Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World

by Leo Damrosch

  MOMUS.

  All, all of a piece throughout:

  [POINTING TO DIANA]

  Thy chase had a beast in view;

  [TO MARS]

  Thy wars brought nothing about;

  [TO VENUS]

  Thy lovers were all untrue.

  JANUS.

  ’Tis well an old age is out,

  And time to begin a new.42

  A month later, just as Dryden’s masque was receiving its first performances, he died at the age of sixty-nine.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Village and the Castle

  A MODEST HOME

  In addition to his duties with Lord Berkeley, Swift expected an appointment or “preferment” in the Church, and one was duly found, though not nearly as distinguished as he had hoped. In September of 1700 he became vicar of Laracor, a tiny hamlet close to the town of Trim, twenty-three miles from Dublin and an easy day’s journey on horseback. Laracor lay in County Meath, in a landscape far less dramatic than the one at Kilroot. Northerners had a saying, “Ulster sits in the middle of five thousand hills, but the county of Meath lies level as a board.”1

  After a century of privation, the towns in the area were unprepossessing. “They were generally small and almost invariably shabby,” a historian says, “their approaches lined with poor hovels, their streets interspersed with ruins.” Trim, however, was described in a 1691 guidebook as “a borough and market town of good trade, reckoned the chief in the county.” Then as now, it was dominated by Trim Castle on the river Boyne, the biggest Anglo-Norman castle in all of Ireland. It is an emblem both of English domination and of the wrenching vicissitudes of history. What had been impregnable in the days of bows and arrows was helpless against cannons, and like a neighboring abbey of which only a gutted bell tower remains, it was nothing more than a majestic ruin.2

  19. Trim Castle.

  Beyond Dublin, the situation of the Irish Church was bad. In the relatively affluent diocese of Meath, only a fifth of the parishes had churches fit for use. Laracor did have one, but no usable vicarage, so Swift had to live elsewhere, probably in Trim. When a new bishop arrived in the diocese he found not a “bishop’s palace” awaiting him, as would have been the case in England, but a single-story house with floorboards so rotten that a stick would go right through to the dirt beneath.3

  Still, Swift grew deeply fond of Laracor, a valued rural retreat even after he moved permanently to Dublin. He had the vicarage rebuilt, “a neat cabin,” as a church document later described it, and he began to plant. A stone’s throw from the church was a little river, hardly more than a stream (the name Laracor comes from the Gaelic Lathrach Cora, meaning “the site of the weir”). He had the banks altered to make a miniature ornamental canal, in imitation of the one at Moor Park, and he planted rows of willows. In later years there were apple and cherry trees as well. He remarked in a letter, “My river walk is extremely pretty, and my canal in great beauty, and I see trouts playing in it.”4 He seems to have taken no interest in a prehistoric tumulus next to the church; in those days the romance of ancient Ireland had yet to be born.

  20. Laracor Church. This drawing was made in 1852, shortly before the building Swift knew was torn down and replaced.

  21. Laracor Communion table.

  Swift’s duties at Laracor were far from exacting, since Protestants were a small minority. On one occasion Swift wrote, “I am this minute very busy, being to preach today before an audience of at least 15 people, most of them gentle [that is, “gentlefolk,” the well born] and all simple.” All of the neighboring peasants were Catholic. The Communion table from Laracor has been preserved, and can be seen in a side aisle of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. Its extreme simplicity suggests how modest the services must have been. Sometimes no one at all showed up. Swift’s Dublin friends enjoyed a story relating how he arrived at church one Sunday and found no one there except the parish clerk, whose first name was Roger. As Orrery told it, instead of saying, “Dearly beloved brethren, the Scripture moveth you and me in sundry places,” Swift began, “with great composure and gravity, but with a turn peculiar to himself, ‘Dearly beloved Roger.’” The younger Sheridan, however, was sure that Swift would never have made a mockery of the service in that way, suggesting that he merely thought of doing it. “They who heard this, as is frequently the case on such occasions, thought it would improve the story much by making him carry it into execution, and related it accordingly.”5

