Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World
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56. Dr. Thomas Sheridan. The normally jocular Sheridan adopts an air of solemn dignity.
Physically, Sheridan was not prepossessing. In a playful Latin poem Swift said he had the voice of a cricket, the thighs of a fly, the hands of a mouse, and the shanks of a heron. In another poem a servant is made to call him “a spindle-shanked hoddy-doddy.” Sheridan was incorrigibly impulsive. “His thoughts are sudden,” Swift said in a character sketch of his friend, “and the most unreasonable always comes uppermost; and he constantly resolves and acts upon his first thoughts, and then asks advice, but never once before.” Swift remarked to Charles Ford, his London friend who was now living at his estate near Dublin, “Sheridan is still the same—I mean in the sense that weathercocks are still the same.”40
Sheridan was native Irish, not Anglo-Irish. His forebears were originally O’Sioradains in County Cavan, and had converted to the Church of Ireland a hundred years before. A graduate of Trinity College, Sheridan was deeply learned in Latin and Greek, and to supplement his clergyman’s income he kept a school for boys. Dublin had no institution like Kilkenny College, and no public schools either. Schools run by private individuals had no fixed curricula, but in Sheridan’s there was a steady diet of the classics, and the students even put on a Greek play once a year. Swift enjoyed visiting the school, where he often took part in the public examinations, and when Dr. Sheridan was sick or out of town he sometimes substituted for him in the classroom.41
Such schools for girls as existed had few academic pretensions. “At Mrs. Dawson’s Boarding School the following work is to be taught, as embroidery, quilting, flourishing, cross stitch and tenth stitch, plain work and dressing of heads, with clearing and washing all manner of gauzes. . . . Likewise dancing, writing, and pastry is taught.”42
If Sheridan had remained unmarried he would probably have had a distinguished career as a fellow of Trinity, but he became ineligible when he married Elizabeth McFadden, possibly before graduating. It was a horrendously unhappy marriage, as his friends all knew and as he freely acknowledged. He called her “a clog bound to me by an iron chain, as heavy as a millstone,” and lamented that “a man should suffer all his life for the frenzy of youth. I was in the mad years of life when I married, and mad to marry, and almost mad after I had married.” Swift said that Elizabeth Sheridan was “as cross as the Devil, and as lazy as any of her sister sows, and as nasty.” But as Pat Rogers comments, this “wretched marriage” produced the actor and writer Thomas Sheridan the younger, and his son, the great playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan.43
A favorite motto of Swift’s was vive la bagatelle, keeping gloom at bay with playful trifles. In this, the younger Sheridan said, “no one was better qualified to keep up the ball” than his father. They regularly exchanged jocular verses, with the stipulation that they had to be composed in five minutes or less. Most of them were naturally thrown away.44
There were language games as well. Swift pretended to believe that words should be abbreviated whenever possible to letters of the alphabet—“The same thing men of business are not ignorant of, for thus three vowels shall stand for a promissory note, IOU ₤20.” A letter to a lady would thus begin, “D R L n U r a Bu t. I s tm u a D t” (“Darling, you are a beauty. I esteem you a deity”).45
And of course Sheridan was a willing participant in punning. He liked to refer to himself, in fact, as “Tom Punsibi,” a name that was itself a pun since it means “a pun on himself.” Sibi is Latin for “himself,” and Sheridan’s surname, sometimes spelled Siridan, was formed from the Irish sír (always) and dán (poetry).46
A poem by Sheridan on the origin of punning begins in mock homage to the androgynous primal human in Plato’s Symposium:
Once on a time, in merry mood,
Jove made a pun of flesh and blood:
A double, two-faced, living creature,
Androgynos, of two-fold nature.
