Esther Johnson, to whom Swift gave the pet name of
"Stella," grew into the existence of this fiery, hold, and independent
genius.
"Stella," grew into the existence of this fiery, hold, and independent
genius.
Orr - Famous Affinities of History, Romacen of Devotion
She had a peculiarly harsh, grating voice, so
that any but a very competent judge would have turned her away. But M.
Choron, whose experience was great, noted the correctness of her accent
and the feeling which made itself felt in every line. He accepted her as
well as her sister, but urged her to study elocution rather than music.
She must, indeed, have had an extraordinary power even at the age
of fourteen, since not merely her voice but her whole appearance was
against her. She was dressed in a short calico frock of a pattern
in which red was spotted with white. Her shoes were of coarse black
leather. Her hair was parted at the back of her head and hung down her
shoulders in two braids, framing the long, childish, and yet gnome-like
face, which was unusual in its gravity.
At first she was little thought of; but there came a time when she
astonished both her teachers and her companions by a recital which she
gave in public. The part was the narrative of Salema in the "Abufar"
of Ducis. It describes the agony of a mother who gives birth to a child
while dying of thirst amid the desert sands. Mme. de Barviera has left a
description of this recital, which it is worth while to quote:
While uttering the thrilling tale the thin face seemed to lengthen with
horror, the small, deep-set black eyes dilated with a fixed stare as
though she witnessed the harrowing scene; and the deep, guttural tones,
despite a slight Jewish accent, awoke a nameless terror in every one who
listened, carrying him through the imaginary woe with a strange feeling
of reality, not to be shaken, off as long as the sounds lasted.
Even yet, however, the time had not come for any conspicuous success.
The girl was still so puny in form, so monkey-like in face, and so
gratingly unpleasant in her tones that it needed time for her to attain
her full growth and to smooth away some of the discords in her peculiar
voice.
Three years later she appeared at the Gymnase in a regular debut; yet
even then only the experienced few appreciated her greatness. Among
these, however, were the well-known critic Jules Janin, the poet and
novelist Gauthier, and the actress Mlle. Mars. They saw that this lean,
raucous gutter-girl had within her gifts which would increase until she
would be first of all actresses on the French stage. Janin wrote some
lines which explain the secret of her greatness:
All the talent in the world, especially when continually applied to
the same dramatic works, will not satisfy continually the hearer. What
pleases in a great actor, as in all arts that appeal to the imagination,
is the unforeseen. When I am utterly ignorant of what is to happen,
when I do not know, when you yourself do not know what will be your
next gesture, your next look, what passion will possess your heart, what
outcry will burst from your terror-stricken soul, then, indeed, I am
willing to see you daily, for each day you will be new to me. To-day I
may blame, to-morrow praise. Yesterday you were all-powerful; to-morrow,
perhaps, you may hardly win from me a word of admiration. So much the
better, then, if you draw from me unexpected tears, if in my heart you
strike an unknown fiber; but tell me not of hearing night after night
great artists who every time present the exact counterpart of what they
were on the preceding one.
It was at the Theatre Francais that she won her final acceptance as the
greatest of all tragedians of her time. This was in her appearance in
Corneille's famous play of "Horace. " She had now, in 1838, blazed forth
with a power that shook her no, less than it stirred the emotions and
the passions of her hearers. The princes of the royal blood came in
succession to see her. King Louis Philippe himself was at last tempted
by curiosity to be present. Gifts of money and jewels were showered on
her, and through sheer natural genius rather than through artifice she
was able to master a great audience and bend it to her will.
She had no easy life, this girl of eighteen years, for other actresses
carped at her, and she had had but little training. The sordid ways of
her old father excited a bitterness which was vented on the daughter.
She was still under age, and therefore was treated as a gold-mine by her
exacting parents. At the most she could play but twice a week. Her form
was frail and reed-like. She was threatened with a complaint of the
lungs; yet all this served to excite rather than to diminish public
interest in her. The newspapers published daily bulletins of her health,
and her door was besieged by anxious callers who wished to know her
condition. As for the greed of her parents, every one said she was
not to blame for that. And so she passed from poverty to riches, from
squalor to something like splendor, and from obscurity to fame.
Much has been written about her that is quite incorrect. She has been
credited with virtues which she never possessed; and, indeed, it may be
said with only too much truth that she possessed no virtues whatsoever.
On the stage while the inspiration lasted she was magnificent. Off
the stage she was sly, treacherous, capricious, greedy, ungrateful,
ignorant, and unchaste. With such an ancestry as she had, with such an
early childhood as had been hers, what else could one expect from her?
She and her old mother wrangled over money like two pickpockets. Some of
her best friends she treated shamefully. Her avarice was without bounds.
Some one said that it was not really avarice, but only a reaction from
generosity; but this seems an exceedingly subtle theory. It is possible
to give illustrations of it, however. She did, indeed, make many
presents with a lavish hand; yet, having made a present, she could
not rest until she got it back. The fact was so well known that her
associates took it for granted. The younger Dumas once received a
ring from her. Immediately he bowed low and returned it to her finger,
saying:
"Permit me, mademoiselle, to present it to you in my turn so as to save
you the embarrassment of asking for it. "
Mr. Vandam relates among other anecdotes about her that one evening she
dined at the house of Comte Duchatel. The table was loaded with the
most magnificent flowers; but Rachel's keen eyes presently spied out the
great silver centerpiece. Immediately she began to admire the latter;
and the count, fascinated by her manners, said that he would be glad to
present it to her. She accepted it at once, but was rather fearful
lest he should change his mind. She had come to dinner in a cab, and
mentioned the fact. The count offered to send her home in his carriage.
"Yes, that will do admirably," said she. "There will be no danger of my
being robbed of your present, which I had better take with me. "
"With pleasure, mademoiselle," replied the count. "But you will send me
back my carriage, won't you? "
Rachel had a curious way of asking every one she met for presents and
knickknacks, whether they were valuable or not. She knew how to make
them valuable.
Once in a studio she noticed a guitar hanging on the wall. She begged
for it very earnestly. As it was an old and almost worthless instrument,
it was given her. A little later it was reported that the dilapidated
guitar had been purchased by a well-known gentleman for a thousand
francs. The explanation soon followed. Rachel had declared that it was
the very guitar with which she used to earn her living as a child in the
streets of Paris. As a memento its value sprang from twenty francs to a
thousand.
It has always been a mystery what Rachel did with the great sums of
money which she made in various ways. She never was well dressed; and as
for her costumes on the stage, they were furnished by the theater. When
her effects were sold at public auction after her death her furniture
was worse than commonplace, and her pictures and ornaments were
worthless, except such as had been given her. She must have made
millions of francs, and yet she had very little to leave behind her.
Some say that her brother Raphael, who acted as her personal manager,
was a spendthrift; but if so, there are many reasons for thinking that
it was not his sister's money that he spent. Others say that Rachel
gambled in stocks, but there is no evidence of it. The only thing that
is certain is the fact that she was almost always in want of money. Her
mother, in all probability, managed to get hold of most of her earnings.
Much may have been lost through her caprices. One instance may be cited.
She had received an offer of three hundred thousand francs to act at St.
Petersburg, and was on her way there when she passed through Potsdam,
near Berlin. The King of Prussia was entertaining the Russian Czar. An
invitation was sent to her in the shape of a royal command to appear
before these monarchs and their guests. For some reason or other Rachel
absolutely refused. She would listen to no arguments. She would go on to
St. Petersburg without delay.
"But," it was said to her, "if you refuse to appear before the Czar at
Potsdam all the theaters in St. Petersburg will be closed against you,
because you will have insulted the emperor. In this way you will be
out the expenses of your journey and also the three hundred thousand
francs. "
Rachel remained stubborn as before; but in about half an hour she
suddenly declared that she would recite before the two monarchs, which
she subsequently did, to the satisfaction of everybody. Some one said to
her not long after:
"I knew that you would do it. You weren't going to give up the three
hundred thousand francs and all your travelling expenses. "
"You are quite wrong," returned Rachel, "though of course you will not
believe me. I did not care at all about the money and was going back to
France. It was something that I heard which made me change my mind. Do
you want to know what it was? Well, after all the arguments were over
some one informed me that the Czar Nicholas was the handsomest man
in Europe; and so I made up my mind that I would stay in Potsdam long
enough to see him. "
This brings us to one phase of Rachel's nature which is rather sinister.
She was absolutely hard. She seemed to have no emotions except those
which she exhibited on the stage or the impish perversity which
irritated so many of those about her. She was in reality a product of
the gutter, able to assume a demure and modest air, but within coarse,
vulgar, and careless of decency. Yet the words of Jules Janin, which
have been quoted above, explain how she could be personally very
fascinating.
In all Rachel's career one can detect just a single strand of real
romance. It is one that makes us sorry for her, because it tells us that
her love was given where it never could be openly requited.
