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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2021
Swift to Esther Johnson,Moor Park [c. January 1698]
This letter was not included in Deane Swift's first edition of the Hawkesworth letters in 1765, and did not appear until 1768. The letter is undated and unaddressed, and was believed by Deane Swift to be from 1696, and addressed not to Johnson, but to Swift's sister, Jane Swift. However, the contents of the letter suggest that it was the first letter written by Swift to Esther Johnson after she had left Moor Park to spend the winter and spring of 1698 in London, along with Sir William Temple and Lady Giffard. The reference to the Czar alludes to Peter the Great's visit to London in January 1698.
LOCATION: Letters (1768), vol. V, pp. 239–40; Woolley, Corr., vol. I, pp. 129–30.
I received your kind letter from Robert by word of mouth, and think it a vast condescension in you to think of us in all your greatness: now shall we hear nothing from you for five months but We Courtiers. Loory is well, and presents his humble duty to my lady, and love to his fellow-servant: but he is the miserablest creature in the world; eternally in his melancholy note, whatever I can do; and if his finger does but ake, I am in such a fright you would wonder at it. I pray return my service to Mrs. Kilby, in payment of hers by Robert.
Nothing grows better by your absence but my lady's chamber-floor, and Tumble-down Dick. Here are three letters for you, and Molly will not send one of them; she says you ordered her to the contrary. Mr. Mose and I desire you will remember our love to the king, and let us know how he looks.
Robert says the Czar is there, and is fallen in love with you, and designs to carry you toMuscovy; pray provide yourself with muffs and sable tippets, &c.
Aeolus has made a strange revolution in the rooks nests; but I say no more, for it is dangerous to meddle with things above us.
I desire your absence heartily; for now I live in great state, and the cook comes in to know what I please to have for dinner: I ask very gravely what is in the house, and accordingly give orders for a dish of pigeons, or &c.
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