The Journal to Stella

The Journal to Stella

When Swift began to write the letters known as the Journal to Stella, he was forty-two years of age, and Esther Johnson twenty-nine. Perhaps the most useful introduction to the correspondence will be a brief setting forth of what is known of their friendship from Stellas childhood, the more specially as the question has been obscured by many assertions and theories resting on a very slender basis of fact. Jonathan Swift, born in 1667 after his fathers death, was educated by his uncle Godwin, and after a not very successful career at Trinity College, Dublin, went to stay with his mother, Abigail Erick, at Leicester. Mrs. Swift feared that her son would fall in love with a girl named Betty Jones, but, as Swift told a friend, he had had experience enough not to think of marriage till I settle my fortune in the world, which I am sure will not be in some years; and even then, I am so hard to please that I suppose I shall put it off to the other world. Soon afterwards an opening for Swift presented itself. Sir William Temple, now living in retirement at Moor Park, near Farnham, had been, like his father, Master of the Irish Rolls, and had thus become acquainted with Swifts uncle Godwin. Moreover, Lady Temple was related to Mrs. Swift, as Lord Orrery tells us. Thanks to these facts, the application to Sir William Temple was successful, and Swift went to live at Moor Park before the end of 1689. There he p. xread to Temple, wrote for him, and kept his accounts, and growing into confidence with his employer, was often trusted with matters of great importance. The storyafterwards improved upon by Lord Macaulaythat Swift received only 20 and his board, and was not allowed to sit at table with his master, is wholly untrustworthy. Within three years of their first intercourse, Temple had introduced his secretary to William the Third, and sent him to London to urge the King to consent to a bill for triennial Parliaments. When Swift took up his residence at Moor Park he found there a little girl of eight, daughter of a merchant named Edward Johnson, who had died young. Swift says that Esther Johnson was born on March 18, 1681; in the parish register of Richmond, [0a] which shows that she was baptized on March 20, 168081, her name is given as Hester; but she signed her will Esther, the name by which she was always known. Swift says, Her father was a younger brother of a good family in Nottinghamshire, her mother of a lower degree; and indeed she had little to boast in her birth. Mrs. Johnson had two children, Esther and Ann, and lived at Moor Park as companion to Lady Giffard, Temples widowed sister. Another member of the household, afterwards to be Esthers constant companion, was Rebecca Dingley, a relative of the Temple family. [0b] She was a year or two older than Swift. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 4208
Author: Swift, Jonathan
Release Date: Jul 1, 2003
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Editor: Aitken, George Atherton, 1860-1917