During the reign of Louis Philippe the Comte Alexandre Walewski held
many posts in the government. He was a son of the great Napoleon. His
mother was that Polish countess who had accepted Napoleon's love because
she hoped that he might set Poland free at her desire. But Napoleon was
never swerved from his well-calculated plans by the wish of any woman,
and after a time the Countess Walewska came to love him for himself. It
was she to whom he confided secrets which he would not reveal to his own
brothers. It was she who followed him to Elba in disguise. It was her
son who was Napoleon's son, and who afterward, under the Second Empire,
was made minister of fine arts, minister of foreign affairs, and,
finally, an imperial duke. Unlike the third Napoleon's natural
half-brother, the Duc de Moray, Walewski was a gentleman of honor and
fine feeling. He never used his relationship to secure advantages for
himself. He tried to live in a manner worthy of the great warrior who
was his father.
As minister of fine arts he had much to do with the subsidized theaters;
and in time he came to know Rachel. He was the son of one of the
greatest men who ever lived. She was the child of roving peddlers whose
early training had been in the slums of cities and amid the smoke of
bar-rooms and cafes. She was tainted in a thousand ways, while he was a
man of breeding and right principle. She was a wandering actress; he was
a great minister of state. What could there be between these two?
George Sand gave the explanation in an epigram which, like most
epigrams, is only partly true. She said:
"The count's company must prove very restful to Rachel. "
What she meant was, of course, that Walewski's breeding, his dignity
and uprightness, might be regarded only as a temporary repose for the
impish, harsh-voiced, infinitely clever actress. Of course, it was all
this, but we should not take it in a mocking sense. Rachel looked up out
of her depths and gave her heart to this high-minded nobleman. He looked
down and lifted her, as it were, so that she could forget for the time
all the baseness and the brutality that she had known, that she might
put aside her forced vivacity and the self that was not in reality her
own.
It is pitiful to think of these two, separated by a great abyss which
could not be passed except at times and hours when each was free. But
theirs was, none the less, a meeting of two souls, strangely different
in many ways, and yet appealing to each other with a sincerity and truth
which neither could show elsewhere.
The end of poor Rachel was one of disappointment. Tempted by the fact
that Jenny Lind had made nearly two million francs by her visit to the
United States, Rachel followed her, but with slight success, as was to
be expected. Music is enjoyed by human beings everywhere, while French
classical plays, even though acted by a genius like Rachel, could be
rightly understood only by a French-speaking people. Thus it came about
that her visit to America was only moderately successful.
She returned to France, where the rising fame of Adelaide Ristori was
very bitter to Rachel, who had passed the zenith of her power. She went
to Egypt, but received no benefit, and in 1858 she died near Cannes. The
man who loved her, and whom she had loved in turn, heard of her death
with great emotion. He himself lived ten years longer, and died a little
while before the fall of the Second Empire.
END OF VOLUME THREE
DEAN SWIFT AND THE TWO ESTHERS
The story of Jonathan Swift and of the two women who gave their lives
for love of him is familiar to every student of English literature.
Swift himself, both in letters and in politics, stands out a conspicuous
figure in the reigns of King William III and Queen Anne. By writing
Gulliver's Travels he made himself immortal. The external facts of his
singular relations with two charming women are sufficiently well known;
but a definite explanation of these facts has never yet been given.
Swift held his tongue with a repellent taciturnity. No one ever dared
to question him. Whether the true solution belongs to the sphere of
psychology or of physiology is a question that remains unanswered.
But, as the case is one of the most puzzling in the annals of love, it
may be well to set forth the circumstances very briefly, to weigh the
theories that have already been advanced, and to suggest another.
Jonathan Swift was of Yorkshire stock, though he happened to be born in
Dublin, and thus is often spoken of as "the great Irish satirist," or
"the Irish dean. " It was, in truth, his fate to spend much of his life
in Ireland, and to die there, near the cathedral where his remains now
rest; but in truth he hated Ireland and everything connected with it,
just as he hated Scotland and everything that was Scottish. He was an
Englishman to the core.
High-stomached, proud, obstinate, and over-mastering, independence was
the dream of his life. He would accept no favors, lest he should put
himself under obligation; and although he could give generously, and
even lavishly, he lived for the most part a miser's life, hoarding every
penny and halfpenny that he could. Whatever one may think of him, there
is no doubt that he was a very manly man. Too many of his portraits give
the impression of a sour, supercilious pedant; but the finest of them
all--that by Jervas--shows him as he must have been at his very prime,
with a face that was almost handsome, and a look of attractive humor
which strengthens rather than lessens the power of his brows and of the
large, lambent eyes beneath them.
At fifteen he entered Trinity College, in Dublin, where he read widely
but studied little, so that his degree was finally granted him only as
a special favor. At twenty-one he first visited England, and became
secretary to Sir William Temple, at Moor Park. Temple, after a
distinguished career in diplomacy, had retired to his fine country
estate in Surrey. He is remembered now for several things--for having
entertained Peter the Great of Russia; for having, while young, won
the affections of Dorothy Osborne, whose letters to him are charming in
their grace and archness; for having been the patron of Jonathan Swift;
and for fathering the young girl named Esther Johnson, a waif, born out
of wedlock, to whom Temple gave a place in his household.
When Swift first met her, Esther Johnson was only eight years old; and
part of his duties at Moor Park consisted in giving her what was then
an unusual education for a girl. She was, however, still a child, and
nothing serious could have passed between the raw youth and this little
girl who learned the lessons that he imposed upon her.
Such acquaintance as they had was rudely broken off. Temple, a man of
high position, treated Swift with an urbane condescension which drove
the young man's independent soul into a frenzy. He returned to Ireland,
where he was ordained a clergyman, and received a small parish at
Kilroot, near Belfast.
It was here that the love-note was first seriously heard in the
discordant music of Swift's career. A college friend of his named Waring
had a sister who was about the age of Swift, and whom he met quite
frequently at Kilroot. Not very much is known of this episode, but
there is evidence that Swift fell in love with the girl, whom he rather
romantically called "Varina. "
This cannot be called a serious love-affair. Swift was lonely, and Jane
Waring was probably the only girl of refinement who lived near Kilroot.
Furthermore, she had inherited a small fortune, while Swift was
miserably poor, and had nothing to offer except the shadowy prospect of
future advancement in England. He was definitely refused by her; and it
was this, perhaps, that led him to resolve on going back to England and
making his peace with Sir William Temple.
On leaving, Swift wrote a passionate letter to Miss Waring--the only
true love-letter that remains to us of their correspondence. He protests
that he does not want Varina's fortune, and that he will wait until
he is in a position to marry her on equal terms. There is a smoldering
flame of jealousy running through the letter. Swift charges her with
being cold, affected, and willing to flirt with persons who are quite
beneath her.
Varina played no important part in Swift's larger life thereafter; but
something must be said of this affair in order to show, first of all,
that Swift's love for her was due only to proximity, and that when he
ceased to feel it he could be not only hard, but harsh. His fiery spirit
must have made a deep impression on Miss Waring; for though she at the
time refused him, she afterward remembered him, and tried to renew their
old relations. Indeed, no sooner had Swift been made rector of a larger
parish, than Varina let him know that she had changed her mind, and was
ready to marry him; but by this time Swift had lost all interest in her.
He wrote an answer which even his truest admirers have called brutal.
"Yes," he said in substance, "I will marry you, though you have treated
me vilely, and though you are living in a sort of social sink. I am
still poor, though you probably think otherwise. However, I will marry
you on certain conditions. First, you must be educated, so that you
can entertain me. Next, you must put up with all my whims and likes and
dislikes. Then you must live wherever I please. On these terms I will
take you, without reference to your looks or to your income. As to the
first, cleanliness is all that I require; as to the second, I only ask
that it be enough. "
Such a letter as this was like a blow from a bludgeon. The insolence,
the contempt, and the hardness of it were such as no self-respecting
woman could endure. It put an end to their acquaintance, as Swift
undoubtedly intended it should do. He would have been less censurable
had he struck Varina with his fist or kicked her.
The true reason for Swift's utter change of heart is found, no doubt, in
the beginning of what was destined to be his long intimacy with Esther
Johnson. When Swift left Sir William Temple's in a huff, Esther had been
a mere schoolgirl. Now, on his return, she was fifteen years of age, and
seemed older. She had blossomed out into a very comely girl, vivacious,
clever, and physically well developed, with dark hair, sparkling eyes,
and features that were unusually regular and lovely.
For three years the two were close friends and intimate associates,
though it cannot be said that Swift ever made open love to her. To the
outward eye they were no more than fellow workers. Yet love does not
need the spoken word and the formal declaration to give it life and make
it deep and strong.
Esther Johnson, to whom Swift gave the pet name of
"Stella," grew into the existence of this fiery, hold, and independent
genius. All that he did she knew. She was his confidante. As to his
writings, his hopes, and his enmities, she was the mistress of all his
secrets. For her, at last, no other man existed.
On Sir William Temple's death, Esther John son came into a small
fortune, though she now lost her home at Moor Park. Swift returned to
Ireland, and soon afterward he invited Stella to join him there.
Swift was now thirty-four years of age, and Stella a very attractive
girl of twenty. One might have expected that the two would marry, and
yet they did not do so. Every precaution was taken to avoid anything
like scandal. Stella was accompanied by a friend--a widow named Mrs.
