25. Morning. I know not whether my warrant be yet ready from the Duke of Ormond. I suppose it will by to-night. I am going abroad, and will keep this unsealed, till I know whether all be finished. Mollow,[546c]sollahs.
I had this letter all day in my pocket, waiting till I heard the warrants were gone over. Mr. Lewis sent to Southwell’s clerk at ten; and he said the Bishop of Killaloe[546d]had desired they should be stopped till next post. He sent again, that the Bishop of Killaloe’s business had nothing to do with ours. Then I went myself, but it was past eleven, and asked the reason. Killaloe is removed to Raphoe, and he has a mind to have an order for the rents of Raphoe, that have fallen due since the vacancy, and he would have all stop till he has gotten that. A pretty request! But the clerk, at Mr. Lewis’s message, sent the warrants for Sterne and me; but then it was too late to send this, which frets me heartily, that MD should not have intelligence first from Pdfr. I think to take a hundred pounds a year out of the deanery, and divide it between MD and Pr,[546e]and so be one year longerin paying the debt; but we’ll talk of zis hen I come over. So nite dear sollahs. Lele.[547a]
26. I was at Court to-day, and a thousand people gave me joy; so I ran out. I dined with Lady Orkney. Yesterday I dined with Lord Treasurer and his Saturday people as usual; and was so bedeaned! The Archbishop of York says he will never more speak against me. Pray see that Parvisol stirs about getting my patent. I have given Tooke DD’s note to prove she is alive. I’ll answer oo rettle. . . . Nite.
27. Nothing new to-day. I dined with Tom Harley, etc. I’ll seal up this to-night. Pray write soon. . . . MD MD MD FW FW FW ME ME ME Lele, lele.
London,May16 [1713].
Ihadyours, No. 40, yesterday. Your new Bishop acts very ungratefully. I cannot say so bad of it as he deserved. I begged at the same post his warrant and mine went over, that he would leave those livings to my disposal. I shall write this post to him to let him know how ill I take it. I have letters to tell me that I ought to think of employing some body to set the tithes of the deanery. I know not what to do at this distance. I cannot be in Ireland under a month. I will write two orders; one to Parvisol, and t’other to Parvisol, and a blank for whatever fellow it is whom the last Dean employed; and I would desire you to advise with friends which to make use of: and if the latter, let the fellow’s name be inserted, and both act by commission. If the former, then speak to Parvisol, and know whether he can undertake it. I doubt it is hardly to be done by a perfect stranger alone, as Parvisol is. He may perhaps venture at all, to keep up his interest with me; but that is needless, for I am willing to do him any good, that will do me no harm.Pray advise with Walls and Raymond, and a little with Bishop Sterne for form. Tell Raymond I cannot succeed for him to get that living of Moimed. It is represented here as a great sinecure. Several chaplains have solicited for it; and it has vexed me so, that, if I live, I will make it my business to serve him better in something else. I am heartily sorry for his illness, and that of the other two. If it be not necessary to let the tithes till a month hence, you may keep the two papers, and advise well in the meantime; and whenever it is absolutely necessary, then give that paper which you are most advised to. I thank Mr. Walls for his letter. Tell him that must serve for an answer, with my service to him and her. I shall buy Bishop Sterne’s hair as soon as his household goods. I shall be ruined, or at least sadly cramped, unless the Queen will give me a thousand pounds. I am sure she owes me a great deal more. Lord Treasurer rallies me upon it, and I believe intends it; but, quando? I am advised to hasten over as soon as possible, and so I will, and hope to set out the beginning of June. Take no lodging for me. What? at your old tricks again? I can lie somewhere after I land, and I care not where, nor how. I will buy your eggs and bacon, DD . . .[548a]your caps and Bible; and pray think immediately, and give me some commissions, and I will perform them as far as oo poo Pdfr can.[548b]The letter I sent before this was to have gone a post before; but an accident hindered it; and, I assure oo, I wam very akkree[548c]MD did not write to Dean Pdfr, and I think oo might have had a Dean under your girdle for the superscription. I have just finished my Treatise,[548d]and must be ten days correcting it. Farewell, deelest MD, MD, MD, FW, FW, FW, ME, ME, ME, Lele.
You’ll seal the two papers after my name.
“London,May16, 1713.“I appoint Mr. Isaiah Parvisol and Mr. . . . to set and let the tithes of the Deanery of St. Patrick’s for this present year. In witness whereof, I hereunto set my hand and seal, the day and year above written.[Jonat. Swift.”[549a]]
“London,May16, 1713.
“I appoint Mr. Isaiah Parvisol and Mr. . . . to set and let the tithes of the Deanery of St. Patrick’s for this present year. In witness whereof, I hereunto set my hand and seal, the day and year above written.
[Jonat. Swift.”[549a]]
“London,May16, 1713.“I do hereby appoint Mr. Isaiah Parvisol my proctor, to set and let the tithes of the Deanery of St. Patrick’s. In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and seal, the day and year above written.Jonat. Swift.”
“London,May16, 1713.
“I do hereby appoint Mr. Isaiah Parvisol my proctor, to set and let the tithes of the Deanery of St. Patrick’s. In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and seal, the day and year above written.
Jonat. Swift.”
Chester,June6, 1713.
