by Sophie Gee
“But then I should not want to be, sir,” he replied.
Mr. Pope was silent for a moment, and Alexander thought that his father was going to upbraid him for dismissing social privilege so lightly. But instead he said, “Be not too quick to cast aside those things that make you very different from your fellow men. If you look and think and dress exactly as they do, nobody will remember who you are. I have always known that you were exceptional, Alexander. I hope that you will learn to accept it, too.”
When Alexander was on the point of finishing his new poem, he received a letter from Bernard Lintot, a well-known publisher in London and Jacob Tonson’s great rival. Lintot wrote to say that he had admired Alexander’s Pastorals and the Essay on Criticism. He was sorry not to have printed them himself, and he wondered whether Alexander might have any new material for him to see. Alexander knew that Lintot paid more than any other publisher in London, but he had half-promised his next piece to Tonson, and he reasoned that he should not change publishers now; he had no desire to be thought of as a troublemaker. But then he reconsidered. Perhaps that was exactly what he wanted people to think. And Lintot offered to include Alexander’s work in a new volume he was preparing, which would have a much larger circulation than Alexander had previously hoped for.
But he did not as yet have a title. He had been thinking of it all along as Lines, Upon a Young Lady Recently Deprived of a Most Important Possession, but that would not do. Absurd and verbose. He decided that it must be called The _____ of _____. That was how all the best titles were arranged. The Merchant of Venice, The Jew of Malta, The Way of the World. But perhaps they only sounded so well because they were famous.
It must also be something to tempt sluggish schoolboys a hundred years hence. The Baron and the Belle? He would feel that he needed to apologize for that name every time he said it. No schoolboy would spend two minutes reading such a document.
The poem sat on Alexander’s table for a week or so, untitled and unsent. But the days ticked by, and Alexander began to fear that if it did go not go off, Lintot would print his Miscellany without him. He looked though his books, but inspiration did not come. He asked his family, but of course they had no suggestions to make.
At last an idea came to him in the middle of the night—he thought it brilliant, and got out of bed to write it down. But in the clear light of morning it seemed idiotic. Overwrought and hysterical—his poem would sound as puffed up as anything that Dennis might have written. But more time passed, and he could not think of one better. So he scribbled down his foolish title and sent it off, hoping that Lintot might improve on it.
A few days later, Bernard Lintot received the morning’s mail as he walked out of his shop door to Will’s coffeehouse. There were a dozen or so letters, and several larger packages—manuscripts, he guessed—all addressed to Mr. Bernard Lintot, at Cross Keys between two Temple Gates in Fleet Street. He picked up the pile and walked out. While he drank his coffee at Will’s he sorted through the mail, coming at last to a package containing fifteen or twenty pages of writing, copied in a meticulous hand, with a covering letter signed “A. Pope.” Lintot remembered Tonson’s hunchbacked client, to whom he had sent a note some weeks previously. He snatched up the poem eagerly, and began to read.
Moments later, he sprang up from his chair, holding aloft the pages of verse.
Good God! he thought to himself. This poem will make my fortune!
The patrons of Will’s looked up simultaneously, smiling and nodding at the great Mr. Lintot. Every one of them was imagining, wildly, that he had somehow got hold of their own half-written doggerel and perceived its brilliance.
“Alexander Pope has sent me his new satire,” Lintot cried victoriously. The poets all looked down again, crestfallen. Alexander Pope, they were thinking bitterly. The venomous, hunchbacked toad. But they had better be civil to him next time they met.
Charles Jervas was among the men present that morning. He had been at a loose end since Alexander had returned to the country, and today he had come to meet Harry Chambers and Tom Breach, who had lately appointed Will’s as the setting for their morning’s idleness. Upon hearing Lintot’s enthusiasms, Jervas hurried over to claim Alexander as his old and dear friend and Tom and Harry followed closely behind.
