Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World

by Leo Damrosch

  52. Swift’s wine bottles. A nineteenth-century depiction of two of Swift’s bottles, in dark green glass. Each held a pint and a quarter (the modern seventy-five-centiliter bottle holds a little more than a pint and a half).

  The vertigo was bad, and its attacks lasted longer than they used to. Unquestionably they contributed to the depression. In addition to nausea that often left Swift helpless in bed, the tinnitus got so bad that it was like “the noise of seven watermills in my ears,” so that the only people he could stand to listen to were “trebles and countertenors.” By now his left ear was effectively deaf, and he had to turn the right one toward people talking to him. These afflictions turn up in Gulliver’s Travels, where the sound of a giant farmer’s voice “pierced my ears like that of a watermill,” and where sounds are frequently described as coming from the right.16

  Medical intervention was useless. Swift submitted patiently to the whole range of treatments that were recommended: emetics to provoke vomiting, bloodletting, searing blisters on the back of the neck, and pills concocted from all sorts of revolting substances. In one letter he mentioned “blister upon blister and pills upon pills.”17

  Swift’s close friend Arbuthnot was one of the most distinguished physicians of the day, but all he could suggest was “cinnabar of antimony and castor, made up into boluses with confect of alkermes.” Alchermes was a liqueur colored red from the insect kermes vermilio; cinnabar of antimony was produced by combining antimony with mercury and sulfur. The castor oil promoted a purgative effect. At another time Arbuthnot recommended a bitter concoction of zedoary root, galangal, and wormwood, to be taken after first inducing vomiting with ipecacuana. Swift told Ford after one such treatment, “I have been twice severely vomited, to the utmost I could possibly bear, but without amendment.” Ford replied sensibly, “Those sort of disorders puzzle the physicians everywhere, and they are merciless dogs in purging or vomiting to no purpose, when they don’t know what to do.” More harmless, but nonetheless weird, was a recommendation to wear a quilted cap stuffed with cloves, mace, and nutmegs.18

  THE DEAN AND HIS SERVANTS

  A sick man can be difficult to live with, as Sir William Temple was, and Swift’s servants found him so. Though not a harsh employer, he was a demanding one. Leslie Stephen comments that Swift studied the behavior of servants with the same attention that Darwin gave to worms, with the difference that Darwin “had none but kindly feelings for worms.”19

  Orrery, though a nobleman and a snob, was startled by Swift’s piercing scrutiny even of other people’s servants:

  Dr. Swift dined with me one day in Dublin. . . . When the first dish was removed and the second was brought upon the table, the Dean became for some time pensive and very grave. I asked him the meaning. “I am thinking,” says he, “how often, if your servant had been mine, I should have chid him for faults which I have seen him commit; and I find the number of times amount to twenty-two.” These faults were: not giving a plate with the right hand; not taking off a dish with both hands; putting the plates too near or too far from the fire; and such kind of trifles, which gave him constant causes of fretfulness and passion, and made his servants, to whom he was in general a very kind and indulgent master, very fearful and uneasy.”20

  Laetitia Pilkington likewise noted Swift’s surveillance techniques. When entertaining he would sit opposite a mirror in which he could watch his servants at the sideboard. On one occasion, “the Dean, turning his eye on the looking glass, espied the butler opening a bottle of ale, helping himself to the first glass, and very kindly jumbling the rest together, that his master and guests might all fare alike. ‘Ha, friend!’ says the Dean, ‘sharp’s the word. I find you drank my ale, for which I stop two shillings of your board wages this week, for I scorn to be outdone in anything, even in cheating.’”21

  As usual, however, Swift was concealing an aspect of the situation that reflected well on himself. The point of board wages was that servants normally had to buy their own food. But Swift gave his servants three free meals a day as well as their regular wages, which meant that the board wages were a complete bonus. This butler, in particular, got 4 shillings a week in board wages, amounting to over £10 a year, which was as much as the total annual salary of most servants. And it has been suggested that the whole thing might have been a setup, prearranged between Swift and the butler to impress the guests. It seems improbable that a servant, knowing Swift well, would help himself to a drink right in front of a mirror.22

  Perhaps with memories of the unreliable Patrick in London, Swift drew up “laws” for his household staff, with penalties strictly defined:

  Whatever servant shall be taken in a manifest lie shall forfeit one shilling out of his or her board wages.

