Jonathan Swift’s Last Joke

In the dying airy of a December day successful 2018, wrong the vaulted Gothic interior of St. Patrick’s Cathedral successful Dublin, Rosie Hennigan saw that her husband, David Kenny, was hypnotized by an epitaph. Kenny and Hennigan are a witty, charismatic Irish couple. He is simply a prof of instrumentality astatine Trinity College and she is simply a novelist. Their conversations often instrumentality the signifier of affable jousts.

Hennigan had suggested the sojourn due to the fact that she wanted to larn much astir a Tudor artifact successful the cathedral, known arsenic the Door of Reconciliation, for a publication she was researching. But it was a much caller monument that detained Kenny. Near the southbound door, helium gazed up astatine a marble plaque bearing the epitaph for Jonathan Swift, the redoubtable novelist, poet, satirist, and erstwhile Dean of St. Patrick’s who died successful 1745, and who was buried beneath the cathedral floor.

The substance of the monument was successful Latin and stipulated by Swift himself, successful his will. Translations vary, but the astir enduring was published successful 1933, by William Butler Yeats, who considered Swift’s “the top epitaph successful history”:

SWIFT has sailed into his rest;
Savage indignation there 
Cannot lacerate his breast. 
Imitate him if you dare, 
World-besotted traveller; he 
Served quality liberty.

Kenny reads Latin, and knew that Yeats had taken immoderate liberties himself. Leo Damrosch, who published “Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World,” successful 2013, had rendered a little flamboyant translation:

Here is deposited the body 
of Jonathan Swift S.T.D. [Sacrae Theologiae Doctor] 
of this Cathedral church 
the Dean 
where savage indignation 
can nary longer 
lacerate his heart. 
Go, traveler, 
and imitate, if you can, 
a valiant champion 
of manly freedom.

Kenny had adored Swift since helium was introduced, arsenic a schoolboy, to “A Modest Proposal,” the Dean’s mordant, devastating satire connected people relations successful Ireland. (Swift’s proposition for reducing the fig of mediocre children successful the state is for the affluent to devour them; kids are delicious, helium notes, “whether stewed, roasted, baked, oregon boiled.”) Kenny had work Swift’s epitaph before, but connected that gloomy day the lines caught him anew. “I had the strongest consciousness that determination was thing going connected present that I couldn’t rather understand, and that wasn’t captured by Yeats,” Kenny told maine recently. “The interpretive materials successful the cathedral didn’t suggest the anticipation of immoderate different reading. The rousing, earnest mentation taken up by Yeats was intelligibly the accepted understanding. But, to my ear, it was discordant. . . . Swift had ne'er struck maine arsenic boastful. Something felt wrong.”

Hennigan and Kenny returned home. She went to bed; helium stayed up until the aboriginal hours speechmaking Swift. This wasn’t that anomalous an occurrence. Kenny, who aboriginal became caput of the instrumentality schoolhouse astatine Trinity, is simply a law specializer who has worked successful Ukraine and has advised the Japanese parliament connected referendums. But helium besides teaches a people called Literature and the Law, and galore of his friends are writers. (He’s mentioned successful the acknowledgments of Sally Rooney’s caller “Intermezzo” due to the fact that helium helped her amended recognize the satellite of 1 of her protagonists, a Dublin barrister.) That nighttime of Swiftian immersion was the commencement of Kenny’s effort to grasp the deeper meaning of the epitaph—an world broadside quest that, helium freely admitted, has go an obsession. Seven years later, the travel whitethorn beryllium reaching its conclusion.

In September, Kenny and I walked a mile from the elegant beforehand quad of Trinity College to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. About to crook forty, helium was wearing a sports coat, chinos, and oxfords, and his brownish hairsbreadth was swept tidily crossed his head. We stopped each truthful often truthful that Kenny could constituent retired immoderate portion of Swiftiana: the Dean’s humble birthplace, adjacent Dublin Castle; the room extracurricular St. Patrick’s, which holds the oldest transcript of Swift’s will; the enactment of houses adjacent the cathedral, which are adorned with reliefs depicting scenes from Swift’s acheronian and riotous caller “Gulliver’s Travels,” the enactment with which helium volition everlastingly beryllium associated. As we entered the cathedral, we passed a formed of Swift’s skull. Nearby, connected a wall, was the epitaph.

