But she to-morrow will return; SONG. In vain you tell your parting lover, That bear me far from what I love? Alas! what dangers on the main ALEXANDER POPE. 1688-1744. THE feminine attachments of Pope fitted into each other like a nest of boxes. He was partial to three women, Teresa and Martha Blount, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, but whether this partiality ever deepened into love may be doubted. If it did it was for Martha Blount. She was the daughter of Mr. Lister Blount, of Mapledurham. It is not known with certainty when Pope became acquainted with the Blounts, but it was before 1712, when he addressed an epistle to Martha, probably as early as 1707, when he lived with his parents at Binfield. The manor of Mapledurham at the furthest was only ten miles from Binfield, and it was natural that the families should know each other. In the absence of a stronger reason, the bond of a common faith, at that time a proscribed one in England, would have occasionally brought them together. Be this however as it may, we know that they were acquainted, at an early period of Pope's life, and that Pope himself was a frequent visitor at Mapledurham. The Blount girls were about his own age, Teresa being born in the same year with himself, and Martha two years later. Which of them first attracted him is a matter of conjecture, for their empire over his heart seems to have been a divided one. He wrote letters to both with the greatest impartiality. Many of these letters he afterwards printed, and not always with the original direction. "You are to understand, madam," he says in one of them, "that my passion for your fair self and your sister has been divided with the most wonderful regularity in the world. Even from my infancy, I have been in love with one after the other of you, week by week, and my journey to Bath fell out in the three hundred seventy-sixth week of the reign of my sovereign lady Sylvia. At the present writing hereof it is the three hundred eighty-ninth week of the reign of your most serene majesty, in whose service I was listed some weeks before I beheld your sister." This letter was probably written to Teresa, whose reign on the whole was a troubled one. Having more wit and vivacity than her sister, she was less disposed to bear the captious exactions of her lover. "I must own," he wrote to Martha in 1714, "I have long been shocked at your sister on several accounts, but above all things at her prudery. I am resolved to break with her forever, and therefore tell her I shall take the first opportunity of sending back all her letters." This direful "first opportunity" was a long time coming, for three years later Pope and Teresa were on such good terms that he executed a deed in her favour, giving her forty pounds a year for six years! Before the six years expired there was another difficulty between them-a quarrel, or something of the kind, which was never made up. He ceased to write to her, seldom, if ever, met her, and when he died never mentioned her name in his will. She passed out of his life in 1722. Martha maintained her ascendency over him, though her reign was weakened at one time by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Not that Lady Mary ever disputed it with her. She was no usurper of the fair Martha's rights, but an independent sovereign, whom his majesty, Alexander the Great, had invited to share his little kingdom. He met her in London in 1714, or thereabouts, and was charmed with her beauty and wit. Clever and learned, celebrated as a belle from her childhood, she was just the woman to captivate him. She recognized his genius, and with feminine tact allowed him to shine in her company. Her appreciation flattered him, and touched his heart through his vanity. In 1716 she accompanied her husband (for there was a husband in the case, though a dull one) to Constantinople. Pope was the last person she saw in England before her departure. In what manner did I behave," he wrote, "the last hour I saw you? What degree of concern did I discover, when I felt a misfortune, which I hope you will never feel, that of parting from what one most esteems? For if my parting looked but like that of your common acquaintance, I am the greatest of all hypocrites that ever decency made. I never since pass by the house but with the same sort of melancholy that we feel upon seeing the tomb of a friend, which only serves to put us in mind of what we have lost," etc., etc. She met his raptures sensibly, and thanked him for the obliging concern which he expressed for her. He continued the correspondence warmly, but was not answered in the same spirit. She gossiped about what she saw in her travels, but avoided any allusion to his passion. Her letters were brilliant and entertaining, and must have delighted him as a wit, but they were not satisfactory to him as a lover. After an absence of two years and a half she returned to England with her husband, and took up her abode in London. Pope engaged a house for them in Twickenham, where he was then residing, and the next summer they moved thither, and he was happyHe renewed his intimacy with Lady Mary, who was a frequent visitor at his house. He wrote notes to her, and verses, and got her to sit to Kneller for her portrait for him. They were the best friends in the world. But by and by there came a change. Their friendship cooled, their intimacy ceased; they hated each other. The cause of the rupture was long a mystery, but years afterwards, when they were both in their graves, it came out, that "at some ill-chosen time, when she least expected what romances call a declaration, he made such passionate love to her, as, in spite of her utmost endeavours to be angry and look grave, produced an immoderate fit of laughter; from that moment he became her implacable enemy." After this unfortunate affair with Lady Mary, Pope returned to his old allegiance with Martha Blount, and for the rest of his life was content with her love, or friendship, or whatever it was she gave him. It was whispered about that they were married, or should have been, but both these charges were denied. Their relation was a subject of scandal in Pope's lifetime, and has been frequently discussed since, but to little purpose. There is no proof in the case, especially in favour of a guilty connection between them, but many circumstances against it, not the least of which is the respect with which Martha Blount was regarded by her contemporaries. The best people of her time-gentlemen and ladies of unimpeachable virtue-considered themselves honoured by her friendship. But the point is not worth discussing. The reader will form what opinion he pleases: mine is a charitable one. I believe that Pope loved Martha Blount when he was young, as much as he could love any one; but that being, for some reason or other, averse to marriage, he subsided from a lover to a friend. He was Martha Blount's friend, and by all odds the best one she ever had. He managed her affairs for her; introduced her into the houses of the great; quarrelled with his friends when they offended her; in short, watched over her and her interests during his life, and at his death left her the bulk of his fortune. She died on the 12th of July, 1763, nineteen years after Pope, in the seventy-fourth year of her age. The portrait of Martha Blount given here is from a family picture at Mapledurham. This picture, which is said to have been painted by Kneller, represents her and her sister as gathering flowers, and confirms the line of Gay, who describes the pair, as "The fair-haired Martha, and Teresa brown." The coronation mentioned in the poem addressed to Teresa, was that of George the First, which took place in September, 1714. I have not been able to fix the date of the birth-day verses. EPISTLE TO MRS. TERESA BLOUNT, ON HER LEAVING THE TOWN AFTER THE CORONATION. As some fond virgin, whom a mother's care To part her time 'twixt reading and bohea, Or o'er cold coffee trifle with the spoon, Count the slow clock, and dine exact at noon; Divert her eyes with pictures in the fire, There starve and pray, for that's the way to heaven. In some fair evening, on your elbow laid, Before you pass th' imaginary sights Of lords, and earls, and dukes, and gartered knights, |