Third in a series. No. 1. No. 2.
Jonathan Swift was born in 1667 in Dublin. On the day he was born, his father had been dead for around seven months, and his formal education, at Kilkenny Grammar School and Trinity College, Dublin, was sponsored by an uncle. His family's connection to Sir William Temple, a relative and diplomat and friend of King William, turned out to be even more important: for the ten years beginning in 1689, he lived intermittently at the Temple household in England, read widely, took holy orders, and became a satirist, the most brilliant ever to write in English prose, of which he was the first great master. It is well to keep in mind his deceptively simple definition of good writing: proper words in proper places.
It was in Temple's household that he met Esther Johnson, the daughter of Temple's steward, who became something like a lifelong partner. It is not clear whether they ever married. She was a child when Swift first made her acquaintance, and he oversaw her education, communicated with her constantly when they were apart, and, when they were together, visited her daily, though always in the company of others. If they married, it was a secret, we know not why; and, if they did not marry--we don't know why that would have been, either. There is nothing to suggest that either one of them was anything less than completely satisfied with their relationship.
While Swift's earliest days are somewhat obscure, we have, thanks to Esther, whom Swift called Stella, a vivid picture of his life in the period 1710-1713, when he was living in London, working for the Tories, and she was in Dublin, where it was cheaper to live. He wrote to her each day, and the preserved letters were, years after his death, published as Journal to Stella. The parts I have read are full of chatty and mundane detail--his walking exercise, his meals, where and what and with whom he dined, lots about the weather and his ailments (he suffered from what we now recognize to be Meniere's Disease), the time that he went to bed and how well he slept, and, occasionally, something like this to make you sit up:
I am just told now that dear Lady Ashburnham, the Duke of Ormond's daughter, died yesterday at her country house. The poor creature was with child. She was my greatest favourite, and I am in excessive concern for her loss. I hardly knew a more valuable person on all accounts. . . . I hate life when I think it exposed to such accidents; and to see so many thousand wretches burdening the earth, while such as her die, makes me think God did never intend life for a blessing. Farewell.
The church was his career but his writings do not seem particularly theological. It is therefore interesting to me that, about the time he was taking holy orders, he collected some "notes on religion," which were not published till after his death. One of them reads:
I am not answerable to God for the doubts that arise in my own breast, since they are the consequence of that reason which he hath planted in me; if I take care to conceal those doubts from others, if I use my best endeavours to subdue them, and if they have no influence on the conduct of my life.
His political journalism on behalf of the Tories won for him, in 1713, the Deanship of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. He might have expected a more desirable appointment, such as an English bishopric. But he accepted the post, proved himself an effective church administrator, and starting in 1724, with his Drapier's Letters, written under the pseudonym M. P. Drapier, became a leader of Irish resistance to English oppression. The government offered an award of 300 pounds for information regarding the identity of the Drapier, but although everyone in Dublin knew it was Swift, not a soul came forward. Swift then became, and still is today, venerated in Ireland. His "Modest Proposal" for alleviating the suffering of Ireland's poor is one of the most startling short documents in English literature, the single work that most richly illustrates one critic's observation that his style, which always "shuns ornaments and singularity of all kinds," "grows more tense and controlled the more fierce the indignation that it is called upon to express."
Gulliver's Travels was published in 1726, the year Swift turned 59. The details of his friendships with Addison, Steele, Gay, Pope, and other eminent though less famous personages, not to mention his relationship with Stella, all indicate that he was, notwithstanding the cold hatred exhibited in some of his most representative works, a gregarious, companionable, and loyal friend. In a letter to Pope he wrote that he heartily loved John and Peter and Thomas but detested mankind. His rejection of the view, which in his time was gaining currency, that human beings are essentially good was thoroughgoing. He remained active and prolific through his sixties--Verses on the Death of Dr Swift (1731), Complete Collection of Genteel Conversation (1738), Directions to Servants (1745)--and, in 1735, established an insane asylum, later named St. Patrick's Hospital, that he had already provided for in his will. By 1740, however, it was apparent that his increasing deafness was isolating him, and he sank into senility, finally to the point that he was declared insane in August of 1742. He died on October 19, 1745, about six weeks shy of his 78th birthday.