The incident is a charming one; and we may admit the facts as regards the clergyman to be fully true, and that the pleasure of Swift must have been great in having the opportunity of thus making a good man happy; but, in order to place the transaction on its probably correct basis, we must not forget that Swift was confessedly already most thoroughly weary of the obscurity of Kilroot, and longing for return to Moorpark. This takes a good deal of the romance out of it. Without, therefore, astonishing ourselves at the unworldly generosity of a young man abandoning his own chance in life to serve a poor and meritorious man, we may suppose to the full that Swift was glad to do the good man such a service while it jumped with his own wishes. No man was more clear-sighted than Swift as to the consequences of such things; and none could better estimate the wide difference in the mode of doing the thing, between saying, "Well, I'm tired of this stupid place; I must away again to England; but I'll try to get the living for you," and leaving the high merit of such a personal sacrifice to be attributed to him. In any way, it was rich in consequences. He left behind a family made happy; grateful hearts, and tongues that would sound his praises through the country; and what a prestige with which to return to Moorpark! He came back like a hero of romance. That, judging by the after life of the dean, is probably the true view of the affair. He did a good deed, and he took care that it presented to the public its best side.
These ten years of life at Moorpark, which ended only with the death of Sir William Temple, were every way a most important portion of Swift's life. Here he laid at once the foundation of his fame and his wretchedness. Here, with books, leisure, and as much solitude as he pleased—with the conversation of Sir William Temple, and the most distinguished literati of the age who visited him—Swift, in so auspicious an atmosphere, not only thought and studied much, but wrote a vast deal, as it were to practice his pen for great future efforts, when he felt his mind and his knowledge had reached a sufficient maturity. He informs his friend, Mr. Kendall, that he had "written, and burned, and written again upon all manner of subjects, more than perhaps any man in England." He wrote Pindaric Odes; translated from the classics; and exercised his powers of satire till he could confidently to himself predict the force of that "hate to fools" which he afterward assumed as his principal characteristic. Besides this, he was deeply engaged in assisting Sir William in the controversy on the superiority of ancient or modern learning, in which Temple, Boyle, Wotton, and Bentley were all involved. This occasioned Swift's "Battle of the Books," though it was not printed till some years afterward. Here, also, he wrote his famous "Tale of a Tub," which more than any other cause stopped effectually the path of his ambition toward a bishopric. Though not known avowedly as an author, Swift was now well known as a man of great ability to many literary men, and was on terms of particular friendship with Congreve.
But his literary pursuits here had not so completely engrossed him as to prevent his engaging in what, in any other man, would have been termed more tender ones; in Swift they must take some other name, be that what it may. The history of his conduct, too, with regard to every woman to whom he paid particular court, is the most extraordinary thing in all literary research; there have been several ways of accounting for it, into which it is not my intention to descend; let the causes have been what they may, they stamp his character for intense selfishness beyond all possibility of palliation. If Swift felt himself disqualified for entering into matrimonial relations from whatever cause or motive, as it is evident he did, he should have conducted himself toward women of taste and feeling accordingly; but, on the contrary, he never, in any instance, seems to have put the slightest check on himself in this respect. He paid them the most marked attentions; in some instances he wooed, with all the appearances of passion, and proposed marriage with the most eager importunity; he saw one after another respond to his warmth, and then he coolly backed out, or entered into such a tantalizing and mysterious position—where the woman had to sacrifice every thing, peace of mind being destroyed, and character put into utmost jeopardy—as wore their very hearts and lives out. He played with women as a cat does with mice. So that they were kept fast bound within his toils, cut off from all the better prospects of life, sacrificed as victims to his need of their society, he cared nothing. He was alarmed and agitated almost to madness by the fear of losing them; yet this was a purely selfish feeling; he took no measures to set their hearts at rest; he placed them in such circumstances that he could not do it; to satisfy one he must immolate another. Some of the finest and most charming women of the age were thus kept, as it were, with a string round their hearts, by which he could pluck and torture them at pleasure, and keep them walking forever over the burning plowshares of agonizing uncertainties, and the world's oblique glances. There is nothing which can ever reclaim Swift's memory, in this respect, from the most thorough contempt and indignation of every manly mind.
Every instance of what are called love-affairs, in which Swift was concerned, presents the same features, even under the softened effect of the coloring of his most laudatory biographer, Sir Walter Scott. While Swift was at Leicester, his mother was afraid of his forming an imprudent attachment to a young woman there; at which Swift, knowing himself pretty well, only laughed. His flirtations, he represented, were only "opportunities of amusement;" a "sort of insignificant gallantry which he used toward the girl in question;" a "habit to be laid aside whenever he took sober resolutions, and which, should he enter the Church, he should not find it hard to lay down at the porch." This is base language, and that of Scott is hardly better. He says, "It is probably to a habit, at first indulged only from vanity or for the sake of amusement, that we are to trace the well-known circumstances which imbittered his life and impaired his reputation."