Kenny showed maine around. He told maine that, soon aft his December, 2018, sojourn to St. Patrick’s, an reflection from a 1953 effort by the professional Maurice Johnson had struck him: “There is nary gag successful Swift’s epitaph. It is obtrusively serious.” Kenny couldn’t bring himself to judge this. Nothing Swift wrote was “obtrusively serious.” There was cleverness and doubleness successful each line. Moreover, thing was disconnected successful the heroic benignant of the epitaph. Swift seldom wrote successful specified a register, but to mock it. As helium enactment it successful the comic poem “An Epistle to a Lady,” “For your Sake, arsenic good arsenic excavation / I the lofty Stile decline.”

There was 1 substance that Kenny thought was peculiarly applicable to his hunt for the information astir the epitaph. In 1732, Swift completed a poem titled “Verses connected the Death of Dr. Swift, D.S.P.D.” successful anticipation of his demise. The poem describes however Swift volition beryllium forgotten by his friends, and by the speechmaking public. Its last verses incorporate immoderate egregious claims, not slightest that Swift’s brutal satires person ne'er been cruel: “Yet malice ne'er was his aim; / He lash’d the vice, but spar’d the name; / No idiosyncratic could resent, / Where thousands arsenic were meant.”

“Verses connected the Death of Dr. Swift” was wide misunderstood successful Swift’s lifetime, and for centuries afterward. Alexander Pope, a person of Swift’s, dismissed its last stanzas arsenic “too vain” and “not true.” But, arsenic respective scholars person since noted, Pope got Swift wrong. Swift was being ironic successful these passages: mocking himself, and mocking vanity of each kinds. (The assertion that helium had “lash’d the vice, but spar’d the name” was undermined by the agelong database of enemies helium ravaged, by name, earlier successful the aforesaid poem.) In different words, the boasts were Swift’s joke—on himself, and connected the remembrance concern successful general. Kenny wondered if the aforesaid misunderstanding had afflicted “the top epitaph successful history.”

Kenny’s quest to recognize wherever Swift’s past gag was hidden began with studying epitaphs successful general. (One night, arsenic Kenny and Hennigan work unneurotic connected their living-room couch, she asked what was truthful absorbing him; it was the Journal of the Association for the Preservation of the Memorials of the Dead successful Ireland.) Then, aft reëncountering Swift’s epitaph, helium attempted to recognize Swift himself arsenic thoroughly arsenic possible, by speechmaking each large biography and arsenic galore secondary works arsenic helium could handle, including ample volumes of Swift’s correspondence. Finally, helium “started looking astatine matters related to the epitaph,” Kenny said, adding, “I was archetypal funny successful making definite of my lawsuit that Swift was up to something, alternatively than needfully to fig retired what helium was up to.”

This went connected for years, arsenic Kenny disappeared into respective “wonderful diversions” that allowed him a much acute knowing of Swift. For instance, the Dean had written different epitaph successful the cathedral, for the Duke of Schomberg, who died, astatine the Battle of the Boyne, successful 1690. Kenny told maine that it was “one of the maddest epitaphs” he’d ever seen. On our walking tour, we stopped to work its Latin text. In it, Swift settles scores with Schomberg’s relatives, who failed to respond to Swift’s entreaties to erect a monument to the Duke’s memory. “His estimation for virtuousness among strangers was stronger than the ties of blood,” it reads. Swift besides paid for the substance to beryllium published successful London newspapers, truthful that Schomberg’s skinflint relatives would spot it. “Apparently the King and Queen were furious,” Kenny told me. “They thought it mightiness pb to a breach with Prussia.”

The Schomberg epitaph taught Kenny something: Swift was unafraid to usage marble to marque a point. But it was lone successful March, 2025, that it became evident to Kenny what the constituent whitethorn person been. He bought a secondhand transcript of a uncommon printing of Swift’s agelong and elaborate volition from a bookseller, for thirty-five euros. He had work the volition online respective times, but thing astir having the insubstantial transcript led him to work it differently.

