Swift did not keep Stella's letters to him in reply to those he wrote to her.[51] He kept Bolingbroke's, and Pope's, and [pg 501] Harley's, and Peterborough's: but Stella, “very carefully,” the Lives say, kept Swift's. Of course: that is the way of the world: and so we cannot tell what her style was, or of what sort were the little letters which the doctor placed there at night, and bade to appear from under his pillow of a morning. But in Letter IV of that famous collection he describes his lodging in Bury Street, where he has the first floor, a dining-room and bedchamber, at eight shillings a week; and in Letter VI he says “he has visited a lady just come to town”, whose name somehow is not mentioned; and in Letter VIII he enters a query of Stella's—“What do you mean ‘that boards near me, that I dine with now and then?’ What the deuce! You know whom I have dined with every day since I left you, better than I do.” Of course she does. Of course Swift has not the slightest idea of what she means. But in a few letters more it turns out that the doctor has been to dine “gravely” with a Mrs. Vanhomrigh: then that he has been to “his neighbour”: then that he has been unwell, and means to dine for the whole week with his neighbour! Stella was quite right in her previsions. She saw from the very first hint what was going to happen; and scented Vanessa in the air.[52] The rival is [pg 502] at the Dean's feet. The pupil and teacher are reading together, and drinking tea together, and going to prayers together, and learning Latin together, and conjugating amo, amas, amavi together. The “little language” is over for poor Stella. By the rule of grammar and the course of conjugation, doesn't amavi come after amo and amas?
The loves of Cadenus and Vanessa[53] you may peruse in Cadenus's own poem on the subject, and in poor Vanessa's vehement expostulatory verses and letters to him; she adores him, implores him, admires him, thinks him something godlike, and only prays to be admitted to lie at his feet.[54] As they are bringing him home from church, those divine feet of Dr. Swift's are found pretty often in [pg 503] Vannessa's parlour. He likes to be admired and adored. He finds Miss Vanhomrigh to be a woman of great taste and spirit, and beauty and wit, and a fortune too. He sees her every day; he does not tell Stella about the business: until the impetuous Vanessa becomes too fond of him, until the doctor is quite frightened by the young woman's ardour, and confounded by her warmth. He wanted to marry neither of them—that I believe was the truth; but if he had not married Stella, Vanessa would have had him in spite of himself. When he went back to Ireland, his Ariadne, not content to remain in her isle, pursued the fugitive Dean. In vain he protested, he vowed, he soothed, and bullied; the news of the Dean's marriage with Stella at last came to her, and it killed her—she died of that passion.[55]
And when she died, and Stella heard that Swift had written beautifully regarding her, “That doesn't surprise me,” said Mrs. Stella, “for we all know the Dean could write beautifully about a broomstick.” A woman—a true woman! Would you have had one of them forgive the other?
In a note in his biography, Scott says that his friend Dr. Tuke, of Dublin, has a lock of Stella's hair, enclosed in a paper by Swift, on which are written in the Dean's hand, the words: “Only a woman's hair.” An instance, says Scott, of the Dean's desire to veil his feelings under the mask of cynical indifference.
See the various notions of critics! Do those words indicate indifference or an attempt to hide feeling? Did you ever hear or read four words more pathetic? Only a woman's hair; only love, only fidelity, only purity, innocence, beauty; only the tenderest heart in the world stricken and wounded, and passed away now out of reach of pangs of hope deferred, love insulted, and pitiless desertion:—only that lock of hair left; and memory and remorse, for the guilty, lonely wretch, shuddering over the grave of his victim.
And yet to have had so much love, he must have given some. Treasures of wit and wisdom, and tenderness, too, must that man have had locked up in the caverns of his gloomy heart, and shown fitfully to one or two whom he took in there. But it was not good to visit that place. People did not remain there long, and suffered for having been there.[56] He shrank away from all affections sooner or later. Stella and Vanessa both died near him, and away from him. He had not heart enough to see them die. He broke from his fastest friend, Sheridan; he slunk away from his fondest admirer, Pope. His laugh jars on one's ear after sevenscore years. He was always alone—alone and gnashing in the darkness, except when Stella's sweet smile came and shone upon him. When that went, silence and utter night closed over him. An immense genius: an awful downfall and ruin. So great a man he seems to me, that thinking of him is like thinking of an empire falling. We have other great names to mention—none, I think, however, so great or so gloomy.
Lecture The Second. Congreve And Addison
A great number of years ago, before the passing of the Reform Bill, there existed at Cambridge a certain debating club, called the “Union”; and I remember that there was a tradition amongst the undergraduates who frequented that renowned school of oratory, that the great leaders of the Opposition and Government had their eyes upon the University Debating Club, and that if a man distinguished himself there he ran some chance of being returned to Parliament as a great nobleman's nominee. So Jones of John's, or Thomson of Trinity, would rise in their might, and draping themselves in their gowns, rally round the monarchy, or hurl defiance at priests and kings, with the majesty of Pitt or the fire of Mirabeau, fancying all the while that the great nobleman's emissary was listening to the debate from the back benches, where he was sitting with the family seat in his pocket. Indeed, the legend said that one or two young Cambridge men, orators of the Union, were actually caught up thence, and carried down to Cornwall or old Sarum, and so into Parliament. And many a young fellow deserted the jogtrot University curriculum, to hang on in the dust behind the fervid wheels of the Parliamentary chariot.