Lintot wrung Jervas by the hand, as though he were Alexander himself. “It is the first poem of its kind to be written,” he exclaimed, clapping him vigorously upon the back, and turning to greet Tom and Harry, too. “I thank God Tonson did not get his hands on it,” he declared. “Your friend Pope is to be congratulated for showing the good sense of sending it to me. And the title is splendid! The Rape of the Lock. That alone will sell a thousand copies.”
Lintot hurried away so that he could write to Alexander, and Jervas was left to the conversation of his old schoolfellows. They all sat down again, and Harry opened a new topic.
“What do you think of this trouble in Barbados, Tom?” he asked.
“Barbados?” Tom repeated with surprise. “I have not the slightest knowledge of it. I am hard enough pressed to keep pace with last week’s gossip at Lady Sandwich’s levee. There is not time in the day to think of other people’s troubles as well.”
“But this will amuse you, for it involves Lord Salisbury—whom I know you dislike.”
“Awful man,” Tom agreed. “I recall him boring me one evening with a brutal tale about his slaves. Tell me of his misfortune.”
“Oh—it involves the slaves, as a matter of fact,” said Harry, a little put out that Tom had already heard about them. “There was a story in the Daily Courant the other day. Lord Salisbury has been the object of unscrupulous scheming.”
“Capital. Of what kind?” asked Tom with a smile.
“He has been buying slaves from a trader whom Edward Fairfax knows,” Harry began.
“Oh yes,” Tom replied. “I remember him showing off about it.”
“Well, it turned out that Fairfax’s trader was charging them for the full boatload that he brought from Africa, but he was in fact stealing fifty slaves or so to sell to another man. He told Fairfax and Salisbury that the slaves had died on the voyage.”
“To judge from Salisbury’s description of the boat, I should have expected the slaves to be dying in vast numbers. It sounded infernal.”
“Some of them were dying, of course,” Harry replied. “But not nearly so many as the trader pretended. He was selling them off to a second dealer, who took them off the slave ship before it docked. So Lord Salisbury has been paying for somebody else to have cheap slaves. He is wild about it, as you might imagine.”
“I am glad to hear it. But how did Salisbury discover the fraud? God knows he is never in Barbados.”
“Oh, the second dealer, the man who bought the ‘dead’ slaves, was running quite a regular racket out there. His name was Dupont, a Frenchman. Apparently he was once the manager on one of the plantations, until he was dismissed for stealing the sugar.”
“A Frenchman,” said Tom. “Lord Salisbury should have known there would be trouble.”
“Dupont’s scheme was rather clever,” said Harry after a short pause. “He had a partner in London who made all the arrangements, raised the capital for him to use, and found plantation owners who wanted to buy the slaves in the West Indies. But somebody got wind of the scheme and told Fairfax.”
“I wondered how it had come to light,” said Tom. “It’s far too clever for Lord Salisbury to have worked it out.”
“This Dupont is obviously a man of talent,” Harry agreed with a smile. “Or at least his partner in London is. I’ve half a mind to get in touch with Dupont myself to offer my services. A shame that I have no energy for work, or I might become rich.”
“It is a pity that James Douglass is not present to hear your story,” Jervas piped up. “It would divert him.”
“Divert him!” Harry rejoined. “He would rant and storm that he did not think of it himself. It is just his sort of affair. Was he not in Africa
himself once?”
“Perhaps Douglass is Dupont’s man in London!” Tom said with glee. “After all, he has just gone to ground himself!”
“Douglass is always disappearing and reappearing—never the worse for wear, and always filled with cheerful optimism that his next scheme will make his fortune. A rum fellow, but capital.”
“Yes,” Jervas agreed. “The town is dull without him.”
The months went by. Summer became autumn; autumn, winter. At long last, it turned to spring again, and The Rape of the Lock was published. Alexander went to Whiteknights to give Martha a copy of the poem. He knew that she was there alone; she had told him in a letter that Teresa had gone to join Arabella in Bath for the new season. It had surprised Alexander to learn that the cousins’ friendship had continued, but he concluded that Arabella must now depend upon Teresa for a companionship that she had not needed in the past, and that a winter spent in the country had provided Teresa with the perspective required to overlook Arabella’s offenses during the last season.
