by Leo Damrosch
And dear Englond, if aught I understond,
Beware of Carrots from Northumberland.
Carrots sown Thyn a deep root may get,
If so be they are in Sommer set;
Their Conyngs mark thou, for I have been told
They Assassine when young, and Poison when old.7
The target was the Duchess of Somerset, whom Swift had met at Moor Park when she was a friend of Lady Giffard’s. This duchess was Abigail Masham’s rival for the queen’s favor, and Swift hated her. “Carrots from Northumberland” are mentioned because her father was the Earl of Northumberland and she had flaming red hair.
The Duchess of Somerset had a remarkable history. Her first husband, Lord Ogle, died shortly after she married him in 1679; she was only twelve at the time. Soon afterward her family forced her into a second marriage with a wealthy gentleman named Thomas Thynne, and a year later Thynne was murdered by thugs in the employ of still another suitor, the Count of Königsmark (spelled “Conigsmark” in England, as Swift’s “Conyngs” hints).
The widow Thynne was suspected of having connived at her husband’s death, but that was never proved. She went abroad for a while, returning to derision from anonymous satirists:
Ogle’s returned and will consider further
Who next she’ll show her arse to for a murder.8
At that point the widow Ogle-Thynne, still just fifteen, acquired a third husband, the Duke of Somerset.
Swift gave his poem to a printer and looked forward to scoring a big hit with it. “I like it mightily,” he told Stella, adding that he was sure people would guess its author. When Mrs. Masham found out, however, she was horrified, and urged Swift to stop publication. It was too late. “I writ to the printer to stop them,” he reported; “they have been printed and given about, but not sold.”9 That made no difference, since copies soon found their way to other printers who did publish. He himself had given copies to all the members of his Club. As Mrs. Masham anticipated, the queen was enraged.
Why ever did Swift permit himself this suicidal performance? No doubt he was sure that the Tories were about to lose office, and was taking a parting shot on his way out. But beyond that, he always had an impulsive, risk-taking streak. Given to strict self-control in his daily routine, he sometimes flaunted his indifference to consequences in larger matters. And perhaps by now he thought he could get away with anything. At any rate, the Duchess of Somerset became his implacable enemy, and if the Tale of a Tub hadn’t sufficiently damaged his chances for promotion, he had now demolished them completely.
When he was supervising an edition of his works a quarter of a century later, Swift neglected to mention that The Windsor Prophecy had ever existed. But perhaps it, too, found an echo in Gulliver’s Travels. This time Gulliver is in Brobdingnag, the land of the giants. “There was a cow-dung in the path, and I must need try my activity by attempting to leap over it. I took a run, but unfortunately jumped short, and found myself just in the middle up to my knees.”10
AN IRISHMAN AFTER ALL
Only the queen could appoint bishops, but various other people had the right to appoint deans. A dean is the priest in charge of the daily affairs of a cathedral, while its bishop is responsible for the diocese as a whole. Giving up on becoming a bishop, Swift began working on his friends to get him a deanery.
For a while it looked as if that might be possible in England. After telling Stella that The Conduct of the Allies had helped to turn the tide in the House of Commons, Swift thought it was a good moment to drop Oxford a hint: “I most humbly take leave to inform your Lordship that the Dean of Wells died this morning at one o’clock. I entirely submit my poor fortunes to your Lordship; and remain, with greatest respect, my Lord, your Lordship’s most obedient and most obliged humble servant J. Swift.”11
That was in 1712. Nothing came of it, and by 1713 time was running out. In April three English deaneries were vacant, but none of them went to Swift. Oxford urged him to be patient, but he replied firmly, “I had nothing to do but go to Ireland immediately, for I could not with any reputation stay longer here, unless I had something honorable immediately given me.”12
That same day Swift and Oxford dined with their mutual friend the Duke of Ormonde, a “brother” in their Club and currently lord lieutenant of Ireland. Ormonde was glad to help, and promised to make Swift dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the best appointment in Ireland at that rank. There was a problem, though: what to do with the present incumbent, Swift’s friend John Stearne? The solution was to make Stearne a bishop, but for that the queen’s approval would be needed.
