The Romance of Biography Volume II Part 19

It will be said, where was her s.e.x's delicacy, where her woman's pride?

Alas!--

La Vergogna ritien debile amore, Ma debil freno di potente amore.

In this agonizing suspense she lived through eight long years; till, unable to endure it longer, and being aware of the existence of Stella, she took the decisive step of writing to her rival, and desired to know whether she was, or was not, married to Swift? Stella answered her immediately in the affirmative; and then, justly indignant that he should have given any other woman such a right in him as was implied by the question, she enclosed Vanessa's letter to Swift; and instantly, with a spirit she had never before exerted, quitted her lodgings, withdrew to the house of Mr. Ford, of Wood Park, and threw herself on the friendship and protection of his family.

This lamentable tragedy was now brought to a crisis. Swift, on receiving the letter, was seized with one of those insane paroxysms of rage to which he was subject. He mounted his horse, rode down to Celbridge, and suddenly entered the room in which Vanessa was sitting. His countenance, fitted by nature to express the dark and fierce pa.s.sions, so terrified her, that she could scarce ask him whether he would sit down? He replied savagely, "No!" and throwing down before her, her own letter to Stella, with a look of inexpressible scorn and anger, flung out of the room, and returned to Dublin.

This cruel scene was her death warrant.[120] Hitherto she had venerated Swift; and in the midst of her sufferings, confided in him, idolized him as the first of human beings. What must he now have appeared in her eyes?--They say, "h.e.l.l has no fury like a woman scorned;"--it is not so: the recoil of the heart, when forced to abhor and contemn, where it has once loved, is far,--far worse; and Vanessa, who had endured her lover's scorn, could not scorn _him_, and live. She was seized with a delirious fever, and died "in resentment and in despair."[121] She desired, in her last will, that the poem of Cadenus and Vanessa, which she considered as a monument of Swift's love for her, should be published, with some of his letters, which would have explained what was left obscure, and have cleared her fame. The poem was published; but the letters, by the interference of Swift's friends, were, at the time, suppressed.

On her death, and Stella's flight, Swift absented himself from home for two months, nor did any one know whither he was gone. During that time, what must have been his feelings--_if_ he felt at all? what agonies of remorse, grief, shame, and horror, must have wrung his bosom! he had, in effect, murdered the woman who loved him, as absolutely as if he had plunged a poniard into her heart: and yet it is not clear that Swift was a prey to any such feelings; at least his subsequent conduct gave no a.s.surance of it. On his return to Dublin, mutual friends interfered to reconcile him with Stella. About this time, she happened to meet, at a dinner-party, a gentleman who was a stranger to the real circ.u.mstances of her situation, and who began to speak of the poem of Cadenus and Vanessa, then just published. He observed, that Vanessa must have been an admirable creature to have inspired the Dean to write so finely.

"That does not follow," replied Mrs. Johnson, with bitterness; "it is well known that the Dean could write finely on a _broomstick_." Ah! how must jealousy and irritation, and long habits of intimacy with Swift, have poisoned the mind and temper of this unhappy woman, before she could have uttered this cruel sarcasm!--And yet she was true to the softness of her s.e.x; for after the lapse of several months, during which it required all the attention of Mr. Ford and his family to sustain and console her, she consented to return to Dublin, and live with the Dean on the same terms as before. Well does old Chaucer say,

There can no man in humblesse him acquite As woman can, he can be half so true As woman be!

"Swift welcomed her to town," says Sheridan, "with that beautiful poem ent.i.tled 'Stella at Wood Park;'" that is to say, he welcomed back to the home from which he had driven her, the woman whose heart he had well nigh broken, the wife he had every way injured and abused,--with a tissue of coa.r.s.e sarcasms, on the taste for magnificence she must have acquired in her visit to Wood Park, and the difficulty of descending

From every day a lordly banquet To half a joint--and G.o.d be thanket!

From partridges and venison with the right _fumette_,--to

Small beer, a herring, and the Dean.

And this was all the sentiment, all the poetry with which the occasion inspired him!