One night, Kenny brought the volition into the chamber to amusement Hennigan thing that had tickled him. Swift had mischievously bequeathed his first-, second-, and third-best “beaver hats” to his friends, allowing them to squabble aft his decease astir however helium mightiness person ranked the garments. Another item besides jumped out:

I tendency that my Body whitethorn beryllium buried successful the Great Isle of [St. Patrick’s] Cathedral, connected the South Side, nether the Pillar adjacent to the Monument of Primate Narcissus Marsh, 3 Days aft my Decease, arsenic privately arsenic possible, and astatine Twelve O’Clock astatine Night: and, that a Black Marble of [illegible] Feet square, and 7 Feet from the Ground, fixed to the Wall, whitethorn beryllium erected, with the pursuing Inscription successful ample Letters, profoundly cut, and powerfully gilded . . .

Narcissus Marsh! It was a thunderbolt. As Kenny knew, Swift loathed Marsh.

Marsh was the provost of Trinity College during Swift’s time, and had risen to beryllium the Primate, oregon main clergyman, successful Ireland. Swift believed him to beryllium a antheral of small wit and fewer talents who had failed upward. In a statement of Primate Marsh written astir 1710, Swift comments connected his enemy’s unpleasant assemblage odor and deficiency of friends, and notes that helium is “the archetypal of quality race, that with large advantages of learning, piety, and station, ever escaped being a large man.” Swift concludes his attack: “No antheral volition beryllium either gladsome oregon atrocious astatine his death, but his successor.”

Why, then, would Swift person asked for his epitaph to beryllium placed adjacent to specified an unimpressive man? On our circuit of the cathedral, Kenny showed maine Marsh’s monument. It was a immense slab of achromatic marble connected which determination were immoderate sixty lines of text, successful Latin, listing Marsh’s galore achievements and virtues—he was brilliant, pious, munificent, and a seven-time Lord Justice of Ireland. Kenny laughed astatine the Ozymandian pathos of the scene: the monument was partially obscured by respective towers of stacked integrative chairs.

Kenny explained to maine that the monument had primitively been extracurricular the cathedral, adjacent the nationalist room that Marsh had founded and that bears his name. The chromatic was moved wrong successful 1728, to prevention it from the weather. Swift’s volition was written aft Marsh’s vanity task took up residence successful the cathedral. It was notable to Kenny that Swift had stipulated that his monument beryllium “deeply cut” successful achromatic marble, to opposition with Marsh’s. In Kenny’s mind, the placement was a jab astatine his aged rival’s vainglory: the eventual satire.

If Swift had asked for his monument to beryllium placed adjacent to Marsh’s, wherefore were they present separated by a region of immoderate 50 yards? Further enquiry led to different thunderbolt. Kenny began to survey the past of the cathedral. The archetypal chromatic of St. Patrick’s was laid successful the thirteenth century, connected boggy land. By the aboriginal portion of the nineteenth century, immoderate of the cathedral’s instauration had sunk. In the eighteen-sixties, Benjamin Guinness, a scion of the brewing family, paid a important sum to person St. Patrick’s rebuilt. Could 1 of the monuments person been moved during the refurbishment?

Kenny went backmost to documents from the eighteenth century, successful hunt of a modern statement of the cathedral. Eventually, helium came crossed a revelatory transition successful an obscure epistolary travelogue from 1777 titled “A Philosophical Survey of the South of Ireland”:

Opposite to it is simply a plain monument of Dr. Marsh. . . . In the aforesaid nave [is] . . . an epitaph [of Swift] . . . precise expressive of that wont of mind, which his ain disappointments, and the oppressions of his country, had produced. It concludes with these words, “ubi saeva indignatio cor ulterius lacerare nequit.”

So the epitaphs were so erstwhile together, arsenic Swift had demanded, and aboriginal moved apart. As we walked on the redesigned southbound broadside of the building, past Marsh’s monument and toward Swift’s, Kenny said, “Part of our presumption astir aged places is that they enactment the same, but that’s not the lawsuit astatine all. . . . They’re each a Ship of Theseus, successful immoderate authorities of being rebuilt.”

Kenny felt that his mentation of the epitaph had been confirmed. In renovating the cathedral, Guinness had ruined Swift’s past joke.

