Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

where I am not rich enough to live otherwise than by shifting, which is now too late. Neither can I have conveniences in the country for three horses and two servants, and many others which I have here at hand. I am one of the governors of all the hackney coaches, carts, and carriages, round this town, who dare not insult me like your rascally waggoners or coachmen, but give me the way; nor is there one lord or squire, for a hundred of yours, to turn me out of the road, or run over me with their coaches and six.1

Thus I make some advantage of the public poverty, and give you the reasons for what I once writ-why I choose to be a freeman among slaves, rather than a slave among freemen. Then, I walk the streets in peace, without being jostled, nor even without a thousand blessings from my friends, the vulgar. I am Lord Mayor of one hundred and twenty houses. I am absolute lord of the greatest cathedral in the kingdom, am at peace with the neighbouring princes-the Lord Mayor of the city, and the Archbishop of Dublin. Only the latter, like the King of France, sometimes attempts encroachments on my dominions, as old Louis [XIV.] did upon Lorraine. In the midst of this raillery I can tell you with seriousness, that these advantages contribute to my ease, and therefore I value them. And in one part of your letter, relating to Lord Bolingbroke and yourself, you agree with me entirely, about the indifference, the love of quiet, the care of health, &c., that grow upon men in years. And, if you discover those inclinations in my Lord and yourself, what can you expect from me, whose health is so precarious? Yet, at your or his time of life, I could have leaped

over the moon.

1 It is remarkable, however, that Swift had occasion, literally, to complain of this insult in Ireland to the House of Peers, in the case of Lord Blaney; and to the Public, in the second number of the Intelligencer, against Squire Ram of Gory, by whose carriage he was nearly ridden down.-S.

MRS. PENDARVES AND SWIFT.

237

TO MRS. PENDARVES.1

Oct. 7, 1734.

When I received the honour and happiness of your last letter (dated Sept. 9), I was afflicted with a pair of disorders that usually seize me once a year, and with which I have been acquainted from my youth; but it is only of late years that they have begun to come together, although I should have been better contented with one at a time-these are giddiness and deafness, which usually last a month: the first tormenting my body, and the other making me incapable of conversing.

In this juncture your letter found me, but I was able to read, though not to hear; neither did I value my deafness for three days, because your letter was my constant entertainment during that time. After which, I grew sensibly better, and, although I was not abroad till yesterday, I find myself well enough to acknowledge the great favour you have done me, but cannot guess your motive for so much goodness.2 I guess that your good genius, accidentally meeting mine, was prevailed on to solicit your pity! Or did you happen to be at leisure by the summer

1 Better known as Mary Granville and Mrs. Delany. She was the daughter of Mr. Bernard Granville, and great granddaughter of the more famous Sir Bevil Granville; and was born in the year 1700, at Coulston, in Wiltshire. She was remarkable for her beauty and accomplishments. Her Autobiography and Correspondence first appeared in 1861-2. This seems to be the first of the two or three letters of Swift to her that have been preserved. It is addressed to her "in Little Brook Street, near Grosvenor Square, London."

2 Mrs. Pendarves had begun her letter in terms, which could not well be more flattering to Swift's epistolary ambition :-"I find," she writes, "your correspondence is like the singing of the nightingale-no bird sings so sweetly; but the pleasure is quickly past. A month or two of harmony, and then we lose it till next spring. I wish your favours may as certainly return. The last letter I writ to you," she reminds him, was from Gloucester, about a twelvemonth ago. After that I went to Longleat [in Somerset] to my lady Weymouth: came to town in January, where I have remained ever since, except a few weeks spent at Sir John Stanley's, at Northend (the Delville of this part of the world)."

absence of your friends? Or would you appear a constant nymph, when all my goddessess of much longer acquaintance have forsaken me, as it is reasonable they should? But the men are almost as bad as the ladies, and I cannot but think them in the right: for I cannot make shifts, and lie rough, and be undone by starving in scanty lodgings, without horses, servants, or conveniences, as I used to do in London, with port wine, or, perhaps, Porter's ale to save charges !

