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Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Farnham


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Death of Esther Johnson, Close Friend of Jonathan Swift

Esther Johnson, an Englishwoman known as “Stella” and known to be a close friend of Jonathan Swift, dies on January 28, 1728. Whether or not she and Swift are secretly married, and if so, why the marriage is never made public, is a subject of debate.

Johnson is born in Richmond, Surrey, England, on March 13, 1681, and spends her early years at Moor Park, Farnham, home of Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet. Here, when she is about eight, she meets Swift, who is Temple’s secretary. He takes a friendly interest in her from the beginning and apparently supervises her education.

Johnson’s parentage has been the subject of much speculation. The weight of evidence is that her mother acts as companion to Temple’s widowed sister, Martha, Lady Giffard, and that Johnson, her mother and her sister Anne are regarded as part of the family. Her father is said to have been a merchant who died young. Gossip that she is Temple’s illegitimate daughter seems to rest on nothing more solid than the friendly interest he shows in her. There are similar rumours about his supposed relationship with Swift.

When Swift sees Johnson again in 1696, he considers that she has grown into the “most beautiful, graceful and agreeable young woman in London.” Temple, at his death in 1699, leaves her some property in Ireland, and it is at Swift’s suggestion that she move to Ireland in 1702 to protect her interests, but her long residence there is probably due to a desire to be close to Swift. She generally lives in Swift’s house, though always with female companions like Rebecca Dingley, a cousin of Temple whom she has known since childhood. She becomes extremely popular in Dublin and an intellectual circle grows up around her, although it was said that she finds the company of other women tedious and only enjoys the conversation of men.

In 1704, their mutual friend, the Reverend William Tisdall, tells Swift that he wishes to marry Johnson, much to Swift’s private disgust, although his letter to Tisdall, which outlines his objections to the marriage, is courteous enough, making the practical point that Tisdall is not in a position to support a wife financially. Little is known about this episode, other than Swift’s letter to Tisdall. It is unclear if Tisdall actually proposes to her. If he does, he seems to have been met with a firm rejection, and he marries Eleanor Morgan two years later. He and Swift, after a long estrangement, become friends once more after Johnson’s death.

Johnson’s friendship with Swift becomes fraught after 1707 when he meets Esther Vanhomrigh, daughter of the Dutch-born Lord Mayor of Dublin, Bartholomew Van Homrigh. Swift becomes deeply attached to her and invents for her the name “Vanessa.” She in turn becomes infatuated with him and after his return to Ireland follows him there. The uneasy relationship between the three of them continues until 1723 when Vanessa, who is by now seriously ill from tuberculosis, apparently asks Swift not to see Johnson again. This leads to a violent quarrel between them, and Vanessa, before her death in June 1723, destroys the will she had made in Swift’s favour, leaving her property to two men, George Berkeley and Robert Marshall, who though eminent in their respective callings are almost strangers to her.

Whether Swift and Johnson are married has always been a subject of intense debate. The marriage ceremony is allegedly performed in 1716 by St. George Ashe, Bishop of Clogher, with no witnesses present, and it is said that the parties agree to keep it secret and live apart. Johnson always describes herself as a “spinster” and Swift always refers to himself as unmarried. Rebecca Dingley, who lives with Johnson throughout her years in Ireland, says that Johnson and Swift were never alone together. Those who know the couple best are divided on whether a marriage ever took place. Some, like Mrs. Dingley and Swift’s housekeeper Mrs. Brent laugh at the idea as “absurd.” On the other hand, Thomas Sheridan, one of Swift’s oldest friends, believes that the story of the marriage is true. He reportedly gives Johnson herself as his source. Historians have been unable to reach a definite conclusion on the truth of the matter. Bishop Ashe dies before the story first becomes public, and there are no other witnesses to the supposed marriage.

A collection of Johnson’s witticisms is published by Swift under the titles of “Bon Mots de Stella” as an appendix to some editions of Gulliver’s Travels. A Journal to Stella, a collection of 65 letters from Swift to Johnson, is published posthumously.

In 1722, Martha, Lady Giffard, dies and leaves money to Johnson and Swift’s sister, Mrs. Fenton, who had been her companion in 1711.