Iamcome here after six days. I set out on Monday last, and got here to-day about eleven in the morning. A noble rider, fais! and all the ships and people went off yesterday with a rare wind. This was told me, to my comfort, upon my arrival. Having not used riding these three years, made me terrible weary; yet I resolve on Monday to set out for Holyhead, as weary as I am. ’Tis good for my health, mam. When I came here, I found MD’s letter of the 26th of May sent down to me. Had you writ a post sooner I might have brought some pins: but you were lazy, and would not write your orders immediately, as I desired you. I will come when God pleases; perhaps I may be with you in a week. I will be three days going to Holyhead; I cannot ride faster, say hat oo will. I am upon Stay-behind’s mare. I have the whole inn to myself. I would fain ’scape this Holyhead journey; but I have no prospect of ships, and it will be almost necessary I should be in Dublin before the 25th instant, to take the oaths;[549c]otherwise I must wait to aquarter sessions. I will lodge as I can; therefore take no lodgings for me, to pay in my absence. The poor Dean can’t afford it. I spoke again to the Duke of Ormond about Moimed for Raymond, and hope he may yet have it, for I laid it strongly to the Duke, and gave him the Bishop of Meath’s memorial. I am sorry for Raymond’s fistula; tell him so. I will speak to Lord Treasurer about Mrs. South[550a]to-morrow. Odso! I forgot; I thought I had been in London. Mrs. Tisdall[550b]is very big, ready to lie down. Her husband is a puppy. Do his feet stink still? The letters to Ireland go at so uncertain an hour, that I am forced to conclude. Farewell, MD, MD MD FW FW FW ME ME ME ME.
Lele lelelele logues andLadies bose fairand slender.
[On flyleaf.]
I mightily approve Ppt’s project of hanging the blind parson. When I read that passage upon Chester walls, as I was coming into town, and just received your letter, I said aloud—Agreeable B—tch.
[0a]Notes and Queries, Sixth Series, x. 287.
[0b]See letter from Swift to John Temple, February 1737. She was then “quite sunk with years and unwieldliness.”
[0c]Athenæum, Aug. 8, 1891.
[0d]Journal, May 4, 1711.
[0e]Craik’sLife of Swift, 269.
[0f]Unpublished Letters of Dean Swift, pp. 189–96.
[0g]In 1730 he wrote, “Those who have been married may form juster ideas of that estate than I can pretend to do” (Dr. Birkbeck Hill’sUnpublished Letters of Dean Swift, p. 237).
[0h]Scott added a new incident which has become incorporated in the popular conception of Swift’s story. Delany is said to have met Swift rushing out of Archbishop King’s study, with a countenance of distraction, immediately after the wedding. King, who was in tears, said, “You have just met the most unhappy man on earth; but on the subject of his wretchedness you must never ask a question.” Will it be believed that Scott—who rejects Delany’s inference from this alleged incident—had no better authority for it than “a friend of his (Delany’s) relict”?
[0i]This incident, for which there is probably some foundation of fact—we cannot say how much—has been greatly expanded by Mrs. Woods in her novelEsther Vanhomrigh. Unfortunately most of her readers cannot, of course, judge exactly how far her story is a work of imagination.
[0j]In October Swift explained that he had been in the country “partly to see a lady of my old acquaintance, who was extremely ill” (Unpublished Letters of Dean Swift, p. 198).
[0k]There is a story that shortly before her death Swift begged Stella to allow herself to be publicly announced as his wife, but that she replied that it was then too late. The versions given by Delany and Theophilus Swift differ considerably, while Sheridan alters the whole thing by representing Swift as brutally refusing to comply with Stella’s last wishes.
[0l]There has also been the absurd suggestion that the impediment was Swift’s knowledge that both he and Stella were the illegitimate children of Sir William Temple—a theory which is absolutely disproved by known facts.
[0m]It is curious to note the intimate knowledge of some of Swift’s peculiarities which was possessed by the hostile writer of a pamphlet calledA Hue and Cry after Dr. S—t, published in 1714. That piece consists, for the most part, of extracts from a supposed Diary by Swift, and contains such passages as these: “Friday. Go to the Club . . . Am treated. Expenses one shilling.” “Saturday. Bid my servant get all things ready for a journey to the country: mend my breeches; hire a washerwoman, making her allow for old shirts, socks, dabbs and markees, which she bought of me . . . Six coaches of quality, and nine hacks, this day called at my lodgings.” “Thursday. The Earl looked queerly: left him in a huff. Bid him send for me when he was fit for company. . . . Spent ten shillings.”
[0n]The “little language” is marked chiefly by such changes of letters (e.g., l for r, or r for l) as a child makes when learning to speak. The combinations of letters in which Swift indulges are not so easy of interpretation. For himself he uses Pdfr, and sometimes Podefar or FR (perhaps Poor dear foolish rogue). Stella is Ppt (Poor pretty thing). MD (my dears) usually stands for both Stella and Mrs. Dingley, but sometimes for Stella alone. Mrs. Dingley is indicated by ME (Madam Elderly), D, or DD (Dear Dingley). The letters FW may mean Farewell, or Foolish Wenches. Lele seems sometimes to be There, there, and sometimes Truly.
[1a]Addressed “To Mrs. Dingley, at Mr. Curry’s house over against the Ram in Capel Street, Dublin, Ireland,” and endorsed by Esther Johnson, “Sept. 9. Received.” Afterwards Swift added, “MD received this Sept. 9,” and “Letters to Ireland from Sept.1710, begun soon after the change of Ministry. Nothing in this.”
[1b]Beaumont is the “grey old fellow, poet Joe,” of Swift’s verses “On the little house by the Churchyard at Castlenock.” Joseph Beaumont, a linen-merchant, is described as “a venerable, handsome, grey-headed man, of quick and various natural abilities, but not improved by learning.” His inventions and mathematical speculations, relating to the longitude and other things, brought on mental troubles, which were intensified by bankruptcy, about 1718. He was afterwards removed from Dublin to his home at Trim, where he rallied; but in a few years his madness returned, and he committed suicide.