Stella naturally hoped, that when her rival was no more, and Swift no longer exposed to her torturing reproaches, that he would do her tardy justice, and at length acknowledge her as his wife. But no;--it would have cost him some little mortification and inconvenience; and on such a paltry pretext he suffered this amiable and admirable woman, of whom he had said, that "her merits towards him were greater than ever was in any human being towards another;" and "that she excelled in every good quality that could possibly accomplish a human creature,"--this woman did he suffer to languish into the grave, broken in heart and blighted in name. When Stella was on her death-bed, some conversation pa.s.sed between them upon this sad subject. Only Swift's reply was audible: he said, "Well, my dear, it shall be acknowledged, if you wish it." To which she answered with a sigh, "It is _now_ too late!"[122] It _was_ too late!--

What now to her was womanhood or fame?

She died of a lingering decline, in January, 1728, four years after the death of Miss Vanhomrigh.

Thus perished these two innocent, warm-hearted and accomplished women;--so rich in all the graces of their s.e.x--so formed to love and to be loved, to bless, and to be blessed,--sacrifices to the demoniac pride of the man they had loved and trusted. But it will be said, "si elles n'avaient point aim, elles seraient moins connues:" they have become immortal by their connection with genius; they are celebrated, merely through their attachment to a celebrated man. But, good G.o.d! what an immortality! won by what martyrdom of the heart!--And what a celebrity!

not that with which the poet's love, and his diviner verse, crown the deified object of his homage, but a celebrity, purchased with their life-blood and their tears! I quit the subject with a sense of relief:--yet one word more.

It was after the death of these two amiable women, who had deserved so much from him, and whose enduring tenderness had flung round his odious life and character their only redeeming charm of sentiment and interest, that the native grossness and rancour of this incarnate spirit of libel burst forth with tenfold virulence.[123] He showed how true had been his love and his respect for _them_, by insulting and reviling, in terms a scavenger would disavow, the s.e.x they belonged to. Swift's master-pa.s.sion was pride,--an unconquerable, all-engrossing, self-revolving pride: he was proud of his vigorous intellect, proud of being the "dread and hate of half mankind,"--proud of his contempt for women,--proud of his tremendous powers of invective. It was his boast, that he never forgave an injury; it was his boast, that the ferocious and unsparing personal satire with which he avenged himself on those who offended him, had never been softened by the repentance, or averted by the concessions of the offender. Look at him in his last years, when the cold earth was heaped over those who would have cheered and soothed his dark and stormy spirit; without a friend--deprived of the mighty powers he had abused--alternately a drivelling idiot and a furious maniac, and sinking from both into a helpless, hopeless, prostrate lethargy of body and mind!--Draw,--draw the curtain, in reverence to the human ruin, lest our woman's hearts be tempted to unwomanly exultation!

FOOTNOTES:

[107] As Swift said truly and wittily of himself:

As when a lofty pile is raised, We never hear the workmen praised, Who bring the lime or place the stones, But all admire Inigo Jones; So if this pile of scattered rhymes Should be approved in after-times, If it both pleases and endures, The merit and the praise are yours!

_Verses to Stella._

[108] Sheridan's Life of Swift.

[109] Dr. Johnson, who allows Stella to have been "virtuous, beautiful, and elegant," says she could not spell her own language: in those days few women _could_ spell accurately.

[110] See her Letters.

[111] See some very poor verses found in Miss Vanhomrigh's desk, and inserted in his poems, vol. x, p. 14.

[112] "The Author on himself," (Swift's poems.)

[113] Sheridan's Life of Swift, p. 316.

[114] How pertinaciously Swift adhered to these conditions, is proved by the fact, that after the ceremony, he never saw her alone; and that several years after, when she was in a dangerous state of health, and he was writing to a friend about providing for her comforts, he desires "that she might not be brought to the Deanery-house on any account, as it was a very improper place for her to breathe her last in."--_Sheridan's Life_, p. 356.

[115] "Marley Abbey, near Celbridge, where Miss Vanhomrigh resided, is built much in the form of a real cloister, especially in its external appearance. An aged man (upwards of ninety, by his own account,) showed the grounds to my correspondent. He was the son of Mrs. Vanhomrigh's gardener, and used to work with his father in the garden when a boy. He remembered the unfortunate Vanessa well; and his account of her corresponded with the usual description of her person, especially as to her _embonpoint_. He said she went seldom abroad, and saw little company; her constant amus.e.m.e.nt was reading, or walking in the garden.

