SWIFT AND IRELAND. BY J. A. STRAHAN, A VISITOR to the the Irish capital, if he has as part of his equipment the smallest supply of literature or romance, never fails to make a pilgrimage to St Patrick's Cathedral, in whose "holy precincts lie, Ashes that make it holier.' If, after doing homage to the sacred sepulchre where lie buried for ever the unhappy loves of the furious dean and the gentle Stella, he traces his way through the congery of squalid streets between the Cathedral and the Castle, he may, if he be fortunate, happen upon a wall containing a tablet which records that Hoey's Court, where the dean was born, once stood there. If, having the aforesaid qualities in his equipment, he has already sought out, as he naturally would, the birthplaces of other sons of Dublin oity even more famous than Swift, this memorial tablet will surprise him. He will have gone, for instance, to Ormond Quay, where Edmund Burke first 8&w the light. Judging by the decrepit condition of the houses there, it is more than likely that they were built before Burke's birth, and that one of them is the authentic building which witnessed that event; but there is no tablet to mark it. And he will have gone to seek and to find the birthplace of the Duke of Wellington. Mor nington House stands straight and square in Upper Merrion Street; but there is no tablet on its walls to tell the casual passer that in that building was born the man who conquered the conqueror of half the world. Monuments no doubt have been erected to both these great among the greatest men-Foley's statue of Burke stands in the grounds of his old University, the ultraUnionist Trinity, and the "big milestone" to Wellington stands in the royal Phoenix Park. Though possibly originally of Norman blood, they were both of families born and bred for centuries in Ireland. Swift's father and mother were born in England, and he himself disdained the name of Irishman. Why, then, should their birthplaces go unmarked while the very site of his vanished birthplace is commemorated? Possibly an answer will suggest itself to the mind of the visitor if, after he has looked at Mornington House, he turns west, and having passed Trinity College_pursues his way along Dame Street. When he reaches Cornmarket he will find there another memorial tablet: it records that the house to which it is affixed is the birthplace of the rebel Napper Tandy. When he proceeds on to Thomas Street he will find another memorial tablet telling him that the rebel Lord Edward Fitzgerald was there taken prisoner and received his death wound. There are many other memorial tablets on many other walls in the city of Dublin; but, if I remember rightly, they all have one thing in common: they are erected to the memory of men who were enemies of England. Perhaps it is because Wellington and Burke were not enemies of England that their birthplaces are unmarked, and perhaps Swift's birthplace or its site is marked because, though all his life he hated Ireland much, in his old age he hated England more. Jonathan Swift never loved or pretended to love Ireland or the Irish. He always described himself as an Englishman who had the misfortune to be born in Ireland. The fierce struggles which he had with the Government of England were fought on behalf of those whom he called the "true English people of Ireland." The very last verses1 he ever wrote were in disparagement of the wit and intelligence of Irishmen. And yet the Celtic Irish to this day revere this Englishman, who despised and contemned them, as the first and greatest of Irish Nationalists. Let us see how far he deserves their reverence. In April 1682 Godwin Swift, a respected and reputed wealthy citizen of Dublin, entered his fatherless nephew Jonathan a student of Trinity College, and paid the necessary fees. It may be assumed that he did this not very graciously. People are seldom over-gracious towards poor relations for whom they have to provide. And in this case Uncle Godwin seems to have had the unhappy disposition which afterwards marked nephew Jonathan. During his long life Dean Swift gave largely in charity, but his bounty was given without grace, and usually received without gratitude. And he received his uncle's graceless bounty with no gratitude, but with raging and reckless humiliation and resentment. Swift used later in life to say that his uncle had given him the education of a dog. He must have meant he had given him his education as if he were a dog; for, in fact, the education which he received, or might, if he had chosen, have received, was the best that Ireland could provide. He was, when he entered Trinity, fourteen years of age. He had previously been at Kilkenny School, and he remained at the University till he was twenty-one. The dramatist Congreve was two or three years before him educated in the very same institutions, and became a scholar of whom Oxford would be proud: Swift left Trinity with no reputation for anything except idleness, stupidity, and insubordination. He himself gave the real reason for this: it was because he was "so discouraged and 1 Those on a new magazine being then erected in Phoenix Park. Uncle Godwin died, and Jonathan became the care of Uncle Dryden.1 Uncle Dryden was a poorer, but seems to have been a gentler man than Unele Godwin; but there is no evidence that his gentleness in any way checked the disorderly life Swift was leading at Trinity. That was ended, however, by the Revolution of 1688. When Ireland fell under Catholic rule, Swift, like many other Protestants, took refuge in England. sunk in his spirits." Seldom orderly that it should be can there have been a more suspended. striking example of what seemed vice being only woe. Swift all his life was a being with a dash of insanity in his blood, and the pride of Lucifer in his heart. For such a man what fate could be more terrible than to pass his youth penniless, parentless, and dependent for everything on the charity of an acrid unele! The very fact that that uncle placed him in the best foundations, where were educated the sons of the wealthiest fathers in the land, could only add to the horrors of the situation. One can well imagine that fierce haughty youth, with harsh repellent features only partly redeemed by large eyes "quite azure as the heavens," stalking in threadbare clothes with empty pockets solitary about the courts, or sitting solitary in the classes, of old Trinity, hearing in the laughter of happier, well-clad, well-provided students jeers at his poverty, and in every rebuke of his teachers an insult put on him because of his wretched condition. No wonder that he should revolt against the authorities and neglect the studies of the place, that the examiners