“I should hardly be making you, of all people, a present of The Rape of the Lock,” Alexander said to Martha as he gave it to her while they walked in the garden, “for you know all too much about the tale of Miss Fermor and her stolen hair. But I promised it to you last year, and I feared that you would think me negligent were I not to present it now.” He smiled, and then said, “The volume has been so long in coming out that Miss Fermor’s charms will have half decayed while the poet was celebrating them, and the printer has been publishing them. Perhaps you had better not pass that last observation on to Miss Fermor,” he added.
“I am very pleased that you have brought the book to give to me today,” she answered. “But your visit to Whiteknights is almost as precious to me as the verses themselves.”
“It should be more so, Patty,” he said. “The postage would have cost me twice as much as the book. If Lintot is making his fortune from this venture, he will most certainly not make mine. But even if The Rape of the Lock is wearisome to you, you will enjoy the other poems in the Miscellany, which are said to contain passages that a lady may not look upon without being in danger of blushing.”
“Well, I blush rather easily, Alexander, as you know,” Martha replied, suiting the action to the word as she spoke.
He replied in a grave voice, but with a smile that would show he was speaking lightly. “Since blushing becomes you better than any lady in England,” he said, “I shall be the party in much more serious danger, merely from looking at you. There: now I have made you blush still further, and our troubles begin again.”
She laughed. “Alexander!” she exclaimed. “I shall have to forbid your visits here if you come only to flatter and flirt with me. If it is so pleasant to be at home, I shall never have a reason to go out—and then what will become of my prospects?”
Alexander liked this new Martha altogether, as much improved in spirits as in looks, and he gazed at her affectionately. “What will become of your prospects indeed?” he echoed. “Very well! In the future I shall make myself so disagreeable when I visit that you will want to leave the house immediately. And I shall visit so often that you will always be out to me when I call. The arrangement will work admirably.” He hesitated ever so slightly before going on. But then he smiled and said, “Indeed, people will think us just like a married couple.”
Martha looked down.
His face became serious and he said, “I shall come to visit you again very soon, dear Patty. And will you give my affectionate regards to your sister? I hope that she is well.”
Martha heard the earnestness in Alexander’s tone, and she came to a halt, motioning for them to sit down on a nearby bench. She had expected Alexander to ask about Teresa long before now, though she had been pleased when he did not. But she had privately determined that she would answer any questions about her sister without sounding awkward or disappointed.
“I have seldom seen her better,” she said. And then, with a wry inflection, she added, “For the first time in her life, she has the advantage over Arabella. Indeed I believe that Teresa is now pleased to have been so much overlooked by Lord Petre. She can claim to have seen through him from the very beginning, and to have understood exactly the kind of man he was.” Martha paused, and then gave a little laugh. “Which I suppose, after a fashion, she did,” she added.
They were silent for a moment, and then Alexander said, “I hope that you will give Teresa my love when next you write to her, and that she will receive it without disgust.”
Martha looked down at her lap again, and said nothing. Alexander noticed her confused expression, and got up from the bench to stand before her.
“Patty, I want you to know that you have at last gained the conquest over your fair sister,” he said with a smile. “It is true: you may not be considered as handsome,” he continued, “but only because you are a woman so you think that you are not. Your good humor and understanding have for me a charm that cannot be resisted. Now! You have gone quite scarlet again, and I am in the gravest danger of blushing myself!”
He held out his hand to her, and she stood up to take his arm. They turned toward the house once again, and each lifted a hand to wave to Sir Anthony, who stood on the yew terrace, watching as they approached.