Yet, according to this authority, her society was courted by several families in the neighbourhood, who visited her, notwithstanding her seldom returning that attention; and he added, that her manners interested every one who knew her,--but she avoided company, and was always melancholy save when Dean Swift was there, and then she seemed happy. The garden was to an uncommon degree crowded with laurels. The old man said, that when Miss Vanhomrigh expected the Dean, she always planted with her own hand a laurel or two against his arrival. He showed her favourite seat, still called Vanessa's Bower. Three or four trees, and some laurels, indicate the spot. They had formerly, according to the old man's information, been trained into a close arbour. There were two seats and a rude table within the bower, the opening of which commanded a view of the Liffey, which had a romantic effect; and there was a small cascade that murmured at some distance. In this sequestered spot, according to the old gardener's account, the Dean and Vanessa used often to sit, with books and writing materials on the table before them."--_Scott's Life of Swift._

[116] Scott's Life of Swift.

[117] Correspondence, (as quoted in Sheridan's Life of Swift.)

[118] I give one specimen, not as the most eloquent that could be extracted, but as most ill.u.s.trative of the story.

"You bid me be easy, and you would see me as often as you could; you had better have said as often as you could get the better of your inclination so much; or, as often as you remembered there was such a person in the world. If you continue to treat me as you do, you will not be made uneasy by me long. 'Tis impossible to describe what I have suffered since I saw you last; I am sure I could have borne the rack much better than those killing, killing words of yours. Sometimes I have resolved to die without seeing you more; but those resolves, to your misfortune, did not last long, for there is something in human nature that prompts us to seek relief in this world. I must give way to it, and beg you would see me, and speak kindly to me; for I am sure you would not condemn any one to suffer what I have done, could you but know it.

The reason I write to you is this, 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 look so awful, that it strikes me dumb. Oh! that you may but have 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. Forgive me, and believe, I cannot help telling you this, and live."--LETTERS, Vol. xix.

page 421.

[119] Mrs. Hemans.

[120] Johnson's Life of Swift.

[121] Johnson, Sheridan. Scott.

[122] Scott's Life of Swift.--Sheridan has recorded another interview between Stella and her destroyer, in which she besought him to acknowledge her before her death, that she might have the satisfaction of dying his wife; and he refused.

Dated Feb. 7, 1728, I find a letter from Swift to Martha Blount, written in a style of gay badinage, and her answer; and in neither is there the slightest allusion to his recent loss.--_Roscoe's Pope_, vol. viii. p.

460.

[123] It was after the death of Stella, that all Swift's coa.r.s.est satires were written. He was in the act of writing the last and most terrible of these, when he was seized with insanity; and it remains unfinished.

CHAPTER XV.

POPE AND MARTHA BLOUNT.

If the soul of sensibility, which I believe Pope really possessed, had been enclosed in a healthful frame and an agreeable person, we might have reckoned him among our _preux chevaliers_, and have had sonnets instead of satires. But he seems to have been ever divided between two contending feelings. He was peculiarly sensible to the charms of women, and his habits as a valetudinarian, rendered their society and attention not only soothing and delightful, but absolutely necessary to him: while, unhappily, there mingled with this real love for them, and dependance on them as a s.e.x, the most irascible self-love; and a torturing consciousness of that feebleness and deformity of person, which embittered all his intercourse with them. He felt that, in his character of poet, he could, by his homage, flatter their vanity, and excite their admiration and their fear; but, at the same time, he was shivering under the apprehension that, as a man, they regarded him with contempt; and that he could never hope to awaken in a female bosom any feelings corresponding with his own. So far he was unjust to us and to himself: his friend Lord Lyttelton, and his enemy Lord Hervey,[124]

might have taught him better.

On reviewing Pope's life, his works, and his correspondence, it seems to me that these two opposite feelings contending in his bosom from youth to age, will account for the general character of his poems with a reference to our s.e.x:--will explain why women bear so prominent a part in all his works, whether as objects of poetical gallantry, honest admiration, or poignant satire: why there is not among all his productions more than one poem decidedly amatory, (and that one partly suppressed in the ordinary editions of his works,) while women only have furnished him with the materials of all his _chef-d'oeuvres_: his Elegy, his 'Rape of the Lock,' the 'Epistle of Helose,' and the second of his Moral Essays. He may call us, and prove us, in his ant.i.thetical style, "a contradiction:"[125] but we may retort; for, as far as women are concerned, Pope was himself one miserable ant.i.thesis.