“When she was extremely ill, her physician said, ‘Madam, you are near the bottom of the hill, but we will endeavour to get you up again.’ She answered, ‘Doctor, I fear I shall be out of breath before I get up to the top.’
“A very dirty clergyman of her acquaintance, who affected smartness and repartees, was asked by some of the company how his nails came to be so dirty. He was at a loss; but she solved the difficulty, by saying, ‘the doctor's nails grew dirty by scratching himself.’
“A quaker apothecary sent her a vial, corked; it had a broad brim, and a label of paper about its neck. ‘What is that?’—said she—‘my apothecary's son!’ The ridiculous resemblance, and the suddenness of the question, set us all a-laughing.”—Swift's Works, Scott's ed., vol. ix, 295-6.
“If we consider Swift's behaviour, so far only as it relates to women, we shall find that he looked upon them rather as busts than as whole figures.”—Orrery.
“You must have smiled to have found his house a constant seraglio of very virtuous women, who attended him from morning to night.”—Orrery.
A correspondent of Sir Walter Scott's furnished him with the materials on which to found the following interesting passage about Vanessa—after she had retired to cherish her passion in retreat:—
“Marley Abbey, near Celbridge, where Miss Vanhomrigh resided, is built much in the form of a real cloister, especially in its external appearance. An aged man (upwards of ninety, by his own account), showed the grounds to my correspondent. He was the son of Mrs. Vanhomrigh's gardener, and used to work with his father in the garden while a boy. He remembered the unfortunate Vanessa well; and his account of her corresponded with the usual description of her person, especially as to her embonpoint. He said she went seldom abroad, and saw little company; her constant amusement was reading, or walking in the garden.... She avoided company, and was always melancholy, save when Dean Swift was there, and then she seemed happy. The garden was to an uncommon degree crowded with laurels. The old man said that when Miss Vanhomrigh expected the Dean she always planted with her own hand a laurel or two against his arrival. He showed her favourite seat, still called ‘Vanessa's bower’. Three or four trees and some laurels indicate the spot.... There were two seats and a rude table within the bower, the opening of which commanded a view of the Liffey.... In this sequestered spot, according to the old gardener's account, the Dean and Vanessa used often to sit, with books and writing materials on the table before them.”—Scott's Swift, vol. i, pp. 246-7. “... But Miss Vanhomrigh, irritated at the situation in which she found herself, determined on bringing to a crisis those expectations of a union with the object of her affections—to the hope of which she had clung amid every vicissitude of his conduct towards her. The most probable bar was his undefined connexion with Mrs. Johnson, which, as it must have been perfectly known to her, had, doubtless, long elicited her secret jealousy, although only a single hint to that purpose is to be found in their correspondence, and that so early as 1713, when she writes to him—then in Ireland—‘If you are very happy, it is ill-natured of you not to tell me so, except 'tis what is inconsistent with mine.’ Her silence and patience under this state of uncertainty for no less than eight years, must have been partly owing to her awe for Swift, and partly, perhaps, to the weak state of her rival's health, which, from year to year, seemed to announce speedy dissolution. At length, however, Vanessa's impatience prevailed, and she ventured on the decisive step of writing to Mrs. Johnson herself, requesting to know the nature of that connexion. Stella, in reply, informed her of her marriage with the Dean; and full of the highest resentment against Swift for having given another female such a right in him as Miss Vanhomrigh's inquiries implied, she sent to him her rival's letter of interrogatories, and, without seeing him, or awaiting his reply, retired to the house of Mr. Ford, near Dublin. Every reader knows the consequence. Swift, in one of those paroxysms of fury to which he was liable, both from temper and disease, rode instantly to Marley Abbey. As he entered the apartment, the sternness of his countenance, which was peculiarly formed to express the fiercer passions, struck the unfortunate Vanessa with such terror that she could scarce ask whether he would not sit down. He answered by flinging a letter on the table, and, instantly leaving the house, remounted his horse, and returned to Dublin. When Vanessa opened the packet, she only found her own letter to Stella. It was her death warrant. She sunk at once under the disappointment of the delayed, yet cherished, hopes which had so long sickened her heart, and beneath the unrestrained wrath of him for whose sake she had indulged them. How long she survived the last interview is uncertain, but the time does not seem to have exceeded a few weeks.”—Scott.
The following is a conspectus of them:—
Addison.—Commissioner of Appeals; Under Secretary of State; Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; Keeper of the Records in Ireland; Lord of Trade; and one of the Principal Secretaries of State, successively.
Steele.—Commissioner of the Stamp Office; Surveyor of the Royal Stables at Hampton Court; and Governor of the Royal Company of Comedians; Commissioner of “Forfeited Estates in Scotland”.