Dingley--without whose presence, or that of some third person, Swift
never saw Esther Johnson. When Swift was absent, how ever, the two
ladies occupied his apartments; and Stella became more than ever
essential to his happiness.
When they were separated for any length of time Swift wrote to Stella
in a sort of baby-talk, which they called "the little language. " It was
made up of curious abbreviations and childish words, growing more and
more complicated as the years went on. It is interesting to think of
this stern and often savage genius, who loved to hate, and whose hate
was almost less terrible than his love, babbling and prattling in little
half caressing sentences, as a mother might babble over her first child.
Pedantic writers have professed to find in Swift's use of this "little
language" the coming shadow of that insanity which struck him down in
his old age.
As it is, these letters are among the curiosities of amatory
correspondence. When Swift writes "oo" for "you," and "deelest" for
"dearest," and "vely" for "very," there is no need of an interpreter;
but "rettle" for "let ter," "dallars" for "girls," and "givar" for
"devil," are at first rather difficult to guess. Then there is a system
of abbreviating. "Md" means "my dear," "Ppt" means "poppet," and "Pdfr,"
with which Swift sometimes signed his epistles, "poor, dear, foolish
rogue. "
The letters reveal how very closely the two were bound together, yet
still there was no talk of marriage. On one occasion, after they had
been together for three years in Ireland, Stella might have married
another man. This was a friend of Swift's, one Dr. Tisdall, who made
energetic love to the sweet-faced English girl. Tisdall accused Swift of
poisoning Stella's mind against him. Swift replied that such was not
the case. He said that no feelings of his own would ever lead him to
influence the girl if she preferred another.
It is quite sure, then, that Stella clung wholly to Swift, and cared
nothing for the proffered love of any other man. Thus through the years
the relations of the two remained unchanged, until in 1710 Swift
left Ireland and appeared as a very brilliant figure in the London
drawing-rooms of the great Tory leaders of the day.
He was now a man of mark, because of his ability as a controversialist.
He had learned the manners of the world, and he carried him self with an
air of power which impressed all those who met him. Among these persons
was a Miss Hester--or Esther--Vanhomrigh, the daughter of a rather
wealthy widow who was living in London at that time. Miss Vanhomrigh--a
name which she and her mother pronounced "Vanmeury"--was then seventeen
years of age, or twelve years younger than the patient Stella.
Esther Johnson, through her long acquaintance with Swift, and from
his confidence in her, had come to treat him almost as an intellectual
equal. She knew all his moods, some of which were very difficult, and
she bore them all; though when he was most tyrannous she became only
passive, waiting, with a woman's wisdom, for the tempest to blow over.
Miss Vanhomrigh, on the other hand, was one of those girls who, though
they have high spirit, take an almost voluptuous delight in yielding to
a spirit that is stronger still. This beautiful creature felt a positive
fascination in Swift's presence and his imperious manner. When his eyes
flashed, and his voice thundered out words of anger, she looked at him
with adoration, and bowed in a sort of ecstasy before him. If he chose
to accost a great lady with "Well, madam, are you as ill-natured and
disagreeable as when I met you last? " Esther Vanhomrigh thrilled at the
insolent audacity of the man. Her evident fondness for him exercised a
seductive influence over Swift.
As the two were thrown more and more together, the girl lost all her
self-control. Swift did not in any sense make love to her, though he
gave her the somewhat fanciful name of "Vanessa"; but she, driven on by
a high-strung, unbridled temperament, made open love to him. When he was
about to return to Ireland, there came one startling moment when Vanessa
flung herself into the arms of Swift, and amazed him by pouring out a
torrent of passionate endearments.
Swift seems to have been surprised. He did what he could to quiet her.
He told her that they were too unequal in years and fortune for anything
but friendship, and he offered to give her as much friendship as she
desired.
Doubtless he thought that, after returning to Ireland, he would not see
Vanessa any more. In this, however, he was mistaken. An ardent girl,
with a fortune of her own, was not to be kept from the man whom
absence only made her love the more. In addition, Swift carried on his
correspondence with her, which served to fan the flame and to increase
the sway that Swift had already acquired.
Vanessa wrote, and with every letter she burned and pined. Swift
replied, and each reply enhanced her yearning for him. Ere long,
Vanessa's mother died, and Vanessa herself hastened to Ireland and took
up her residence near Dublin. There, for years, was enacted this tragic
comedy--Esther Johnson was near Swift, and had all his confidence;
Esther Vanhomrigh was kept apart from him, while still receiving
missives from him, and, later, even visits.
It was at this time, after he had become dean of St. Patrick's
Cathedral, in Dublin, that Swift was married to Esther Johnson--for it
seems probable that the ceremony took place, though it was nothing more
than a form. They still saw each other only in the presence of a third
person. Nevertheless, some knowledge of their close relationship leaked
out. Stella had been jealous of her rival during the years that Swift
spent in London. Vanessa was now told that Swift was married to the
other woman, or that she was his mistress. Writhing with jealousy, she
wrote directly to Stella, and asked whether she was Dean Swift's wife.
In answer Stella replied that she was, and then she sent Vanessa's
letter to Swift himself.
All the fury of his nature was roused in him; and he was a man who could
be very terrible when angry. He might have remembered the intense love
which Vanessa bore for him, the humility with which she had accepted his
conditions, and, finally, the loneliness of this girl.
But Swift was utterly unsparing. No gleam of pity entered his heart as
he leaped upon a horse and galloped out to Marley Abbey, where she was
living--"his prominent eyes arched by jet-black brows and glaring with
the green fury of a cat's. " Reaching the house, he dashed into it, with
something awful in his looks, made his way to Vanessa, threw her letter
down upon the table and, after giving her one frightful glare, turned on
his heel, and in a moment more was galloping back to Dublin.
The girl fell to the floor in an agony of terror and remorse. She was
taken to her room, and only three weeks afterward was carried forth,
having died literally of a broken heart.
Five years later, Stella also died, withering away a sacrifice to
what the world has called Swift's cruel heartlessness and egotism. His
greatest public triumphs came to him in his final years of melancholy
isolation; but in spite of the applause that greeted The Drapier Letters
and Gulliver's Travels, he brooded morbidly over his past life. At last
his powerful mind gave way, so that he died a victim to senile dementia.
By his directions his body was interred in the same coffin with
Stella's, in the cathedral of which he had been dean.
Such is the story of Dean Swift, and it has always suggested several
curious questions. Why, if he loved Stella, did he not marry her long
before? Why, when he married her, did he treat her still as if she were
not his wife? Why did he allow Vanessa's love to run like a scarlet
thread across the fabric of the other affection, which must have been so
strong?
Many answers have been given to these questions. That which was
formulated by Sir Walter Scott is a simple one, and has been generally
accepted. Scott believed that Swift was physically incapacitated for
marriage, and that he needed feminine sympathy, which he took where he
could get it, without feeling bound to give anything in return.
If Scott's explanation be the true one, it still leaves Swift exposed to
ignominy as a monster of ingratitude. Therefore, many of his biographers
have sought other explanations. No one can palliate his conduct toward
Vanessa; but Sir Leslie Stephen makes a plea for him with reference
to Stella. Sir Leslie points out that until Swift became dean of St.
Patrick's his income was far too small to marry on, and that after his
brilliant but disappointing three years in London, when his prospects of
advancement were ruined, he felt himself a broken man.
Furthermore, his health was always precarious, since he suffered from a
distressing illness which attacked him at intervals, rendering him both
deaf and giddy. The disease is now known as Meniere's disease, from its
classification by the French physician, Meniere, in 1861. Swift felt
that he lived in constant danger of some sudden stroke that would
deprive him either of life or reason; and his ultimate insanity makes it
appear that his forebodings were not wholly futile. Therefore, though he
married Stella, he kept the marriage secret, thus leaving her free, in
case of his demise, to marry as a maiden, and not to be regarded as a
widow.
Sir Leslie offers the further plea that, after all, Stella's life was
what she chose to make it. She enjoyed Swift's friendship, which she
preferred to the love of any other man.
Another view is that of Dr. Richard Garnett, who has discussed the
question with some subtlety. "Swift," says Dr. Garnett, "was by nature
devoid of passion. He was fully capable of friendship, but not of love.
The spiritual realm, whether of divine or earthly things, was a region
closed to him, where he never set foot. " On the side of friendship
he must greatly have preferred Stella to Vanessa, and yet the latter
assailed him on his weakest side--on the side of his love of imperious
domination.
Vanessa hugged the fetters to which Stella merely submitted. Flattered
to excess by her surrender, yet conscious of his obligations and his
real preference, he could neither discard the one beauty nor desert the
other.
Therefore, he temporized with both of them, and when the choice was
forced upon him he madly struck down the woman for whom he cared the
less.
One may accept Dr. Garnett's theory with a somewhat altered conclusion.
It is not true, as a matter of recorded fact, that Swift was incapable
of passion, for when a boy at college he was sought out by various young
women, and he sought them out in turn. His fiery letter to Miss Waring
points to the same conclusion. When Esther Johnson began to love him he
was heart-free, yet unable, because of his straitened means, to marry.