[1c]Vicar of Trim, and formerly a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. In various places in his correspondence Swift criticises the failings of Dr. Anthony Raymond, who was, says Scott, “a particular friend.” His unreliability in money matters, the improvidence of his large family, his peculiarities in grammar, his pride in his good manners, all these points are noticed in the journal and elsewhere. But when Dr. Raymond returned to Ireland after a visit to London, Swift felt a little melancholy, and regretted that he had not seen more of him. In July 1713 Raymond was presented to the Crown living of Moyenet.
[2a]A small township on the estuary of the Dee, between twelve and thirteen miles north-west of Chester. In the early part of the eighteenth century Parkgate was a rival of Holyhead as a station for the Dublin packets, which started, on the Irish side, from off Kingsend.
[2b]Dr. St. George Ashe, afterwards Bishop of Derry, who had been Swift’s tutor at Trinity College, Dublin. He died in 1718. It is this lifelong friend who is said to have married Swift and Esther Johnson in 1716.
[2c]The Commission to solicit for the remission of the First-Fruits and twentieth parts, payable to the Crown by the Irish clergy, was signed by the Archbishops of Armagh, Dublin, and Cashel, and the Bishops of Kildare, Meath, and Killala.
[2d]Dr. William Lloyd was appointed Bishop of Killala in 1690. He had previously been Dean of Achonry.
[2e]Dr. John Hough (1651–1743). In 1687 he had been elected President of Magdalen College, Oxford, in place of the nominee of JamesII. Hough was Bishop of Oxford, Lichfield, and Worcester successively, and declined the primacy in 1715.
[2f]Steele was at this time Gazetteer. The Cockpit, in Whitehall, looked upon St. James’s Palace, and was used for various Government purposes.
[2g]This coffee-house, the resort of the Whig politicians, was kept by a man named Elliot. It is often alluded to in theTatlerandSpectator.
[2h]William Stewart, second Viscount Mountjoy, a friend and correspondent of Swift’s in Ireland. He was the son of one of William’s generals, and was himself a Lieutenant-General and Master-General of the Ordnance; he died in 1728.
[2i]Catherine, daughter of Maurice Keating, of Narraghmore, Kildare, and wife of Garret Wesley, of Dangan, M.P. for Meath. She died in 1745. On the death of Garret Wesley without issue in 1728, the property passed to a cousin, Richard Colley, who was afterwards created Baron Mornington, and was grandfather to the Duke of Wellington.
[3a]The landlady of Esther Johnson and Mrs. Dingley.
[3b]Swift’s housekeeper at Laracor. Elsewhere Swift speaks of his “old Presbyterian housekeeper,” “who has been my Walpole above thirty years, whenever I lived in this kingdom.” “Joe Beaumont is my oracle for public affairs in the country, and an old Presbyterian woman in town.”
[3c]Isaiah Parvisol, Swift’s tithe-agent and steward at Laracor, was an Irishman of French extraction, who died in 1718 (Birkbeck’sUnpublished Letters of Dean Swift, 1899, p.85).
[4a]In some MS. Accounts of Swift’s, in the Forster Collection at South Kensington there is the following entry:—“Set out for England Aug. 31st on Thursday, 10 at night; landed at Parkgate Friday 1st at noon. Sept. 1, 1710, came to London. Thursday at noon, Sept. 7th, with Lord Mountjoy, etc. Mem.: Lord Mountjoy bore my expenses from Chester to London.”
[4b]In a letter to Archbishop King of the same date Swift says he was “equally caressed by both parties; by one as a sort of bough for drowning men to lay hold of, and by the other as one discontented with the late men in power.”
[4c]The Earl of Godolphin, who was severely satirised by Swift in hisSid Hamet’s Rod, 1710. He had been ordered to break his staff as Treasurer on August 8. Swift told Archbishop King that Godolphin was “altogether short, dry, and morose.”
[4d]Martha, widow of Sir Thomas Giffard, Bart., of County Kildare, the favourite sister of Sir William Temple, had been described by Swift in early pindaric verses as “wise and great.” Afterwards he was to call her “an old beast” (Journal, Nov. 11, 1710). Their quarrel arose, towards the close of 1709, out of a difference with regard to the publication of Sir William Temple’s Works. On the appearance of vol. v. Lady Giffard charged Swift with publishing portions of the writings from an unfaithful copy in lieu of the originals in his possession, and in particular with printing laudatory notices of Godolphin and Sunderland which Temple intended to omit, and with omitting an unfavourable remark on Sunderland which Temple intended to print. Swift replied that the corrections were all made by Temple himself.
[4e]Lord Wharton’s second wife, Lucy, daughter of Lord Lisburn. She died in 1716, a few months after her husband. See Lady M. W. Montagu’sLetters.
[4f]Mrs. Bridget Johnson, who married, as her second husband, Ralph Mose or Moss, of Farnham, an agent for Sir William Temple’s estate, was waiting-woman or companion to Lady Giffard. In her will (1722) Lady Giffard left Mrs. Moss £20, “with my silver cup and cover.” Mrs. Moss died in 1745, when letters of administration were granted to a creditor of the deceased.
[4g]Dr. William King (1650–1729), a Whig and High Churchman, had more than one difference with Swift during the twenty years following Swift’s first visit to London in connection with the First-Fruits question.
[4h]Swift’s benefice, in the diocese of Meath, two miles from Trim.
[5a]Steele, who had been issuing theTatlerthrice weekly since April 1709. He lost the Gazetteership in October.
[5b]James, second Duke of Ormond (1665–1745) was appointed Lord Lieutenant on the 26th of October. In the following year he became Captain-General and Commander-in-Chief. He was impeached of high treason and attainted in 1715; and he died in exile.
