We're delighted to present a pair of extracts from the essential new anthology Best-Loved Swift, edited by John Wyse Jackson and published by the O'Brien Press.
This anthology offers fresh view of the life, work and wit of Jonathan Swift, the first of Ireland’s truly great writers, presented through his poetry, fiction, epigrams, social satires and personal letters.
From The Blunders, Deficiencies, Distresses, And Misfortunes Of Quilca
One of Swift’s closest male friends in Ireland was the schoolmaster Thomas Sheridan. He, or rather his formidable wife, owned a house in the muddy townland of Quilca, County Cavan. Swift first stayed there in October 1722, while he was writing Gulliver’s Travels. (More folklore: a contributory spark for that book was said to be a local giant, Big Doughty, who impressed Swift one day by carrying a young horse over a fence.)
In April 1725, the Dean was back in Cavan, and this time, the Sheridans being away, he brought the rest of his entourage with him. He hoped that the country air would be good for Mrs Johnson (Stella). He wrote letters to friends, telling them about hiking with Stella over mountains and through bogs, and how she, with the little axe she carried at her waist, helped him ‘levelling mountains and raising stones, and fencing against inconveniencies of a scanty lodging, want of victual, and a thieving race of people’. They would all be there for almost six months. The place had a few disadvantages, however – among other problems in the long, low, thatched cottage they found, according to Swift:
* The empty boxes all uncleanable.
* The vessels for drink few and leak.
* One hinge of the street door broke off, and the people forced to go out and come in at the back door.
* The door of the Dean’s bedchamber full of large chinks.
* The Dean’s bed threatening every night to fall under him.
* The passages open overhead, by which the cats pass continually into the cellar and eat the victuals, for which one was tried, condemned, and executed by the sword.
* The kitchen perpetually crowded with savages.
* Not a bit of mutton to be had in the country.
* Not a bit of turf this cold weather, and Mrs Johnson and the Dean in person, with all their servants, forced to assist at the bog in gathering up the wet bottoms of old clamps [piles of turf].
* The grate in the Ladies’ bedchamber broke, and forced to be removed, by which they were compelled to be without fire, the chimney smoking intolerably, and the Dean’s greatcoat was employed to stop the wind from coming down the chimney, without which expedient they must have been starved [frozen] to death.
* The spit blunted with poking into bogs for timber, and tears the meat to pieces.
* A great hole in the floor of the Ladies’ chamber, every hour hazarding a broken leg.
* The Ladies’ and Dean’s servants growing fast into the manners and thieveries of the natives; the Ladies themselves very much corrupted; the Dean perpetually storming, and in danger either of losing all his flesh, or sinking into barbarity for the sake of peace.
* Mrs Dingley full of cares for herself, and blunders and negligence for her friends. Mrs Johnson sick and helpless. The Dean deaf and fretting; the Lady’s Maid awkward and clumsy; Robert lazy and forgetful; William a pragmatical, ignorant, and conceited puppy; Robin and Nurse the two great and only supports of the family.
* Bellum lacteum: Or, the milky battle, fought between the Dean and the crew of Quilca; the latter insisting on their privilege of not milking till eleven in the forenoon; whereas Mrs Johnson wanted milk at eight for her health. In this battle the Dean got the victory; but the crew of Quilca began to rebel again, for it is this day almost ten o’clock, and Mrs Johnson hath not got her milk.
From Stella’s Birthday (1927)
But though the fresh Cavan air seemed to have done Stella some good – the best medicine being, as Swift said elsewhere, ‘Dr Diet, Dr Quiet and Dr Merriman’ – it couldn’t be denied that her health was inexorably going downhill. His last birthday poem to her reads more like a requiem than a celebration. He praises her stoicism, her charitable work and her care for him during an illness in 1724, when she had tended him ‘like an humble slave’.
This day, whate’er the Fates decree,
Shall still be kept with joy by me:
This day then let us not be told,
That you are sick, and I grown old;
Nor think on our approaching ills,
And talk of spectacles and pills.
Tomorrow will be time enough
To hear such mortifying stuff …
Although we now can form no more
Long schemes of life, as heretofore;
Yet you, while time is running fast,
Can look with joy on what is past …
Say, Stella, feel you no content,
Reflecting on a life well pent?
Your skilful hand employed to save
Despairing wretches from the grave;
And then supporting with your sore
Those whom you dragged from death before? …
Believe me, Stella, when you show
That true contempt for things below,
Nor prize your life for other ends,
Than merely to oblige your friends;
Your former actions claim their part,
And join to fortify your heart.
For Virtue, in her daily race,
Like Janus, bears a double face; [Roman god
Looks back with joy where she has gone
And therefore goes with courage on:
She at your sickly couch will wait,
And guide you to a better sate.
O then, whatever Heaven intends,
Take pity on your pitying friends!
Nor let your ills affect your mind,
To fancy they can be unkind.
Me, surely me, you ought to pare,
Who gladly would your sufferings share;
Or give my scrap of life to you,
And think I far beneath your due;
You, to whose care so oft I owe
That I’m alive to tell you so.
Best-Loved Swift (published by the O'Brien Press) is in bookshops now.
