GULLIVER'S TRAVELSauthor Jonathan Swift used a form of baby language mixed with often bawdy endearments in letters from London to two women living in Dublin, a new investigation has revealed.
Oxford academic Abigail Williams, with the help of a forensic scientist from the US Federal Bureau of Investigations, used digital technology to delve into the secrets of the letters, now held by the British Library.
Up to now, it had been believed that some intimate language in the letters had been crossed out by censorious editors decades after they were first written to Stella, whose real name was Esther Johnson, and to her companion Rebecca Dingley.
However, Dr Williams disagrees: “What I have discovered is that Swift himself lightly crossed out those parts of the letters before he sent them. I think the effect was intended to be a kind of ‘now you see me, now you don’t’ guessing game with his readers.
“The women he was writing to needed to undress the text before they could fully enjoy it. This disguising of affectionate endearments is clearly part of a secret code of intimacy that characterises the letters as a whole.
“Until now, scholars thought that prudish 18th-century editors had crossed out the most intimate parts of Swift’s letters to preserve his reputation,” said Dr Johnson, of Oxford University’s Faculty of English Language and Literature.
In the letters, collectively titled The Journal to Stella, Swift provided an extraordinary snapshot of London life between 1710 and 1714, covering the social, political and cultural climate in the city.
In the centuries since, academics have suggested that Swift was secretly married to Johnson, though contemporaries claimed that he was “never once in his life alone in a room” with her, said Dr Williams.
However, a strong sense of “sexual playfulness” is displayed in the letters, where in February 1711 he writes, “Tis still terribly cold. I wish my cold hand was in the warmest place about you, young women”.
In others, Swift, who seems to have had a horror of the naked female form, judging by some of his poems, calls the women “saucy sluts”, “agreeable bitches” and “rogues”.
Elsewhere, he uses infantilised language to communicate with the women, which Williams probed by getting her three-year-old “who has an excellent lisp” to read them out loud.
In one, he writes: “I expect a Rettle vely soon; that MD is vely werr, and so Nite dee MD” , which is translated to read: “I expect a letter very soon, and that my dears are very well, and so night dear my dears.”
In another, Swift, who was an Anglican clergyman besides being an author of renown, writes: “I am sorry for poo poo ppt, pray walk hen oo can,” which is translated to read: “I am sorry for poor poor poppet, pray walk when you can.”
Her research, Dr Williams believes, shows that the letters were never destined for the eyes of Esther Johnson alone, but rather were for her and her companion: “Part of their sexual and emotional playfulness is related to this three-way readership.
“The evidence of my work suggests that even in these apparently personal and self-revealing letters, intimacy is a complicated thing,” said Dr Williams, who is to publish a book on her research.
The letters were eventually returned to Swift’s estate, though the collection was broken up a century later when their owner, James Smith, sold some separately.
“I think the rest are in attics all over Ireland.
“One of the frustrations is that we don’t have the letters back to him from the women, so we don’t know if they were saying to him to stop writing this baby language, or to drop the sexual references,” said Dr Williams.
