STELLA AND VANESSA.
[TO TEE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR:']
SIR,—"Will you allow me to call your attention to some observa- tions in a review of Mr. Forster's " Life of Swift " contained in your issue of January 8. The reviewer quotes a sentence from Lord Campbell's " Life of Lord Cowper," which runs thus :— "In perusing the ' Journal to Stella,' it is curious to observe that in the minute and circumstantial accounts he gives of all his other visits, he studiously and systematically suppresses his visits to Mrs. Vanhomrigh and his acquaintance with her daughter." He then mentions that Mr. Forster was so surprised to read this, that be had the curiosity to count the number of mentions made of such visits, which he found to amount to seventy-three.
You stigmatise this inaccuracy as unpardonable carelessness, And I do not traverse the assertion, but will- you allow me to remind your readers of the real gist of Lord Campbell's -observations ?
In the text ("Lives of the Chancellors," Vol. IV., p. 329) he speaks of Lord Cowper as follows :—" In his retirement, he was violently assailed by the man who at this very time was treacher- ously carrying on a double courtship with Stella and Vanessa, prepared to break the hearts of both,"—to which he appends the mote above mentioned, by way of illustration. As to the mother, Lord Campbell is inaccurate; as to the daughter, he is correct. To quote Sir Walter Scott's words in his " Life of Swift," " while Vanessa was occupying much of his time, and much doubtless of Ibis thought, she is never once mentioned in the 'Journal' directly by name, and is only twice casually indicated by the title of Vanhomrigh's eldest daughter."
But this is not a full statement of the case as against Swift, for no one can read his various notices of dinners and visits at Mrs. Vanhomrigh's without observing that he constantly explains -why he went there, when there was no necessity except that arising -from the promptings of his own conscience for any explanation whatever. Between October 20, 1710, and December 31, 1711, Swift dined or visited at Mrs. Vanhomrigh's between forty and fifty times. The first three of these occasions he mentions with- out comment, but in more than two out of three of the remain- ing notices he takes the precaution of alleging some excuse or -other. Sometimes it is the weather, sometimes his broken shin ; at one time he is taken there by Sir Andrew Fountaine, or some- body else ; at another, he goes there because he leaves his gown and periwig in Mrs. V.'s custody ; at another he has to order a scarf, and this entails the duty of dining there yet again in order to pay for it.
I trust, therefore, that your readers will not infer, as they might do from your reviewer's censure and from Mr. Forster's language, that Lord Campbell had entirely misstated the case. In that part of the statement which was comparatively immaterial, he is, I confess, mistaken ; but in the essential part, that which illustrates Swift's double-dealing, he errs rather by omission than by exaggeration. Apologising for this communication, I am,
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