And is this all? Are habits of indulging vanity, and of amusing one's self with the affections and the happiness of others, to be thus coolly talked of? "Circumstances which imbittered his life, and impaired his reputation," indeed! Swift had the greatest right to imbitter his own life, and impair his own reputation, if he pleased, but that is not the question; it was because he most recklessly, for the indulgence of his vanity and his self-love, imbittered the lives of those who listened to him, and impaired their reputations, that he was culpable in proportion to his brilliant powers, and placed himself thereby in the category of heartless villains. These are severe words; but I have always felt, and still can not avoid feeling, that their application to Swift is most just and necessary. Perhaps no instance of mere meanness was ever more striking than that shown in his second courtship. The lady in this case was not a simple country girl, but was Jane Waryng, the sister of an ancient college companion; to this young lady, in his affected pastoral style, he had given the name of Varina. Let it be remembered that this was in Ireland, while he was bearing the name, and performing the functions, of a clergyman. His suit for this lady was continued for four or five years with all the appearances and protestations of the deepest attachment; he proposed marriage in the most unequivocal terms. The young lady does not seem to have responded very cordially to his advances, for a long time, in fact, till that very response put a speedy end to the disgraceful farce. When she did agree to accept him and his offer, "he seemed," says Scott, "to have been a little startled by her sudden offer of capitulation." He then assumed quite another tone; let Scott's own language relate what he did: "Swift charged Varina with want of affection and indifference; stated his own income in a most dismal point of view, yet intimated that he might well pretend to a better fortune than she was possessed of! He was so far from retaining his former opinion as to the effects of a happy union, that he inquired whether the physicians had got over some scruples they appeared to entertain on the subject of her health. (He had made this delicate health before a plea for entreating her to put herself under his care.) Lastly, he demanded peremptorily to know whether she would undertake to manage their domestic affairs with an income of rather less than three hundred pounds a year; whether she would engage to follow the methods he should point out for the improvement of her mind; whether she could bend all her affections to the same direction which he should give his own, and so govern her passions, however justly provoked, as at all times to resume her good humor at his approach; and, finally, whether she could account the place where he resided more welcome than courts and cities without him. These premises agreed, as indispensable to please those who, like himself, 'were deeply read in the world,' he intimates his willingness to wed her, though without personal beauty or large fortune."
This language requires no comment; it is the vile shuffle of a contemptible fellow, who, taken at his word, then bullies and insults to get off again.
The next victim of this wretched man was Esther Johnson, the Stella of this strange history. This young lady was the daughter of the steward of Sir William Temple at Moorpark; she was fatherless when Swift commenced his designs upon her; her father died soon after her birth, and her mother and sister resided in the house at Moorpark, and were treated with particular regard and esteem by the family. Miss Esther Johnson, who was much younger than Swift, was beautiful, lively, and amiable. Swift devoted himself to her as her teacher, and under advantage of his daily office and position, engaged her young affections most absolutely. So completely was it understood by her that they were to be married when Swift's income warranted it, that on the death of Temple, and Swift's preferment to the living of Laracor in Ireland, she was induced by him to come over and fix her residence in Trim near him, under the protection of a lady of middle age, Mrs. Dingley. The story is too well known to be minutely followed; Swift acquired such complete mastery over her, that he kept her near him and at his command the greater part of his life, but would neither marry her, nor allow her to marry any one else, though she had excellent offers. It was not till many years afterward, when this state of dependence, uncertainty, and arbitrary selfishness had nearly worn her to the death; and when these were aggravated by fears for her reputation, and then by the appearance of a rival on the scene, that she extorted from him a marriage, which was still kept a profound secret, unacknowledged, and which left her just in the position she was in before, that of a mere companion in presence of a third party, when he chose. The rival just mentioned was a Miss Vanhomrigh, the daughter of a widow lady, whose house he frequented during his life in London. This young lady, to whom he, on his uniform plan, which tended to prevent unpleasant claims by the evidence of letters, gave the name of Vanessa, as he termed himself Cadenus, was high-spirited and accomplished. When Swift, in his usual manner, had for a long time paid every marked attention to Miss Vanhomrigh, and was regarded both by herself and the whole family as an acknowledged lover, yet never came to plain terms, the young lady came boldly to them herself. The gay deceiver was thunderstruck: he had for a few years been living in the most intimate state of confidence with Stella, as her affianced lover; she had all the claims of honor and affection upon him that a wife could have; for, though maintaining the strictest propriety of life under the closest care of Mrs. Dingley, she was devoting her time, her thoughts, the very flower of her life, and the hazard of her good name, to his social happiness. This plain dealing, therefore, on the part of Vanessa, was an embarrassing blow. "We can not doubt," says Scott, "that he actually felt" the shame, disappointment, guilt, surprise, "expressed in his celebrated poem, though he had not the courage to take the open and manly course of avowing those engagements with Stella, or other impediments, which prevented his accepting the hand and fortune of her rival."
