The Violent Friendship of Esther Johnson

Sarah Robertson is editor of the Canadian Book Review Annual.

Esther Johnson (1681–1728), the daughter of Sir William Temple’s
housekeeper, was eight years old when she first met Temple’s
secretary, Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), the future author of
Gulliver’s Travels and dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin.
Trudy J. Morgan-Cole’s exhaustively researched first novel tells the
story of their relationship.

It is a relationship whose particulars have long confounded historians.
Were either Esther or Swift the illegitimate offspring of ex-diplomat
Sir William Temple? Were they secretly married in 1816? Married or not,
did they ever have sexual relations? Were they the biological parents of
Esther’s foster child, or was Bryan M’Loghlin the love child of
Swift and Hester Vanhomrigh (immortalized in Swift’s verses as
“Vanessa”)? Swift himself commented on his relationship with Esther
when he wrote to a friend shortly before her death that “violent
friendship is much more lasting, and as much engaging, as violent
love.”

In an afterword, Morgan-Cole notes that “all the major events of
[Esther’s] life are historically accurate, as are many of the minor
details.” But while the historian must hew to the available evidence,
Morgan-Cole’s only obligation as a novelist is “to decide which
[among any number of potential explanations] makes the best story.”
The story of Esther and Swift’s friendship, told entirely from the
former’s perspective (a blend of third-person narrative and invented
journal entries), is satisfyingly complex and nuanced. It is set against
a backdrop of vivid historical detail, from the collapse of the gallery
in London’s Smock-Alley Theatre to the washing of a titled woman’s
hair (a process that entails removing “months’ accretions of powder,
grease, dirt, and lice”). Morgan-Cole is especially good at conveying
the debilitating effects of Esther’s protracted terminal illness.

The fictional Esther Johnson is a prototypical feminist heroine. She
treasures her life of independence and is firmly convinced “that a
woman’s mind [is] more valuable than her face could ever be.”
Ironically, the one person who consistently supports Esther’s
unconventional lifestyle is Jonathan Swift. As portrayed in
Morgan-Cole’s engaging and highly readable book, the
satirist-cum-clergyman is a misogynist with feminist leanings of his
own.