But Esther Johnson always appealed more to his reason, his friendship,
and his comfort, than to his love, using the word in its material,
physical sense. This love was stirred in him by Vanessa. Yet when he
met Vanessa he had already gone too far with Esther Johnson to break the
bond which had so long united them, nor could he think of a life without
her, for she was to him his other self.
At the same time, his more romantic association with Vanessa roused
those instincts which he had scarcely known himself to be possessed of.
His position was, therefore, most embarrassing. He hoped to end it when
he left London and returned to Ireland; but fate was unkind to him in
this, because Vanessa followed him. He lacked the will to be frank
with her, and thus he stood a wretched, halting victim of his own dual
nature.
He was a clergyman, and at heart religious. He had also a sense of
honor, and both of these traits compelled him to remain true to Esther
Johnson. The terrible outbreak which brought about Vanessa's death was
probably the wild frenzy of a tortured soul. It recalls the picture of
some fierce animal brought at last to bay, and venting its own anguish
upon any object that is within reach of its fangs and claws.
No matter how the story may be told, it makes one shiver, for it is a
tragedy in which the three participants all meet their doom--one crushed
by a lightning-bolt of unreasoning anger, the other wasting away through
hope deferred; while the man whom the world will always hold responsible
was himself destined to end his years blind and sleepless, bequeathing
his fortune to a madhouse, and saying, with his last muttered breath:
"I am a fool! "
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY AND MARY GODWIN
A great deal has been said and written in favor of early marriage; and,
in a general way, early marriage may be an admirable thing. Young men
and young women who have no special gift of imagination, and who have
practically reached their full mental development at twenty-one or
twenty-two--or earlier, even in their teens--may marry safely; because
they are already what they will be. They are not going to experience any
growth upward and outward. Passing years simply bring them more closely
together, until they have settled down into a sort of domestic unity,
by which they think alike, act alike, and even gradually come to look
alike.
But early wedlock spells tragedy to the man or the woman of genius. In
their teens they have only begun to grow. What they will be ten years
hence, no one can prophesy. Therefore, to mate so early in life is
to insure almost certain storm and stress, and, in the end, domestic
wreckage.
As a rule, it is the man, and not the woman, who makes the false step;
because it is the man who elects to marry when he is still very young.
If he choose some ill-fitting, commonplace, and unresponsive nature to
match his own, it is he who is bound in the course of time to learn his
great mistake. When the splendid eagle shall have got his growth,
and shall begin to soar up into the vault of heaven, the poor little
barn-yard fowl that he once believed to be his equal seems very far away
in everything. He discovers that she is quite unable to follow him in
his towering flights.
The story of Percy Bysshe Shelley is a singular one. The circumstances
of his early marriage were strange. The breaking of his marriage-bond
was also strange. Shelley himself was an extraordinary creature. He was
blamed a great deal in his lifetime for what he did, and since then some
have echoed the reproach. Yet it would seem as if, at the very beginning
of his life, he was put into a false position against his will. Because
of this he was misunderstood until the end of his brief and brilliant
and erratic career.
SHELLEY AND MARY GODWIN
In 1792 the French Revolution burst into flame, the mob of Paris stormed
the Tuileries, the King of France was cast into a dungeon to await his
execution, and the wild sons of anarchy flung their gauntlet of defiance
into the face of Europe. In this tremendous year was born young Shelley;
and perhaps his nature represented the spirit of the time.
Certainly, neither from his father nor from his mother did he derive
that perpetual unrest and that frantic fondness for revolt which
blazed out in the poet when he was still a boy. His father, Mr. Timothy
Shelley, was a very usual, thick-headed, unromantic English squire. His
mother--a woman of much beauty, but of no exceptional traits--was the
daughter of another squire, and at the time of her marriage was simply
one of ten thousand fresh-faced, pleasant-spoken English country girls.
If we look for a strain of the romantic in Shelley's ancestry, we
shall have to find it in the person of his grandfather, who was a very
remarkable and powerful character.
This person, Bysshe Shelley by name, had in his youth been associated
with some mystery. He was not born in England, but in America--and
in those days the name "America" meant almost anything indefinite and
peculiar. However this might be, Bysshe Shelley, though a scion of
a good old English family, had wandered in strange lands, and it was
whispered that he had seen strange sights and done strange things.
According to one legend, he had been married in America, though no one
knew whether his wife was white or black, or how he had got rid of her.
He might have remained in America all his life, had not a small
inheritance fallen to his share. This brought him back to England, and
he soon found that England was in reality the place to make his fortune.
He was a man of magnificent physique. His rovings had given him ease
and grace, and the power which comes from a wide experience of life. He
could be extremely pleasing when he chose; and he soon won his way into
the good graces of a rich heiress, whom he married.
With her wealth he became an important personage, and consorted with
gentlemen and statesmen of influence, attaching himself particularly to
the Duke of Northumberland, by whose influence he was made a baronet.
When his rich wife died, Shelley married a still richer bride; and so
this man, who started out as a mere adventurer without a shilling to his
name, died in 1813, leaving more than a million dollars in cash, with
lands whose rent-roll yielded a hundred thousand dollars every year.
If any touch of the romantic which we find in Shelley is a matter
of heredity, we must trace it to this able, daring, restless, and
magnificent old grandfather, who was the beau ideal of an English
squire--the sort of squire who had added foreign graces to native
sturdiness. But young Shelley, the future poet, seemed scarcely to be
English at all. As a young boy he cared nothing for athletic sports.
He was given to much reading. He thought a good deal about abstractions
with which most schoolboys never concern themselves at all.
Consequently, both in private schools and afterward at Eton, he became
a sort of rebel against authority. He resisted the fagging-system. He
spoke contemptuously of physical prowess. He disliked anything that he
was obliged to do, and he rushed eagerly into whatever was forbidden.
Finally, when he was sent to University College, Oxford, he broke
all bounds. At a time when Tory England was aghast over the French
Revolution and its results, Shelley talked of liberty and equality on
all occasions. He made friends with an uncouth but able fellow student,
who bore the remarkable name of Thomas Jefferson Hogg--a name that seems
rampant with republicanism--and very soon he got himself expelled from
the university for publishing a little tract of an infidel character
called "A Defense of Atheism. "
His expulsion for such a cause naturally shocked his father. It probably
disturbed Shelley himself; but, after all, it gave him some satisfaction
to be a martyr for the cause of free speech. He went to London with his
friend Hogg, and took lodgings there. He read omnivorously--Hogg says
as much as sixteen hours a day. He would walk through the most crowded
streets poring over a volume, while holding another under one arm.
His mind was full of fancies. He had begun what was afterward called
"his passion for reforming everything. " He despised most of the laws of
England. He thought its Parliament ridiculous. He hated its religion. He
was particularly opposed to marriage. This last fact gives some point to
the circumstances which almost immediately confronted him.
Shelley was now about nineteen years old--an age at which most English
boys are emerging from the public schools, and are still in the
hobbledehoy stage of their formation. In a way, he was quite far from
boyish; yet in his knowledge of life he was little more than a mere
child. He knew nothing thoroughly--much less the ways of men and women.
He had no visible means of existence except a small allowance from
his father. His four sisters, who were at a boarding-school on Clapham
Common, used to save their pin-money and send it to their gifted brother
so that he might not actually starve. These sisters he used to call
upon from time to time, and through them he made the acquaintance of a
sixteen-year-old girl named Harriet Westbrook.
Harriet Westbrook was the daughter of a black-visaged keeper of a
coffee-house in Mount Street, called "Jew Westbrook," partly because of
his complexion, and partly because of his ability to retain what he
had made. He was, indeed, fairly well off, and had sent his younger
daughter, Harriet, to the school where Shelley's sisters studied.
Harriet Westbrook seems to have been a most precocious person. Any girl
of sixteen is, of course, a great deal older and more mature than a
youth of nineteen. In the present instance Harriet might have been
Shelley's senior by five years. There is no doubt that she fell in love
with him; but, having done so, she by no means acted in the shy and
timid way that would have been most natural to a very young girl in her
first love-affair. Having decided that she wanted him, she made up her
mind to get Mm at any cost, and her audacity was equaled only by his
simplicity. She was rather attractive in appearance, with abundant hair,
a plump figure, and a pink-and-white complexion. This description makes
of her a rather doll-like girl; but doll-like girls are just the sort to
attract an inexperienced young man who has yet to learn that beauty and
charm are quite distinct from prettiness, and infinitely superior to it.
In addition to her prettiness, Harriet Westbrook had a vivacious manner
and talked quite pleasingly. She was likewise not a bad listener;
and she would listen by the hour to Shelley in his rhapsodies about
chemistry, poetry, the failure of Christianity, the national debt, and
human liberty, all of which he jumbled up without much knowledge, but in
a lyric strain of impassioned eagerness which would probably have made
the multiplication-table thrilling.
For Shelley himself was a creature of extraordinary fascination, both
then and afterward. There are no likenesses of him that do him justice,
because they cannot convey that singular appeal which the man himself
made to almost every one who met him.
