Part 11 (1/2)
He prevailed upon her to remove her residence from the bosom of her own family in England to his immediate neighbourhood in Ireland, where she took lodgings with an elderly companion of the name of Mrs Dingley--avowedly for the sake of his society and protection, and on a footing of intimacy so very strange and unprecedented, that, whenever he left his parsonage-house for England or Dublin, these ladies immediately took possession and occupied it till he came back. A situation so extraordinary and undefined was liable, of course, to a thousand misconstructions, and must have been felt as degrading by any woman of spirit and delicacy; and, accordingly, though the master of this Platonic seraglio seems to have used all manner of paltry and insulting practices to protect a reputation which he had no right to bring into question,--by never seeing her except in the presence of Mrs Dingley, and never sleeping under the same roof with her,--it is certain both that the connection was regarded as indecorous by persons of her own s.e.x, and that she herself felt it to be humiliating and improper.
Accordingly, within two years after her settlement in Ireland, it appears that she encouraged the addresses of a clergyman of the name of Tisdal, between whom and Swift there was a considerable intimacy, and that she would have married him, and thus sacrificed her earliest attachment to her freedom and her honour, had she not been prevented by the private dissuasions of that false friend who did not choose to give up his own claims to her, although he had not the heart or the honour to make her lawfully his own. She was then a blooming beauty of little more than twenty, with fine black hair, delicate features, and a playful and affectionate character. It seems doubtful to us whether she originally felt for Swift anything that could properly be called love; and her willingness to marry another in the first days of their connection, seems almost decisive on the subject; but the ascendancy he had acquired over her mind, and her long habit of submitting her own judgment and inclinations to his, gave him at last an equal power over her, and moulded her pliant affections into too deep and exclusive a devotion.
Even before his appointment to the deanery of St Patrick's, it is utterly impossible to devise any apology for his not marrying her, or allowing her to marry another; the only one he ever appears to have stated himself, viz., the want of a sufficient fortune to sustain the expenses of matrimony, being palpably absurd in the mouth of a man born to nothing, and already more wealthy than nine-tenths of his order; but after he obtained that additional preferment, and was thus ranked among the well-beneficed dignitaries of the Establishment, it was plainly an insult upon common sense to pretend that it was the want of money that prevented him from fulfilling his engagement. Stella was then twenty-six, and he near forty-five, and both had hitherto lived very far within an income that was now more than doubled. That she now expected to be made his wife appears from the care he took in the Journal indirectly to destroy that expectation; and though the awe in which he continually kept her probably prevented her either from complaining or inquiring into the cause, it is now certain that a new attachment, as heartless, as unprincipled, and as fatal in its consequences as either of the others, was at the bottom of this cruel and unpardonable proceeding.
During his residence in London, from 1710 to 1712, regardless of the ties that bound him to Stella, he allowed himself to be engaged by the amiable qualities of Miss Esther Vanhomrigh; and, without explaining the nature of those ties to his new idol, strove by his a.s.siduities to obtain a return of affection, while he studiously concealed from the unhappy Stella the wrong he was consciously doing her. [The consequences of this double connection form one of the most tragic stories in our language--the formal ceremony by which he made Stella his wife, under the cloud of secrecy, and still keeping her from the enjoyment of her rights; the death of Miss Vanhomrigh of a broken heart, and the miserable fate of Stella.] Vanessa (so he called Miss Vanhomrigh) was now dead. The grave had heaped its tranquillising mould on her agitated heart, and given her tormentor a.s.surance that he should no more suffer from her reproaches on earth; and yet, though with her the last pretext was extinguished for refusing to acknowledge the wife he had so infamously abused, we find him, with this dreadful example before his eyes, persisting to withhold from his remaining victim that late and imperfect justice to which her claim was so apparent, and from the denial of which she was sinking before his eyes in sickness and sorrow to the grave. For the sake of avoiding some small awkwardness or inconvenience to himself,--to be secured from the idle talking of those who might wonder why, since they were to marry, they did not marry before, or perhaps merely to retain the object of his regard in more complete subjection and dependence,--he could bear to see her pining year after year in solitude and degradation, and sinking at last to an untimely grave, prepared by his hard and unrelenting refusal to clear her honour to the world even at her dying hour.
