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clear=all>  <TABLE> <TR> <TD valign="TOP"> <IMG SRC="http://www.irelandseye.com/newmedia/culture/literature/jonathan_swift_logo.jpg" ALT="Jonathan Swift's Ireland logo"> <h3>Jonathan Swift's long journey to Kilroot, County Antrim</h3> <P> Yet, despite his isolation, he did manage regular trips to Belfast, and even the odd one to Dublin. In Belfast he met Jane Waring, whom he nicknamed “Varina”, the young daughter of a former Archdeacon of Dromore who had established the family home in Waringstown, about fifteen miles south-west of Belfast. Swift probably devoted more energy to this romantic liaison than to his clerical post, although both were to end in frustration. From a letter he wrote her in April 1696, shortly before he left Kilroot, we learn that Swift had determined on either marriage to Jane or, if that was refused, immediate return to Temple’s household in Surrey. In a heavy-handed and imperious manner, he presented her with an ultimatum: marry him forthwith or never enjoy his company again. In this letter, the lowly cleric tries to seduce Jane Waring by adopting airs above his station, hinting at elevated social connections that he is prepared to sacrifice for her sake:</p><p> <blockquote> I am once more offered the advantage to have the same acquaintance with greatness that I formerly enjoyed, and with better prospect of interest. </blockquote> Jane, perhaps wisely, resisted Swift’s combination of romantic appeal and insensitive threat. True to his word, he left Kilroot a couple of weeks after his overtures had failed, and turned back to Dublin to catch a boat for England. He arrived in Moor Park in May to resume his clerical duties for Temple.</p><p> Swift had spent just over a year in Kilroot, yet he did not surrender his patent to the prebend for another eighteen months. In effect, he had abandoned his parish. Two years after his escape, he wrote to his successor, Rev. John Winder, to clear up some tithe accounts and bills. He also requested that the books he had left behind be properly packed and dispatched to him in Surrey. (Winder, rector of Carnmoney and a former friend of Swift from their time in Oxford, stayed on in Kilroot for twenty years.) On religious matters, Swift advised Winder to ignore those sermons he might come across, clearly uninterested in what he had once written for such an elusive congregation:</p><p> <blockquote> Those sermons You have thought fitt to transcribe will utterly disgrace You, unless you have so much credit that whatever comes from You will pass; They were what I was firmly resolved to burn and especially some of them the idlest trifling stuff that ever was writt, calculated for a Church without a company or a roof; like our [Chapel at] Oxford. </blockquote> That image of ruin and desolation, a mockery of the Church’s temporal vitality, angered and offended Swift. His first clerical experience, of an anxious Anglican island surrounded by fundamentalist Dissent, would provoke his imaginative and literary ire for the rest of his life.</p><p> At the end of the letter to Winder, dated 1 April 1698, Swift asks him to pay an outstanding bill on his behalf to “Taylor of Loughbricland…for something about grazing a Horse and Farrier’s bill”. While Swift’s memory for dates and places usually was shaky, his attention to financial detail was obsessive. Nine months later, in January 1699, he wrote again to Winder, and concluded with yet another inquiry about the settlement, this time referring to “Tailer the Innkeeper”. Loughbrickland is on the main road between Belfast and Dublin, about thirty miles south of Carrickfergus. (It was in this area that William of Orange assembled his army before the Battle of the Boyne.) Details of this unpaid bill confirm that Swift did indeed ride the long road to Dublin during his time in Kilroot and, in this case, rested overnight in a safely Protestant town, while his horse was reshod and fed.