  MONEY

  Clergymen had to pay close attention to finances, because their “livings,” as their appointments were known, came not from salaries but from tithes and rents. In most cases what they could collect was discouragingly low. Tithes were paid by the landowners in the parish, but they always tried to pay less than they were supposed to, and had often acquired a legal right to the tithes themselves. Getting even partial payment was a struggle that exasperated Swift for the rest of his life. “Although tithes be of divine institution,” he remarked, “they are of diabolical execution.”6

  Rents, on the other hand, came from property owned directly by the local church, including farmland known as the glebe. Laracor had barely an acre of glebe, though Swift augmented it later by purchases out of his own pocket. Johnson, who defines glebe as “the land possessed as part of the revenue of an ecclesiastical benefice,” illustrates it with a quotation from Swift: “Many parishes have not an inch of glebe.” As late as 1728 an Irish archbishop reported that the majority of parishes had no glebe, and no parsonage either.7

  In these circumstances, the only way to make ends meet was to join two or more parishes under a single minister, as had been the case at Kilroot. So together with Laracor, Swift took on Rathbeggan, halfway between Laracor and Dublin, and Agher, a few miles south of Laracor. Agher provided a modest income, but a recent writer says that it had “no church in repair, no curate, and possibly no Protestants.” At Rathbeggan there were definitely no Protestants. Three parishes held by one priest was very common; there were instances in which eight or even ten would be joined for a meager total income of £40 per year.8

  In Victorian times this practice of holding multiple livings would be denounced as corrupt “pluralism,” and there were certainly eighteenth-century examples of that. Richard Watson, bishop of Llandaff in Wales later in the century, had a princely income of ₤2,200 a year, cobbled together from seven churches in Llandaff, two churches in Shropshire, two in Leicestershire, two in Cambridgeshire, and three in Huntingtonshire. Watson employed low-paid curates in all of those far-flung dependencies, the majority of which weren’t even in Wales. But for the humbler clergy there was no possibility of affluence. Macaulay paints a vivid picture of their status in England at just the time when Swift was going to Laracor:

  Hardly one living in fifty enabled the incumbent to bring up a family comfortably. As children multiplied and grew, the household of the priest became more and more beggarly. Holes appeared more and more plainly in the thatch of his parsonage and in his single cassock. Often it was only by toiling on his glebe, by feeding swine, and by loading dung carts that he could obtain daily bread; nor did his utmost exertions always prevent the bailiffs from taking his concordance and his inkstand in execution. . . . His children were brought up like the children of the neighbouring peasantry. His boys followed the plough, and his girls went out to service. . . . Even a keen and strong intellect might be expected to rust in so unfavourable a situation.9

  Since pluralism was an economic necessity, it infuriated Swift to hear it criticized. “The clergy having been stripped,” he said, “of the greatest part of their revenues, the glebes being generally lost, the tithes in the hands of laymen, the churches demolished, and the country depopulated; in order to preserve a face of Christianity, it was necessary to unite small vicarages, sufficient to make a tolerable maintenance for a minister.”10

  With their own and their parishioners’ income dependent on farming, rural clergymen had a strong personal interest in agriculture.
When Swift turned Kilroot over to John Winder he described its income in detail, which “at eighteen pence per acre, oats, amounts to better than £100 a year—with cows, sheep, cats, and dogs etc.,” and he called himself proudly “an understanding man in that affair.” Laracor and the other two parishes were worth £200 in years of good harvests, but numerous expenses had to be paid. There was taxation on church property, which came out of the vicar’s pocket, and generous pay (more than £50) for the curate who took charge whenever Swift was away. There were personal outlays, of course: in addition to food, wine, and clothing, there was also £15 for a personal servant, £10 for feeding and stabling two horses, £10 for clothing, and so on.11

  22. Swift’s account book. Swift recorded expenses by the month and totaled his income at the end of each year. Here tithes and rents for 1703 at Laracor and Agher are listed in pounds, shillings, and pence. Swift’s agent Isaiah Parvisol collected ₤132, 8 shillings (at the top, just before ₤6 from “Mr. Bumford”).

