For the Love of a Misanthropist
Swift's life on the inside and the outside
Like Chaucer, that other great English satirist, Jonathan Swift lived in between different spaces and social spheres—between Ireland and England, between the church and politics, between establishment and opposition—and also like Chaucer, this gave him the special perspective of the insider-outsider, without which his most important works would not have been possible.
This in-between position is apparent from the earliest biographical facts: Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland of English, Protestant parents in 1667.1 When he was an infant, his nurse took him to England to live for a few years. It is unclear whether or not she did this with his parents' permission. He never knew his father, and for much of his life he suspected that the elder Jonathan Swift may not have been his biological parent. When he returned to Ireland, he was raised by his relatively wealthy uncle, whom he resented and detested for the rest of his life; it is unclear exactly why. His uncle provided him with the most prestigious education that Ireland had to offer (Kilkenny, followed by Trinity College), but Swift later complained that he had the education "of a dog."
We can see already this insider-outsider perspective, the feeling of not belonging anywhere, in geographical or familial terms, and this would continue into his adulthood. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Swift fled to England for fear of Jacobite reprisals against Protestants in Ireland. Eventually, he landed a job as secretary to Sir William Temple, a figure whose literary and political influence stayed with him for the rest of his life. At Temple's estate he met the eight-year-old Esther Johnson, who became known as "Stella." She became, arguably, the most important person in his life, their close relationship lasting until her death in 1728. The nature of this relationship is the subject of much speculation.
Upon his return to Ireland, Swift took holy orders and served as an obscure vicar for several years before returning to London in the early years of the new century, when he published his first major work, A Tale of a Tub—a satire of Christian sectarian divisions, a subject to which he would return—which brought him some notoriety.
In the early 1710s, he became a sort of propagandist for the new Tory government and established friendships with prominent literary Tories like Alexander Pope. During this period he documented his life with intimate letters to Stella back in Ireland, and this correspondence was published after his death as the Journal to Stella. During this time he began a relationship with a certain Hester Vamhomrigh, whom he called Vanessa. Unlike the Stella relationship, the nature of which remains something of a mystery, we can say pretty definitively that this one was sexual. In their correspondence they apparently used the phrase "having coffee" as a euphemism for sex. He kept this relationship secret from Stella.
After a few years as something like an "insider" in court and government circles, Swift again became an outsider in 1714 with the fall of the Tory government. He had to return to Ireland, where his allies had secured him a position as Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin—a far cry from the English bishopric for which he had hoped.
Despite these disappointments, his fame increased exponentially with the publication of Gulliver's Travels in 1726, which became an international literary sensation. Everyone read it: children loved it as a fantastical adventure, and adults read it as a devastating satire that attacked everyone—Whigs, Tories, the Church, the Crown, lawyers, doctors, women, bankers, publishers, courtiers, the military, and (perhaps most of all) himself.
Even this fame, however, did not bring him much joy, as he was dissatisfied with the initial publication (see last week's piece). More painful by far, however, was the death of Stella in 1728, from which he seems never to have fully recovered.
On each of Stella's birthdays, Swift composed a poem for her. Here is the last of these birthday poems, from March 13th, 1727:
This day, whate'er the Fates decree,
Shall still be kept with joy by me:
This day then let us not be told,
That you are sick, and I grown old;
Nor think on our approaching ills,
And talk of spectacles and pills.
To-morrow will be time enough
To hear such mortifying stuff.
Yet, since from reason may be brought
A better and more pleasing thought,
Which can, in spite of all decays,
Support a few remaining days:
From not the gravest of divines
Accept for once some serious lines.Although we now can form no more
Long schemes of life, as heretofore;
Yet you, while time is running fast,
Can look with joy on what is past.Were future happiness and pain
A mere contrivance of the brain,
As atheists argue, to entice
And fit their proselytes for vice;
(The only comfort they propose,
To have companions in their woes;)
Grant this the case; yet sure 'tis hard
That virtue, styl'd its own reward,
And by all sages understood
To be the chief of human good,
Should, acting, die, nor leave behind
Some lasting pleasure in the mind;
Which by remembrance will assuage
Grief, sickness, poverty, and age;
And strongly shoot a radiant dart
To shine through life's declining part.Say, Stella, feel you no content,
Reflecting on a life well spent?
Your skilful hand employ'd to save
Despairing wretches from the grave;
And then supporting with your store
Those whom you dragg'd from death before?
So Providence on mortals waits,
Preserving what it first creates.
Your gen'rous boldness to defend
An innocent and absent friend;
That courage which can make you just
To merit humbled in the dust;
The detestation you express
For vice in all its glitt'ring dress;
That patience under torturing pain,
Where stubborn stoics would complain:
Must these like empty shadows pass,
Or forms reflected from a glass?
Or mere chimæras in the mind,
That fly, and leave no marks behind?
Does not the body thrive and grow
By food of twenty years ago?
And, had it not been still supplied,
It must a thousand times have died.
Then who with reason can maintain
That no effects of food remain?
And is not virtue in mankind
The nutriment that feeds the mind;
Upheld by each good action past,
And still continued by the last?
Then, who with reason can pretend
That all effects of virtue end?Believe me, Stella, when you show
That true contempt for things below,
Nor prize your life for other ends,
Than merely to oblige your friends;
Your former actions claim their part,
And join to fortify your heart.
For Virtue, in her daily race,
Like Janus, bears a double face;
Looks back with joy where she has gone
And therefore goes with courage on:
She at your sickly couch will wait,
And guide you to a better state.O then, whatever Heav'n intends,
Take pity on your pitying friends!
Nor let your ills affect your mind,
To fancy they can be unkind.
Me, surely me, you ought to spare,
Who gladly would your suff'rings share;
Or give my scrap of life to you,
And think it far beneath your due;
You, to whose care so oft I owe
That I'm alive to tell you so.
This is a moving expression of love from the notorious misanthrope. I assign this poem to students to demonstrate the kind of affection of which Swift was capable.
Next week, we will examine the opening chapters of Gulliver's Travels as the title character finds himself shipwrecked in Lilliput, and as we study this text over the coming weeks, we will get to know Gulliver, like Swift himself, as a man who does not belong, an insider-outsider—a giant among tiny people, a rodent among giant people, a Yahoo among Houyhnhnms, a "reasonable" human among Yahoos. Again, Gulliver is and is not Swift, and we will see Swift reserve his most potent satirical attack for Gulliver himself.
The Muses Restor'd
To accompany your Swiftian reading this week, I recommend this recent album by Rachel Podger and Brecon Baroque, which brings together much forgotten music that was composed in England from the seventeeth through the early eighteenth century (plus a couple of more famous pieces by Handel and Purcell). Swift may have known some of this music, and he certainly heard music in these styles. Enjoy. Here are the links:
The Muses Restor'd on Apple Music
A reading schedule is forthcoming in the next few days. Thanks for reading, from my fancy internet typewriter to yours.
I have gleaned most of the biographical information in the sketch that follows from biographies of Swift by Victoria Glendinning and Leo Damrosch.
You, to whose care so oft I owe
That I'm alive to tell you so.
Very moving. And telling.
It is a poem full of affection, but not, I think, romantic love. They know that Stella is slowly dying, but there is a flash of charming humour in these lines:
"Nor think on our approaching ills,
And talk of spectacles and pills.
To-morrow will be time enough
To hear such mortifying stuff."
Stella's character sounds intriguing - she is sickly, yet has also helped the sick from what Swift says in this poem. I was wondering how old she was when she died?