The Journal to Stella | Page 9

she confessed her love, he was filled with "shame,
disappointment, guilt, surprise." He had aimed only at cultivating the
mind, and had hardly known whether she was young or old. But he was
flattered, and though he could not give her love, he offered her
friendship, "with gratitude, respect, esteem." Vanessa took him at his
word, and said she would now be tutor, though he was not apt to
learn:--
"But what success Vanessa met Is to the world a secret yet. Whether
the nymph to please her swain Talks in a high romantic strain; Or
whether he at last descends To act with less seraphic ends; Or, to
compound the business, whether They temper love and books together,
Must never to mankind be told, Nor shall the conscious Muse unfold."
Such is the poem as we now have it, written, it must be remembered,
for Vanessa's private perusal. It is to be regretted, for her own sake, that
she did not destroy it.
Swift received the reward of his services to the Government--the
Deanery of St. Patrick's, Dublin--in April 1713. Disappointed at what
he regarded as exile, he left London in June. Vanessa immediately
began to send him letters which brought home to him the extent of her
passion; and she hinted at jealousy in the words, "If you are very happy,
it is ill-natured of you not to tell me so, except 'tis what is inconsistent
with my own." In his reply Swift dwelt upon the dreariness of his
surroundings at Laracor, and reminded her that he had said he would
endeavour to forget everything in England, and would write as seldom
as he could.
Swift was back again in the political strife in London in September,
taking Oxford's part in the quarrel between that statesman and
Bolingbroke. On the fall of the Tories at the death of Queen Anne, he
saw that all was over, and retired to Ireland, not to return again for
twelve years. In the meantime the intimacy with Vanessa had been
renewed. Her mother had died, leaving debts, and she pressed Swift for
advice in the management of her affairs. When she suggested coming

to Ireland, where she had property, he told her that if she took this step
he would "see her very seldom." However, she took up her abode at
Celbridge, only a few miles from Dublin. Swift gave her many cautions,
out of "the perfect esteem and friendship" he felt for her, but he often
visited her. She was dissatisfied, however, begging him to speak kindly,
and at least to counterfeit his former indulgent friendship. "What can be
wrong," she wrote, "in seeing and advising an unhappy young woman?
You cannot but know that your frowns make my life unsupportable."
Sometimes he treated the matter lightly; sometimes he showed
annoyance; sometimes he assured her of his esteem and love, but urged
her not to make herself or him "unhappy by imaginations." He was
uniformly unsuccessful in stopping Vanessa's importunity. He
endeavoured, she said, by severities to force her from him; she knew
she was the cause of uneasy reflections to him; but nothing would
lessen her "inexpressible passion."
Unfortunately he failed--partly no doubt from mistaken considerations
of kindness, partly because he shrank from losing her affection--to take
effective steps to put an end to Vanessa's hopes. It would have been
better if he had unhesitatingly made it clear to her that he could not
return her passion, and that if she could not be satisfied with friendship
the intimacy must cease. To quote Sir Henry Craik, "The friendship had
begun in literary guidance: it was strengthened by flattery: it lived on a
cold and almost stern repression, fed by confidences as to literary
schemes, and by occasional literary compliments: but it never came to
have a real hold over Swift's heart."
With 1716 we come to the alleged marriage with Stella. In 1752, seven
years after Swift's death, Lord Orrery, in his Remarks on Swift, said
that Stella was "the concealed, but undoubted, wife of Dr. Swift. . . . If
my informations are right, she was married to Dr. Swift in the year
1716, by Dr. Ashe, then Bishop of Clogher." Ten years earlier, in 1742,
in a letter to Deane Swift which I have not seen quoted before, Orrery
spoke of the advantage of a wife to a man in his declining years; "nor
had the Dean felt a blow, or wanted a companion, had he been married,
or, in other words, had Stella lived." What this means is not at all clear.
In 1754, Dr. Delany, an old friend of Swift's, wrote, in comment upon
Orrery's Remarks, "Your account of his marriage is, I am satisfied,
true." In 1789, George Monck Berkeley, in his Literary Relics, said that

Swift