[5c]“Presto,” substituted by the original editor for “Pdfr,” was suggested by a passage in theJournalfor Aug. 2, 1711, where Swift says that the Duchess of Shrewsbury “could not say my name in English, but said Dr. Presto, which is Italian for Swift.”
[5d]Charles Jervas, the popular portrait-painter, has left two portraits of Swift, one of which is in the National Portrait Gallery, and the other in the Bodleian Library.
[5e]Sir William Temple’s nephew, and son of Sir John Temple (died 1704), Solicitor and Attorney-General, and Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. “Jack” Temple acquired the estate of Moor Park, Surrey, by his marriage with Elizabeth, granddaughter of Sir William Temple, and elder daughter of John Temple, who committed suicide in 1689. As late as 1706 Swift received an invitation to visit Moor Park.
[5f]Dr. Benjamin Pratt, Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, was appointed Dean of Down in 1717. Swift calls him “a person of wit and learning,” and “a gentleman of good birth and fortune, . . . very much esteemed among us” (Short Character of Thomas,Earl of Wharton). On his death in 1721 Swift wrote, “He was one of the oldest acquaintance I had, and the last that I expected to die. He has left a young widow, in very good circumstances. He had schemes of long life. . . . What a ridiculous thing is man!” (Unpublished Letters of Dean Swift, 1899, p. 106).
[6a]A Westmeath landlord, whom Swift met from time to time in London. The Leighs were well acquainted with Esther Johnson.
[6b]Dr. Enoch Sterne, appointed Dean of St. Patrick’s, Dublin, in 1704. Swift was his successor in the deanery on Dr. Sterne’s appointment as Bishop of Dromore in 1713. In 1717 Sterne was translated to the bishopric of Clogher. He spent much money on the cathedrals, etc., with which he was connected.
[6c]Archdeacon Walls was rector of Castle Knock, near Trim. Esther Johnson was a frequent visitor at his house in Queen Street, Dublin.
[6d]William Frankland, Comptroller of the Inland Office at the Post Office, was the second son of the Postmaster-General, Sir Thomas Frankland, Bart. Luttrell (vi. 333) records that in 1708 he was made Treasurer of the Stamp Office, or, according to Chamberlayne’sMag. Brit. Notitiafor 1710, Receiver-General.
[6e]Thomas Wharton, Earl and afterwards Marquis of Wharton, had been one of Swift’s fellow-travellers from Dublin. Lord Lieutenant of Ireland under the Whig Government, from 1708 to 1710, Wharton was the most thorough-going party man that had yet appeared in English politics; and his political enemies did not fail to make the most of his well-known immorality. In his Notes to Macky’sCharactersSwift described Wharton as “the most universal villain that ever I knew.” On his death in 1715 he was succeeded by his profligate son, Philip, who was created Duke of Wharton in 1718.
[6f]This money was a premium the Government had promised Beaumont for his Mathematical Sleying Tables, calculated for the improvement of the linen manufacture.
[6g]The bellman was both town-crier and night-watchman.
[7a]Dr. William Cockburn (1669–1739), Swift’s physician, of a good Scottish family, was educated at Leyden. He invented an electuary for the cure of fluxes, and in 1730, inThe Danger of Improving Physick, satirised the academical physicians who envied him the fortune he had made by his secret remedy. He was described in 1729 as “an old very rich quack.”
[7b]Sir Matthew Dudley, Bart., an old Whig friend, was M.P. for Huntingdonshire, and Commissioner of the Customs from 1706 to 1712, and again under George I., until his death in 1721.
[7c]Isaac Manley, who was appointed Postmaster-General in Ireland in 1703 (Luttrell, v. 333). He had previously been Comptroller of the English Letter Office, a post in which he was succeeded by William Frankland, son of Sir Thomas Frankland. Dunton calls Manley “loyal and acute.”
[7d]Sir Thomas Frankland was joint Postmaster-General from 1691 to 1715. He succeeded to the baronetcy on the death of his father, Sir William Frankland, in 1697, and he died in 1726. Macky describes Sir Thomas as “of a sweet and easy disposition, zealous for the Constitution, yet not forward, and indulgent to his dependants.” On this Swift comments, “This is a fair character.”
[7e]Theophilus Butler, elected M.P. for Cavan, in the Irish Parliament, in 1703, and for Belturbet (as “the Right Hon. Theophilus Butler”) in 1713. On May 3, 1710, Luttrell wrote (Brief Relation of State Affairs, vi. 577), “’Tis said the Earl of Montrath, Lord Viscount Mountjoy . . . and Mr. Butler will be made Privy Councillors of the Kingdom of Ireland.” Butler—a contemporary of Swift’s at Trinity College, Dublin—was created Baron of Newtown-Butler in 1715, and his brother, who succeeded him in 1723, was made Viscount Lanesborough. Butler’s wife was Emilia, eldest daughter and co-heir of James Stopford, of Tara, County Meath.
[8a]No. 193 of theTatler, for July 4, 1710, contained a letter from Downes the Prompter—not by Steele himself—in ridicule of Harley and his proposed Ministry.
[8b]Charles Robartes, second Earl of Radnor, who died in 1723. In theJournalfor Dec. 30, 1711, Swift calls him “a scoundrel.”
[8c]Benjamin Tooke, Swift’s bookseller or publisher, lived at the Middle Temple Gate. Dunton wrote of him, “He is truly honest, a man of refined sense, and is unblemished in his reputation.” Tooke died in 1723.
[8d]Swift’s servant, of whose misdeeds he makes frequent complaints in theJournal.
[9a]Deputy Vice-Treasurer of Ireland. In one place Swift calls him Captain Pratt; and in all probability he is the John Pratt who, as we learn from Dalton’sEnglish Army Lists, was appointed captain in General Erle’s regiment of foot in 1699, and was out of the regiment by 1706. In 1702 he obtained the Queen’s leave to be absent from the regiment when it was sent to the West Indies. Pratt seems to have been introduced to Swift by Addison.
