The Journal to Stella by Jonathan Swift

Swift crossed to Ireland in August, fearing the worst; but Stella rallied, and in the spring of 1727 he returned to London. In August, however, there came alarming news, when Swift was himself suffering from giddiness and deafness. To Dr. Sheridan he wrote that the last act of life was always a tragedy at best: “it is a bitter aggravation to have one’s best friend go before one.” Life was indifferent to him; if he recovered from his disorder it would only be to feel the loss of “that person for whose sake only life was worth preserving. I brought both those friends over that we might be happy together as long as God should please; the knot is broken, and the remaining person you know has ill answered the end; and the other, who is now to be lost, is all that was valuable.” To Worrall he again wrote (in Latin) that Stella ought not to be lodged at the Deanery; he had enemies who would place a bad interpretation upon it if she died there.

Swift left London for Dublin in September; he was detained some days at Holyhead by stress of weather, and in the private journal which he kept during that time he speaks of the suspense he was in about his “dearest friend.”[11] In December Stella made a willsigned “Esther Johnson, spinster”disposing of her property in the manner Swift had suggested. Her allusions to Swift are incompatible with any such feeling of resentment as is suggested by Sheridan. She died on January 28, 1728. Swift could not bear to be present, but on the night of her death he began to write his very interesting Character of Mrs. Johnson, from which passages have already been quoted. He there calls her “the truest, most virtuous and valuable friend that I, or perhaps any other person, was ever blessed with.” Combined with excellent gifts of the mind, “she had a gracefulness, somewhat more than human, in every motion, word, and action. Never was so happy a conjunction of civility, freedom, easiness, and sincerity.” Everyone treated her with marked respect, yet everyone was at ease in her society. She preserved her wit, judgment, and vivacity to the last, but often complained of her memory. She chose men rather than women for her companions, “the usual topic of ladies’ discourse being such as she had little knowledge of and less relish.” “Honour, truth, liberality, good nature, and modesty were the virtues she chiefly possessed, and most valued in her acquaintance.” In some Prayers used by Swift during her last sickness, he begged for pity for “the mournful friends of Thy distressed servant, who sink under the weight of her present condition, and the fear of losing the most valuable of our friends.” He was too ill to be present at the funeral at St. Patrick’s. Afterwards, we are told, a lock of her hair was found in his desk, wrapped in a paper bearing the words, “Only a woman’s hair.”

INTRODUCTION.

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The Journal to Stella

Swift continued to produce pamphlets manifesting growing misanthropy, though he showed many kindnesses to people who stood in need of help. He seems to have given Mrs. Dingley fifty guineas a year, pretending that it came from a fund for which he was trustee. The mental decay which he had always feared “I shall be like that tree,” he once said, “I shall die at the top”became marked about 1738. Paralysis was followed by aphasia, and after acute pain, followed by a long period of apathy, death relieved him in October 1745. He was buried by Stella’s side, in accordance with his wishes. The bulk of his fortune was left to found a hospital for idiots and lunatics.

There has been much rather fruitless discussion respecting the reason or reasons why Swift did not marry Stella; for if there was any marriage, it was nothing more than a form. Some have supposed that Swift resolved to remain unmarried because the insanity of an uncle and the fits and giddiness to which he was always subject led him to fear insanity in his own case. Others, looking rather to physical causes, have dwelt upon his coldness of temperament and indisposition to love; upon the repugnance he often showed towards marriage, and the tone of some of the verses on the subject written in his later years. Others, again, have found a cause in his parsimonious habits, in his dread of poverty, the effects of which he had himself felt, and in the smallness of his income, at least until he was middle−aged.[12] It may well be that one or all of these things influenced Swift’s action. We cannot say more. He himself, as we have seen, said, as early as 1704, that if his humour and means had permitted him to think of marriage, his choice would have been Stella.