The eminent painter, Mulready, once said that Shelley was too beautiful
for portraiture; and yet the descriptions of him hardly seem to bear
this out.
that any but a very competent judge would have turned her away. But M.
Choron, whose experience was great, noted the correctness of her accent
and the feeling which made itself felt in every line. He accepted her as
well as her sister, but urged her to study elocution rather than music.
She must, indeed, have had an extraordinary power even at the age
of fourteen, since not merely her voice but her whole appearance was
against her. She was dressed in a short calico frock of a pattern
in which red was spotted with white. Her shoes were of coarse black
leather. Her hair was parted at the back of her head and hung down her
shoulders in two braids, framing the long, childish, and yet gnome-like
face, which was unusual in its gravity.
At first she was little thought of; but there came a time when she
astonished both her teachers and her companions by a recital which she
gave in public. The part was the narrative of Salema in the "Abufar"
of Ducis. It describes the agony of a mother who gives birth to a child
while dying of thirst amid the desert sands. Mme. de Barviera has left a
description of this recital, which it is worth while to quote:
While uttering the thrilling tale the thin face seemed to lengthen with
horror, the small, deep-set black eyes dilated with a fixed stare as
though she witnessed the harrowing scene; and the deep, guttural tones,
despite a slight Jewish accent, awoke a nameless terror in every one who
listened, carrying him through the imaginary woe with a strange feeling
of reality, not to be shaken, off as long as the sounds lasted.
Even yet, however, the time had not come for any conspicuous success.
The girl was still so puny in form, so monkey-like in face, and so
gratingly unpleasant in her tones that it needed time for her to attain
her full growth and to smooth away some of the discords in her peculiar
voice.
Three years later she appeared at the Gymnase in a regular debut; yet
even then only the experienced few appreciated her greatness. Among
these, however, were the well-known critic Jules Janin, the poet and
novelist Gauthier, and the actress Mlle. Mars. They saw that this lean,
raucous gutter-girl had within her gifts which would increase until she
would be first of all actresses on the French stage. Janin wrote some
lines which explain the secret of her greatness:
All the talent in the world, especially when continually applied to
the same dramatic works, will not satisfy continually the hearer. What
pleases in a great actor, as in all arts that appeal to the imagination,
is the unforeseen. When I am utterly ignorant of what is to happen,
when I do not know, when you yourself do not know what will be your
next gesture, your next look, what passion will possess your heart, what
outcry will burst from your terror-stricken soul, then, indeed, I am
willing to see you daily, for each day you will be new to me. To-day I
may blame, to-morrow praise. Yesterday you were all-powerful; to-morrow,
perhaps, you may hardly win from me a word of admiration. So much the
better, then, if you draw from me unexpected tears, if in my heart you
strike an unknown fiber; but tell me not of hearing night after night
great artists who every time present the exact counterpart of what they
were on the preceding one.
It was at the Theatre Francais that she won her final acceptance as the
greatest of all tragedians of her time. This was in her appearance in
Corneille's famous play of "Horace. " She had now, in 1838, blazed forth
with a power that shook her no, less than it stirred the emotions and
the passions of her hearers. The princes of the royal blood came in
succession to see her. King Louis Philippe himself was at last tempted
by curiosity to be present. Gifts of money and jewels were showered on
her, and through sheer natural genius rather than through artifice she
was able to master a great audience and bend it to her will.
She had no easy life, this girl of eighteen years, for other actresses
carped at her, and she had had but little training. The sordid ways of
her old father excited a bitterness which was vented on the daughter.
She was still under age, and therefore was treated as a gold-mine by her
exacting parents. At the most she could play but twice a week. Her form
was frail and reed-like. She was threatened with a complaint of the
lungs; yet all this served to excite rather than to diminish public
interest in her. The newspapers published daily bulletins of her health,
and her door was besieged by anxious callers who wished to know her
condition. As for the greed of her parents, every one said she was
not to blame for that. And so she passed from poverty to riches, from
squalor to something like splendor, and from obscurity to fame.
Much has been written about her that is quite incorrect. She has been
credited with virtues which she never possessed; and, indeed, it may be
said with only too much truth that she possessed no virtues whatsoever.
On the stage while the inspiration lasted she was magnificent. Off
the stage she was sly, treacherous, capricious, greedy, ungrateful,
ignorant, and unchaste. With such an ancestry as she had, with such an
early childhood as had been hers, what else could one expect from her?
She and her old mother wrangled over money like two pickpockets. Some of
her best friends she treated shamefully. Her avarice was without bounds.
Some one said that it was not really avarice, but only a reaction from
generosity; but this seems an exceedingly subtle theory. It is possible
to give illustrations of it, however. She did, indeed, make many
presents with a lavish hand; yet, having made a present, she could
not rest until she got it back. The fact was so well known that her
associates took it for granted. The younger Dumas once received a
ring from her. Immediately he bowed low and returned it to her finger,
saying:
"Permit me, mademoiselle, to present it to you in my turn so as to save
you the embarrassment of asking for it. "
Mr. Vandam relates among other anecdotes about her that one evening she
dined at the house of Comte Duchatel. The table was loaded with the
most magnificent flowers; but Rachel's keen eyes presently spied out the
great silver centerpiece. Immediately she began to admire the latter;
and the count, fascinated by her manners, said that he would be glad to
present it to her. She accepted it at once, but was rather fearful
lest he should change his mind. She had come to dinner in a cab, and
mentioned the fact. The count offered to send her home in his carriage.
"Yes, that will do admirably," said she. "There will be no danger of my
being robbed of your present, which I had better take with me. "
"With pleasure, mademoiselle," replied the count. "But you will send me
back my carriage, won't you? "
Rachel had a curious way of asking every one she met for presents and
knickknacks, whether they were valuable or not. She knew how to make
them valuable.
Once in a studio she noticed a guitar hanging on the wall. She begged
for it very earnestly. As it was an old and almost worthless instrument,
it was given her. A little later it was reported that the dilapidated
guitar had been purchased by a well-known gentleman for a thousand
francs. The explanation soon followed. Rachel had declared that it was
the very guitar with which she used to earn her living as a child in the
streets of Paris. As a memento its value sprang from twenty francs to a
thousand.
It has always been a mystery what Rachel did with the great sums of
money which she made in various ways. She never was well dressed; and as
for her costumes on the stage, they were furnished by the theater. When
her effects were sold at public auction after her death her furniture
was worse than commonplace, and her pictures and ornaments were
worthless, except such as had been given her. She must have made
millions of francs, and yet she had very little to leave behind her.
Some say that her brother Raphael, who acted as her personal manager,
was a spendthrift; but if so, there are many reasons for thinking that
it was not his sister's money that he spent. Others say that Rachel
gambled in stocks, but there is no evidence of it. The only thing that
is certain is the fact that she was almost always in want of money. Her
mother, in all probability, managed to get hold of most of her earnings.
Much may have been lost through her caprices. One instance may be cited.
She had received an offer of three hundred thousand francs to act at St.
Petersburg, and was on her way there when she passed through Potsdam,
near Berlin. The King of Prussia was entertaining the Russian Czar. An
invitation was sent to her in the shape of a royal command to appear
before these monarchs and their guests. For some reason or other Rachel
absolutely refused. She would listen to no arguments. She would go on to
St. Petersburg without delay.
"But," it was said to her, "if you refuse to appear before the Czar at
Potsdam all the theaters in St. Petersburg will be closed against you,
because you will have insulted the emperor. In this way you will be
out the expenses of your journey and also the three hundred thousand
francs. "
Rachel remained stubborn as before; but in about half an hour she
suddenly declared that she would recite before the two monarchs, which
she subsequently did, to the satisfaction of everybody. Some one said to
her not long after:
"I knew that you would do it. You weren't going to give up the three
hundred thousand francs and all your travelling expenses. "
"You are quite wrong," returned Rachel, "though of course you will not
believe me. I did not care at all about the money and was going back to
France. It was something that I heard which made me change my mind. Do
you want to know what it was? Well, after all the arguments were over
some one informed me that the Czar Nicholas was the handsomest man
in Europe; and so I made up my mind that I would stay in Potsdam long
enough to see him. "
This brings us to one phase of Rachel's nature which is rather sinister.
She was absolutely hard. She seemed to have no emotions except those
which she exhibited on the stage or the impish perversity which
irritated so many of those about her. She was in reality a product of
the gutter, able to assume a demure and modest air, but within coarse,
vulgar, and careless of decency. Yet the words of Jules Janin, which
have been quoted above, explain how she could be personally very
fascinating.
In all Rachel's career one can detect just a single strand of real
romance. It is one that makes us sorry for her, because it tells us that
her love was given where it never could be openly requited.