[9b]Charles Ford, of Wood Park, near Dublin, was a great lover of the opera and a friend of the Tory wits. He was appointed Gazetteer in 1712. Gay calls him “joyous Ford,” and he was given to over-indulgence in conviviality. See Swift’s poem on Stella at Wood Park.
[9c]Lord Somers, to whom Swift had dedicatedThe Tale of a Tub, with high praise of his public and private virtues. In later years Swift said that Somers “possessed all excellent qualifications except virtue.”
[9d]At the foundation school of the Ormonds at Kilkenny (see p.10, note 6.)
[9e]A Whig haberdasher.
[9f]Benjamin Hoadley, the Whig divine, had been engaged in controversy with Sacheverell, Blackall, and Atterbury. After the accession of George I. he became Bishop of Bangor, Hereford, Salisbury, and Winchester in success.
[9g]Dr. Henry Sacheverell, whose impeachment and trial had led to the fall of the Whig Government.
[10a]Sir Berkeley Lucy, Bart., F.R.S., married Katherine, daughter of Charles Cotton, of Beresford, Staffordshire, Isaac Walton’s friend. Lady Lucy died in 1740, leaving an only surviving daughter, Mary, who married the youngest son of the Earl of Northampton, and had two sons, who became successively seventh and eighth Earls of Northampton. Forster and others assumed that “Lady Lucy” was a Lady Lucy Stanhope, though they were not able to identify her. It was reserved for Mr. Ryland to clear up this difficulty. As he points out, Lady Lucy’s elder sister, Olive, married George Stanhope, Dean of Canterbury, and left a daughter Mary,—Swift’s “Moll Stanhope,”—a beauty and a madcap, who married, in 1712, William Burnet, son of Bishop Burnet, and died in 1714. Mary, another sister of Lady Lucy’s, married Augustine Armstrong, of Great Ormond Street, and is the Mrs. Armstrong mentioned by Swift on Feb. 3, 1711, as a pretender to wit, without taste. Sir Berkeley Lucy’s mother was a daughter of the first Earl of Berkeley, and it was probably through the Berkeleys that Swift came to know the Lucys.
[10b]Ann Long was sister to Sir James Long, and niece to Colonel Strangeways. Once a beauty and toast of the Kit-Cat Club, she fell into narrow circumstances through imprudence and the unkindness of her friends, and retired under the name of Mrs. Smythe to Lynn, in Norfolk, where she died in 1711 (seeJournal, December 25, 1711). Swift said, “She was the most beautiful person of the age she lived in; of great honour and virtue, infinite sweetness and generosity of temper, and true good sense” (Forster’sSwift, 229). In a letter of December 1711, Swift wrote that she “had every valuable quality of body and mind that could make a lady loved and esteemed.”
[10c]Said, I know not on what authority, to be Swift’s friend, Mrs. Barton. But Mrs. Barton is often mentioned by Swift as living in London in 1710–11.
[10d]One of Swift’s cousins, who was separated from her husband, a man of bad character, living abroad. Her second husband, Lancelot, a servant of Lord Sussex, lived in New Bond Street, and there Swift lodged in 1727.
[10e]£100,000.
[10f]Francis Stratford’s name appears in the Dublin University Register for 1686 immediately before Swift’s. Budgell is believed to have referred to the friendship of Swift and Stratford in theSpectator, No. 353, where he describes two schoolfellows, and says that the man of genius was buried in a country parsonage of £160 a year, while his friend, with the bare abilities of a common scrivener, had gained an estate of above £100,000.
[10g]William Cowper, afterwards Lord Cowper.
[11a]Sir Simon Harcourt, afterwards Viscount Harcourt, had been counsel for Sacheverell. On Sept. 19, 1710, he was appointed Attorney-General, and on October 19 Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. In April 1713 he became Lord Chancellor.
[11b]This may be some relative of Dr. John Freind (see p.65), or, more probably, as Sir Henry Craik suggests, a misprint for Colonel Frowde, Addison’s friend (seeJournal, Nov. 4, 1710). No officer named Freind or Friend is mentioned in Dalton’sEnglish Army Lists.
[11c]See theTatler, Nos. 124, 203. There are various allusions in the “Wentworth Papers” to this, the first State Lottery of 1710; and two bluecoat boys drawing out the tickets, and showing their hands to the crowd, as Swift describes them, are shown in a reproduction of a picture in a contemporary pamphlet given in Ashton’sSocial Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, i. 115.
[11d]A few weeks later Swift wrote, “I took a fancy of resolving to grow mad for it, but now it is off.”
[11e]Sir John Holland, Bart., was a leading manager for the Commons in the impeachment of Sacheverell. He succeeded Sir Thomas Felton in the Comptrollership in March 1710.
[12a]Dryden Leach. (see p.51.)
[12b]William Pate, “bel espritand woollen-draper,” as Swift called him, lived opposite the Royal Exchange. He was Sheriff of London in 1734, and died in 1746. Arbuthnot, previous to matriculating at Oxford, lodged with Pate, who gave him a letter of introduction to Dr. Charlett, Master of University College; and Pate is supposed to have been the woollen-draper, “remarkable for his learning and good-nature,” who is mentioned by Steele in theGuardian, No. 141.
[12c]James Brydges, son of Lord Chandos of Sudeley, was appointed Paymaster-General of Forces Abroad in 1707. He succeeded his father as Baron Chandos in 1714, and was created Duke of Chandos in 1729. The “princely Chandos” and his house at Canons suggested to Pope the Timon’s villa of the “Epistle to Lord Burlington.” The Duke died in 1744.
