IN A week when a much-admired public man was laid to rest, it's somewhat sobering to open my copy of Methuen's Poems for Every Dayand find that the entry for June 16th is Swift's satirical elegy: On the Death of a Late Famous General.
The general in question was John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough, who expired on this date in 1722. Churchill was admired too, at least for his military brilliance. The Duke of Wellington considered him the greatest of generals and Dublin’s Marlborough Street is one of many memorials.
But his greed and ambition also earned enemies, including Swift, whose poem, after expressing mock horror at the great man’s demise, quickly drops all pretence and predicts trouble for the general come the last judgment, viz: “Well, since he’s gone, no matter how,/The last loud trump must wake him now;/And, trust me, as the noise grows stronger,/He’d wish to sleep a little longer.”
Among the crimes he accuses the duke of is living to be 72, a feat unpardonable in a so celebrated a soldier: “Threescore, I think, is pretty high;/’Twas time in conscience he should die.” Warming to his theme, Swift also affects to note the absence of a “widow’s sighs” or “orphan’s tears” at the funeral: “But what of that, his friends may say./He had those honours in his day./True to his profit and his pride/He made them weep before he dy’d.”
In fact, the duke and his wife, a notoriously hot-tempered woman called Sarah Jennings, had been considered unusually close for a couple in those times of arranged marriages. And whatever about her husband, she was well known for falling out with other people, including her daughter, the prime minister Robert Walpole, and the then queen of England, a former close friend.
In fairness to Swift, by speaking ill of the dead, he was only being consistent. He had also spoken ill of Marlborough prehumously, as it were, accusing him of prolonging wars for personal gain and calculating his various sources of income, ill-gotten or otherwise, at £540,000, a sum equivalent to tens of millions today.
Hence another sideswipe in Gulliver's Travels, when the hero's tales of home lead the monarch of Brobdingnag to surmise that "our generals must needs be richer than our kings". Churchill's widow inherited his great wealth, leaving her one of the world's richest women. So if her sighs were lacking at the funeral, it may have been from consolation that at least her future was secure.
ON THE same day of the year as Swift's general, but a generation earlier, there died an Irishman called Sir Tristram Beresford. His demise is recorded in another almanack, Chambers's Book of Days, not because he was a leader in the Williamite Wars, or later an MP, but because of a famous ghost story associated with his wife.
Her name was Nicola Hamilton, and during her schooldays she had had as a fellow student one John Power, the second Earl of Tyrone. Educated in unconventional religious beliefs, the two shared doubts about life after death. So in the hope that one would learn the truth in advance, they made a pact that the first to go would return from beyond, if possible, with a sign.
Some years passed and, aged only 29, Power was chosen by fate to lead the fact-finding mission. Sure enough, one October morning in 1693, Lady Beresford sat down to breakfast with what her husband noticed was a “pallid and careworn look” and wearing a black ribbon on her wrist. Moreover, she let it be known she was expecting post later with bad news about her friend.
No doubt women were often pallid in those days. But after some cajoling by Sir Tristram, she attributed her appearance to a nocturnal visit in which her old schoolmate had informed her that there was indeed an afterlife and that he was now in it.
Pressed for proof of his reality, he had touched her wrist with an icy finger, leaving a black mark, now (and ever after) covered by the ribbon.
Lady Beresford’s conversational style appears to have been a bit pallid too, judging from another reported part of her account to Sir Tristram. “I can tell you more,” she said, “and it is a piece of intelligence which I know will prove welcome: I shall ere long present you with a son.” Her pregnancy and the death of the earl were both subsequently confirmed. So were other predictions made to her on the night. But Lord Tyrone had also foretold her death “in the 47th year of your age”. So when, eventually, her 47th birthday passed without incident, followed by another 12 months, this part of the premonition at least appeared unfounded.
Alas, and readers may already have guessed what happened next, those attending her 48th birthday party included a local clergyman who had been going through the parish records and had good news. Yes, Lady Beresford was a year younger than she realised! At which point, her talent for drama unimproved by the passing decades, she told the clergyman: “Oh, then you have signed my death warrant. If I am only 47 today, I have but a few hours to live, and these I must devote to settling my affairs.” She promptly settled them and, just as promptly, died. Thereafter she was buried in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, where she enjoys the company of the aforementioned Swift. Her ghostly tale later inspired a verse by another poet, Walter Scott.
But that aside, it’s unclear whether, since her departure for the world beyond, she has been back in touch with anyone else.