EPILOGUE
Alexander’s poem was a huge success. In coffeehouses and salons and at balls across London, everybody talked about The Rape of the Lock and its brilliant author. But he was not satisfied. The more he thought about the poem and its subject, the more he wished that he had written a longer piece, reaching beyond the facts of the story to satisfy the full scope of his ambitions. The first edition was so popular that he thought Lintot would print a second, and he decided that it ought to be twice as long, published separately in a volume of its own. He began work on it, but the new verses took him a long time to write, and it was nearly two years after the day at Hampton Palace that Alexander arrived in Button’s coffeehouse in London to read them aloud. Button’s was owned by Steele’s collaborator, Joseph Addison, and Alexander hoped that a good audience at the reading would remind Addison of his promise to advertise his new poem in the pages of the Spectator.
When he reached the coffeehouse on the afternoon of the reading a large crowd had already gathered. Among them he saw Richard Steele sitting with John Gay and Jonathan Swift. He found that he recognized nearly all the other men in the room, too, and he was aware of being spoken about in lowered tones. With feelings of pride, and a self-consciousness that he could not quite keep in check, he walked directly up to his group of friends.
John Gay saluted him loudly. “He is come! Pope is here!”
Richard Steele likewise sprang to his feet, crying, “My dear fellow, you are in excellent health, I see. I am in the gout once again and suffer mightily, but it will pass soon enough!”
Swift was on his feet, too, shaking him by the hand and pulling him on to a chair; Addison was rushing up to offer him refreshment. He could see the poets Ambrose Philips and Thomas Tickell on the other side of the coffeehouse, sitting with his former mentor William Wycherley. He crossed the room to greet them, and noticed that Wycherley looked dour, but Philips and Tickell jumped up to wring Alexander’s hand.
“You are being named as the genius of our age,” Philips said with unstinting warmth. “The idea for your poem was brilliant, and every day I wish that I had thought of it—but then I wager that there isn’t a man in this room who hasn’t had the same wish cross his mind.”
Alexander turned to Wycherley, and shook him by the hand. “A very lively satire, sir,” Wycherley said to him. “And just the thing for the modern age. Twenty years ago it would not have been understood, but we have paved the way for you.” Alexander was not particularly surprised by the mean-spiritedness of Wycherley’s response, but he saw that the other two fellows looked embarrassed. He was about to extricate himself from the group when a new gentleman, about the same age as himself, came up with a friendly smile. Ale
xander recognized him as Edward Young, a good-hearted fellow, though of a nervous disposition. Alexander had heard that Young was given to bouts of frenzied high spirits, followed by interludes of impenetrable gloom. He knew that Young longed to be a poet. Alexander shook him by the hand.
“You have written such a lively, spirited piece,” Young exclaimed. “So easy; so full of wit and merit. I admire you and I envy you, sir—in equal parts.” He laughed so generously that Alexander could not be in the least affronted.
“I do thank you, sir,” he replied. “Your own poems progress well, I hope.”
“I have lately written a piece on the death of Lady Jane Grey,” he replied. “It is very grand and melancholy, but I fear that it will not please. Something with more humor in it would serve me better. Perhaps I shall try a satire. Yet I seem to be more suited to somber strains.”
“People love to be made sad as much as they like to laugh,” Pope replied. “If they are smiling this week, they will want to weep the next. Keep your melancholy thoughts, Young. Their time will come.”
When Alexander returned to his own table, Swift beckoned him to sit down at his side. “The new version is a masterpiece,” he said, making Alexander’s heart swell as he continued, “You will doubtless know that I have a reputation for disliking all of mankind. But in your case my renown will serve a purpose: when I tell you that you are a man of genius, you are more likely to believe me.” He paused as Alexander laughed at his praise, and then asked, “Why did you call Miss Fermor by the name of Belinda in the poem?”
“I thought that I should conceal her identity,” Alexander answered, “though I have not done so very strenuously, since Miss Fermor’s friends all call her ‘Bell.’ The name is my own invention, but I hope that it may catch on,” he said with a self-deprecating gesture.