sequent Character" of her, written the night of her decease. In this latter he says: "She was sickly (a) from her childhood until about the age of 15, but then grew into perfect health, and was looked upon as one of the most beautiful, graceful, and agreeable young women in London, only a little too fat. Her hair was blacker than a raven, and every feature of her face in perfection. She had a gracefulness somewhat more than human in every motion, word, and action." Her gracefulness and the beauty of her hair are frequently alluded to by writers of or about her time. The writer in the Gentleman's Magazine gives the fullest description of her which we have met. Speaking of Swift's mortification on making the fatal discovery of her birth, he says: "Let those judge who have been so happy as to have seen this Stella,—this Hetty Johnson; and let those who have not judge from the following description. Her shape was perfectly easy and elegant; her complexion exquisitely fair; her features were regular, with the addition of that nameless something that so often exceeds the most exact beauty, and which never fails to add to it when they meet together. Her teeth were beyond comparison; her eye-brows and hair of the most glossy black; and her eyes,—but those I pretend not to describe; her mien and air were equal to the rest of the piece." Mr. Mason—who, however, merely paraphrased the descriptions of earlier writers-says: "Nature seems to have lavished upon this remarkable female all possible charms, mental and corporeal. Her features were beautiful and expressive; her countenance, rather pale, was pensive, but not melancholy; her eyes dark; and her hair blacker than a raven; her person was formed with the greatest symmetry, but rather inclined to embonpoint," &c.(b) Mr. Mason, although he has not acknowledged it, as it might militate against an opinion which he had expressed relative to the (a) When at Laracor she suffered from sore eyes, as we learn from the "Journal to Stella ;" and she always had rather weak sight. (b) History of the Cathedral of St. Patrick. authority of Scott's informant, evidently copied a portion of his description from that biographer, who says, quoting a friend of Mrs. Delany's: "She was very pale, and looked pensive, but not melancholy, and had hair as black as a raven.” Of her genius and high mental cultivation it is not necessary here to enlarge. The world is already in possession of them. The cranium of Stella, of which the accompanying is an engraving, was exhumed from the vaults of St. Patrick's Cathedral, along with that of Swift, in 1835(a). "The coffin in which it lay was of the same material, and placed in the same relation to the pillar bearing the tablet to her memory, as that of the Dean; and the bones constituting the skeleton exhibited the same characters, and were in equally perfect preservation, though interred ten [seventeen] years earlier. Its exact and proper place was well known, and no other coffin lay near it from which any confusion might have arisen."(b) (a) Phrenological Journal, vol. xix. p. 607. The skull of Stella was returned to its former, and, we hope, its last resting-place, at the same time as that of Swift. (b) Stella is buried beneath the second pillar from the great western entrance, on the south side of the nave of the Cathedral. The following inscription, on a plain, white marble" slab, in accordance with her will, marks 66 As may be seen by the foregoing representation, this skull is a perfect model of symmetry and beauty. Its outline is one of the most graceful we have ever seen; the teeth, which, for their whiteness and regularity were, in life, the theme of general admiration, were, perhaps, the most perfect ever witnessed in a skull. On the whole, it is no great stretch of the imagination to clothe and decorate this skull again with its alabaster skin, on which the rose had slightly bloomed; to adorn it with its original luxuriant dark hair, its white, expanded forehead, level, pencilled eye-brows, and deep, dark, lustrous eyes, its high prominent nose, its delicately chiselled mouth, and pouting upper lip, its full, rounded chin, and long but gracefully swelling neck,-when we shall find it realize all that description has handed down to us of an intellectual beauty of the style of those painted by Kneller, and with an outline and form of head accurately corresponding to the pictures of Stella which still exist. Have we a veritable portrait of Stella now existing which answers the foregoing description? We have taken considethe spot. From the contiguity of the tombs it looks as if she and the Dean had long arranged the place of their burial: "Underneath lie interred the Mortal Remains of Mrs. HESTER JOHNSON, better known to the world by the