The fox, in fact, was taken in his wiles. He had got more on his hands than, with all his cunning, he knew how to manage. His selfish tyranny had been able to control, and put off poor Stella, but Vanessa was a different kind of subject, and put the wretched shuffler into great alarm and anxiety. He retired to Ireland; but this did not mend the matter: it tended rather to make it worse; for Miss Vanhomrigh had property there, and speedily announced to the guilty dean her presence in Dublin. He was now in as pretty a fix as one could wish such a double-dealer to be. "The claims of Stella," says Scott, "were preferable in point of date, and to a man of honor and good faith, in every respect inimitable. She had resigned her country, her friends, and even hazarded her character, in hope of one day being united to Swift. But if Stella had made the greater sacrifice, Vanessa was the more important victim. She had youth, fortune, fashion; all the acquired accomplishments and information in which Stella was deficient; possessed at least as much wit, and certainly higher powers of imagination. She had, besides, enjoyed the advantage of having in a manner compelled Swift to hear and reply to the language of passion. There was in her case no Mrs. Dingley, no convenient third party, whose presence in society and community in correspondence necessarily imposed upon both a restraint, convenient perhaps to Swift, but highly unfavorable to Stella."
The consequences were such as might be expected. Swift endeavored to temporize and amuse Miss Vanhomrigh, and to get her to return to England, but in vain. She never ceased to press, to her, the important question, and to keep him in what he used to call a "quickset hedge." She importuned him with complaints of cruelty and neglect, and it was obvious that any decisive measure to break this acquaintance would be attended with some such tragic consequence as, though late, at length concluded their story. He was thus compelled to assume a demeanor of kindness and affection to Vanessa, which, of course, soon was reported to Stella, and began to produce in her the most fatal symptoms. Her heart was wrung by fears and jealousies; her health gave way; and Swift was compelled to a private marriage, in order not to clog his conscience with her murder. The conditions of this marriage were, that it should continue a strict secret from the public, and that they should continue to live separately, and in the same guarded manner as before. The grand business of his life now was to soothe and wheedle Vanessa, and to play the hypocrite lover to her while he was the husband of another woman; a fine situation for a clergyman and a dean! This, we may believe, with a woman of Miss Vanhomrigh's temperament, was no easy task. His next plan was to get rid of her by inducing her to marry some one else, and for this purpose he presented to her Dean Winter, a gentleman of character and fortune, and Dr. Price, afterward Archbishop of Cashel. It was in vain; she rejected such offers peremptorily, and at length, as if to hide her vexation and seek repose in nature, she retired to Marley Abbey, her house and property near Celbridge. But the dreams of love and jealousy pursued her thither with only the more force. She heard whispers of Stella being actually the wife of Swift, and she determined to know the truth. For this purpose she wrote at once to Stella, and put the plain question to her. The result of this was rapid and startling. In a few days she saw the dean descend from his horse at her gate, and advance to her door dark and fierce as a thunder-cloud. He entered, threw down a letter upon the table before her, and with a look black as night, stalked out again without a word, mounted, and rode away. As soon as Miss Vanhomrigh recovered in some degree from her terror and amazement, she took up the letter, opened it, and found it her own to Stella!
Stella herself confirmed the fatal truth by a candid avowal and Miss Vanhomrigh sank under the shock. For eight years, trusting probably to the promises of Swift, and the apparently failing health of Stella, she had maintained the unequal contest with her deep-rooted passion and Swift's mysterious conduct, but this revelation of his villainy was her death. However, she lived only to revoke in haste her will, which had been made in favor of Swift, and to leave her fortune to Mr. Marshall, afterward one of the judges of the Court of Common Pleas in Ireland, and Dr. Berkeley, the celebrated philosopher, and afterward Bishop of Cloyne; and to command the publication of all the letters which had passed between Swift and herself, as well as the celebrated poem of Cadenus and Vanessa.