  This attention to finances made Swift more interested in economic issues than a modern clergyman might be. Throughout his life he would publish pamphlets on economic subjects. In the 1720s his intervention in an especially controversial issue would make him an Irish national hero.

  As is true of nearly all Irish sites associated with Swift, hardly anything remains today of the Laracor he knew. Though the name still appears on maps, there is not even a hamlet there, and as a current resident has written, “Laracor exists today only in the concerns of Swiftian aficionados and local historians.” Swift’s church was torn down in 1856 in favor of a Victorian replacement, which has since been converted to a private residence. The old graveyard is still there, choked with weeds, and it contains gravestones of some parishioners Swift must have known. The most interesting is the gravestone of a gentleman mentioned by Swift as “Goodman Bumford” and his wife: “They lived together in wedlock 50 years in this parish and were descended from good ancient English families. They had many children to whom they gave virtuous example and education being tender parents, loving neighbours, devoted frequenters of the church and constant benefactors of the poor. . . . He departed life the 25th of March 1720 aged 103 years and she the 25th of January 1722 aged 89 years.”12

  As for the rectory that Swift repaired and used, no trace at all remains, except for a fragment of medieval masonry that was once thought to be part of it. In actuality it was never incorporated in the house, and was never mentioned by Swift. Down by the little river, his plantings are long gone and his canal filled in.

  A LONG-SOUGHT APPOINTMENT

  Seven months after being appointed to Laracor, Swift got a second position, the prebend of Dunlavin in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Even now he felt resentment, because Archbishop Marsh, who had been provost of Trinity when Swift was a student there, seems to have delayed the appointment due to dislike of Swift. “He hath found out the secret,” Swift later said bitterly, “of preferring men without deserving their thanks; and where he dispenses his favours to persons of merit, they are less obliged to him than to fortune.”13

  The cathedral had eighteen prebendaries whose duties were minimal: they only had to take turns preaching there and to show up for an annual meeting. There was a modest income, but out of it Swift had to pay a curate to look after the parish of Dunlavin thirty miles to the south. In no way was this a distinguished appointment, as Laurence Sterne wryly acknowledged in his own case, when he had Pride tell him that he would never be anything more in the Church than “a lousy prebendary.”14 Yet this turned out to be a crucial stage in Swift’s career, for it gave him a foothold in the cathedral, and that would lead to an ever more impressive career.

  In 1702 Swift achieved another goal when he received the degree of doctor of divinity from Trinity College. Like the Oxford M.A., this one required no extra work, just payment of a hefty sum of money—₤44 in “fees and treats,” presumably for the college officials. He was referred to thereafter as “Dr. Swift,” a title he clearly enjoyed.

  AT HOME IN THE CASTLE

  The appointment that mattered most to Swift was his chaplaincy to Lord Berkeley, the king’s representative in Ireland. Whenever the Irish Parliament was in session, for six to eight months every other year, this dignitary was required to be present. He was known by several titles. Usually he was referred to as the lord lieutenant, but sometimes as the viceroy or the lord deputy. During the extended periods when no lord lieutenant was present, three lords justices would act as a governing committee. When Berkeley took up his position, there was no Parliament sitting, so that technically he governed as one of the lords justices.

  The royal representative enjoyed a certain amount of power, but the position was largely ceremonial. Each new incumbent—there were thirteen between 1703 and 1745, the year of Swift’s death—would progress to the castle in an ornate coach drawn by eight horses, with foot guards and battle axes marching in front, in a procession that took four hours to cover a distance that normally needed only half an hour. “The joy of the people was such,” claimed a 1732 account, “as besides huzzas, bells ringing, great and small guns firing, bonfires and other illuminations, wine and ale was given away in plenty to the populace.”15 That helps to account for the joy.