There was another obstacle as well. Ormonde disliked Dean Stearne and was reluctant to get him a promotion. Swift wrote, “With great kindness he said he would consent, but would do it for no man alive but me.” Swift was thus the cause of raising Stearne to the rank of bishop, a position he might never attain himself, as indeed he didn’t. “They say here ’tis much to my reputation that I have made a bishop in spite of all the world, to get the best deanery in Ireland.”13
As for Queen Anne, she was happy to make Stearne a bishop if that was the price of getting rid of Swift. “The Queen was willing enough,” Sheridan says, “that Swift should have a moderate provision made for him in Ireland, in order to send him into banishment, in a decent though not very honourable manner.”14
The whole business left a permanent sour taste. Swift never really blamed Oxford for not pushing harder, but perhaps he should have. Ten years later Bolingbroke told him that the reason he got no appointment in England was Oxford’s failure to make it happen. “You are unjust when you say that it was either not in the power or will of a ministry to place you in England. Write ‘minister,’ friend Jonathan, and scrape out the words ‘either power or,’ after which the passage will run as well and be conformable to the truth of things. I know but one man who had power at that time, and that wretched man had neither the will nor the skill to make a good use of it.”15
The person Swift did blame was Archbishop Sharp of York, second only to the archbishop of Canterbury in the Church hierarchy. Sharp was the queen’s trusted adviser on religious matters, and Swift regarded him as “my mortal enemy.” It may be that he was misled on this too. Bolingbroke later told the head of an Oxford college that “he had been assured by the Queen herself that she never had received any unfavourable character of Dr. Swift, nor had the archbishop or any other person endeavoured to lessen him in her esteem. My Lord Bolingbroke added that this tale was invented by the Earl of Oxford to deceive Swift, and make him contented with his deanery in Ireland.” Bolingbroke’s friend commented, sensibly enough, “If Lord Bolingbroke had hated the Earl of Oxford less, I should have been readily inclined to believe him.”16 It was true—Bolingbroke and Oxford did hate each other, and their collaboration was on the verge of shipwreck.
After telling Stella that Stearne would become bishop of Dromore “to make room for me,” Swift added glumly, “Neither can I feel joy at passing my days in Ireland, and I confess I thought the ministry would not let me go; but perhaps they can’t help it. Nite Md.”17
The installation—literally, ceremonial occupation of the dean’s stall in the cathedral—happened in May. Dublin was depressing, and Swift preferred to stay in Laracor instead, while Stella and Rebecca boarded with Anthony Raymond and his wife in nearby Trim, where Raymond was the rector. The account books show frequent charges for dinners, wine, “etc.”
Swift’s vertigo came on again, as it often did in times of stress. He wrote to Vanessa about it, adding affectionately, “It is impossible for anybody to have more acknowledgements at heart for all your kindness and generosity to me.” She responded with anxious concern, and then exclaimed,
Oh what would I give to know how you do at this instant! My fortune is too hard, your absence was enough without this cruel addition. Sure the powers above are envious of your thinking so well, which makes them at some times strive to interrupt you. But I must confine my thoughts, o
r at least stop from telling them to you, or you’ll chide, which will still add to my uneasiness. I have done all that was possible to hinder myself from writing to you till I heard you were better, for fear of breaking my promise, but ’twas all in vain. . . . I am impatient to the last degree to hear how you are. I hope I shall soon have you here.18
Deanship brought with it a major burden: it entailed taking on a massive debt. When Swift was still in London, Stearne had offered to sell him a houseful of expensive furniture. “I shall buy Bishop Stearne’s hair,” Swift told Stella, “as soon as his household goods.” But he did have to pay ₤600 for the deanery itself, because that was required by law. To encourage improvements in church properties, a statute stipulated that when a clergyman spent his own money on a residence, his successor had to pay him two-thirds of the cost, receiving in turn one-third of the value from the next occupant. Stearne had recently spent ₤900 to have the deanery rebuilt.19
Foreseeing this hefty expense, Swift secured a promise from Lord Oxford to find ₤1,000 for him, and he looked forward confidently to receiving it. It never came, but his friendship with Oxford remained unshaken. Like his secrecy and procrastination, Oxford’s inability to follow through on promises seems to have been accepted as a character trait that couldn’t be altered. In later years Swift wrote repeatedly to implore him to fulfill one promise at least: to send a portrait of himself. Oxford never did that either.
