14 MAY 1954, Page 16

THE BLACK DEAN

SIR,—The reference to Swift's obsession of cleanliness in Mr. Taplin's review of Mr. Middleton Murry's Jonathan Swift (Spectator, April 23rd) recalls to me a story which I would like to see printed. It was told to me some years ago by an Irish clergyman then in his nineties, who had visited Swift's parish at Laracor in Co. Meath many years previously. There he had found an elderly woman, a

cottager, who spoke of Swift as if he were her contemporary. She had owned the to in which he had sent his things to be washed, but it had been bought off her by an American, also on pilgrimage to Laracor. " The Dane,* she said, "was a very clane man."— Youre faithfully,