STELLA’S COTTAGE, ON THE BOUNDARY OF THE MOOR PARK ESTATE.
DRAWN BY CHARLES HERBERT WOODBURY, ENGRAVED BY S. DAVIS.
humor in which he indulged, contemptuous of everybody’s opinion, have furnished many amusing incidents. One well-known anecdote, which describes him as finding his congregation to consist only of his clerk and beginning the service gravely with, “Dearly beloved Roger,” has found a permanent place among ecclesiastical pleasantries. In all probability it is true; but if not so, it is at least so ben trovato as to be as good as true. There were few claims upon the energies of such a man in such a sphere, and when Lord Berkeley was recalled to England his chaplain went with him. But neither did he find any promotion in London. Up to this time his only literary work had been that wonderful “Battle of the Books,” which had burst like a bombshell into the midst of the squabble of the literati, but which had only as yet been handed about in manuscript, and was therefore known to few. No doubt it was known to various wits and scholars that Sir William Temple’s late secretary and literary executor was a young man of no common promise; but statesmen in general, and the king in particular, sick and worn out with many preoccupations, had no leisure for the claims of the Irish parson. He hung about the Berkeley household, and gravely read out of the book of moral essays which the countess loved those Reflections on a Broomstick which her ladyship found so edifying, and launched upon the world an anonymous pamphlet or two, which he had the pleasure of hearing talked about and attributed to names greater than his own, but made no step toward the advancement for which he longed.
The interest of this visit to England was however as great and told for as much in his life as if it had brought him a bishopric. It determined that long connection and close intercourse in which Swift’s inner history is involved. After he had paid in vain his court to the king, and made various ineffectual attempts to recommend himself in high quarters, he went on a visit to Farnham, where Hester Johnson and Mrs. Dingley had settled after Sir William’s death. Swift found the two women quite undetermined what to do, in an uncomfortable lodging, harassed for money, and without any object in their lives. Most probably he was called to advise as to their future plans, where they should settle and how they were to live, both being entirely inexperienced in the art of independent existence. They had lived together for years, and knew everything about each other: Hester had grown up from childhood under Swift’s eye, his pupil, his favorite and playfellow. She had now, it is true, arrived at an age when other sentiments are supposed to come in. She must have been about twenty, while he was thirty-four. There was no reason in the world why they should not have married then and there, had they so wished. But there seems no appearance or thought of any such desire, and the question was what should the ladies do for the arrangement of their affairs and pleasant occupation of their lives. Farnham being untenable, where should they go? Why not to Ireland, where Hester’s property was—where they would be near their friend, who could help them into society and give them his own companionship as often as he happened to be there? Here is his own account of the decision:
“I prevailed with her and her dear friend and companion, the other lady,” he says, “to draw what money they had into Ireland, a great part of their fortunes being in annuities upon funds. Money was then ten per cent. in Ireland, besides the advantage of returning it, and all the necessaries of life at half the price. They complied with my advice, and soon after came over; but I happening to continue some time longer in England, they were much discouraged to live in Dublin, where they were wholly strangers. But this adventure looked so like a frolic, the censure held for some time as if there were a secret history in such a removal; which however soon blew off by her excellent conduct. She came over with her friend in the year 1700, and they both lived together until the day [of her death, 1728].”
This was then the time which decided that which is called the “sad and mysterious history” of Swift and Stella—a story so strangely told, so obstinately insisted upon as miserable, unnatural, and tragical, that the reader or writer of to-day has scarcely the power of forming an impartial judgment upon it. We have not a word from the woman’s side of the question, who is supposed to have passed a melancholy existence of unsatisfied longings and disappointed love by Swift’s side, the victim of his capricious affections, neglect, cruelty, and fondness. That she should have wished to marry him, that the love was impassioned on her side, and her whole life blighted and overcast by his fantastic repugnance to the common ties of humanity, is taken for granted by every historian. These writers differ as to Swift’s motives, as to the character of his feelings, and even as to the facts of the case; but no one has the slightest doubt of what the woman’s sentiments must have been. But, as a matter of fact, we have no evidence at all what Stella’s sentiments were. By so much written testimony as remains we are fully entitled to form such conclusions as we please on Swift’s side of the question; but there is actually no testimony at all upon Stella’s side. Appearances of blighted life or unhappiness there are none in anything we know of her. As the ladies appear reflected in that “Journal to Stella”—which is the dean’s only claim upon our affections, but a strong one—they seem to have lived’ a most cheerful, lively life. They had a number of friends, they had their little tea-parties, their circle of witty society, to which the letters of the absent were a continual amusement and delight. And it is the man, not the woman, who complains of not receiving letters; it is he, not she, who exhausts every playful wile, every tender art, to keep himself in vivid recollection. Is it perhaps a certain mixture of masculine vanity and compassion for the gentle feminine creature who never succeeded in getting the man she loved to marry her, and thus failed to attain the highest end of woman, which has moved every biographer of Swift, each man more compassionate than his predecessor, thus to exhaust himself in pity for Stella? Johnson, Scott, Macaulay, Thackeray, not to mention many lesser names, have all taken her injured innocence to heart. And nobody notes the curious fact that Stella herself never utters any complaint, nor indeed seems to feel the necessity of being unhappy at all, but takes her dean most cheerfully,—laughing, scolding, giving her opinion with all the delightful freedom of a relationship which was at once nature and choice, the familiar trust and tenderness of old use and wont with the charm of voluntary association. We see her only as reflected in his letters, in the references he makes to hers, and all his tender, sportive allusions to her habits and ways of thinking. This reflection and image is not in rigid lines of black and white, but an airy and radiant vision, the representation of anything in the world rather than a downcast and disappointed woman. It is not that either of a wife or a lover; it is more like the wilful, delightful image of a favorite child, a creature confident that everything she says or does will be received with admiration from the mere fact that it is she who says or does it, and who tyrannizes, scoffs, and proffers a thousand comments and criticisms with all the elastic brightness of unforced and unimpassioned affection. It is through this medium alone that Stella is ever visible. And he, too, laughs, teases, fondles, and advises with the same doting, delightful ease of affection. By what process this attractive conjunction should have furnished the idea of a victim in Stella, and in Swift of a tyrannous secret lover crushing her heart, it is difficult to understand. The external circumstances of their intimacy were, no doubt, very
unusual, and might have lent occasion to much evil speaking. But they do not seem to have done so, after the first moment at least. Nobody ventured to assail the good fame of Stella, and Swift took every means to make the perfect innocence of their friendship apparent. She cannot be made out to have suffered in the vulgar way, and it seems to us one of the most curious examples of an obstinately maintained theory to represent her as Swift’s victim in what is supposed to be a long martyrdom of the heart.