Johnson’s health begins to fail in her mid-forties. In 1726, she is thought to be dying and Swift rushes back from London to be with her but finds her better. The following year it becomes clear that she is gravely ill. After sinking slowly for months, she dies on January 28, 1728, and is buried in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin. Swift is inconsolable at her death and writes The Death of Mrs. Johnson in tribute to her. When Swift dies in October 1745, he is buried beside her at his own request. A ward in St. Patrick’s University Hospital is named “Stella” in her memory.

In the 1994 film Words Upon the Window Pane, based on the play by William Butler Yeats, Johnson is played by Bríd Brennan. The plot turns on a séance in Dublin in the 1920s, where the ghosts of Swift, Johnson and Vanessa appear to resume their ancient quarrel.

In the 1982 Soviet film The House That Swift Built, Johnson is played by Aleksandra Zakharova.


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Birth of William Lewery Blackley, Divine & Social Reformer

william-lewery-blackley

William Lewery Blackley, divine and social reformer, is born at Dundalk, County Louth on December 30, 1830.

Blackley is the second son of Travers Robert Blackley of Ashtown Lodge, County Dublin and Eliza, daughter of Colonel Lewery, who is taken prisoner by the French at Verdun. His maternal grandfather is Travers Hartley, MP for Dublin (1776-1790) and governor of the Bank of Ireland.

In boyhood Blackley is sent with his brother John to a school at Brussels kept by Dr. Carl Martin Friedlander, a Polish political refugee, whose daughter, Amelia Jeanne Josephine, he subsequently marries on July 24, 1855. There he acquires proficiency in French, German, and other foreign languages. In 1847 he returns to Ireland, entered Trinity College, Dublin, graduating B.A. in 1850, M.A. in 1854, and takes holy orders. In 1854 he becomes curate of St. Peter’s, Southwark, but an attack of cholera compels his retirement from London. From 1855 to 1867 he has charge of two churches at Frensham, near Farnham, Surrey. He is rector of North Waltham, Hampshire (1867-1883), and King’s Somborne (1883-1889). In 1883 he is made honorary canon of Winchester.

Blackley, who is an energetic parish priest and is keenly interested in social questions, carefully elaborates a scheme for the cure of pauperism by a statutory enforcement of thrift which has far-reaching results at home and abroad. In November 1878 he contributes to the Nineteenth Century an essay entitled National Insurance a Cheap, Practical, and Popular Way of Preventing Pauperism, and thenceforth strenuously advocates a scheme of compulsory insurance, which the National Providence League, with the Earl of Shaftesbury as president, is formed in 1880 to carry into effect. At the same time he recommends temperance as a means of social regeneration. His views reach a wide public through his writings, which include How to teach Domestic Economy (1879), Collected Essays on the Prevention of Pauperism (1880), Social Economy Reading Book, adapted to the New Code (1881), Thrift and Independence; a Word for Working-men (1884).

Blackley’s scheme provides that all persons between eighteen and twenty should subscribe to a national fund, and should receive in return a week in time of sickness, and a week after the age of seventy. The plan is urged on the House of Lords by the Earl of Carnarvon in 1880, and is the subject of inquiry by a select committee of the House of Commons from 1885 to 1887. The majority of the boards of guardians in England and Wales support the proposals, but the commons’ committee, while acknowledging Blackley’s ingenuity and knowledge, reports adversely on administrative and actuarial grounds. At the same time the friendly societies, which Blackley has censured in his Thrift and Independence, regards the principle of compulsion as a menace to their own growth, and their historian and champion, the Rev. John Frome Wilkinson, sharply criticises Blackley’s plan in The Blackley National Providence Insurance Scheme; a Protest and Appeal (1887). Blackley’s plan, although rejected for the time, stimulates kindred movements in the colonies and in foreign countries, and leads directly to the adoption of old age pensions in England by legislation in 1908, while the national insurance scheme which receives parliamentary sanction in 1911 bears some trace of Blackley’s persistent agitation.

In 1887 Blackley, who is director of the Clergy Mutual Insurance Company, makes proposals to the church congress which lead to the formation of the “Clergy Pension Scheme” and of a society for ecclesiastical fire insurance. In the autumn of 1889 Blackley, whose active propagandism brings him constantly to London, becomes vicar of St. James the Less, Vauxhall Bridge Road. There he enlarges the schools and builds a parish hall and a vicarage.

William Lewery Blackley dies after a brief illness at 79 St. George’s Square, on July 25, 1902. Brasses are put up in Blackley’s memory in the churches of St. James the Less, North Waltham, and Frensham.