fter taking up her residence in that country. Swift's
influence over women was always very striking. Most of the toasts of the
day were his friends, and he insisted that any lady of wit and quality
who desired his acquaintance should make the first advances. This, he
says--writing in 1730--had been an established rule for over twenty
years. In 1708 a dispute on this question with one toast, Mrs. Long,
was referred for settlement to Ginckel Vanhomrigh, the son of the house
where it was proposed that the meeting should take place; and by the
decision--which was in Swift's favour--"Mrs. Vanhomrigh and her fair
daughter Hessy" were forbidden to aid Mrs. Long in her disobedience
for the future. This is the first that we hear of Hester or Esther
Vanhomrigh, who was afterwards to play so marked a part in the story
of Swift's life. Born on February 14, 1690, she was now eighteen. Her
father, Bartholomew Vanhomrigh, a Dublin merchant of Dutch origin,
had died in 1703, leaving his wife a fortune of some sixteen thousand
pounds. On the income from this money Mrs. Vanhomrigh, with her two
daughters, Hester and Mary, were able to mix in fashionable society in
London. Swift was introduced to them by Sir Andrew Fountaine early in
1708, but evidently Stella did not make their acquaintance, nor indeed
hear much, if anything, of them until the time of the Journal.

Swift's visit to London in 1707-9 had for its object the obtaining for
the Irish Church of the surrender by the Crown of the First-Fruits and
Twentieths, which brought in about 2500 pounds a year. Nothing came
of Swift's interviews with the Whig statesmen, and after many
disappointments he returned to Laracor (June 1709), and conversed with
none but Stella and her card-playing friends, and Addison, now secretary
to Lord Wharton.(4) Next year came the fall of the Whigs, and a request
to Swift from the Irish bishops that he would renew the application for
the First-Fruits, in the hope that there would be greater success with
the Tories. Swift reached London in September 1710, and began the series
of letters, giving details of the events of each day, which now form the
Journal to Stella. "I will write something every day to MD," he says,
"and make it a sort of journal; and when it is full I will send it,
whether MD writes or no; and so that will be pretty; and I shall always
be in conversation with MD, and MD with Presto." It is interesting to
note that by way of caution these let