GULLIVER’S GIRLS
He’s remembered as a storyteller and satirist but Jonathan Swift was also quite a ladies’ man as he juggled the emotions of two women for decades!
This weekend Dublin hosts the Jonathan Swift Festival to mark the 350th anniversary of the birth of the celebrated satirist and author of such works as Gulliver’s Travels. Swift was Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral for more than 30 years. However, perhaps the greatest conundrum of his life was how to maintain an intimate relationship with two women, without one finding out about the other…
JONATHAN Swift was born in Dublin on November 30, 1667. His father died of syphilis before he was born and his mother left him in the care of his uncle, Godwin Swift, an employee of the Duke of Ormonde, who later sent Swift to Kilkenny College and Trinity College Dublin to receive his education.
In 1689, Swift moved to England to work as secretary to the diplomat Sir William Temple. Also in Temple’s household was eight-year-old Esther Johnson. Her mother was a full-time companion to Temple’s sister, while her father is variously said to have been Temple’s steward or merchant. Swift took a shine to Esther, whom he nicknamed ‘Stella’. He taught her how to read and write so well that she was soon writing copies of Temple’s letters on Swift’s behalf.
Swift was a clergyman with high ambitions. His first clerical appointment was to Kilroot, a remote parish in Co. Antrim. To combat the loneliness, he proposed marriage to Jane Waring, a pious but rather moany archdeacon’s daughter whom he nicknamed ‘Varina’. Although Swift confessed a ‘violent desire’ for her, Varina prevaricated, and after much dithering, Swift’s interest petered out.
Arguably this is because he now had his eye on Stella who had grown into the ‘most beautiful, graceful and agreeable young woman in London’. Their friendship blossomed when Temple died in 1699 and left some property in Dublin to Stella. On Swift’s advice, the 20-year-old moved to the Irish capital in 1702 to look after these interests. She was accompanied by her lifelong friend, 35-year-old Rebecca Dingley, a, tobaccochewing kinswoman of the Temples who, ‘tripped over her petticoats when she walked.’
Their first port of call was to see Dr Jonathan Swift, now Vicar of Laracor, in Co. Meath. Stella was a man’s woman and, during long evenings spent playing backgammon with Swift and Mrs Dingley, made a deep impression on the clergyman. Her hair was ‘blacker than a raven’; ‘every feature of her face [was] perfection.’ However, it was her mind that he relished most. ‘I have nowhere met with a humour, a wit, or conversation so agreeable, a better portion of good sense, or a truer judgement of men and things.’ On any given evening, ‘she never failed, before we parted, of delivering the best thing that was said’.
As such, Swift had to bite his tongue in 1704 when the Reverend William Tisdall, a fellow clergyman, declared his wish to marry Stella. Swift persuaded Tisdall to drop the idea, reasoning that Tisdall didn’t have the means to support a wife. Tisdall found another wife but he and Swift barely spoke again until after Stella’s demise.
By 1710, Swift’s acerbic wit was in hot demand in London where he became an arch supporter of the Tory government, writing essays and pamphlets that slated the opposition. During this time, he wrote to Stella and his 65 surviving letters to her reveal a playful and intimate relationship. However, as time moved on, Stella must have noted his references to ‘Mrs Van’s eldest daughter’, even if he never actually mentioned the woman by name.
THIS ‘eldest daughter’ was Hester ‘Hessy’ Vanhomrigh, a Dutch-Irish girl, 21 years Swift’s junior (and seven years younger than Stella). He nicknamed her ‘Vanessa’. In fact, he invented the name ‘Vanessa’, by combining the first three letters of her surname with the sound of her first name.
Her father was a prosperous Dutch merchant who had equipped William III’s army during the king’s campaign against the Jacobites, later becoming Lord Mayor of Dublin. Following his death, Vanessa and her family relocated from their home at Celbridge Abbey in Kildare to start anew in London. They met Swift en route, at an inn in 1707. Swift’s 17-year relationship with Vanessa appears to have commenced when she accidentally spilled some coffee. In London, Swift kept in close touch with the Vanhomrighs (or ‘Vans’ as he called them). Vanessa was present on most occasions, but he never let Stella know – even when he became Vanessa’s tutor.