During the reign of Louis Philippe the Comte Alexandre Walewski held
many posts in the government. He was a son of the great Napoleon. His
mother was that Polish countess who had accepted Napoleon's love because
she hoped that he might set Poland free at her desire. But Napoleon was
never swerved from his well-calculated plans by the wish of any woman,
and after a time the Countess Walewska came to love him for himself. It
was she to whom he confided secrets which he would not reveal to his own
brothers. It was she who followed him to Elba in disguise. It was her
son who was Napoleon's son, and who afterward, under the Second Empire,
was made minister of fine arts, minister of foreign affairs, and,
finally, an imperial duke. Unlike the third Napoleon's natural
half-brother, the Duc de Moray, Walewski was a gentleman of honor and
fine feeling. He never used his relationship to secure advantages for
himself. He tried to live in a manner worthy of the great warrior who
was his father.
As minister of fine arts he had much to do with the subsidized theaters;
and in time he came to know Rachel. He was the son of one of the
greatest men who ever lived. She was the child of roving peddlers whose
early training had been in the slums of cities and amid the smoke of
bar-rooms and cafes. She was tainted in a thousand ways, while he was a
man of breeding and right principle. She was a wandering actress; he was
a great minister of state. What could there be between these two?
George Sand gave the explanation in an epigram which, like most
epigrams, is only partly true. She said:
"The count's company must prove very restful to Rachel. "
What she meant was, of course, that Walewski's breeding, his dignity
and uprightness, might be regarded only as a temporary repose for the
impish, harsh-voiced, infinitely clever actress. Of course, it was all
this, but we should not take it in a mocking sense. Rachel looked up out
of her depths and gave her heart to this high-minded nobleman. He looked
down and lifted her, as it were, so that she could forget for the time
all the baseness and the brutality that she had known, that she might
put aside her forced vivacity and the self that was not in reality her
own.
It is pitiful to think of these two, separated by a great abyss which
could not be passed except at times and hours when each was free. But
theirs was, none the less, a meeting of two souls, strangely different
in many ways, and yet appealing to each other with a sincerity and truth
which neither could show elsewhere.
The end of poor Rachel was one of disappointment. Tempted by the fact
that Jenny Lind had made nearly two million francs by her visit to the
United States, Rachel followed her, but with slight success, as was to
be expected. Music is enjoyed by human beings everywhere, while French
classical plays, even though acted by a genius like Rachel, could be
rightly understood only by a French-speaking people. Thus it came about
that her visit to America was only moderately successful.
She returned to France, where the rising fame of Adelaide Ristori was
very bitter to Rachel, who had passed the zenith of her power. She went
to Egypt, but received no benefit, and in 1858 she died near Cannes. The
man who loved her, and whom she had loved in turn, heard of her death
with great emotion. He himself lived ten years longer, and died a little
while before the fall of the Second Empire.
END OF VOLUME THREE
DEAN SWIFT AND THE TWO ESTHERS
The story of Jonathan Swift and of the two women who gave their lives
for love of him is familiar to every student of English literature.
Swift himself, both in letters and in politics, stands out a conspicuous
figure in the reigns of King William III and Queen Anne. By writing
Gulliver's Travels he made himself immortal. The external facts of his
singular relations with two charming women are sufficiently well known;
but a definite explanation of these facts has never yet been given.
Swift held his tongue with a repellent taciturnity. No one ever dared
to question him. Whether the true solution belongs to the sphere of
psychology or of physiology is a question that remains unanswered.
But, as the case is one of the most puzzling in the annals of love, it
may be well to set forth the circumstances very briefly, to weigh the
theories that have already been advanced, and to suggest another.
Jonathan Swift was of Yorkshire stock, though he happened to be born in
Dublin, and thus is often spoken of as "the great Irish satirist," or
"the Irish dean. " It was, in truth, his fate to spend much of his life
in Ireland, and to die there, near the cathedral where his remains now
rest; but in truth he hated Ireland and everything connected with it,
just as he hated Scotland and everything that was Scottish. He was an
Englishman to the core.
High-stomached, proud, obstinate, and over-mastering, independence was
the dream of his life. He would accept no favors, lest he should put
himself under obligation; and although he could give generously, and
even lavishly, he lived for the most part a miser's life, hoarding every
penny and halfpenny that he could. Whatever one may think of him, there
is no doubt that he was a very manly man. Too many of his portraits give
the impression of a sour, supercilious pedant; but the finest of them
all--that by Jervas--shows him as he must have been at his very prime,
with a face that was almost handsome, and a look of attractive humor
which strengthens rather than lessens the power of his brows and of the
large, lambent eyes beneath them.
At fifteen he entered Trinity College, in Dublin, where he read widely
but studied little, so that his degree was finally granted him only as
a special favor. At twenty-one he first visited England, and became
secretary to Sir William Temple, at Moor Park. Temple, after a
distinguished career in diplomacy, had retired to his fine country
estate in Surrey. He is remembered now for several things--for having
entertained Peter the Great of Russia; for having, while young, won
the affections of Dorothy Osborne, whose letters to him are charming in
their grace and archness; for having been the patron of Jonathan Swift;
and for fathering the young girl named Esther Johnson, a waif, born out
of wedlock, to whom Temple gave a place in his household.
When Swift first met her, Esther Johnson was only eight years old; and
part of his duties at Moor Park consisted in giving her what was then
an unusual education for a girl. She was, however, still a child, and
nothing serious could have passed between the raw youth and this little
girl who learned the lessons that he imposed upon her.
Such acquaintance as they had was rudely broken off. Temple, a man of
high position, treated Swift with an urbane condescension which drove
the young man's independent soul into a frenzy. He returned to Ireland,
where he was ordained a clergyman, and received a small parish at
Kilroot, near Belfast.
It was here that the love-note was first seriously heard in the
discordant music of Swift's career. A college friend of his named Waring
had a sister who was about the age of Swift, and whom he met quite
frequently at Kilroot. Not very much is known of this episode, but
there is evidence that Swift fell in love with the girl, whom he rather
romantically called "Varina. "
This cannot be called a serious love-affair. Swift was lonely, and Jane
Waring was probably the only girl of refinement who lived near Kilroot.
Furthermore, she had inherited a small fortune, while Swift was
miserably poor, and had nothing to offer except the shadowy prospect of
future advancement in England. He was definitely refused by her; and it
was this, perhaps, that led him to resolve on going back to England and
making his peace with Sir William Temple.
On leaving, Swift wrote a passionate letter to Miss Waring--the only
true love-letter that remains to us of their correspondence. He protests
that he does not want Varina's fortune, and that he will wait until
he is in a position to marry her on equal terms. There is a smoldering
flame of jealousy running through the letter. Swift charges her with
being cold, affected, and willing to flirt with persons who are quite
beneath her.
Varina played no important part in Swift's larger life thereafter; but
something must be said of this affair in order to show, first of all,
that Swift's love for her was due only to proximity, and that when he
ceased to feel it he could be not only hard, but harsh. His fiery spirit
must have made a deep impression on Miss Waring; for though she at the
time refused him, she afterward remembered him, and tried to renew their
old relations. Indeed, no sooner had Swift been made rector of a larger
parish, than Varina let him know that she had changed her mind, and was
ready to marry him; but by this time Swift had lost all interest in her.
He wrote an answer which even his truest admirers have called brutal.
"Yes," he said in substance, "I will marry you, though you have treated
me vilely, and though you are living in a sort of social sink. I am
still poor, though you probably think otherwise. However, I will marry
you on certain conditions. First, you must be educated, so that you
can entertain me. Next, you must put up with all my whims and likes and
dislikes. Then you must live wherever I please. On these terms I will
take you, without reference to your looks or to your income. As to the
first, cleanliness is all that I require; as to the second, I only ask
that it be enough. "
Such a letter as this was like a blow from a bludgeon. The insolence,
the contempt, and the hardness of it were such as no self-respecting
woman could endure. It put an end to their acquaintance, as Swift
undoubtedly intended it should do. He would have been less censurable
had he struck Varina with his fist or kicked her.
The true reason for Swift's utter change of heart is found, no doubt, in
the beginning of what was destined to be his long intimacy with Esther
Johnson. When Swift left Sir William Temple's in a huff, Esther had been
a mere schoolgirl. Now, on his return, she was fifteen years of age, and
seemed older. She had blossomed out into a very comely girl, vivacious,
clever, and physically well developed, with dark hair, sparkling eyes,
and features that were unusually regular and lovely.
For three years the two were close friends and intimate associates,
though it cannot be said that Swift ever made open love to her. To the
outward eye they were no more than fellow workers. Yet love does not
need the spoken word and the formal declaration to give it life and make
it deep and strong.
Esther Johnson, to whom Swift gave the pet name of
"Stella," grew into the existence of this fiery, hold, and independent
genius. All that he did she knew. She was his confidante. As to his
writings, his hopes, and his enmities, she was the mistress of all his
secrets. For her, at last, no other man existed.
On Sir William Temple's death, Esther John son came into a small
fortune, though she now lost her home at Moor Park. Swift returned to
Ireland, and soon afterward he invited Stella to join him there.
Swift was now thirty-four years of age, and Stella a very attractive
girl of twenty. One might have expected that the two would marry, and
yet they did not do so. Every precaution was taken to avoid anything
like scandal. Stella was accompanied by a friend--a widow named Mrs.
Dingley--without whose presence, or that of some third person, Swift
never saw Esther Johnson. When Swift was absent, how ever, the two
ladies occupied his apartments; and Stella became more than ever
essential to his happiness.