ESTHER VANHOMRIGH.
[1723.]
SIR WALTER SCOTT.
This unfortunate lady, when she first became acquainted with Swift, was in her twentieth year, and joined to all the attractions of youth, fas.h.i.+on, and elegance, the still more dangerous gifts of a lively imagination, a confiding temper, and a capacity of strong and permanent affection. Conscious of the pleasure which Swift received from her society, and of the advantages of youth and fortune which she possessed, and ignorant of the peculiar circ.u.mstances in which he stood with respect to another, naturally (and surely without offence either to reason or virtue) Miss Vanhomrigh gave way to the hope of forming a union with a man whose talents had first attracted her admiration, and whose attentions, in the course of their mutual studies, had by degrees gained her affections, and seemed to warrant his own. The friends continued to use the language of friends.h.i.+p, but with the a.s.siduity and earnestness of a warmer pa.s.sion, until Vanessa (the poetical name bestowed upon her by him) rent asunder the veil, by intimating to Swift the state of her affections; and in this, as she conceived, she was justified by her favourite, though dangerous maxim, of doing that which seems in itself right, without respect to the common opinion of the world. We cannot doubt that he actually felt the ”shame, disappointment, guilt, surprise,” expressed in his celebrated poem, though he had not courage to take the open and manly course of avowing those engagements with Stella, or other impediments which prevented him from accepting the hand and fortune of her rival. Without therefore making this painful but just confession, he answered the avowal of Vanessa's pa.s.sion in raillery, and afterwards by an offer of devoted and everlasting friends.h.i.+p, founded on the basis of virtuous esteem. Vanessa seems neither to have been contented nor silenced by the result of her declaration, but to the very close of her life persisted in endeavouring, by entreaties and arguments, to extort a more lively return to her pa.s.sion than this cold proffer was calculated to afford.
Upon Swift's return to Ireland, we may guess at the disturbed state of his feelings, wounded at once by ungratified ambition, and harra.s.sed by his affection being divided between two objects, each worthy of his attachment, and each having great claims upon him, while neither was likely to remain contented with the limited return of friends.h.i.+p in exchange for love, and that friends.h.i.+p, too, divided by a rival. Time wore on. Mrs Vanhomrigh was now dead. Her two sons survived her but a short time; and the circ.u.mstances of the young ladies were so embarra.s.sed by inconsiderate expenses, as gave them a handsome excuse for retiring to Ireland, where their father had left a small property near Celbridge. The arrival of Vanessa in Dublin excited the apprehensions of Swift and the jealousy of Stella. She importuned him with complaints of neglect and cruelty; and it was obvious that any decisive measure to break their correspondence would be attended with some such tragic consequence as, though late, at length concluded their story.
About the year 1717, she retired from Dublin to her house and property near Celbridge, to nurse her hopeless pa.s.sion in seclusion from the world. Swift seems to have foreseen and warned her against the consequences of this step. His letters uniformly exhort her to seek general society, to take exercise, and divert as much as possible the current of her thoughts from the unfortunate subject which was preying upon her spirits. Until the year 1720, he never appears to have visited her at Celbridge; they only met when she was occasionally in Dublin. But in that year, and down to the time of her death, Swift came repeatedly to Celbridge.
But Miss Vanhomrigh, irritated at the situation in which she found herself, determined on bringing to a crisis those expectations of an 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 connection with Mrs Johnson, which, as it must have been perfectly known to her, had doubtless long excited 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 connection. 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 on him as Miss Vanhomrigh's inquiries implied, she sent to him her rival's letter of interrogation, 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 pa.s.sions, struck the unfortunate Vanessa with such terror that she could scarce ask whether he would not sit down. He answered by flinging a letter upon the table, and, instantly leaving the house, mounted 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 this last interview is uncertain, but the time does not seem to have exceeded a few weeks.