You dare not pretend to say that your town equals ours in hospitable evenings, with your deep play and no entertainment but a cup of chocolate, unless you have mended your manners. I will not declare your reasons for not taking a second trip over hither, because you have offered none but your royal will and pleasure; but, if I were in the case of your friends here, with more life before me and better health, I would solicit an Act of Parliament to prevent your coming among us or, at least, to make it high treason in you ever to leave us. In the meantime, I wish you were forced over by debts or want, because we would gladly agree to a contribution for life, dinners and suppers excluded, that are to go for nothing. I speak for the public good of this country; because a pernicious heresy prevails here among the men, that it is the duty of your sex to be fools in every article, except what is merely domestic; and, to do the ladies justice, there are very few of them without a good share of that heresy, except upon one article-that they have as little regard for family business as for the improvement of their minds!

I have had for some time a design to write against this heresy; but have now laid those thoughts aside, for fear of making both sexes my enemies. However, if you will come over to my assistance, I will carry you about among our adversaries, and dare them to produce one instance where your want of ignorance makes you affected, pretending, conceited, disdainful, endeavouring to speak like a scholar, with twenty

MRS. PENDARVES IMMACULATE.

239

more faults objected by themselves, their lovers, or their husbands. But I fear your case is desperate; for I know you. never laugh at a jest before you understand it, and I much question whether you understand a fan, or have so good a fancy at silks as others; and your way of spelling would not be intelligible. Therefore, upon your arrival hither (which I expect in three packets at furthest), I will give you a license to be as silly as you can possibly afford, one half-hour every week, to the heretics of each sex; to atone for which you are to keep one fasting day at Dr. Delany's or Dr. Helsham's, and one at the Deanery.

I think my Lord Carteret is the most happy, in all circumstances of life, that I ever have known; and, as he well deserves it, so I hope he is sensible of it. All my fear is, that he will be too rich. I am no cause of my Lord Bathurst's forsaking you. He hath long done the same with me; and, to say the truth, Madam, it is a very cold scent to continue a correspondence with one whom we never expect to see. I never knew it long practised, except among the learned of different nations. Mr. Pope and my Lord Bolingbroke themselves begin to fail me, in seven years. Nothing vexes me so much with relation to you as that, with all my disposition to find faults, I was never once able to fix upon anything that I could find amiss, although I watched you narrowly. For, when I found we were to lose you soon, I kept my eyes and ears always upon you, in hopes that you would make some boutale. It is, you know, a French word, and signifies a sudden jerk from a horse's hinder feet which you did not expect, because you thought him for some months a sober animal; and this hath been my case with several ladies whom I chose for friends. In a week, a month, or a year, hardly one of them failed to give me a boutade; therefore, I command you will obey my orders, in coming over

An allusion to Gay's satirical pieces in verse.

:

hither for one whole year after which, upon the first boutade you make, I will give you my pass to be gone.

Are you acquainted with the Duke of Chandois ?1 I know your cozen Lansdown and he were intimate friends. I have known the Duke long and well, and thought I had a share in his common favour; but he hath lately given me great cause of complaint. I was pressed by many persons of learning here to write to his Grace, that, having some old Records relating to this Kingdom, which were taken from hence by the Earl of Clarendon, who was Lieutenant here, and purchased them from private owners, and are now in the Duke's possession, that his Grace would please to bestow them to the University here; because Irish antiquities are of little value or curiosity to any other nation. I writ with all the civility in my power, and with compliments on the fame of his generosity, and in a style very different from what I use to my friends with titles. But he hath pleased to be silent for above six weeks, which is the first treatment I ever met with of that kind from any English person of quality, and what would better become a little Irish Baron than a great English Duke. But whether grandeur or party be the cause I shall not enquire, but leave it to you, and expect you will employ my brother Lansdown (his Lordship will tell you why I give him that title), if he still converses with the Duke, to know the reason of this treatment, and you shall be my instrument to find it out, although it shall cost you two shillings for a chair!

If I have tired you, it is the effect of the great esteem I have for you. Do but lessen your own merits, and I will shorten my letters in proportion. If you will come among us, I engage your dreadful old beggarly western parson to residence.

2

1 James Brydges, created Marquis of Carnarvon and Duke of Chandos in 1719.-Your cozen Lansdown is a mistake for your uncle Lansdown.—Lady Llanover.

Swift himself.

« ПредишнаНапред »