name of STELLA, under which she is celebrated in the writings of Dr. JONATHAN SWIFT, Dean of this Cathedral. She was a person of extraordinary endowments and accomplishments in body, mind, and behaviour; justly admired and respected by all who knew her, on account of her many eminent virtues, as well as for her great natural and acquired perfections. She died January 27, 1727-8, in the forty-sixth year of her age, and by her will bequeathed one thousand pounds towards the support of a Chaplain to the Hospital founded in this city by Dr. Stevens." This certainly, as Mr. Mason remarks, is not from the pen of any skilful eulogist. Both her own name and that of Dr. Steevens are misspelled in it. The precise date of its erection has not been ascertained; but it does not appear to have been set up during the Dean's lifetime. rable pains during the last six months to answer this question, and have had opportunities of examining several portraits and miniatures said to have been painted for her. There are two oil paintings in this city which tradition asserts to be originals of Esther Johnson. These are both females about twenty years of age. One of them is, along with a very good original of the Dean, in the possession of Mrs. Hillis. These were purchased several years ago in the Liberty, and are said to have been the property of Swift's butler. The other is that which Sir Walter Scott alluded to as the only portrait known to exist; it is in the possession of Walter Berwick, Esq., who has kindly lent it to us for the purposes of this inquiry. Most of the biographers of Swift describe Stella as "a dumpy woman," but this idea has evidently arisen from the expression of the Dean's already alluded to. In latter life it is well known that Stella lost much of her plumpness and also some of her beauty; Swift himself frequently alludes to this in the later odes upon her birth day. Even in 1719, when she was but 35, it is evident that her beauty was declining, and the following year we read that this was "Stella's case in fact, An angel's face a little crack'd; Could poets or could painters fix How angels look at thirty-six." In 1721 she seems to have felt the clouds of time passing over her fair features. And in her poem to Swift on his birth day, November 30, 1721, she thus reminds him of the cir cumstance: "Behold that beauty just decay'd And even then alludes to the failing lustre of her eyes, and the loss of changed or falling hairs. In 1725 Swift wrote the "Receipt to restore Stella's Youth," and in that poem her thinness and want of flesh form the burden of the Dean's song. In the same year the annual ode ex plicitly describes her state when half her locks were turned to grey; and in 1727 Sheridan alludes to the subject of Stella's thinness in his poetical invitation to the Dean to Rathfarnham, where he says: "You shall be welcome to dine, if your Deanship Can take up with me and my friend Stella's leanship.” We have introduced these quotations to show that Stella's advancing years and declining health induced great thinness; let us now return to the subject of the portrait. Some years after the Dean's death, George Faulkner, the bookseller, published a wretched engraving of Stella, taken, he says, from an original drawing by the Rev. George Parnel, Archdeacon of Clogher, and then in possession of the publisher(a). What has become of this picture we have not been able to discover. We have now beside us a copy of this very rare engraving(b), but, besides being most inartistic, it in no wise answers the description given of Esther Johnson. The history of the picture in the possession of Mr. Berwick, and described by Scott, is unknown beyond the last thirty years; and even Mr. Berwick himself had some doubts about its authenticity at the time. The hair, however, is brown, not black, which would be a fatal objection to any picture supposed to be that of Stella. It would occupy unnecessary space to discuss the claims and merits of the various pictures said to be those of Stella, three of which are now before us. We know of but one, the history of which is undoubtedly authentic, and which perfectly answers both to the foregoing description and to the characters of the skull. It is that engraved as the frontispiece to this work. It was originally in the possession of the distinguished Charles Ford of Woodpark, where (a) It is the frontispiece to the seventeenth volume of Swift's works, revised by Deane Swift, Esq., and published in Dublin in 1772. (b) This belonged to the late Dean Dawson, to whom it was presented by Mr. Hopkins. It is now in the possession of the family of the late Mr. Maguire, to whom we are indebted for the use of it, and other matters connected with Swift. Dr. A. Smith possesses another copy. |