In Plato’s myth, the subsequent division into sexes was the beginning of all our troubles. The Symposium ends with Socrates telling his drunken companions that tragedy and comedy are really the same thing. In Sheridan’s irreverent version,
Whatever words the male expressed,
The female turned them to a jest;
Whatever words the female spoke,
The male converted to a joke.47
Swift’s own puns tended to be desperately elaborate. Thus, “all eggs under the grate” becomes “Alexander the Great.” He also came up with a nice imaginary derivation for the word “pun”—“from the French word punaise, which signifies a little stinking insect that gets into the skin, provokes continual itching, and is with great difficulty removed.”48 It may well be that punning, for Swift, was the reverse side of his obsession with stylistic correctness. Puns subvert propriety from within, a miniature expression of the anarchic inventiveness that created A Tale of a Tub.
CHAPTER 19
Political Peril
SWIFT UNDER SURVEILLANCE
Swift was now far from the world of London politics, but not from its influence, for the victorious Whigs were on the warpath. Back in 1712, when he prepared an index for his collected Examiner papers, he identified the Whigs complacently as “not properly a national party, but a little, inconsiderable, undone faction.” Just two years after that they regained power, as he later said, “with wrath and vengeance in their hearts.”1 The Tory party, meanwhile, was in the process of committing political suicide. Swift’s closest associates would be driven into exile or confined to prison, and for years to come he too would face the threat of arrest and imprisonment.
What wrecked the Tories was the well-grounded suspicion that they had been secretly colluding with the Pretender, promising that if he would convert to Protestantism, they would put him on the throne. Swift always denied that he had Jacobite sympathies, but of course he would need to deny it. Whatever his private feelings may have been, nothing in writing was ever found to incriminate him. The best guess is that he didn’t actively support bringing back the Pretender, and might not have done so even if James turned Protestant—the danger of civil war would have been too great. On the other hand, he disliked William III and despised George I, and might have been glad to see the native Stuart dynasty restored.2
Early in 1715 Erasmus Lewis, Oxford’s former right-hand man, wrote to warn, “If you have not already hid your papers in some private place in the hands of a trusty friend, I fear they will fall into the hands of your enemies.” Swift’s mail was definitely being opened, and he told a friend with amusement that the authorities thought they had found incriminating evidence, “but after opening several seals it proved only plum cake.” Without Swift’s knowledge, Archbishop King was shown some of the intercepted letters, but to King’s relief they were entirely innocent. Still, Swift was alarmed, and he acquired a legal treatise entitled A Collection of the Several Statutes, and Parts of Statutes, Now in Force, Relating to High Treason and Misprision of High Treason. “This is not a time for any man to talk to the purpose,” Pope wrote. “Truth is a kind of contraband commodity which I would not venture to export.”3
In Ireland, Tories were systematically purged from office; eight of ten judges were removed, along with seventy-two justices of the peace. Bishops couldn’t be deposed, but every vacancy henceforth was filled with a loyal Whig, guaranteeing that Swift would never be a bishop. And for several years, his Tory affiliation made many Dubliners distrust him. According to the younger Sheridan, “He was constantly insulted with opprobrious language as he walked the streets, and some of the more violent used to take up dirt from the kennel [gutter] to throw at him as he passed along; insomuch, that he was obliged never to go abroad without servants armed to protect his person.”4
In the winter of 1715 a remarkable incident occurred when Swift was riding on the beach toward Howth, and he was so indignant that he made a formal petition to the Irish House of Lords. A Whig peer named Lord Blayney, riding in a fast chaise with another man, galloped after him with t
he clear intention of running him down. After taking evasive action Swift reached safety at a ditch that the chaise couldn’t cross. In his account,
The two gentlemen stopping their career, your petitioner mildly expostulated with them. Whereupon one of the gentlemen said, “Damn you, is not the road as free for us as for you?” and calling to his servant who rode behind said, “Tom (or some such name) is the pistol loaden with ball?” To which the servant answered, “Yes, my Lord,” and gave him the pistol. Your petitioner then said to the gentleman, “Pray, sir, do not shoot, for my horse is apt to start, by which I shall endanger my life.” The chaise went forward, and your petitioner took the opportunity to stay behind.5
The implication was that Lord Blayney was unlikely to hit anything he was aiming at, so that the only thing Swift had to fear was his horse’s alarm when the gun went off. In the event, no action was taken against Blayney.
