service was a noble education, the only school accessible to the young gentlewomen of her connection—down to our own less picturesque and more independent days, in which personal service has ceased to be compatible with the pretensions of any who can assume, by the most distant claim, to be “gentle” folk. The institution is very apparent in Shakspere’s day, the waiting-gentlewomen who surround his heroines being of entirely different mettle from the soubrettes of modern comedy. At a later period such a fine gentleman as John Evelyn, in no need of patronage, was content and proud that his daughter should enter a great household to learn how to comport herself in the world. In the end of the seventeenth century the dependents were perhaps more absolutely dependent. But even this, like most things, had its better and worst side.
That a poor widow with her child, like Stella’s mother, should find refuge in the house of her wealthy kinswoman at no heavier cost than that of attending to Lady Temple’s linen and laces, and secure thus such a training for her little girl as might indeed have ended in the rude household of a Parson Trulliber, but at the same time might fit her to take her place in a witty and brilliant society, and enter into all the thoughts of the most brilliant genius of his time, was no ill fate; nor is there anything that is less than noble and befitting (in theory) in the association of that young man of genius, whatsoever exercises of patience he might be put to, with the highly cultured man of the world, the ex-ambassador and councilor of kings, under whose auspices he could learn to understand both books and men, see the best company of his time, and acquire at second hand all the fruits of a ripe experience. So that, perhaps, there is something to be said after all for the curious little community at Moor Park, where Sir William, like a god, made the day good or evil for his people according as he smiled or frowned; where the young Irish secretary, looking but uneasily upon a world in which his future fate was so unassured, had yet the wonderful chance once, if no more, of explaining English institutions to King William, and in his leisure the amusement of teaching little Hester how to write, and learning from her baby prattle—which must have been the delight of the house, kept up and encouraged by her elders—that “little language” which had become a sort of synonym for the most intimate and endearing utterances of tenderness. No doubt Sir William himself (who left her a modest little fortune when he died) must have loved to hear the child talk, and even Lady Giffard and the rest, having no responsibility for her parts of speech, kept her a baby as long as possible, and delighted in the pretty jargon to which foolish child-lovers cling in all ages after the little ones themselves are grown too wise to use it more.
Jonathan Swift left Ireland, along with many more, in the commotion that succeeded the revolution of 1688—a very poor and homely lad, with nothing but the learning, such as it was, picked up in a somewhat disorderly university career. Through his mother, then living at Leicester, and on the score of humble relationship between Mrs. Swift and Lady Temple, of whom the reader may perhaps remember the romance and tender history,—a pleasant association,—he was introduced to Sir William Temple’s household, but scarcely, it would appear, at first to any permanent position there. He was engaged, an unfriendly writer says, “at the rate of £20 a year” as amanuensis and reader, but “Sir William never favoured him with his conversation nor allowed him to sit at table with him.” Temple’s own account of the position, however, contains nothing at all derogatory to the young man, for whom, about a year after, he endeavored, no doubt in accordance with Swift’s own wishes, to find a situation with Sir Robert Southwell, then going to Ireland as secretary of state. Sir William describes Swift as “of good family in Herefordshire.... He has lived in my house, read to me, writ for me, and kept all my accounts as far as my small occasions required. He has Latin and Greek, some French, writes a very good current hand, is very honest and diligent, and has good friends, though they have for the present lost their fortunes,” the great man says; and he recommends the youth “either as a gentleman to wait on you, or a clerk to write under you, or upon any establishment of the College to recommend him to a fellowship there, which he has a just pretence to.” This shows how little there was in the position of “a gentleman to wait on you,” of which the young suitor need have been ashamed. Swift’s own account of this speedy return to Ireland is that it was by advice of the physicians, “who weakly imagined that his native air might be of some use to recover his health,” which he was young enough to have endangered by the temptations of Sir William’s fine gardens; a “surfeit of fruit” being the innocent cause to which he attributes the disease which haunted him for all the rest of his life.
His absence, however, from the Temple household was of very short duration, Sir Robert Southwell having apparently had no use for his services, or means of preferring him to a fellowship, and he returned to Moor Park in 1690, where he remained for four years. It was quite clear, whatever his vicissitudes of feeling might have been, that he identified himself entirely with his patron’s opinions and even prejudices, and was
a loyal and devoted retainer both now and afterward. When Sir William became involved in a literary quarrel with the great scholar Bentley, young Swift rushed into the field with a jeu d’esprit which has outlived all other records of the controversy. The “Battle of the Books” could hardly have been written in aid of a hard or contemptuous master. Years after, when he had a house of his own and had entered upon his independent career, he turned his little rectory garden into a humble imitation of the Dutch paradise which Temple had made to bloom in the wilds of Surrey, with a canal and a willow walk like those which were so dear to King William and his courtiers. And when Temple died, it was to Swift, and not to any of his nephews, that Sir William committed the charge of his papers and literary remains. This does not look like a hard bondage on one side, or any tyrannical sway on the other, notwithstanding a few often-quoted phrases which are taken as implying complaint. “Don’t you remember,” Swift asks long after, “how I used to be in pain when Sir William Temple would look cold and out of temper for three or four days, and I used to suspect a hundred reasons?” But these words need not represent anything more than that sensitiveness to the aspect of the person on whom his prospects and comfort depend which is inevitable to every individual in a similar position, however considerate and friendly the patron may be. The hard-headed and unbending Scotch philosopher, James Mill, was just as sensitive to the looks of his kind friend and helper in the early struggles of life, Jeremy Bentham, in whose sunny countenance Mill discovered unspoken offense with an ingenuity worthy of a self-tormenting woman. It was natural indeed that Swift, a high-spirited young man, should fret and struggle as the years went on and nothing happened to enlarge his horizon beyond the trees of Moor Park. He was sent to King William, as has been said, when Temple was unable to wait upon his Majesty, to explain to him the expediency of certain parliamentary measures, and this was no doubt intended by his patron as a means of bringing him under the king’s notice. William would seem to have taken a kind of vague interest in the secretary, which he expressed in an odd way by offering him a captain’s commission in a cavalry regiment,—a proposal which did not tempt Swift,—and by teaching him how to cut asparagus “in the Dutch way,” and to eat up all the stalks, as the dean afterward, in humorous revenge, made an unlucky visitor of his own do. But William, notwithstanding these whimsical evidences of favor, neither listened to the young secretary’s argument nor gave him a prebend as had been hoped.