[12d]Charles Talbot, created Duke of Shrewsbury in 1694, was held in great esteem by WilliamIII., and was Lord Chamberlain under Anne. In 1713 he became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and held various offices under George I., until his death in 1718. “Before he was o. age,” says Macaulay, “he was allowed to be one of the finest gentlemen and finest scholars of his time.”
[13a]See p.230.
[13b]William Cavendish, second Duke of Devonshire (1673–1729), who was Lord Steward from 1707 to 1710 and from 1714 to 1716. Afterwards he was Lord President of the Council. Swift’s comment on Macky’s character of this Whig nobleman was, “A very poor understanding.”
[13c]John Annesley, fourth Earl of Anglesea, a young nobleman of great promise, had only recently been appointed joint Vice-Treasurer, Receiver-General, and Paymaster of the Forces in Ireland, and sworn of the Privy Council.
[14a]Nichols, followed by subsequent editors, suggested that “Durham” was a mistake for “St. David’s,” because Dr. George Bull, Bishop of St. David’s, died in 1710. But Dr. Bull died on Feb. 17, 1710, though his successor, Dr. Philip Bisse, was not appointed until November; and Swift was merely repeating a false report of the death of Lord Crewe, Bishop of Durham, which was current on the day on which he wrote. Luttrell says, on Sept. 19, “The Lord Crewe . . . died lately”; but on the 23rd he adds, “The Bishop of Durham is not dead as reported” (Brief Relation, vi. 630, 633).
[14b]Lady Elizabeth (“Betty”) Butler, who died unmarried in 1750.
[14c]Swift wrote in 1734, “Once every year I issued out an edict, commanding that all ladies of wit, sense, merit, and quality, who had an ambition to be acquainted with me, should make the first advances at their peril: which edict, you may believe, was universally obeyed.”
[14d]Charles, second Earl of Berkeley (1649–1710), married Elizabeth, daughter of Baptist Noel, Viscount Campden. The Earl died on Sept. 24, 1710, and his widow in 1719. Swift, it will be remembered, had been chaplain to Lord Berkeley in Ireland in 1699.
[14e]Lady Betty and Lady Mary Butler. (see p.44.)
[14f]Henry Boyle, Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1702 to 1708, was Secretary of State from 1708 to 1710, when he was succeeded by St. John. In 1714 he was created Baron Carleton, and he was Lord President from 1721 until his death in 1725.
[15a]On Sept. 29 Swift wrote that his rooms consisted of the first floor, a dining-room and bed-chamber, at eight shillings a week. On his last visit to England, in 1726, he lodged “next door to the Royal Chair” in Bury Street. Steele lived in the same street from 1707 to 1712; and Mrs. Vanhomrigh was Swift’s next-door neighbour.
[15b]In Exchange Alley. Cf.Spectator, No. 454: “I went afterwards to Robin’s, and saw people who had dined with me at the fivepenny ordinary just before, give bills for the value of large estates.”
[16a]John Molesworth, Commissioner of the Stamp Office, was sent as Envoy to Tuscany in 1710, and was afterwards Minister at Florence, Venice, Geneva, and Turin. He became second Viscount Molesworth in 1725, and died in 1731.
[16b]Misson says, “Every two hours you may write to any part of the city or suburbs: he that receives it pays a penny, and you give nothing when you put it into the Post; but when you write into the country both he that writes and he that receives pay each a penny.” The Penny Post system had been taken over by the Government, but was worked separately from the general Post.
[17a]The Countess of Berkeley’s second daughter, who married, in 1706, Sir John Germaine, Bart. (1650–1718), a soldier of fortune. Lady Betty Germaine is said to have written a satire on Pope (Nichols’Literary Anecdotes, ii. 11), and was a constant correspondent of Swift’s. She was always a Whig, and shortly before her death in 1769 she made a present of £100 to John Wilkes, then in prison in the Tower. Writing of Lady Betty Butler and Lady Betty Germaine, Swift says elsewhere, “I saw two Lady Bettys this afternoon; the beauty of one, the good breeding and nature of the other, and the wit of either, would have made a fine woman.” Germaine obtained the estate at Drayton through his first wife, Lady Mary Mordaunt—Lord Peterborough’s sister—who had been divorced by her first husband, the Duke of Norfolk. Lady Betty was thirty years younger than her husband, and after Sir John’s death she remained a widow for over fifty years.
[17b]The letter in No. 280 of theTatler.
[17c]Discover, find out. Cf. Shakespeare’sAll’s Well that Ends Well, iii. 6: “He was first smoked by the old Lord Lafeu.”
[17d]A village near Dublin.
[17e]Excellent.
[18a]See p.3.
[18b]John Molesworth, and, probably, his brother Richard, afterwards third Viscount Molesworth, who had saved the Duke of Marlborough’s life at the battle of Ramillies, and had been appointed, in 1710, colonel of a regiment of foot.
[18c]Presumably at Charles Ford’s.
[18d]The Virtues of Sid Hamet the Magician’s Rod, published as a single folio sheet, was a satire on Godolphin.
[19a]Apparently Marcus Antonius Morgan, steward to the Bishop of Kildare (Craik). Swift wrote to the Duke of Montagu on Aug. 12, 1713 (Buccleuch MSS., 1899, i. 359). “Mr. Morgan of Kingstrope is a friend, and was, I am informed, put out of the Commission of justice for being so.”
[19b]Dr. Raymond is called Morgan’s “father” because he warmly supported Morgan’s interests.
[19c]The Rev. Thomas Warburton, Swift’s curate at Laracor, whom Swift described to the Archbishop as “a gentleman of very good learning and sense, who has behaved himself altogether unblamably.”