  The woman may go out when the Dean is abroad for one hour, but no longer, under the same penalty with the men, but provided the two men-servants keep the house until she returns. Otherwise, either of the servants who goes out before her return shall forfeit a crown out of his wages, as above.

  Whatever other laws the Dean shall think fit to make, at any time to come, for the governance of his servants, and forfeitures for neglect or disobedience, all the servants shall be bound to submit to.23

  Servants had to be especially careful not to offend against Swift’s standards of cleanliness. He listed, with obvious irony, a variety of ways that they could extinguish candles, as alternatives to simply blowing them out: “You may run the candle end against the wainscot, which puts the snuff out immediately; you may lay it on the floor, and tread the snuff out with your foot; you may hold it upside down until it is choked with its own grease, or cram it into the socket of the candlestick; you may whirl it round in your hand till it goes out; when you go to bed, after you have made water, you may dip your candle end into the chamber pot.” According to Dr. Lyon, “among all kinds of smells, none offended him so much as the snuff of a candle.”24

  In fact Swift rarely used candles, since they were very expensive. Instead he made do with rushlights, pincerlike holders for rushes that had been soaked in bacon grease or mutton fat. They gave a smoky flame and an unpleasant smell, which he evidently endured for the sake of economy. Dr. Delany remembered that he resolved to read by candlelight once he had increased the value of the deanery, but admitted ruefully that he never kept his resolution. Even in homes that did use candles, lighting was feeble by modern standards. “Much was invisible,” a historian says, “in a world lit by candlelight, rush-light, and moonlight.”25

  At bottom the issue was not just “good” servants or “bad” ones but the vulnerability created by sharing one’s life with poorly paid, often dishonest employees. Eighteenth-century novels are full of servants who conspire against each other, defame their masters, and steal whenever they can get away with it. In a sermon Swift reviewed their misdeeds:

  If we consider the many misfortunes that befall private families, it will be found that servants are the causes and instruments of them all. Are our goods embezzled, wasted, and destroyed? Is our house burnt down to the ground? It is by the sloth, the drunkenness, or the villainy of servants. Are we robbed and murdered in our beds? It is by confederacy with our servants. Are we engaged in quarrels and misunderstandings with our neighbours? These were all begun and inflamed by the false, malicious tongues of our servants. Are the secrets of our family betrayed, and evil repute spread of us? Our servants were the authors. Do false accusers rise up against us (an evil too frequent in this country)? They have been tampering with our servants.

  53. Swift’s rushlight, now in St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

  Samuel Johnson, though notable for kindness to servants, said much the same thing: “No condition is more hateful or despicable than his who has put himself in the power of his servant. . . . He is condemned to purchase, by continual bribes, that secrecy which bribes never secured, and which, after a long course of submission, promises, and anxieties, he will find violated in a fit of rage, or in a frolic of drunkenness.”26

/>   In his own way Swift tried to be tactful. Delany was present when a badly overdone roast was served, whereupon Swift sent for the cook and said calmly, “Sweetheart, take this down to the kitchen, and do it less.” When she protested that that was impossible, he pointed out that if it had been underdone, there would have been no difficulty. “Why then, sweetheart, let me advise you, if you must commit a fault, commit a fault that can be mended.” Only when the cook had left the room did he permit his irascibility to emerge. “Turning to the company, he cried, ‘You see, gentlemen, how I bear this; and yet I can assure you, this was the very thing that tried Job’s patience and got the better of it, when none of his other calamities could: to wait for his victuals, as we have done, a great while, and then have them sent up to him roasted to rags.’”27

  In truth, the roasts were never anything special. Dr. Delany teased Swift about the difference between Swift and his predecessor, John Stearne:

  In the days of good John, if you came here to dine,

  You had choice of good meat, but no choice of good wine.

