‘A Supposed Relic of Swift’ –
thus the Kildare County Archaeological Journal captioned
its photographs of this pendant in a brief note published in 1920.
The article concluded:
This remarkable relic
is said by family tradition to have been made for Swift in memory
of Stella, the initials upon it standing for Jonathan Swift
and Stella Swift. Be this as it may, it is certainly of
considerable antiquity, while its gruesome emblems recall the
hideous imagination so typical of Swift.
(Journal of the County Kildare Archaeological Society,
vol.9, 1920, p.303f.)
So put-out by the imputation ‘supposed’ was my
Great Uncle Ben (The Revd M.B.A.Byrn) — then custodian of
the pendant (known in the family at the time as "the Dean's
locket") — that he excised the word ‘supposed’ from his
copy of the article and wrote emphatically across the top of the
page:
This history of the Dean’s locket was
often repeated to me by my mother. There is no doubt whatever
of its authenticity. M.B.A.Byrn
And there is no doubt also that the family was
flattered by the link and cultivated it. A nephew of M.B.A.Byrn's
was christened Jonathan Swift Byrn.
The family also treasured and handed down a portrait said to be
of Stella — but the latter's authenticity has never been examined.
The history of the pendant’s ownership,
tracing it back to Jonathan Swift’s day, is as follows:
M.B.A.Byrn (d.1960) inherited the pendant from his mother, Marie
Wetzlar Byrn, née Swift
(d.c.1900), who was given it by her father, the Revd Richard Meade
Swift (b.c.1800).
The latter had been given it (perhaps on the occasion of his marriage
in 1829) by his cousin, Frances Jones, younger daughter of Alexander
Swift (b.1719) of Lynn, County Westmeath (who received it from her
father perhaps on the occasion of her marriage in 1771).
This Alexander Swift was Jonathan Swift’s first cousin-once-removed,
the only child of Meade Swift of Lynn (of his second marriage).
Meade Swift was the eldest son of Jonathan’s uncle Godwin by his
fourth wife, Elinor Meade, and was thus a first cousin of Jonathan's.
Our family's assumption is that Swift recovered
the pendant from amongst Stella's personal effects after her death
in 1728. And after his own death (1745) it would have passed into
the family of his cousin Meade, thence to Alexander.
During my father's custodianship the pendant
was put on view at the Co. Kildare Archaeological Association's
ter-centenary exhibition for Jonathan Swift (1967). Two decades
later the Hon.Sec. of that Society, Con Costello, also published
a short article plus photograph of one face in "The Leinster
Leader" (18th Feb. 1989).
Having myself in due course inherited the pendant,
I unhesitatingly accepted the family tradition and set about making
my own attempt to authenticate it.
This led to the publication of two articles in
Swift Studies. The Annual of the Ehrenpreis Center (ed. Hermann
Real; see: Ehrenpreis
Center for Swift Studies). Both articles propose that the pendant
should be understood as a marriage-token, and thus that it was created
well before Stella's death:
‘Jonathan Swift’s Locket for Stella Swift:
a sacramental marriage ‘certificate’?’ (vol. 3, 1988, pp.
2-8); and
‘Jonathan Swift’s Locket for Stella Swift:
further considerations’ (vol. 6, 1991, pp. 38-48).
Much of the substance of the latter article had
been aired in a paper delivered to the Second Münster Symposium
on Jonathan Swift in May 1989, where the family claims were
exposed to critical scrutiny by leading Swift scholars. The outcome
of this scrutiny is that I have to say, with much regret, that my
faith in the family’s traditional explanation for the pendant is
severely challenged. No longer do I refer to it confidently as ‘the
Dean’s locket’ but now, more cautiously, as ‘the Swift pendant’.
(Not even ‘locket’ because it does not open as lockets generally
do.)
One fact, at least, is not under challenge,
i.e. whilst there is no way of proving that the second initial ‘S’
(on all three faces) designates the surname Swift, the pendant
certainly descended to a family of Byrns from a family of Swifts.
On the other hand, since Swift scholars in general
doubt the likelihood of Jonathan's marriage to Esther (Stella) Johnson,
they are unwilling to accept that the initials ‘S S’ (on
faces one and three) could stand for Stella Swift.
Experts in mourning jewellery, for their part,
point out that memorial jewels of this kind were being produced
more commonly at the end of the 17th century rather than as late
as 1728, the year of Stella’s death. The idea that Swift might have
commissioned it after Stella’s death is thus improbable. My own
supposition is that it was commissioned much earlier: either around
1716, the year given for the marriage between Swift and Stella by
Samuel Johnson in his biography of Swift, or up to 20 years earlier
still, when it would have been offered to Stella as a token of love-unto-death.
To the eye of an expert in 17th century mourning
jewellery this pendant could be a memorial to three individuals
whose deaths would have occurred at the same time, perhaps in an
epidemic (I am particularly indebted
to Diana Scarisbrick).
Thus, face 1 showing ‘S S’ beneath a coffin bearing the letters
"I REST" would relate to an adult. Faces two and
three (‘J S’ above a skull, and again ‘S S’ this time
beneath a skull-and-cross-bones) might relate to children.
The most serious challenge to a link with Jonathan
Swift, however, relates to face two.
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