The Spirit of Place, and Other Essays

								

"in pain except he saw MD's little handwriting."  He hid with them in the
long labours of these exquisite letters every night and morning.  If no
letter came, he comforted himself with thinking that "he had it yet to be
happy with."  And the world has agreed to hide under its own manifold and
lachrymose blunders the grace and singularity--the distinction--of this
sweet romance.  "Little, sequestered pleasure-house"--it seemed as though
"the many could not miss it," but not even the few have found it.
It is part of the scheme of the sympathetic historian that Stella should
be the victim of hope deferred, watching for letters from Swift.  But day
and night Presto complains of the scantiness of MD's little letters; he
waits upon "her" will: "I shall make a sort of journal, and when it is
full I will send it whether MD writes or not; and so that will be
pretty."  "Naughty girls that will not write to a body!"  "I wish you
were whipped for forgetting to send.  Go, be far enough, negligent
baggages."  "You, Mistress Stella, shall write your share, and then comes
Dingley altogether, and then Stella a little crumb at the end; and then
conclude with something handsome and genteel, as 'your most humble
cumdumble.'"  But Scott and Macaulay and Thackeray are all exceedingly
sorry for Stella.
Swift is most charming when he is feigning to complain of his task: "Here
is such a stir and bustle with this little MD of ours; I must be writing
every night; O Lord, O Lord!"  "I must go write idle things, and twittle
twattle."  "These saucy jades take up so much of my time with writing to
them in the morning."  Is it not a stealthy wrong done upon Mrs. Dingley
that she should be stripped of all these ornaments to her name and
memory?  When Swift tells a woman in a letter that there he is "writing
in bed, like a tiger," she should go gay in the eyes of all generations.
They will not let Stella go gay, because of sentiment; and they will not
let Mrs. Dingley go gay, because of sentiment for Stella.  Marry come up!
Why did not the historians assign all the tender passages (taken very
seriously) to Stella, and let Dingley have the jokes, then?  That would
have been no ill share for Dingley.  But no, forsooth, Dingley is allowed
nothing.
There are passages, nevertheless, which can hardly be taken from her.  For
now and then Swift parts his dear MD.  When he does so he invariably
drops those initials and writes "Stella" or "Ppt" for the one, and "D" or
"Dingley" for the other.  There is no exception to this anywhere.  He is
anxious about Stella's "little eyes," and about her health generally;
whereas Dingley is strong.  Poor Ppt, he thinks, will not catch the "new
fever," because she is not well; "but why should D escape it, pray?"  And
Mrs. Dingley is rebuked for her tale of a journey from Dublin to Wexford.
"I doubt, Madam Dingley, you are apt to lie in your travels, though not
so bad as Stella; she tells thumpers."  Stella is often reproved for her