When they were separated for any length of time Swift wrote to Stella
in a sort of baby-talk, which they called "the little language. " It was
made up of curious abbreviations and childish words, growing more and
more complicated as the years went on. It is interesting to think of
this stern and often savage genius, who loved to hate, and whose hate
was almost less terrible than his love, babbling and prattling in little
half caressing sentences, as a mother might babble over her first child.
Pedantic writers have professed to find in Swift's use of this "little
language" the coming shadow of that insanity which struck him down in
his old age.
As it is, these letters are among the curiosities of amatory
correspondence. When Swift writes "oo" for "you," and "deelest" for
"dearest," and "vely" for "very," there is no need of an interpreter;
but "rettle" for "let ter," "dallars" for "girls," and "givar" for
"devil," are at first rather difficult to guess. Then there is a system
of abbreviating. "Md" means "my dear," "Ppt" means "poppet," and "Pdfr,"
with which Swift sometimes signed his epistles, "poor, dear, foolish
rogue. "
The letters reveal how very closely the two were bound together, yet
still there was no talk of marriage. On one occasion, after they had
been together for three years in Ireland, Stella might have married
another man. This was a friend of Swift's, one Dr. Tisdall, who made
energetic love to the sweet-faced English girl. Tisdall accused Swift of
poisoning Stella's mind against him. Swift replied that such was not
the case. He said that no feelings of his own would ever lead him to
influence the girl if she preferred another.
It is quite sure, then, that Stella clung wholly to Swift, and cared
nothing for the proffered love of any other man. Thus through the years
the relations of the two remained unchanged, until in 1710 Swift
left Ireland and appeared as a very brilliant figure in the London
drawing-rooms of the great Tory leaders of the day.
He was now a man of mark, because of his ability as a controversialist.
He had learned the manners of the world, and he carried him self with an
air of power which impressed all those who met him. Among these persons
was a Miss Hester--or Esther--Vanhomrigh, the daughter of a rather
wealthy widow who was living in London at that time. Miss Vanhomrigh--a
name which she and her mother pronounced "Vanmeury"--was then seventeen
years of age, or twelve years younger than the patient Stella.
Esther Johnson, through her long acquaintance with Swift, and from
his confidence in her, had come to treat him almost as an intellectual
equal. She knew all his moods, some of which were very difficult, and
she bore them all; though when he was most tyrannous she became only
passive, waiting, with a woman's wisdom, for the tempest to blow over.
Miss Vanhomrigh, on the other hand, was one of those girls who, though
they have high spirit, take an almost voluptuous delight in yielding to
a spirit that is stronger still. This beautiful creature felt a positive
fascination in Swift's presence and his imperious manner. When his eyes
flashed, and his voice thundered out words of anger, she looked at him
with adoration, and bowed in a sort of ecstasy before him. If he chose
to accost a great lady with "Well, madam, are you as ill-natured and
disagreeable as when I met you last? " Esther Vanhomrigh thrilled at the
insolent audacity of the man. Her evident fondness for him exercised a
seductive influence over Swift.
As the two were thrown more and more together, the girl lost all her
self-control. Swift did not in any sense make love to her, though he
gave her the somewhat fanciful name of "Vanessa"; but she, driven on by
a high-strung, unbridled temperament, made open love to him. When he was
about to return to Ireland, there came one startling moment when Vanessa
flung herself into the arms of Swift, and amazed him by pouring out a
torrent of passionate endearments.
Swift seems to have been surprised. He did what he could to quiet her.
He told her that they were too unequal in years and fortune for anything
but friendship, and he offered to give her as much friendship as she
desired.
Doubtless he thought that, after returning to Ireland, he would not see
Vanessa any more. In this, however, he was mistaken. An ardent girl,
with a fortune of her own, was not to be kept from the man whom
absence only made her love the more. In addition, Swift carried on his
correspondence with her, which served to fan the flame and to increase
the sway that Swift had already acquired.
Vanessa wrote, and with every letter she burned and pined. Swift
replied, and each reply enhanced her yearning for him. Ere long,
Vanessa's mother died, and Vanessa herself hastened to Ireland and took
up her residence near Dublin. There, for years, was enacted this tragic
comedy--Esther Johnson was near Swift, and had all his confidence;
Esther Vanhomrigh was kept apart from him, while still receiving
missives from him, and, later, even visits.
It was at this time, after he had become dean of St. Patrick's
Cathedral, in Dublin, that Swift was married to Esther Johnson--for it
seems probable that the ceremony took place, though it was nothing more
than a form. They still saw each other only in the presence of a third
person. Nevertheless, some knowledge of their close relationship leaked
out. Stella had been jealous of her rival during the years that Swift
spent in London. Vanessa was now told that Swift was married to the
other woman, or that she was his mistress. Writhing with jealousy, she
wrote directly to Stella, and asked whether she was Dean Swift's wife.
In answer Stella replied that she was, and then she sent Vanessa's
letter to Swift himself.
All the fury of his nature was roused in him; and he was a man who could
be very terrible when angry. He might have remembered the intense love
which Vanessa bore for him, the humility with which she had accepted his
conditions, and, finally, the loneliness of this girl.
But Swift was utterly unsparing. No gleam of pity entered his heart as
he leaped upon a horse and galloped out to Marley Abbey, where she was
living--"his prominent eyes arched by jet-black brows and glaring with
the green fury of a cat's. " Reaching the house, he dashed into it, with
something awful in his looks, made his way to Vanessa, threw her letter
down upon the table and, after giving her one frightful glare, turned on
his heel, and in a moment more was galloping back to Dublin.
The girl fell to the floor in an agony of terror and remorse. She was
taken to her room, and only three weeks afterward was carried forth,
having died literally of a broken heart.
Five years later, Stella also died, withering away a sacrifice to
what the world has called Swift's cruel heartlessness and egotism. His
greatest public triumphs came to him in his final years of melancholy
isolation; but in spite of the applause that greeted The Drapier Letters
and Gulliver's Travels, he brooded morbidly over his past life. At last
his powerful mind gave way, so that he died a victim to senile dementia.
By his directions his body was interred in the same coffin with
Stella's, in the cathedral of which he had been dean.
Such is the story of Dean Swift, and it has always suggested several
curious questions. Why, if he loved Stella, did he not marry her long
before? Why, when he married her, did he treat her still as if she were
not his wife? Why did he allow Vanessa's love to run like a scarlet
thread across the fabric of the other affection, which must have been so
strong?
Many answers have been given to these questions. That which was
formulated by Sir Walter Scott is a simple one, and has been generally
accepted. Scott believed that Swift was physically incapacitated for
marriage, and that he needed feminine sympathy, which he took where he
could get it, without feeling bound to give anything in return.
If Scott's explanation be the true one, it still leaves Swift exposed to
ignominy as a monster of ingratitude. Therefore, many of his biographers
have sought other explanations. No one can palliate his conduct toward
Vanessa; but Sir Leslie Stephen makes a plea for him with reference
to Stella. Sir Leslie points out that until Swift became dean of St.
Patrick's his income was far too small to marry on, and that after his
brilliant but disappointing three years in London, when his prospects of
advancement were ruined, he felt himself a broken man.
Furthermore, his health was always precarious, since he suffered from a
distressing illness which attacked him at intervals, rendering him both
deaf and giddy. The disease is now known as Meniere's disease, from its
classification by the French physician, Meniere, in 1861. Swift felt
that he lived in constant danger of some sudden stroke that would
deprive him either of life or reason; and his ultimate insanity makes it
appear that his forebodings were not wholly futile. Therefore, though he
married Stella, he kept the marriage secret, thus leaving her free, in
case of his demise, to marry as a maiden, and not to be regarded as a
widow.
Sir Leslie offers the further plea that, after all, Stella's life was
what she chose to make it. She enjoyed Swift's friendship, which she
preferred to the love of any other man.
Another view is that of Dr. Richard Garnett, who has discussed the
question with some subtlety. "Swift," says Dr. Garnett, "was by nature
devoid of passion. He was fully capable of friendship, but not of love.
The spiritual realm, whether of divine or earthly things, was a region
closed to him, where he never set foot. " On the side of friendship
he must greatly have preferred Stella to Vanessa, and yet the latter
assailed him on his weakest side--on the side of his love of imperious
domination.
Vanessa hugged the fetters to which Stella merely submitted. Flattered
to excess by her surrender, yet conscious of his obligations and his
real preference, he could neither discard the one beauty nor desert the
other.
Therefore, he temporized with both of them, and when the choice was
forced upon him he madly struck down the woman for whom he cared the
less.
One may accept Dr. Garnett's theory with a somewhat altered conclusion.
It is not true, as a matter of recorded fact, that Swift was incapable
of passion, for when a boy at college he was sought out by various young
women, and he sought them out in turn. His fiery letter to Miss Waring
points to the same conclusion. When Esther Johnson began to love him he
was heart-free, yet unable, because of his straitened means, to marry.