“BROKE TO SHATTERS”
Swift was barely settled in Ireland when there was pressure to return to England. Erasmus Lewis, Oxford’s chief aide, wrote urgently that only Swift could patch up the rift between Oxford and Bolingbroke. Since both of them liked and trusted him, they might listen to him. Swift ignored these pleas for a while, until Lewis made it clear that he was speaking for Oxford himself: “I have so often and in so pressing a manner desired you to come over [to England] that if what I have already said has no effect, I shall despair of better success by any further arguments. . . . You and I have already laid it down for a maxim that we must serve Lord Treasurer without receiving orders or particular instructions. . . . The desires of great men are commands, at least the only ones I hope they will ever be able to use.”20
In September Swift was back in London, after just four months in Ireland. He had departed so abruptly for England that Archbishop King was offended, and the Irish lord chancellor wrote to tell Swift, “I cannot discharge the part of a friend if I omit to let you know that your great neighbor at St. Pulchers [the archbishop’s palace] is very angry with you; he accuseth you for going away without taking your leave of him, and intends in a little time to compel you to reside at your Deanery.”21 It was a fair point.
Perhaps Swift was getting back at King, soon afterward, when he helped to block his promotion to an eminence he clearly deserved. When the archbishop of Armagh died, King was the obvious candidate to succeed him as Primate of all Ireland. But King had Whiggish sympathies, and Swift made that his reason for urging his colleagues to recommend someone else to the queen. He told Stearne, “I should be thought a very vile man if I presumed to recommend to a bishopric my own brother, if he were the least disinclined to the present measures of her Majesty and ministry here.”22
Still, there is no reason to suspect that Swift was insincere when he assured King that despite their political differences, “I sincerely look upon your Grace to be master of as much wisdom and sagacity as any person I have known. . . . I conceive you to follow the dictates of your reason and conscience; and whoever does that will, in public management, often differ as well from one side as another.” Nokes calls this a “poisonous compliment,” but does not explain why. He also says mistakenly that Swift’s letter to Stearne was addressed to King, which would indeed have been an insult.23 The correction is important because Swift and King are often described as enemies when in fact they worked well together, and would become stalwart allies in the years to come.
Shortly after returning to England, Swift published a remarkable poem about his relationship with Lord Oxford. There was a fashion of adapting classical poems to modern circumstances, and he called this one Part of the Seventh Epistle of the First Book of Horace Imitated. Horace’s poem describes a poor man who is given a farm, but gets so badly in debt that he asks his patron to put him back where he found him. In Swift’s version, Oxford (still Harley at the time) encounters him browsing at a bookstall, invites him to dinner, and is offended when Swift assumes it’s a joke and doesn’t show up. After Oxford repeats the invitation, Swift arrives flustered and full of apologies:
“My Lord—the honour you designed—
Extremely proud—but I had dined—
I am sure I never should neglect—
No man alive has more respect”—24
They quickly become friends, and soon Swift is a regular guest at the family table.
Harley knows that Swift wants to be a bishop, but tells him to settle instead for St. Patrick’s Cathedral, with assurances that it’s a perfect choice:
You need but cross the Irish Seas
To live in plenty, power, and ease.
Far from living in ease and plenty, Swift as dean is harassed by debts and unable to collect his rightful income, which he describes in a torrent of detail:
Suppose him gone through all vexations,
Patents, installments, abjurations,
First Fruits and tenths, and chapter-treats,
Dues, payments, fees, demands, and cheats
(The wicked laity’s contriving
To hinder clergymen from thriving).