[19d]The tobacco was to be used as snuff. About this time ladies much affected the use of snuff, and Steele, in No. 344 of theSpectator, speaks of Flavilla pulling out her box, “which is indeed full of good Brazil,” in the middle of the sermon. People often made their own snuff out of roll tobacco, by means of rasps. On Nov. 3, 1711, Swift speaks of sending “a fine snuff rasp of ivory, given me by Mrs. St. John for Dingley, and a large roll of tobacco.”
[20a]Katherine Barton, second daughter of Robert Barton, of Brigstock, Northamptonshire, and niece of Sir Isaac Newton. She was a favourite among the toasts of the Kit-Cat Club, and Lord Halifax, who left her a fortune, was an intimate friend. In 1717 she married John Conduitt, afterwards Master of the Mint.
[20b]See p.17.
[20c]William Connolly, appointed a Commissioner of the Revenue in 1709, was afterwards Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. He died in 1729. Francis Robarts, appointed a Commissioner of the Revenue in 1692, was made a Teller of the Exchequer in England in 1704, and quitted that office, in September 1710, on his reappointment, in Connolly’s place, as Revenue Commissioner in Ireland. In 1714 Robarts was removed, and Connolly again appointed Commissioner.
[20d]Enoch Sterne, Collector of Wicklow and Clerk to the Irish House of Lords. Writing to Dr. Sterne on Sept. 26, Swift said, “I saw Collector Sterne, who desired me to present his service to you, and to tell you he would be glad to hear from you, but not about business.”
[20e]In hisCharacter of Mrs. JohnsonSwift says, “She was never known to cry out, or discover any fear, in a coach.” The passage in the text is obscure. Apparently Esther Johnson had boasted of saving money by walking, instead of riding, like a coward.
[21a]John Radcliffe (1650–1714), the well-known physician and wit, was often denounced as a clever empiric. Early in 1711 he treated Swift for his dizziness. By his will, Radcliffe left most of his property to the University of Oxford.
[21b]Charles Barnard, Sergeant-Surgeon to the Queen, and Master of the Barber Surgeons’ Company. His large and valuable library, to which Swift afterwards refers, fetched great prices. Luttrell records Barnard’s death in his diary for Oct. 12, 1710.
[21c]Robert Harley, afterwards Earl of Oxford, had been appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in August 1710. In May 1711 he was raised to the peerage and made Lord High Treasurer; and he is constantly referred to in theJournalas “Lord Treasurer.” He was impeached in 1715, but was acquitted to 1717; he died in 1724.
[22a]The Right Hon. Thomas Bligh, M.P., of Rathmore, County Meath, died on Aug. 28, 1710. His son, mentioned later in theJournal, became Earl of Darnley.
[22b]Penalty.
[23a]Erasmus Lewis, Under Secretary of State under Lord Dartmouth, was a great friend of Swift, Pope, and Arbuthnot. He had previously been one of Harley’s secretaries, and in hisHorace Imitated,Book I. Ep. vii., Swift describes him as “a cunning shaver, and very much in Harley’s favour.” Arbuthnot says that under George I. Lewis kept company with the greatest, and was “principal governor” in many families. Lewis was a witness to Arbuthnot’s will. Pope and Esther Vanhomrigh both left him money to buy rings. Lewis died in 1754, aged eighty-three.
[23b]Charles Darteneuf, or Dartiquenave, was a celebrated epicure, who is said to have been a son of CharlesII. Lord Lyttleton, in hisDialogues of the Dead, recalling Pope’s allusions to him, selects him to represent modernbon vivantsin the dialogue between Darteneuf and Apicius. SeeTatler252. Darteneuf was Paymaster of the Royal Works and a member of the Kit-Cat Club. He died in 1737.
[23c]No. 230.
[23d]Good, excellent.
[23e]Captain George Delaval, appointed Envoy Extraordinary to the King of Portugal in Oct. 1710, was with Lord Peterborough in Spain in 1706. In May 1707 he went to Lisbon with despatches for the Courts of Spain and Portugal, from whence he was to proceed as Envoy to the Emperor of Morocco, with rich presents (Luttrell, vi. 52, 174, 192).
[23f]Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax, as Ranger of Bushey Park and Hampton Court, held many offices under WilliamIII., and was First Lord of the Treasury under George I., until his death in 1715. He was great as financier and as debater, and he was a liberal patron of literature.
[24a]John Manley, M.P. for Bossiney, was made Surveyor-General on Sept. 30, 1710, and died in 1714. In 1706 he fought a duel with another Cornish member (Luttrell, vi. 11, 535, 635). He seems to be the cousin whom Mrs. De la Riviere Manley accuses of having drawn her into a false marriage. For Isaac Manley and Sir Thomas Frankland, see p.7.
[24b]The Earl of Godolphin (see p.18).
[24c]Sir John Stanley, Bart., of Northend, Commissioner of Customs, whom Swift knew through his intimate friends the Pendarves. His wife, Anne, daughter of Bernard Granville, and niece of John, Earl of Bath, was aunt to Mary Granville, afterwards Mrs. Delany, who lived with the Stanleys at their house in Whitehall.
[24d]Henry, Viscount Hyde, eldest son of Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, succeeded his father in the earldom in 1711, and afterwards became Earl of Clarendon. His wife, Jane, younger daughter of Sir William Leveson Gower,—who married a daughter of John Granville, Earl of Bath,—was a beauty, and the mother of two beauties—Jane, afterwards Countess of Essex (seeJournal, Jan. 29, 1712), and Catherine, afterwards Countess of Queensberry. Lady Hyde was complimented by Prior, Pope, and her kinsman, Lord Lansdowne, and is said to have been more handsome than either of her daughters. She died in 1725; her husband in 1753. Lord Hyde became joint Vice-Treasurer for Ireland in 1710; hence his interest with respect to Pratt’s appointment.