  Swift’s new employer was Charles Berkeley, second Earl Berkeley, a former diplomat who had recently succeeded his father to the earldom. Berkeley was a cultivated, intelligent man, though Swift later described him as “intolerably lazy and indolent, and somewhat covetous,” and his appointment would be withdrawn after less than a year.16

  23. Lord Berkeley.

  Swift’s job as domestic chaplain was essentially a sinecure, reading family prayers and preaching now and then to dignitaries at the castle. But he liked to manage his own time, and disliked being constantly available for minor duties, rather as he had been at Moor Park. Years later he said, “I will be no man’s chaplain alive.”17 To look after Laracor when he wasn’t there, he employed a reliable curate.

  A notable perk for the chaplain was that he got to live in the handsome family apartments in the castle, close to Hoey’s Court where Swift’s uncle Godwin had lived until his death in 1695. He became something of a favorite in the Berkeley family, especially with a pretty fifteen-year-old daughter named Elizabeth. In London in the coming years he often visited them, and he kept up a warm lifelong correspondence with Elizabeth, known after her marriage in 1706 as Lady Betty Germaine.

  Deane Swift heard about one near disaster:

  In the year 1699 Swift had like to have burnt the Castle of Dublin, and the Lord Berkeley in the midst of it. For the Doctor [he wasn’t in fact a doctor yet], whose bedchamber was the next room to his Excellency’s, having grown drowsy over his book while he was reading in bed, dropped asleep without extinguishing his candle; which happening to fall upon his quilt set it on fire, and burnt its passage quite through the bedclothes until it reached his thigh. Swift, roused by the pain, leaped out of bed and extinguished the fire, which by this time had burnt part of the curtains. He took care to have the damages repaired, and by throwing away some guineas in hush money, the accident was never made known in the Castle.18

  Swift’s appointment began awkwardly, and thanks to Louis Landa’s patient research, it illustrates the way he often harbored unjustified resentment. His autobiographical sketch breaks off at exactly this point after describing a double offense. At first, it had been his understanding that he was going to be Berkeley’s secretary as well as chaplain, with more pay and status. But a rival candidate “had so far insinuated himself into the Earl’s favor, by telling him that the post of secretary was not proper for a clergyman, nor would be of any advantage to one who aimed only at Church preferments, that his Lordship after a poor apology gave that office to the other.”19

  The new secretary, Arthur Bushe, was indeed something of a schemer, but what Swift narrates next makes him sound downright diabolical. “In some months the deanery of Derry fell vacant, and it was the Earl of Berkel
ey’s turn to dispose of it. Yet things were so ordered that the secretary having received a bribe, the deanery was disposed of to another, and Mr. Swift was put off with some other Church livings [that is, Laracor] not worth above a third part of that rich deanery, and at this present time not a sixth. The excuse pretended was his being too young, although he were then 30 years old.”20

  Reading through the correspondence of everyone involved, Landa shows that Swift once again overestimated his own qualifications, and wrongly suspected treachery. The person with the right to bestow the deanery was the Earl of Galway, not Berkeley. Galway was responding to a bishop’s plea that this especially difficult post in the Presbyterian north should go to an experienced man of prudence and piety. John Bolton, who did get the deanery, had been an able clergyman for twenty-three years, whereas Swift had left the only parish he ever served after a single year. Moreover, far from angling for Derry, Bolton was so unenthusiastic about going there that it had to be sweetened by letting him keep the income from a parish near Dublin. It’s not even clear that Berkeley ever pushed for Swift’s appointment, or that he should have. Bolton had been his chaplain too.21

  Swift’s behavior in incidents like this is not very attractive, nor is his habit of spinning a circumstantial but groundless story to explain it. Yet there were positive consequences too. Such experiences fueled his indignation against injustice, and later on he would focus that indignation on issues of public concern, with spectacular results.

  THE PLAYFUL SWIFT

  Swift was now spending a lot of time with sophisticated people from high society. It amused him to mimic the vacuous entries that a lady’s guests would write in her table book, which he imagined as interspersed with her own jottings.

  Here you may read (dear charming saint)

  Beneath (a new receipt for paint);