The Dean Drank Coffee
MR. JOIINSTON, dissatisfied with the reception given to his eighteen.Lyear-old article 'The Mysterious Origin of Dean Swift,' now publishes the results of a mature examination of the revelant documents. This is his theory: Swift was a son of Sir John Temple, and so an illegitimate half- brother of Sir William Temple, who, employed him at Moor, Park. Stella was an illegitimate datighter of Sir William's. It is true, therefore, that marriage between Swift. and Stella was prevented by tt forbidden degree of consanguinity, but they were not brother and sister, they were uncle and niece. The Vanessa episode is explained thus: Swift would have liked to marry Vanessa, but could not do so without first making up his mind either to leave Stella in an intolerable position=- the world would treat her as a cast-off mistress— or to make .public the facts of their relationShip. He chose to do neither of these things, and that is why they all three remained unmarried and behaved so strangely.- Swift was perfectly normal, and his morbid sexual fastidiousness is a myth created to explain an otherwise inexplicable situa- tion. Indeed Vanessa was probably his mistress: hence those mysterious allusions to coffee- drinking in the letters to Vanessa, for Swift made them precisely in the spirit of Mr.. John Braine's hero who speaks of making presents of fine china when he means making love.
\ Ir. Johnston's thesis certainly explains a great many otherwise unexplained evasions, lies and animosities. I wish he had set it forth more straightforwardly instead of taking us on a Hotsonian tour of the documents, with pauses for setting up and knocking down rows of contrary biographers. It seems to be true that no one else
has ever covered all this ground, but one can have too much detail about the mechanics of research; and the book is duller than it need be, despite NI r. Johnston's sprightly manner.
Specialists will certainly dispute some of the evidence, and others are encouraged to do so by the provision of many photographs of documents, though these are not as good as they might have been. Still, after a good look at one of them I am prepared to dispute Mr. Johnston on an important point. Jonathan Swift the elder is usually said to have died in April, 1667; the Dean was born November 30. It is essential to the argu- ment that the Dean should have been conceived after his reputed father's death. Now Swift the elder was Steward of King's Inn, and Mr. John- ston has found a document signed by his successor and dated '13 Junij, 1667.' This date is of no use to him, since nobody denies that Swift was dead by June; so he argues tortuously that this entry originally read '3 Junii' and that somebody has backdated it to January, when the matters re- corded were transacted; so Swift was dead by January. But the photograph lends no support to this, and for reasons too dry to set out here it seems clear that the' date was not altered at all. Mr. Johnston expects a lot of trouble from in- veterate believers in the Stella marriage and in Swift's legitimacy; but he may get it on other grounds too. Still, 1 hope he is right, not only because Swift deserved his coffee, but because everything that weakens the myth of his insanity helps his books to a better reading.
FRANK KERMODE
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