MRS. DINGLEY


We cannot do her honour by her Christian name. {1} All we have to call
her by more tenderly is the mere D, the D that ties her to Stella, with
whom she made the two-in-one whom Swift loved "better a thousand times
than life, as hope saved." MD, without full stops, Swift writes it eight
times in a line for the pleasure of writing it. "MD sometimes means
Stella alone," says one of many editors. "The letters were written
nominally to Stella and Mrs. Dingley," says another, "but it does not
require to be said that it was really for Stella's sake alone that they
were penned." Not so. "MD" never stands for Stella alone. And the
editor does not yet live who shall persuade one honest reader, against
the word of Swift, that Swift loved Stella only, with an ordinary love,
and not, by a most delicate exception, Stella and Dingley, so joined that
they make the "she" and "her" of every letter. And this shall be a paper
of reparation to Mrs. Dingley.

No one else in literary history has been so defrauded of her honours. In
love "to divide is not to take away," as Shelley says; and Dingley's half
of the tender things said to MD is equal to any whole, and takes nothing
from the whole of Stella's half. But the sentimentalist has fought
against Mrs. Dingley from the outset. He has disliked her, shirked her,
misconceived her, and effaced her. Sly sentimentalist--he finds her
irksome. Through one of his most modern representatives he has but
lately called her a "chaperon." A chaperon!