When Swift can’t stand any more of this, he returns to England, accuses Oxford of having managed the whole business as a practical joke, and ends with the same demand that Horace did:
The Doctor in a passion cried,
“Your raillery is misapplied:
I have experience dearly bought;
You know I am not worth a groat;
But you resolved to have your jest,
And ’twas a folly to contest.
Then since you now have done your worst,
Pray leave me where you found me first.”25
This poem was something of a sensation, and quickly ran through eight editions in London, Dublin, and Edinburgh. Some critics believed it was a shameless attempt to get money from Oxford, and they had a point. Swift bitterly resented never getting the £1,000, and he may have thought that going public would embarrass Oxford into paying.
With no official duties in London any longer, Swift decided to write a major retrospective work in the ministry’s defense, and he began a heavily slanted account of the peace negotiations, misleadingly titled The History of the Four Last Years of the Queen. For the rest of his life he would make efforts to get the thing published, but Erasmus Lewis, Bolingbroke, and (after Oxford’s death) Oxford’s son always dissuaded him. It was unacceptably biased, even though in their favor, and it distorted too many facts. The History of the Four Last Years does show how deeply Swift believed his own rhetoric. As a historian says, he and the Whigs bought into rival ideologies, each reflecting “a view of reality intensely perceived and experienced.” Another historian says severely that Swift “displays a disquieting facility for tendentious argument, tunnel vision, and conspiracy theory.”26
Also at this time, Swift effected a final breach with Steele. A year previously he had attacked Steele in The Importance of the Guardian Considered, pausing in his political argument to disparage Steele as a writer (and heavy drinker): “He hath no invention, nor is master of a tolerable style. His chief talent is humour, which he sometimes discovers [that is, reveals] both in writing and discourse, for after the first bottle he is no disagreeable companion.” Now Swift followed up with The Public Spirit of the Whigs. “He hath a confused remembrance of words since he left the university, but hath lost half their meaning, and puts them together with no regard except to their cadence; as I remember a fellow nailed up maps in a gentleman’s closet, some sidelong, others upside
down, the better to adjust them to the panels.”27
That was just bad blood between former friends, but The Public Spirit was objectionable to the entire Whig party, since it claimed that the Whigs were smearing Oxford and Bolingbroke, charging the Tory ministers falsely with conspiring to bring back the Pretender. “They are most damnably wicked,” Swift declared, “impatient for the death of the Queen [which would ensure the accession of George I]; ready to gratify their ambition and revenge by all desperate methods; wholly alienate from truth, law, religion, mercy, conscience, or honour.”28
This accusation of disloyalty to the queen was offensive enough, and still worse, Swift gratuitously added some insulting comments about the Scots, suggesting that the Union had been a big mistake. There was a furious debate in Parliament, and The Public Spirit of the Whigs was formally censured by the House of Lords: “The said pamphlet is a false, malicious, and factious libel . . . tending to the destruction of the constitution, and most injurious to her Majesty.”29 A reward of £300 was offered for discovery of the writer, and when the publisher and printer refused to name him, they were imprisoned
Of course, everyone knew that the writer was Swift, but he had his protectors. This pamphlet was his culminating defense of the ministry, and it was unthinkable that Oxford and Bolingbroke would let him go to jail. Oxford sent him an urgent note promising to take care of the printer, John Barber; it still survives in the British Library, with Swift’s annotation, “Lord Treasurer to me in a counterfeit hand, with the bill, when the printers were prosecuted by the House of Lords for a pamphlet.” The “bill” was money for bail to get the bookseller and printer out of jail. “I have heard that some honest men who are very innocent,” Oxford wrote circumspectly, “are under trouble touching a printed pamphlet. A friend of mine, an obscure person but charitable, puts the enclosed bill in your hands to answer such exigencies as their case may immediately require, and I find he will do more, this being only for the present. If this comes safe to your hands it is enough.”30