But Esther Johnson always appealed more to his reason, his friendship,
and his comfort, than to his love, using the word in its material,
physical sense. This love was stirred in him by Vanessa. Yet when he
met Vanessa he had already gone too far with Esther Johnson to break the
bond which had so long united them, nor could he think of a life without
her, for she was to him his other self.
At the same time, his more romantic association with Vanessa roused
those instincts which he had scarcely known himself to be possessed of.
His position was, therefore, most embarrassing. He hoped to end it when
he left London and returned to Ireland; but fate was unkind to him in
this, because Vanessa followed him. He lacked the will to be frank
with her, and thus he stood a wretched, halting victim of his own dual
nature.
He was a clergyman, and at heart religious. He had also a sense of
honor, and both of these traits compelled him to remain true to Esther
Johnson. The terrible outbreak which brought about Vanessa's death was
probably the wild frenzy of a tortured soul. It recalls the picture of
some fierce animal brought at last to bay, and venting its own anguish
upon any object that is within reach of its fangs and claws.
No matter how the story may be told, it makes one shiver, for it is a
tragedy in which the three participants all meet their doom--one crushed
by a lightning-bolt of unreasoning anger, the other wasting away through
hope deferred; while the man whom the world will always hold responsible
was himself destined to end his years blind and sleepless, bequeathing
his fortune to a madhouse, and saying, with his last muttered breath:
"I am a fool! "
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY AND MARY GODWIN
A great deal has been said and written in favor of early marriage; and,
in a general way, early marriage may be an admirable thing. Young men
and young women who have no special gift of imagination, and who have
practically reached their full mental development at twenty-one or
twenty-two--or earlier, even in their teens--may marry safely; because
they are already what they will be. They are not going to experience any
growth upward and outward. Passing years simply bring them more closely
together, until they have settled down into a sort of domestic unity,
by which they think alike, act alike, and even gradually come to look
alike.
But early wedlock spells tragedy to the man or the woman of genius. In
their teens they have only begun to grow. What they will be ten years
hence, no one can prophesy. Therefore, to mate so early in life is
to insure almost certain storm and stress, and, in the end, domestic
wreckage.
As a rule, it is the man, and not the woman, who makes the false step;
because it is the man who elects to marry when he is still very young.
If he choose some ill-fitting, commonplace, and unresponsive nature to
match his own, it is he who is bound in the course of time to learn his
great mistake. When the splendid eagle shall have got his growth,
and shall begin to soar up into the vault of heaven, the poor little
barn-yard fowl that he once believed to be his equal seems very far away
in everything. He discovers that she is quite unable to follow him in
his towering flights.
The story of Percy Bysshe Shelley is a singular one. The circumstances
of his early marriage were strange. The breaking of his marriage-bond
was also strange. Shelley himself was an extraordinary creature. He was
blamed a great deal in his lifetime for what he did, and since then some
have echoed the reproach. Yet it would seem as if, at the very beginning
of his life, he was put into a false position against his will. Because
of this he was misunderstood until the end of his brief and brilliant
and erratic career.
SHELLEY AND MARY GODWIN
In 1792 the French Revolution burst into flame, the mob of Paris stormed
the Tuileries, the King of France was cast into a dungeon to await his
execution, and the wild sons of anarchy flung their gauntlet of defiance
into the face of Europe. In this tremendous year was born young Shelley;
and perhaps his nature represented the spirit of the time.
Certainly, neither from his father nor from his mother did he derive
that perpetual unrest and that frantic fondness for revolt which
blazed out in the poet when he was still a boy. His father, Mr. Timothy
Shelley, was a very usual, thick-headed, unromantic English squire. His
mother--a woman of much beauty, but of no exceptional traits--was the
daughter of another squire, and at the time of her marriage was simply
one of ten thousand fresh-faced, pleasant-spoken English country girls.
If we look for a strain of the romantic in Shelley's ancestry, we
shall have to find it in the person of his grandfather, who was a very
remarkable and powerful character.
This person, Bysshe Shelley by name, had in his youth been associated
with some mystery. He was not born in England, but in America--and
in those days the name "America" meant almost anything indefinite and
peculiar. However this might be, Bysshe Shelley, though a scion of
a good old English family, had wandered in strange lands, and it was
whispered that he had seen strange sights and done strange things.
According to one legend, he had been married in America, though no one
knew whether his wife was white or black, or how he had got rid of her.
He might have remained in America all his life, had not a small
inheritance fallen to his share. This brought him back to England, and
he soon found that England was in reality the place to make his fortune.
He was a man of magnificent physique. His rovings had given him ease
and grace, and the power which comes from a wide experience of life. He
could be extremely pleasing when he chose; and he soon won his way into
the good graces of a rich heiress, whom he married.
With her wealth he became an important personage, and consorted with
gentlemen and statesmen of influence, attaching himself particularly to
the Duke of Northumberland, by whose influence he was made a baronet.
When his rich wife died, Shelley married a still richer bride; and so
this man, who started out as a mere adventurer without a shilling to his
name, died in 1813, leaving more than a million dollars in cash, with
lands whose rent-roll yielded a hundred thousand dollars every year.
If any touch of the romantic which we find in Shelley is a matter
of heredity, we must trace it to this able, daring, restless, and
magnificent old grandfather, who was the beau ideal of an English
squire--the sort of squire who had added foreign graces to native
sturdiness. But young Shelley, the future poet, seemed scarcely to be
English at all. As a young boy he cared nothing for athletic sports.
He was given to much reading. He thought a good deal about abstractions
with which most schoolboys never concern themselves at all.
Consequently, both in private schools and afterward at Eton, he became
a sort of rebel against authority. He resisted the fagging-system. He
spoke contemptuously of physical prowess. He disliked anything that he
was obliged to do, and he rushed eagerly into whatever was forbidden.
Finally, when he was sent to University College, Oxford, he broke
all bounds. At a time when Tory England was aghast over the French
Revolution and its results, Shelley talked of liberty and equality on
all occasions. He made friends with an uncouth but able fellow student,
who bore the remarkable name of Thomas Jefferson Hogg--a name that seems
rampant with republicanism--and very soon he got himself expelled from
the university for publishing a little tract of an infidel character
called "A Defense of Atheism. "
His expulsion for such a cause naturally shocked his father. It probably
disturbed Shelley himself; but, after all, it gave him some satisfaction
to be a martyr for the cause of free speech. He went to London with his
friend Hogg, and took lodgings there. He read omnivorously--Hogg says
as much as sixteen hours a day. He would walk through the most crowded
streets poring over a volume, while holding another under one arm.
His mind was full of fancies. He had begun what was afterward called
"his passion for reforming everything. " He despised most of the laws of
England. He thought its Parliament ridiculous. He hated its religion. He
was particularly opposed to marriage. This last fact gives some point to
the circumstances which almost immediately confronted him.
Shelley was now about nineteen years old--an age at which most English
boys are emerging from the public schools, and are still in the
hobbledehoy stage of their formation. In a way, he was quite far from
boyish; yet in his knowledge of life he was little more than a mere
child. He knew nothing thoroughly--much less the ways of men and women.
He had no visible means of existence except a small allowance from
his father. His four sisters, who were at a boarding-school on Clapham
Common, used to save their pin-money and send it to their gifted brother
so that he might not actually starve. These sisters he used to call
upon from time to time, and through them he made the acquaintance of a
sixteen-year-old girl named Harriet Westbrook.
Harriet Westbrook was the daughter of a black-visaged keeper of a
coffee-house in Mount Street, called "Jew Westbrook," partly because of
his complexion, and partly because of his ability to retain what he
had made. He was, indeed, fairly well off, and had sent his younger
daughter, Harriet, to the school where Shelley's sisters studied.
Harriet Westbrook seems to have been a most precocious person. Any girl
of sixteen is, of course, a great deal older and more mature than a
youth of nineteen. In the present instance Harriet might have been
Shelley's senior by five years. There is no doubt that she fell in love
with him; but, having done so, she by no means acted in the shy and
timid way that would have been most natural to a very young girl in her
first love-affair. Having decided that she wanted him, she made up her
mind to get Mm at any cost, and her audacity was equaled only by his
simplicity. She was rather attractive in appearance, with abundant hair,
a plump figure, and a pink-and-white complexion. This description makes
of her a rather doll-like girl; but doll-like girls are just the sort to
attract an inexperienced young man who has yet to learn that beauty and
charm are quite distinct from prettiness, and infinitely superior to it.
In addition to her prettiness, Harriet Westbrook had a vivacious manner
and talked quite pleasingly. She was likewise not a bad listener;
and she would listen by the hour to Shelley in his rhapsodies about
chemistry, poetry, the failure of Christianity, the national debt, and
human liberty, all of which he jumbled up without much knowledge, but in
a lyric strain of impassioned eagerness which would probably have made
the multiplication-table thrilling.
For Shelley himself was a creature of extraordinary fascination, both
then and afterward. There are no likenesses of him that do him justice,
because they cannot convey that singular appeal which the man himself
made to almost every one who met him.
The eminent painter, Mulready, once said that Shelley was too beautiful
for portraiture; and yet the descriptions of him hardly seem to bear
this out.