MARY ASTELL.
[BORN 1668. DIED 1731.]
BALLARD.
This great ornament of her s.e.x, the daughter of a merchant in Newcastle, and born about the year 1668, was taught all the accomplishments which were usually learned by young women of her station; and although she proceeded no further in the languages at that time than the learning of the French tongue, yet she afterwards gained some knowledge of the Latin. And having a piercing wit, a solid judgment, and tenacious memory, she made herself a complete mistress of everything she attempted to learn with the greatest ease imaginable. At about twenty years of age she left Newcastle and went to London, where, and at Chelsea, she spent the remaining part of her life, and where she prosecuted her studies very a.s.siduously, and in a little time made great acquisitions in the sciences.
The learning and knowledge which she had gained, together with her great benevolence and generosity of temper, taught her to observe and lament the loss of it in those of her own s.e.x, the want of which, as she justly observed, was the princ.i.p.al cause of their plunging themselves into so many follies and inconveniences. To redress this evil as much as lay in her power, she wrote and published the two parts of her ingenious treatise, ent.i.tled, ”A Serious Proposal to the Ladies.” Afterwards came her ”Letters, concerning the Love of G.o.d, between the author of the Proposal to the Ladies and Mr John Norris.” Notwithstanding her great care to conceal herself, her name was soon discovered and made known to several learned persons, whose restless curiosity would hardly otherwise have been satisfied. These letters have been much applauded for their good sense, sublime thoughts, and fine language.
Afterwards she acquired a more complete knowledge of many cla.s.sic authors,--Xenophon, Plato, Hierocles, Tully, Seneca, Epictetus, and Antoninus. In 1700 she published her ”Reflections on Marriage,” which was followed by her book against the sectaries, ”Moderation truly Stated,”--a work of which, notwithstanding all the arts she used to conceal herself, she was soon discovered to be the author. Afterwards came her ”Religion of a Church of England Woman;” and her ”Enquiry into the Causes of Rebellion and Civil War.”
As her notions and sentiments of religion, piety, charity, humility, friends.h.i.+p, and all the other graces which adorn the good Christian, were most refined and sublime, so she possessed these rare and excellent virtues in a degree which would have made her admired and distinguished in an age less degenerate and profane; and though from the very flower of her age she lived and conversed with the fas.h.i.+onable world, amidst all the gaiety, pomp, and pageantry of the great city, yet she well knew how to resist and shun those infatuating snares. To know G.o.d, and to be like Him, was her first and great endeavour. Though easy and affable to others, to herself she was often over-severe. In abstinence, few or none ever surpa.s.sed her; for she would live like a hermit a considerable time together, with a crust of bread and water, with a little small beer.
And at the time of her highest living, she very rarely eat any dinner till night, and then it was by the strictest rules of temperance.
She seemed to enjoy an uninterrupted state of health till a few years before her death, when, having one of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s cut off, it so much impaired her const.i.tution that she did not long survive it. This was occasioned by a cancer, which she had concealed from the world in such a manner that even few of her most intimate acquaintances knew anything at all of the matter. She dressed and managed it herself, till she plainly perceived there was an absolute necessity for its being cut off; and then, with the most intrepid resolution and courage, she went to the Rev. Mr Johnson, a gentleman very eminent for his skill in surgery (with only one person to attend her), entreating him to take it off in the most private manner imaginable, and would hardly allow him to have persons whom necessity required to be at the operation. She seemed so regardless of the sufferings or pain she was to undergo, that she refused to have her hands held, and did not discover the least timidity or impatience, but went through the operation without the least struggling or resistance, or even so much as giving a groan or a sigh.
Soon after this her health and strength declined apace; and at length, by a gradual decay of nature, being confined to bed, and finding the time of her dissolution drawing nigh, she ordered her coffin and shroud to be made and brought to her bedside, and there to remain in her view as a constant memento to her of her approaching fate, and that her mind might not deviate or stray one moment from G.o.d, its proper object.
MADAME DES URSINS.