Four years, however, is a long time for an ambitious young man to spend in dependence, watching one hope die out after another; and Swift’s impatience began to be irrestrainable and to trouble the peace of his patron’s learned leisure. Although destined from the first to the church, and for some time waiting in tremulous expectation of ecclesiastical preferment, Swift had not yet taken orders. The explanation he gives of how and why he finally determined on doing so is characteristic. His dissatisfaction and restlessness, probably his complaints, moved Sir William,—though evidently deeply offended that his secretary should wish to leave him,—to offer him an employ of about £120 a year in the Rolls Office in Ireland, of which Temple held the sinecure office of master. “Whereupon [says Swift’s own narrative] Mr. Swift told him that since he had now an opportunity of living without being driven into the Church for a maintenance, he was resolved to go to Ireland and take Holy Orders.” This arbitrary decision to balk his patron’s tardy bounty, and take his own way in spite of him, was probably as much owing to a characteristic blaze of temper as to the somewhat fantastic disinterestedness here put forward, though Swift was never a man greedy of money or disposed to sacrifice his pride to the acquisition of gain, notwithstanding certain habits of miserliness afterward developed in his character. Sir William was “extremely angry”—hurt, no doubt, as many a patron has been, by the ingratitude of the dependent who would not trust everything to him, but claimed some free will in the disposition of his own life. Had they been uncle and nephew, or even father and son, the same thing might easily have happened. Swift set out for Dublin full of indignation and excitement, “everybody judging I did best to leave him,”—but alas! in this, as in so many cases, pride was doomed to speedy downfall.
On reaching Dublin, and taking the necessary steps for his ordination, Swift found that it was needful for him to have a recommendation and certificate from the patron in whose house so many years of his life had been spent. No doubt it must have been a somewhat bitter necessity to bow his head before the protector whom he had left in anger and ask for this. Macaulay describes him as addressing his patron in the language “of a lacquey, or even of a beggar,” but we doubt greatly if apart from prejudice or the tingle of these unforgettable words, any impartial reader would form such an impression. “The particulars expected of me,” Swift writes, “are what relates to morals and learning and the reasons of quitting your honour’s family, that is whether the last was occasioned by any ill action.” “Your honour” has a somewhat servile tone in our days, but in Swift’s the formality was natural. Lady Giffard, Temple’s sister-in-law, in the further quarrels which followed Sir William’s death, spoke of this as a penitential letter, and perhaps it was not wonderful that she should look on the whole matter with an unfavorable eye. No doubt the ladies of the house thought young Swift an unnatural monster for wishing to go away and thinking himself able to set up for himself without their condescending notice and the godlike philosopher’s society and instruction, and were pleased to find his pride so quickly brought down. Sir William, however, it would seem, behaved as a philosopher and a gentleman should, and gave the required recommendation with magnanimity and kindness. Thus the young man had his way.
Swift got a small benefice in the north of Ireland, the little country parish of Kilroot, in which doubtless he expected that the sense of independence would make up to him for other deprivations. It was near Belfast, among those hard-headed Scotch colonists whom he could never endure; and probably this had something to do with the speedy revulsion of his mind. He remained there only a year; and it is perhaps the best proof we could have of his sense of isolation and banishment that this was the only time in his life in which he thought of marriage. There is in existence a fervent and impassioned letter addressed to the object of his affections, a Miss Waring, whom, after the fashion of the time, he called Varina. He does not seem in this case to have had the usual good fortune that attended his relationships with women. Miss Waring did not respond with the same warmth; indeed, she was discouraging and coldly prudent. And he was still pleading for a favorable answer when there arrived a letter from Moor Park inviting his return—Sir William’s pride, too, having apparently broken down under the blank made by Swift’s departure. He made instant use of this invitation—which must have soothed his injured feelings and restored his self-satisfaction—to shake the resolution of the ungrateful Varina. “I am once more offered,” he says, “the advantage to have the same acquaintance with greatness which I formerly enjoyed, and with better prospects of interest”; and though he offers magnanimously “to forego it all for your sake,” yet it is evident that the proposal had set the blood stirring in his veins, and that the dependence from which he had broken loose with a kind of desperation, once more seemed to