BOLINGBROKE DISGRACED
Meanwhile a government witch hunt was under way throughout Britain, searching for Jacobites. And Bolingbroke did something that was catastrophic for the future of the Tory party—he panicked and fled to France. One evening he appeared at a London playhouse, and the next day, disguised as a servant, he left the country.6
This was an obvious admission of guilt. Bolingbroke had indeed been negotiating with the Pretender. His gamble was that if James Stuart would agree to turn Protestant while Queen Anne was still alive, she might welcome a Stuart successor, replace Oxford with Bolingbroke, and smash the Whigs. J. H. Plumb believes the scheme could actually have worked, but it foundered on James’s sincere devotion to his Catholic faith. “To a man of Bolingbroke’s worldliness and agnosticism,” Plumb comments, “a change of religion was a paltry matter.”7 But now the queen was dead, George I was on his way from Hanover, and the Tory party was in ruins.
From this perspective, Swift’s abrupt retreat from London to Letcombe Bassett, in the months before the queen’s death, was a prudent move to get out before it was too late. It’s now certain that Oxford, as well as Bolingbroke, had been in touch with the Pretender, and although Ehrenpreis believes they successfully pulled the wool over Swift’s eyes, it seems highly unlikely that Swift never suspected it. Even if they didn’t confide in him explicitly, he had to guess what they were up to. And he was well aware that you could go to jail for not telling what you knew, even if you had done nothing wrong yourself.8
Two years later, in 1716, Archbishop King was afraid that Swift was still in danger, and pressed him to be frank about his situation. Swift answered, “Had there ever been the least overture or intent of bringing in the Pretender during my acquaintance with the ministry, I think I must have been very stupid not to have picked out some discoveries or suspicions; and though I am not sure I should have turned informer, yet I am sure I should have dropped some general cautions, and immediately have retired.”9
What Swift had done was indeed to offer Oxford and Bolingbroke some “general cautions” and then leave town. King understood his meaning perfectly, and replied, “I never believed you [were] for the Pretender, but remember that when the surmises of that matter run high, you retired, which agrees with what you say you ought to have done in that case.”10 Staying in a country vicarage far from London, Swift avoided knowing too much.
In September of 1715, a rebellion broke out, known as the Jacobite Rising or “the Fifteen.” Bolingbroke actively encouraged it, telling the Pretender, “Things are hastening to that point that either you, Sir, at the head of the Tories, must save the Church and Constitution of England, or both must be irretrievably lost forever.”11 Fighting began in Scotland, ancestral home of the Stuarts, and at first the Jacobite forces won some battles. The Pretender then joined them, but momentum flagged, and by early 1716 their campaign to recover his throne came to an ignominious end. The Pretender went back to France for good.
Swift’s friend the Duke of Ormonde was charged with high treason for supporting the rebellion, and escaped to France. He never saw England or his wife again. Swift wrote that Ormonde’s downfall was like an unreal dream “to those who will consider the nobleness of his birth, the great merits of his ancestors and his own, his long unspotted loyalty, his affability, generosity, and sweetness of nature. I knew him long and well.” Swift added that Ormonde “no more conceived himself to be acting high treason than he did when he was wounded and a prisoner at Landen for his sovereign King William, or when he took and burned the enemy’s fleet at Vigo.”12
OXFORD IN THE TOWER
Bolingbroke panicked, but Oxford didn’t. With characteristic caution, he had been careful to leave no paper trail, and he knew that the Whigs would never be able to convict him. He was given repeated opportunities to get away as Bolingbroke had, and he refused to do it. Lacking evidence for a trial, the government simply kept him in the Tower of London without charges for two whole years. He was the last high-ranking British statesman to be imprisoned there.