  In Jonathan’s reign, if you come here to eat,

  You have choice of good wine, but no choice of good meat.28

  54. The Alexander McGee memorial.

  Some servants became much more than employees. That was true of Swift’s housekeeper, Anne Brent, who often dined with him when there were no guests. Swift also had the highest regard for his faithful manservant, Alexander (“Saunders”) McGee. He was deeply distressed when McGee died in 1722 at the age of twenty-nine: “Poor Saunders died on Saturday last, and was buried on Easter Sunday, and in him I have lost one of my best friends as well as the best servant in the kingdom.” He performed the funeral service himself “and was observed to shed tears.” In his will McGee left Swift “a fusil, quail pipes and nets . . . as the last mark of duty and affection from a faithful servant.” It’s not clear whether Swift ever used the gun, let alone the “quail pipes,” which were whistles to lure birds by imitating their call.29

  In the southern side aisle in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, a modest marble plaque stands out by its difference from the pompous memorials of the rich and famous: “Here lieth the body of Alexander McGee, servant to Dr. Swift, Dean of St. Patrick’s. His grateful master caused this monument to be erected in memory of his discretion, fidelity, and diligence in that humble station.” When Swift originally composed the epitaph, he called himself Saunders’s “grateful friend and master.” A snobbish friend persuaded him to omit the word “friend.” And in a culture deeply imbued with class consciousness, even the revised version struck some people as outrageous. Swift’s enemy Jonathan Smedley complained that it was “a kind of burlesque apotheosis that he celebrated in honour of his deceased servant, who used to squeeze his lemons, and for his faithful discharge of that important trust had an inscription engraved to his memory on his master’s large punchbowl.” Smedley thought the memorial must have been a joke.30

  SOCIAL LIFE

  Selective quotations from Swift’s letters, especially in his later years, can give the impression that he was miserable in Ireland. He calls himself, in biblical language, “a stranger in a strange land.” He says that Ireland is “the most disagreeable place in Europe,” and that it is “a wretched, dirty dog-hole and prison, but it is a good enough place to die in.” He even exclaims that he expects to “die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.”31 But these are all deliberate exaggerations, usually to impress English friends with how unkind the world had been. Before long, Swift, who was always sociable, acquired a wide circle of friends. There were Worrall and Walls, and a pair of brothers named Dan and John Jackson, and no fewer than five Grattan brothers. All were intelligent and congenial, though we know them only indistinctly from casual references. Deane Swift the younger, who was still just a boy during these years, heard from members of Swift’s circle that he spent most of the day with friends, from noon until bedtime at eleven.32

  The most important friendship of all was with Stella, but it remains as hidden as ever, though occasional references confirm that she participated in the social evenings. A number of their closest friends were certain that in 1716 they were secretly married. Others were just as certain that they didn’t. That strange mystery will be taken up later.

  The closest male friends were two young clergymen, Thomas Sheridan and Patrick Delany, many of whose comments have already been quoted. Delany was the popular vicar of St. Werburgh’s, the church in which Swift was supposedly baptized. He was unusually well off for a clergyman, having married a lady with money, and they regularly entertained at their impressive country house, which Swift dubbed Delville. “Of all the gentlemen I ever knew,” Laetitia Pilkington recalled, “this I must say, that Dr. Delany excels in one point particularly, which is in giving an elegant entertainment, with ease, cheerfulness, and an hospitality which makes the company happy.”33