[24e]See p.9.
[24f]Sir Paul Methuen (1672–1757), son of John Methuen, diplomatist and Lord Chancellor of Ireland. Methuen was Envoy and Ambassador to Portugal from 1697 to 1708, and was M.P. for Devizes from 1708 to 1710, and a Lord of the Admiralty. Under George I. he was Ambassador to Spain, and held other offices. Gay speaks of “Methuen of sincerest mind, as Arthur grave, as soft as womankind,” and Steele dedicated to him the seventh volume of theSpectator. In his Notes on Macky’sCharacters, Swift calls him “a profligate rogue . . . without abilities of any kind.”
[24g]Sir James Montagu was Attorney-General from 1708 to Sept. 1710, when he resigned, and was succeeded by Sir Simon Harcourt. Under George I. Montagu was raised to the Bench, and a few months before his death in 1723 became Chief Baron of the Exchequer.
[25a]The turnpike system had spread rapidly since the Restoration, and had already effected an important reform in the English roads. Turnpike roads were as yet unknown in Ireland.
[25b]Ann Johnson, who afterwards married a baker named Filby.
[25c]An infusion of which the main ingredient was cowslip or palsy-wort.
[25d]William Legge, first Earl of Dartmouth (1672–1750), was St. John’s fellow Secretary of State. Lord Dartmouth seems to have been a plain, unpretending man, whose ignorance of French helped to throw important matters into St. John’s hands.
[25e]Richard Dyot was tried at the Old Bailey, on Jan. 13, 1710–11, for counterfeiting stamps, and was acquitted, the crime being found not felony, but only breach of trust. Two days afterwards a bill of indictment was found against him for high misdemeanour.
[26a]Sir Philip Meadows (1626–1718) was knighted in 1658, and was Ambassador to Sweden under Cromwell. His son Philip (died 1757) was knighted in 1700, and was sent on a special mission to the Emperor in 1707. A great-grandson of the elder Sir Philip was created Earl Manvers in 1806.
[26b]Her eyes were weak.
[26c]The son of the Sir Robert Southwell to whom Temple had offered Swift as a “servant” on his going as Secretary of State to Ireland in 1690. Edward Southwell (1671–1730) succeeded his father as Secretary of State for Ireland in 1702, and in 1708 was appointed Clerk to the Privy Council of Great Britain. Southwell held various offices under GeorgeI. and GeorgeII., and amassed a considerable fortune.
[27a]Nicholas Rowe (1674–1718), dramatist and poet laureate, and one of the first editors of Shakespeare, was at this time under-secretary to the Duke of Queensberry, Secretary of State for Scotland.
[27b]No. 238 contains Swift’s “Description of a Shower in London.”
[27c]This seems to be a vague allusion to the text, “Cast thy bread upon the waters,” etc.
[27d]Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646–1723), the fashionable portrait-painter of the period.
[28a]At the General election of 1710 the contest at Westminster excited much interest. The number of constituents was large, and the franchise low, all householders who paid scot and lot being voters. There were, too, many houses of great Whig merchants, and a number of French Protestants. But the High Church candidates, Cross and Medlicott, were returned by large majorities, though the Whigs had chosen popular candidates—General Stanhope, fresh from his successes in Spain, and Sir Henry Dutton Colt, a Herefordshire gentleman.
[28b]Sir Andrew Fountaine (1676–1753), a distinguished antiquary, of an old Norfolk family, was knighted by WilliamIII. in 1699, and inherited his father’s estate at Norfolk in 1706. He succeeded Sir Isaac Newton as Warden of the Mint in 1727, and was Vice-Chamberlain to Queen Caroline. He became acquainted with Swift in Ireland in 1707, when he went over as Usher of the Black Rod in Lord Pembroke’s Court.
[28c]See p.6. The Bishop was probably Dr. Moreton, Bishop of Meath (seeJournal, July 1, 1712).
[28d]The game of ombre—of Spanish origin—is described in Pope’sRape of the Lock. See also theCompleat Gamester, 1721, andNotes and Queries, April 8, 1871. The ace of spades, or Spadille, was always the first trump; the ace of clubs (Basto) always the third. The second trump was the worst card of the trump suit in its natural order,i.e.the seven in red and the deuce in black suits, and was called Manille. If either of the red suits was trumps, the ace of the suit was fourth trump (Punto). Spadille, Manille, and Basto were “matadores,” or murderers, as they never gave suit.
[28e]See p.12
[29a]In theSpectator, No. 337, there is a complaint from “one of the top China women about town,” of the trouble given by ladies who turn over all the goods in a shop without buying anything. Sometimes they cheapened tea, at others examined screens or tea-dishes.
[29b]The Right Hon. John Grubham Howe, M.P. for Gloucestershire, an extreme Tory, had recently been appointed Paymaster of the Forces. He is mentioned satirically as a patriot in sec. 9 ofThe Tale of a Tub.
[30a]George Henry Hay, Viscount Dupplin, eldest son of the sixth Earl of Kinnoull, was made a Teller of the Exchequer in August, and a peer of Great Britain in December 1711, with the title of Baron Hay. He married, in 1709, Abigail, Harley’s younger daughter, and he succeeded his father in the earldom of Kinnoull in 1719.
[30b]Edward Harley, afterwards Lord Harley, who succeeded his father as Earl of Oxford in 1724. He married Lady Henrietta Cavendish Holles, daughter of the Duke of Newcastle, but died without male issue in 1741. His interest in literature caused him to form the collection known as the Harleian Miscellany.