Esther Vanhomrigh, Irish woman of Dutch descent and a longtime lover and correspondent of Jonathan Swift, dies in Celbridge, County Kildare, on June 2, 1723. Swift’s letters to her are published after her death. Her fictional name “Vanessa” is created by Swift by taking Van from her surname, Vanhomrigh, and adding Esse, a pet form of her first name, Esther.

Vanhomrigh is born in Dublin on February 14, 1688, the eldest of four children of Bartholomew Van Homrigh, a merchant of Amsterdam and afterwards of Dublin, who is appointed commissary of the stores by King William III upon his expedition into Ireland. He serves as Lord Mayor of Dublin from 1697–98. Her mother, also named Esther, is the daughter of John Stone, an Irish commissioner of revenue. She grows up at Celbridge Abbey in County Kildare.

Vanhomrigh’s father dies in 1703, and his widow moves her family to London in 1707. She becomes acquainted with Swift in December of that year while the family is en route for London, at Dunstable, and it is here that their intense 17-year relationship begins. She is 22 years younger than Swift, and it is obvious from the beginning that he admires her for her rugged qualities, as he does not admire very delicate women. She is said “not to be a beauty,” although it is difficult to be sure about this since no contemporary portrait of her exists (the famous 1868 Millais portrait is a work of artistic imagination). Swift later serves as her tutor. After her mother dies in 1714, she follows Swift to Ireland, and returns to Celbridge Abbey, but she is desperately miserable there.

Their relationship is fraught. It is broken up after 17 years by Swift’s relationship with another woman, Esther Johnson, whom he calls “Stella,” in 1723. Swift has known Stella since about 1690, when she is a little girl in the household of his employer Sir William Temple; their relationship is intense and it is possible that they secretly married in 1716. Vanhomrigh is thought to have asked Swift not to see Stella again, and he apparently refuses, thus putting an end to their relationship.

Vanhomrigh never recovers from his rejection and dies on June 2, 1723, likely from tuberculosis contracted from nursing her sister Mary, who had died of the same disease in 1720, as had their mother before her. Some accuse Swift of inadvertently causing her death.

Vanhomrigh’s father had left her well provided for, but she is burdened by debts accumulated by her mother and her spendthrift brother Bartholomew. In her will, she names the barrister Robert Marshall and George Berkeley, the celebrated philosopher and future Bishop of Cloyne, executors and joint residuary legatees of her estate, although she knew neither man well. Due to the debts, a protracted lawsuit ensues and a large part of the estate is lost in legal costs. It is widely reported that she had made it a condition of the inheritance that her executors publish all her correspondence with Swift, but in fact, no such stipulation seems to have been made.

Swift, whose letters to her are published after her death, is not mentioned in her will, perhaps a final retaliation against a man whose neglect made her “live a life like a languishing death.”