Without assuming some such tacit understanding, his letters to
her are unintelligible. He repeatedly alludes to his absence from her as
only tolerable because it was for her sake no less than his own, and the
details of his petty economies would be merely vulgar except to her for
whom their motive gave them a sweetness of humorous pathos. The evidence
of the marriage seems to be as conclusive as that of a secret can well
be. Dr. Delany, who ought to have been able to judge of its probability,
and who had no conceivable motive of misstatement, was assured of it by
one whose authority was Stella herself. Mr. Monck-Berkeley had it from
the widow of Bishop Berkeley, and she from her husband, who had it from
Dr. Ashe, by whom they were married. These are at least unimpeachable
witnesses. The date of the marriage is more doubtful, but Sheridan is
probably not far wrong when he puts it in 1716. It was simply a
reparation, and no union was implied in it. Delany intimates that
Vanessa, like the young Chevalier, vulgarized her romance in drink. More
than this, however, was needful to palliate even in Swift the brutal
allusion to her importunacy in "Gulliver," unless, as is but too
possible, the passage in question be an outbreak of ferocious spleen
against her victorious rival. Its coarseness need not make this seem
impossible, for that was by no means a queasy age, and Swift continued
on intimate terms with Lady Betty Germaine after the publication of the
nasty verses on her father.
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