should refuse him his degree, and that after he had obtained it by special grace, his conduct should be so dis These were Swift's first experiences of Ireland. To his last day he hated Dublin University as the scene of his early miseries and degradations. When in 1692 he obtained his M. A. at Oxford, he wrote bitterly that "he was ashamed to be more obliged in a few weeks to strangers than in seven years to Dublin College." Perhaps if he had spent the seven years at Dublin College as well as he spent the four years before going to Oxford, he should have been as much obliged to Dublin College; and perhaps if he had been as disorderly at Oxford as he was at Dublin College, he never should have get a degree there at all. However, he arrived in England with hatred for Trinity and no love for Ireland in his heart, and no wish ever to 1 Swift's great-grandmother was a Dryden, and the poet was Swift's cousin once removed. Not long before Swift died insane in Dublin, Dryden's last surviving son died insane at Canons Ashby. It is commonly assumed that Dryden's son inherited his insanity from his mother, who also died insane; but this coinoidence is worth noticing, as is also the fact that considerable eccentricity existed in some other members of the Dryden family, and the Swifts descended from Elizabeth Dryden. return to either. His fortune year was, probably through Temple's recommendation, presented by Lord Deputy Capel to the prebend of Kilroot, with a stipend of about £100 a year. in life compelled him to return to both, but he always returned with reluctance, and till his health rendered it difficult to do so, found frequent occasion to desert them and to pay visits to England, which at times lasted for years. We need not deal with the first six years he spent with Sir William Temple, first at Sheen and later at Moor Park, save to point out that he there retrieved the wasted years of his nonage by study so ardent and prolonged that probably it, and not the over-eating of fruit, was the cause of the vertigo from which he from time to time suffered during the rest of his life. When he When he obtained his Oxford M.A., he thought it was time to establish himself in life, and he applied to Temple to secure him an appointment. Temple not very warmly consented to de so, and found him a small office in the Rolls Court in Ireland. Swift declined it. He had, as he said, a scruple to enter the Church merely for a maintenance; now that he was offered maintenance elsewhere this objection, he thought, no longer applied. He left Moor Park, set out on foot to Leicester, where his mother lived, being "passing rich on twenty pounds a year.' From there he travelled to Dublin, was ordained deacon in October 1694 by the Bishop of Kildare, was made priest in January 1695, and in the same Kilroot is a part of that district which slopes down from the hills of Antrim te the shores of Belfast Bay. It is a land of rushing streams and singing birds, and its surroundings recall to the memory of the travelled visitor Gibbon's "sweet country of Vaux." Over the bay lie the rolling richly-wooded fields of Down; across the Channel rise bluely in the far distance the mountains of Galloway, and on your right hand the ancient Norman Castle of Carrickfergus stands on its grey rock out among the waves like another Chillon. It was in these surroundings that the first of Swift's three love affairs began; and as wherever these love affairs began they all ended in Ireland, though they have little to do with Swift's feelings as to Ireland and things Irish, it is proper te trace them here. Among the families resident near Kilroot was one, a son of which Swift had known at Trinity. The family's name was Waring, 8 name still eemmen enough about Belfast. Naturally before long Swift established friendly relations with the Warings, and soon he developed a passion for one of the daughters called Jane. Just as he did in his two subsequent love affairs, he conferred on Jane a pet 1 He obtained his D.D. in Trinity in February 1701. name-Varina, The passion Lady Giffard, Sir William's continued to grow stronger sister-in-law, resided there, and stronger till the May of She had a waiting - woman 1696. Then Swift was pre- known as Mrs Johnson, and paring to return to Sir William Mrs Johnson had 8 little Temple, and before doing so he delicate child of six years proposed to Varina in a vehe- called Esther. Who Mrs ment letter that she should Johnson was, or who Esther's await till he had acquired a father was, is not certain to position worthy of her, and this day. Writing forty years then become his bride. Varina later on Esther's death, Swift returned an evasive answer, says that Mr Johnson was a and Swift resigned his living younger son of a Nottinghamand returned to Moor Park. shire gentleman, and that Mrs Swift's return to Moor Park Johnson belonged to a lower was due to the urgent and re- class, adding significantly that peated requests to do so from "indeed" the little girl "had Sir William Temple. The aged little to boast of her birth." statesman, now in declining The ordinary opinion was health, had felt the loss of that Esther was the natural Swift's services deeply, and daughter of Temple himself; now implored him to come and this is not rendered the back to be his friend, com- less likely by the fact that in panion, and man of affairs. features she closely resembled Temple had been very much him, and on his death he bethe fine gentleman towards queathed her £1000 and some his poorly-paid secretary; but leasehold property in Ireland. from this return till his death Whosoever's daughter she may his bearing was different. have been, to all the world save When in 1698 he died, he by Swift she remained Esther his will left Swift £100, and Johnson all her life, even appointed him his literary after her alleged marriage to executor; and Swift, in ehron- Swift. He, as he had done ieling his last illness, wrote, with his previous love, gave "with him died all that was her a pet name-Stella-and by that pet name she is likely to be remembered as long as the world lasts. good and amiable among men."1 What, from a literary and historical point, is ten times of more importance, is this: it was during this short second residence with Temple that Swift's second love affair began. When he first entered Temple's service at Sheen, Macaulay's account of the beginning of Swift's second love affair is sufficiently ridiculous: "An eceentrio, uncouth, disagreeable young Irishman, who had narrowly escaped plucking at Dublin, 1 Again in 1709, when Temple had been long dead and Swift long famous, he refers with affection and respect to his old friend in the Apology prefixed to 'The Tale of a Tub.' |