  55. Dr. Patrick Delany. Delany’s comfortable, well-fed countenance reflects his excellence as a host.

  Delany was a man of wide interests, one of which was the native Gaelic language, and through him Swift became acquainted with the blind musician Turlough Carolan (more properly, Toirdhealbhach Ó Cearbhallain). Carolan, who went blind at eighteen and was then apprenticed to a harper, was a celebrity in Dublin and welcome at country estates, where he would sing verses in praise of his hosts.34

  There is no evidence that Swift ever learned much Irish, but he picked up at least a smattering. Sheridan was amused by his chumminess with country people:

  Conforming to the tattered rabble,

  He learns their Irish tongue to gabble,

  And what our anger more provokes,

  He’s pleased with their insipid jokes.35

  Gaelic words do show up here and there in Swift’s writings, and on one occasion, working from a literal translation, he produced a spirited version of a ballad that Carolan had set to music.

  O’Rourk’s noble fare

  Will ne’er be forgot

  By those who were there,

  Or those who were not.

  His revels to keep,

  We sup and we dine

  On seven score sheep,

  Fat bullocks, and swine. . . .

  They dance in a round,

  Cutting capers and ramping;

  A mercy the ground

  Did not burst with their stamping.

  The floor is all wet

  With leaps and with jumps,

  While the water and sweat

  Splish, splash in their pumps.36

  Swift liked to note down scraps of dialogue in which Gaelic words would mingle in with English ones.

  A. He sometimes coshers with me, and once a month I take a pipe with him, and we shoh it about for an hour together.

  B. Well, I’d give a cow in Connaugh to see you together. I hear he keeps good horses.

  A. None but garrawns, and I have seen him often riding on a sougawn. In short, he is no better than a spawlpeen, a perfect Monaghan.

  This was the patois of the Anglo-Irish planters. “Shoh” comes from seach, to take turns; a “spawlpeen” is a common laborer, from spailpín. To “cosher” is to find lodging with friends or relatives, a “garrawn” is a gelding, and a “sougawn” is a straw saddle. Connaught is the western province of Ireland, named here for the alliteration with “cow”; a person from County Monaghan is understood to be a rustic clod.37 Indeed, there may be something especially Irish in Swift’s love of wordplay.

  At bottom, however, Swift was no admirer of the native Irish tongue, because he thought it trapped its speakers in a cultural ghetto. He called it “barbarous,” criticized its “abominable sounds,” and said that it did more than anything else “to prevent the Irish from being tamed.” On another occasion he talked about “civilizing” the Irish in much the same way that the English would talk about people in India: “It would be a noble achievement to abolish the Irish language in this kingdom, so far at least as to oblige all the natives to sp
eak only English on every occasion of business in shops, markets, fairs, and other places of dealing. . . . This would, in a great measure, civilize the most barbarous among them, reconcile them to our customs and manner of living, and reduce great numbers to the national religion, whatever kind may then happen to be established.”38 That last comment might seem surprising, coming from the dean of St. Patrick’s, but it had always been Swift’s principle that the crucial thing was to enforce a single national religion, not to insist on the Anglican Church as the sole repository of truth.

  Most valued of all Swift’s friends was Dr. Thomas Sheridan (not to be confused with his son the actor and biographer, also named Thomas). Delany said that the bond was obvious: Sheridan “had a faculty, and indeed a felicity, of throwing out hints and materials of mirth and humor, beyond any man I ever knew.” The younger Sheridan concurred that his father “had a lively fancy, and a surprising quickness of invention. He had such a perpetual flow of spirits, such a ready wit and variety of humour, that I have often heard his acquaintance say it was impossible for the most splenetic man not to be cheerful in his company.”39 Wit is verbal, and often sarcastic and hostile; humor is situational, genial, and tolerant. It is rare for both to be highly developed in the same person. Voltaire had wit but not humor; Dickens had humor but not wit. Swift—like another great Irish writer, Oscar Wilde—had both, and in Sheridan he found a kindred spirit.