‘I have a mighty friendship for her,’ he confessed to a friend. Such amity was no doubt boosted by a private love poem, Cadenus And Vanessa, that he gifted her.
In 1714, the political tides turned in London, and the Whigs returned to power, with many of Swift’s Tory allies locked up. He returned to Dublin where he began his 32year tenure as Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. When Vanessa’s mother died that same year, he urged his wealthy young protégée to move back to Ireland and take up residence once more at Celbridge Abbey.
Swift now found himself trying to juggle two women within relatively close proximity of his parish. Vanessa was the immediate loser, probably because she fell madly in love with him. Having led her on for many years, Swift began to recoil. She became increasingly possessive. Although they still corresponded frequently, he began closing the relationship down, warning that their meetings should henceforth be ‘seldom’.
The main reason for this coldness was Stella. It is a matter of debate as to whether or not the 49-year-old Swift secretly married Stella in 1716. The ceremony was allegedly performed by Swift’s former tutor, St George Ashe, Bishop of Clogher, but he died less than two years later. No other witnesses were present.
Among those who denied the marriage were Mrs Dingley, who swore the couple were never alone together, and Mrs Brent, Swift’s housekeeper, who scoffed that it was an ‘absurd’ notion. And yet Swift’s close friend Dr Thomas Sheridan firmly believed they were married and declared he had heard this from Stella herself. The Earl of Orrery, another friend of Swift, also insisted this ‘private marriage’ to ‘the virtuous and patient Stella’ was true. He believed Swift did not ‘openly own her as his wife’ because he was too ‘proud’ to admit to marrying ‘the daughter of a man who had been a servant.’
Married or not, Swift was still keeping Vanessa on a thread. Orrery claimed she ‘was even proud of being reputed his concubine’. During this time, Vanessa reputedly declined a proposal from Dr Arthur Price, who later became Archbishop of Cashel.
YET this strange ménage à trois lasted until early 1723 when Vanessa is thought to have asked Swift to marry him. Swift’s response was an absolute refusal. Perhaps his growing deafness played a part, but his discourteous behaviour spelled the end of their relationship. Vanessa died heartbroken on June 2, 1723, aged just 35. Her death was reputedly caused by TB but many blamed Swift for her demise.
Indeed, Orrery gleefully noted how she managed to find a moment ‘to cancel a will she had made in the Dean’s favour.’ Instead, her fortune was to be shared by two men, one of whom was the philosopher George Berkeley, despite the fact that she barely knew him. To Swift’s dismay, Vanessa also directed her executors to publish his love poem, Cadenus And Vanessa, presumably as a vindication of their romance. He was understandably concerned by the effects this might have on the other woman in his life.
By the time the poem was published, however, Stella was very ill. Orrery reckoned that revelations about Swift’s intimacy with Vanessa ‘sat heavy on her mind.’ She lived long enough to see his novel Gulliver’s Travels become the runaway bestseller of 1726 but she passed away on January 28, 1728, aged 45, and was buried in St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin.
Swift channelled some of his sorrow into his writings but, ever after, he was an angry man.
Nor did he find another love although he developed a soft spot for many women including the full-bosomed Queen Caroline, a huge fan of Gulliver’s Travels. As Mathew Dennison reveals in his new biography, The First Iron Lady – A Life Of Caroline Of Ansbach, Swift gifted George II’s wife some gold-threaded Irish silk in the hope that she would wear it in London and thereby stimulate the weaving industry in the Dublin Liberties where he lived.
Jonathan Swift died aged 77 in 1745. In accordance with his will, he was buried beside Stella in St Patrick’s Cathedral.
The Jonathan Swift Festival runs until November 26. See www.jonathanswiftfestival.ie