During a gathering of writers past year, which started astatine a Lebanese edifice and finished astatine a rowdy South Dublin pub, Kenny narrated the communicative of his enquiry into Swift’s epitaph. He had been astatine Marsh’s Library earlier that day, conducting much research, and had arrived astatine meal bursting with caller facts. When helium presented his findings, helium did truthful successful a self-deprecating, and riotously funny, style. (Shortly aft the dinner, helium wrote maine an email astir his research, saying, “I uncertainty anyone volition wage overmuch attention, but that’s okay.”) But his find of the epitaph’s imaginable meaning was a serious, if unusual, portion of scholarship: portion literate criticism, portion humanities reconstruction, portion detective story. I wondered whether helium had sought confirmation from Swift experts astir his epitaph theory. Kenny said that helium was tense to exposure his enactment to the light. Swifties, helium warned me, could beryllium withering.

Among these experts was John Stubbs, the writer of “Jonathan Swift: The Reluctant Rebel,” a well-regarded caller biography. When I reached Stubbs by phone, helium was pleased to beryllium presented with Kenny’s theory, but stopped abbreviated of an contiguous endorsement. “It’s wholly successful character,” Stubbs said. “Swift was conscionable an inveterate hoaxer. He loved pranks, applicable jokes—couldn’t halt himself. And I would emotion it to beryllium true.”

Stubbs pointed out, however, that Swift’s connection besides worked “straight up.” He did consciousness the “savage indignation” that is successful the epitaph. (Swift saw himself arsenic an “avenger,” aft all.) But, the much Stubbs thought astir Kenny’s theory, “the thought that it’s this large applicable gag against this feline whom helium despised” sounded “completely plausible.”

Kenny was thrilled that his mentation had not been dismissed retired of hand. But the last brag successful his Swift ngo had ever been Leo Damrosch, whose playful and penetrating biography Kenny admires much than immoderate other. “He roams implicit each of Swift with specified an casual command,” Kenny said, of Damrosch.

In November, I called Damrosch astatine his home, successful Newton, Massachusetts. An emeritus prof astatine Harvard, helium is present successful his mid-eighties and inactive publishing books. As I related Kenny’s mentation to him, I felt oddly nervous, arsenic if it were I, not Kenny, who mightiness beryllium humiliated. But, arsenic I spoke to Damrosch, determination were encouraging signs. I heard chuckles of amusement arsenic I work immoderate of Swift’s descriptions of Marsh, and purrs of support arsenic I outlined Kenny’s detective enactment astir the question of the monuments. “Well,” Damrosch said, finally. “Thank you. If I had known astir it, this would person been successful my book, due to the fact that I deliberation it’s totally convincing, and exactly what Swift would do: from the grave, haunting his aged enemy.”

Damrosch wanted to enactment 1 much thing. When helium published his ain book, helium said, helium demolished galore of the claims that had been made successful the totemic three-volume survey of Swift published by the student Irvin Ehrenpreis betwixt 1962 and 1983. Damrosch had observed that overmuch of the astir revealing enactment astir Swift had been done by enthusiastic amateurs extracurricular the literary-academic community. One of them was Denis Johnston, an Irish playwright and writer who—among different important acts of witness—had reported connected the liberation of Buchenwald successful 1945. Johnston, Damrosch argued, published incisive enactment relating to the parentage of Swift’s lover, Stella, suggesting that she was the girl of Sir William Temple—a diplomat who was 1 of Swift’s astir important mentors. Michael Foot, a erstwhile person of the British Labour Party, besides wrote sparkling essays astir Swift, erstwhile calling “Gulliver’s Travels” a “perpetually unfinished argument.” As Damrosch saw it, Kenny had conscionable joined this good tradition. Academics could sometimes spot Swift connected a pedestal; amateurs saw the grudges and the mean quality failings beneath his literate legacy.

I called Kenny the infinitesimal I hung up with Damrosch, and told him of the scholar’s reaction. Kenny squealed with delight. “Oh, my God,” helium said. “That is simply a portion of feedback that I americium benignant of bowled implicit by.”

A fewer weeks later, I asked Kenny whether his quest was present astatine an end. He told maine that his enquiry had been abandoned for the moment. There were different leads to tally down—one nexus to John Dryden, and different to Juvenal, seemed peculiarly promising—but these investigations could wait. His relentless appetite for enactment had been causing him aesculapian problems, and helium had precocious stepped down arsenic the caput of the instrumentality schoolhouse astatine Trinity to effort to find a healthier equilibrium successful his life. Nevertheless, helium was inactive lured by his aged addiction. As helium enactment it to me, “I don’t cognize that I volition ever halt reasoning astir Swift.” ♦