As soon as Swift heard of Oxford’s arrest, he wrote to him to say that he was “the ablest and faithfullest minister and truest lover of your country that this age has produced. . . . Your heroic and Christian behavior under this prosecution astonisheth everyone but me, who know you so well, and know how little it is in the power of human actions or events to discompose you.” Swift also assured Oxford in verse that even if other people were talking too much, he himself never would:
Faithful silence hath a sure reward;
Within our breast be every secret barred.
He who betrays his friend shall never be
Under one roof or in one ship with me.13
These lines strongly suggest that Swift did know what Oxford and Bolingbroke had been up to. That he denied it in writing proves nothing; he would have been a fool not to deny it.
Finally, in June of 1717, Erasmus Lewis was able to assure Swift that Oxford’s accusers “publicly own that they neither have, nor ever had any evidence.” Two weeks after that Lewis reported, “My Lord Oxford’s impeachment was discharged last night, by the unanimous consent of all the Lords present. . . . Our friend, who seems more formed for adversity than prosperity, has at present many more friends than ever he had before in any part of his life.”14 “All the Lords present” meant that a number of peers, bitterly opposed to setting Oxford free, absented themselves from the vote. The Duke of Marlborough, now in retirement but still eligible to sit in the House of Lords, was one of them.
Soon afterward Swift wrote to Oxford, offering to come and stay with him in Herefordshire and adding pointedly, “I have many things to say to you, and to inquire of you, as you may easily imagine.” Oxford’s reply was unenthusiastic. “Our impatience to see you should not draw you into uneasiness. We long to embrace you—if you find it may be no inconvenience to yourself.” Oxford was probably hinting that he was still under suspicion, and it would be best for Swift to stay away. They went on exchanging occasional letters—Oxford was always a poor correspondent—but they never saw each other again. After Oxford’s death seven years later, Swift wrote to ask his son whether he had any papers that could be used for a biography. “Such a work most properly belongs to me, who loved and respected him above all men, and had the honor to know him better than any other of my level did.”15 Oxford’s son seems never to have sent the papers.
At about the time when Oxford was released from the Tower, Swift preached a sermon in St. Patrick’s on the tenth commandment, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.” It was filled with biblical examples, but made obvious reference to current politics. In times of party rivalry, Swift said, “there is never wanting a set of evil instruments, who either out of mad zeal, private hatred, or filthy lucre, are always ready to offer their service to the prevailing side, and become accusers of their brethren without any regard to truth or charity.” Writing to Pope (in a letter that may never have been sent), Swift called informers “the most accursed and prostitute and abandoned race that God ever permitted to plague mankind.”16
THE FORMIDABLE SIR ROBERT
Rejoicing in their power in 1712, the Tories had pushed through a vote by which Robert Walpole, leader of the opposition in the House of Commons, was expelled for alleged corruption and imprisoned for five months in the Tower. He was charged with skimming money from military contracts, but that was never proved, though it’s true that he got incredibly rich during this period. From the Tower, Walpole wrote to his sister, “You hear from me from this place, but I am sure it will be a satisfaction to you to know that this barbarous injustice being only the effect of party malice, does not concern me at all, and I heartily despise what I shall one day revenge.”17
In 1713 Swift was still dismissing Walpole as a second-rater, adding that that readers “must excuse me for being so particular about one who is otherwise altogether obscure.” He and his colleagues had no idea what they were up against. As Walpole’s biographer, J. H. Plumb, summarizes his talents, “His powers of concentration were of the highest, and they were backed by an obstinate will, soaring ambition, and a greedy love of power, for he was a man utterly confident of his own capacity to rule.” Plumb calls his ambition “aching,” and says that he pursued power “with the greed and lust of a jealous lover.”18
Oxford was never driven in that way. He enjoyed power, but not enough to master every detail or to manipulate allies and rivals with relentless skill. Bolingbroke was driven and self-confident, but it was fatal overconfidence. Brilliant though he was, he was erratic and untrustworthy, the type of person the English call too clever by half. He and Walpole had been rivals ever since they were schoolboys at Eton together, and at first it was Bolingbroke who shot to the top, but now the tables were turned. It was payback when he fled to France and Oxford went to the Tower.