Old Age

One misery of advancing age for Swift, was that the old dean did not easily rebound from the strains of his chronic disorders. We may judge his fear of attacks by his reluctance to go far from home even in the summer, when he normally wished to visit the country. The approach of warm weather in the spring of 1736 meant the dispersal of many friends; and with both Sheridan and Delany hard to reach, Swift felt the loss. John Rochfort, whom he had been seeing, left town for the summer; and by late May the dean was complaining that he had only Mrs Delany and the Grattans to keep him company. ¹ Swift’s intimacy with his helpful cousin, Martha Whiteway, had of course grown. She came to a dean-and-chapter dinner at which, he claimed, she ‘got drunk with eating too much turbot’; ² for she avoided wine.