The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees | Page 3

have mentioned him to all the ministers, and have given them some of his writings, and I will favour him as much as I can."
In the natural course of things Berkeley soon heard much, though he saw scarcely anything, of Mrs. Vanhomrigh and her daughter, the latter the famous and unhappy "Vanessa," both of whom were settled at this time in Berry Street, near Swift, in a house where, Swift writes to Stella, "I loitered hot and lazy after my morning's work," and often dined "out of mere listlessness," keeping there "my best gown and perriwig" when at Chelsea.
Mrs. Vanhomrigh was the widow of a Dutch merchant, who had followed William the Third to Ireland, and there obtained places of profit, and her daughter, Esther, or Hester, as she is variously called, was a girl of eighteen when she first met Swift, and fell violently in love with him. This passion eventually proved the girl's perdition,--and was, as we shall see, the cause of a will which enabled Dean Berkeley to carry out his dear and cherished scheme of coming to America.
Swift's journal, frank about nearly everything else in the man's life, is significantly silent concerning Esther Vanhomrigh. And in truth there was little to be said to anybody, and nothing at all to be confided to Stella, in regard to this unhappy affair. That Swift was flattered to find this girl of eighteen, with beauty and accomplishment, caring so much for him, a man now forty-four, and bound by honour, if not by the Church, to Stella, one cannot doubt. At first, their relations seem to have been simply those of teacher and pupil, and this phase of the matter it is which is most particularly described in the famous poem, "Cadenus and Vanessa," written at Windsor in 1713, and first published after Vanessa's death.
Human nature has perhaps never before or since presented the spectacle of a man of such transcendent powers as Swift involved in such a pitiable labyrinth of the affections as marked his whole life. Pride or ambition led him to postpone indefinitely his marriage with Stella, to whom he was early attached. Though he said he "loved her better than his life a thousand millions of times," he kept her always hanging on in a state of hope deferred, injurious alike to her peace and her reputation. And because of Stella, he dared not afterward with manly sincerity admit his undoubted affection for Vanessa. For, if one may believe Doctor Johnson, he married Stella in 1716,--though he died without acknowledging this union, and the date given would indicate that the ceremony occurred while his devotion to his young pupil was at its height.
Touching beyond expression is the story of Vanessa after she had gone to Ireland, as Stella had gone before, to be near the presence of Swift. Her life was one of deep seclusion, chequered only by the occasional visits of the man she adored, each of which she commemorated by planting with her own hand a laurel in the garden where they met. When all her devotion and her offerings had failed to impress him, she sent him remonstrances which reflect the agony of her mind:
"The reason I write to you," she says, "is because I cannot tell it you should I see you. For when I begin to complain, then you are angry; and there is something in your looks so awful, that it strikes me dumb. Oh! that you may have but so much regard for me left that this complaint may touch your soul with pity. I say as little as ever I can. Did you but know what I thought, I am sure it would move you to forgive me, and believe that I cannot help telling you this and live."
Swift replies with the letter full of excuses for not seeing her oftener, and advises her to "quit this scoundrel island." Yet he assures her in the same breath, "que jamais personne du monde a ��t�� aim��e, honor��e, estim��e, ador��e, par votre ami que vous."
The tragedy continued to deepen as it approached the close. Eight years had Vanessa nursed in solitude the hopeless attachment. At length (in 1723) she wrote to Stella to ascertain the nature of the connection between her and Swift. The latter obtained the fatal letter, and rode instantly to Marley Abbey, the residence of Vanessa. "As he entered the apartment," to quote the picturesque language Scott has used in recording the scene, "the sternness of his countenance, which was peculiarly formed to express the stronger 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, mounted his horse, and returned to Dublin.