</p><p> What may seem like a year wasted in Swift’s clerical apprenticeship, a period outwardly marked by frustration and disappointment, turns out to conceal a most extraordinary literary plot – the secretive composition of <i>A Tale of a Tub</i>, a scandalous satire on the theological lunacy and political danger of Dissent. Most commentators agree that the story was probably conceived during Swift’s uneventful tenure at Kilroot. Surrounded by living examples of what he considered to be grotesque distortions of reasonable Protestantism, and having more than enough free time on his hands, Swift dreamed up this virtuoso piece of literary revenge. He never once mentioned it in his correspondence during this period, beginning a life-long literary strategy of personal concealment. There were also practical considerations behind this stylistic preference: publicising the fact that he was responsible for a satire on non-conformists might please his artistic vanity, but it might equally endanger a smooth path to a career in England, where toleration was more acceptable than in penal Ireland. (Swift clearly intended his <i>Tale of a Tub</i> for an English audience and ensured that it was published in London, anonymously, in 1704). When he arrived back in Surrey, he was almost thirty years old, and still without a settled clerical career. Kilroot had certainly stimulated his artistic imagination, and shaped his sense of ironic attack and reserve, but it had not given him a greater sense of security.</p><p> The fundamentalist character of Kilroot has changed little since Swift’s unhappy residence there, except that now the parish has a small, attractive church, St Colman’s, built in 1971, and a regular congregation. At the back of the church sits a beautiful handmade model of “Dean Swift’s cottage”, inspired by a photograph taken in the 1920s. The cottage itself was occupied until the 1950s, when it was destroyed by fire, and the remains buried in the foundations of a monstrous ICI chemical plant. Nearby stands the only sign of the writer’s association with the place, the Jonathan Swift Gallery, which hosts regular exhibitions of modern Irish art, and which contains an interesting collection of Swiftiana.</p><p> Up in Balllynure, the remains of Swift’s lonesome church are still visible, a small roofless shell in an overgrown graveyard, an image resonant of Swift’s own characterisation of the place, as described to his successor three hundred years before.</p><p> Read more about the early career and travels of of Jonathan Swift in the book by Joseph McMinn; '<b>Jonathan's Travels: Swift and Ireland</b>'.<hr></p><p><br> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0862814537/applepress03-20/ref=nosim"><img src="http://www.appletree.ie/cat/books/covmed4537.gif" Height=150 ALIGN=LEFT></a> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0862814537/applepress03-20/ref=nosim"><I>Jonathan's Travels</I></a>, by Joseph McMinn. For more information on the book, click <A href="http://www.appletree.ie/cat/books/4537.htm">here</a>.<br> Also from Appletree: <A href="http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0862817595/applepress03-20/ref=nosim"><I>Famous Irish Lives</I></a>, <A href="http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0862817595/applepress03-20/ref=nosim">click here to buy</A> or <A href="http://www.appletree.ie/cat/books/7595.htm">here</A> for more information & <A href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0862815487/applepress03-20/ref=nosim"> <I>Irish Museums and Heritage Centres</I></a>, click <A href="http://www.appletree.ie/cat/books/5487.htm">here</A> for more information.<P></P> </TD> <TD width="180" align="RIGHT" valign="TOP"> <script type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"> </script></TD> </TR> </TABLE> <P> [ <A HREF="#top">Back to Top</A> ]<P><FONT SIZE=2>All Material © 1999-2005 Irelandseye.com and contributors</FONT><BR><BR clear=all></FONT></TD> </TR> <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#336699" width=120 valign=bottom><IMG SRC="/newmedia/ssi/bluwaves.jpg" WIDTH=120 HEIGHT=145 ALIGN=TOP></TD> <TD><IMG SRC="/Images/spacer.gif" WIDTH=20 HEIGHT=2 ALIGN=TOP></TD> </TR> <TR><TD colspan=5 BGCOLOR="#336699" align=right><IMG SRC="/Images/spacer.gif" WIDTH=100 HEIGHT=1 ALIGN=TOP></TD> </TR></TABLE> <BR><CENTER><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="ARIAL, HELVETICA">[ <A HREF="http://www.irelandseye.com">Home</A> | <A HREF="http://www.irelandseye.com/aarticles/features/index.shtm">Features</A> | <A HREF="http://www.irelandseye.com/aarticles/culture/index.shtm">Culture</A> | <A HREF="http://www.irelandseye.com/aarticles/history/index.shtm">History</A> | <A HREF="http://www.irelandseye.com/aarticles/travel/index.shtm">Travel</A> ]</FONT></CENTER> </body> </html> </body> </html>