Strength to revoke a will made in favour of Swift, and to sign another (dated May 1, 1723) which divided her estate between Bishop Berkeley and Judge Marshall, the poor young woman managed to summon from somewhere, however. Berkeley she knew very slightly, and Marshall scarcely better. But to them both she entrusted as executors her correspondence with Swift, and the poem, "Cadenus and Vanessa," which she ordered to be published after her death.
Doctor Johnson, in his "Life of Swift," says of Vanessa's relation to the misanthropic dean, "She was a young woman fond of literature, whom Decanus, the dean (called Cadenus by transposition of the letters), took pleasure in directing and interesting till, from being proud of his praise, she grew fond of his person. Swift was then about forty-seven, at the age when vanity is strongly excited by the amorous attention of a young woman."
The poem with which these two lovers are always connected, was founded, according to the story, on an offer of marriage made by Miss Vanhomrigh to Doctor Swift. In it, Swift thus describes his situation:
"Cadenus, common forms apart, In every scene had kept his heart; Had sighed and languished, vowed and writ For pastime, or to show his wit, But books and time and state affairs Had spoiled his fashionable airs; He now could praise, esteem, approve, But understood not what was love: His conduct might have made him styled A father and the nymph his child. That innocent delight he took To see the virgin mind her book, Was but the master's secret joy In school to hear the finest boy."
That Swift was not always, however, so Platonic and fatherly in his expressions of affection for Vanessa, is shown in a "Poem to Love," found in Miss Vanhomrigh's desk after her death, in his handwriting. One verse of this runs:
"In all I wish how happy should I be, Thou grand deluder, were it not for thee. So weak thou art that fools thy power despise, And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise."
After the poor girl's unhappy decease, Swift hid himself for two months in the south of Ireland. Stella was also shocked by the occurrence, but when some one remarked in her presence, apropos of the poem which had just appeared, that Vanessa must have been a remarkable woman to inspire such verses, she observed with perfect truth that the dean was quite capable of writing charmingly upon a broomstick.