Perhaps, however, there is not much mystery in the matter. Swift seems to have been wanting in passion; probably he was satisfied with the affection which Stella gave him, and did not wish for more. Such an attachment as his usually results in marriage, but not necessarily. It is not sufficiently remembered that the affection began in Stella’s childhood. They were “perfect friends” for nearly forty years, and her advancing years in no way lessened his love, which was independent of beauty. Whether Stella was satisfied, who shall say? Mrs. Oliphant thought that few women would be disposed to pity Stella, or think her life one of blight or injury. Mr. Leslie Stephen says, “She might and probably did regard his friendship as a full equivalent for the sacrifice. . . . Is it better to be the most intimate friend of a man of genius or the wife of a commonplace Tisdall?” Whatever we may surmise, there is nothing to prove that she was disappointed. She was the one star which brightened Swift’s storm−tossed course; it is well that she was spared seeing the wreck at the end.

The Journal to Stella is interesting from many points of view: for its bearing upon Swift’s relations with Stella and upon his own character; for the light which it throws upon the history of the time and upon prominent men of the day; and for the illustrations it contains of the social life of people of various classes in London and elsewhere. The fact that it was written without any thought of publication is one of its greatest attractions.

Swift jotted down his opinions, his hopes, his disappointments, without thought of their being seen by anybody but his correspondents. The letters are transparently natural. It has been said more than once that the Journal, by the nature of the case, contains no full−length portraits, and hardly any sketches. Swift mentions the people he met, but rarely stops to draw a picture of them. But though this is true, the casual remarks which he makes often give a vivid impression of what he thought of the person of whom he is speaking, and in many cases those few words form a chief part of our general estimate of the man. There are but few people of note at the time who are not mentioned in these pages. We see Queen Anne holding a Drawing−room in her bedroom: “she looked at us round with her fan in her mouth, and once a minute said about three words to some that were nearest her.” We see Harley, afterwards the Earl of Oxford, “a pure trifler,” who was always putting off important business; Bolingbroke, “a thorough rake”; the prudent Lord Dartmouth, the other Secretary of State, from whom Swift could never “work out a dinner.” There is Marlborough, “covetous as Hell, and ambitious as the prince of it,” yet a great general and unduly pressed by the Tories; and the volatile Earl of Peterborough, “above fifty, and as active as one of five−and−twenty””the ramblingest lying rogue on earth.” We meet poor Congreve, nearly blind, and in fear of losing his commissionership; the kindly Arbuthnot, the Queen’s physician; Addison, whom Swift met more and more rarely, busy with the preparation and production of Cato; Steele, careless as ever, neglecting important appointments, and “governed by his wife most abominably”; Prior, poet and diplomatist, with a “lean carcass”; and young Berkeley of Trinity College, Dublin, “a very ingenious man and great philosopher,” whom Swift determined to favour as much as INTRODUCTION.

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The Journal to Stella

he could. Mrs. Masham, the Duchess of Somerset, the Duchess of Shrewsbury, the Duchess of Hamilton, Lady Betty Germaine, and many other ladies appear with more or less distinctness; besides a host of people of less note, of whom we often know little but what Swift tells us.

Swift throws much light, too, on the daily life of his time. The bellman on his nightly rounds, calling “Paaast twelvvve o’clock”; the dinner at three, or at the latest, four; the meetings at coffee−houses; the book−sales; the visit to the London sightsthe lions at the Tower, Bedlam, the tombs in Westminster Abbey, and the puppet−show; the terrible Mohocks, of whom Swift stood in so much fear; the polite “howdees” sent to friends by footmen; these and more are all described in the Journal. We read of curious habits and practices of fashionable ladies; of the snuff used by Mrs. Dingley and others; of the jokes”bites,” puns, and the likeindulged in by polite persons. When Swift lodged at Chelsea, he reached London either by boat, or by coach,which was sometimes full when he wanted it,or by walking across the “Five Fields,” not without fear of robbers at night. The going to or from Ireland was a serious matter; after the long journey by road came the voyage (weather permitting) of some fifteen hours, with the risk of being seized or pursued by French privateers; and when Ireland was reached the roads were of the worst. We have glimpses of fashionable society in Dublin, of the quiet life at Laracor and Trim, and of the drinking of the waters at Wexford, where visitors had to put up with primitive arrangements: “Mrs. Dingley never saw such a place in her life.”