The Scandal of the Season

by Sophie Gee

  “I have seen the real Miss Fermor but once, and I do not recall whether she enjoyed as great a share of beauty as your Belinda.”

  “She is exceptionally handsome,” Alexander replied. “And yet I did always feel that her hair, for which she has been envied, was rather too luxuriant.”

  “Then posterity will credit you with correcting the only fault Miss Fermor ever had, by giving her a haircut,” Swift answered. “Who would have thought a lock of hair could have so much satire in it?

  “There is but one objection that I would expect to be raised to your new verses. People will want to know how you came by the details of the story. You hint at an affair between your hero and heroine; you give the suggestion that Jacobite strife was involved in the intrigue—readers will ask how you can be sure of your facts. I have always found that it is a dangerous thing for a writer to dabble in the truth; it supplies people with an excuse to say that you are in error.”

  Alexander had given a good deal of thought to this, and he had an answer ready to give his friend. “Oh! I hope that nobody should think my poem true in point of fact,” he said lightly. “Truth is but a frail and sickly creature, and soon forgotten. After all, Arabella Fermor’s beauty will fade, and the present Lord Petre shall be the baron only for a little while. The Jacobites will carry on with their plans for rebellion, and who knows who will succeed the present Queen? Although my poem may not be strictly true, I hope that it might prove a more—how shall I say it—a more enduring record. After all, nobody really cares for the truth, do they, Dr. Swift?”

  “Do you know, Pope, I believe that you are right,” Swift said, shaking his head. “The trouble with the truth is that it always brings such bitter disappointments.”

  As Alexander and Swift came to the end of this exchange, a gentleman sitting close to them could be overheard reciting the closing couplet of The Rape of the Lock, followed by a loud hurrah from himself and his friends.

  “This Lock, the Muse shall consecrate to fame, / And ’midst the stars inscribe Belinda’s name!”

  This caused another group of fellows to propose a toast to “Belinda and the baron—the romantic heroes of the modern age.”

  Alexander watched as Richard Steele leaned confidentially across to one of them, and said, “You should more properly be toasting Miss Arabella Fermor than Belinda.”

  Though Alexander attempted to silence Steele’s indiscretion, the youth turned toward his friend. “Arabella Fermor?” he repeated. “Who is she?”

  “How should I know?” the friend said. “Another lady, I suppose.”

  Then he, too, turned to address his companion. “Who is Arabella Fermor?” he asked.

  “Never heard of her,” the young man replied callously, drinking from his mug of ale. “Do you know of a lady called Arabella Fermor?” he asked another man in the party.

  “Farmer?” the friend echoed. “No—is she a real person?”

  “Who knows?” he replied with a laugh. “In any case, a toast to Belinda—the most beautiful girl in London—and the poet who created her.”

  Steele was about to cut in and correct them, but Alexander motioned to him to be quiet.

  “Arabella could not be London’s reigning belle forever,” he said merrily, with a chuckle. “Let Belinda have her day.”

  As Alexander stood up to begin reading he felt a wave of anticipation sweep through the room. Everybody was watching him: some of them admiringly, others enviously; some affectionately, others coldly. What a great variety of men were to be met with here, he reflected. What a cruel world this was, and how brief was each man’s moment of celebrity. Who, from this motley band, would be remembered?

  But suddenly he felt a surge of excitement. As much as he disdained Grub Street, he saw that it was a new world, yet to be explored. The people who inhabited it—the publishers, the editors, the printers—were new men, and the activities in which they engaged were new, too: the buying and selling of books, the printing of newspapers, the raising up and dragging down of writers and critics and essayists. It would call for a steady head and nerves of iron to succeed, but the prospect was bracing.

  All around him the room fell silent and attentive as they quieted their babble. He began to read the opening lines of his poem:

  What dire offence from am’rous causes springs,

  What mighty contests rise from trivial things,

  I sing.

  He glanced up, and saw that they were watching him entranced. Not a breath could be heard besides his own voice. Everybody was spellbound, and a wild rush of exhilaration overcame him. He had done it, he thought—he had written a poem that would make him the most famous poet in England.

  AFTERWORD

  Alexander Pope did indeed become the most famous poet in England. The 1714 version of The Rape of the Lock sold three thousand copies in the first week after it was printed, and is a standard text on every undergraduate English syllabus today. He is the first writer in English history to become independently wealthy from the sales of his own books. In 1719 he built a large villa on the banks of the Thames in Twickenham, just outside London, for which he designed one of the most fashionable gardens in England.

  Arabella Fermor’s own fame as a beauty was largely eclipsed by the much greater fame of her fictionalized character, Belinda. She was twenty-five years old by the time she married Francis Perkins, the owner of Ufton Court, a moderate estate in Berkshire—practically an old maid by eighteenth-century standards.

  Robert, Lord Petre, married Catherine Walmesley in 1712, but died of smallpox less than two years later, just before the second version of The Rape of the Lock was published. Ten weeks after the baron’s death, Catherine Walmesley gave birth to the Petre heir. In later life she remarried, and became celebrated as an educational philanthropist.

  Martha Blount remained Pope’s closest friend and companion. Rumors always abounded that they had secretly married, but nobody knows for sure. In 1743 Pope, who had long wanted Martha to establish a house of her own, bought the lease on a house in Berkeley Street in London. When he died he left Martha all his goods and chattels and the income on his estate for the rest of her life.

  Teresa Blount fell in and out with Pope, as well as with the members of her family, for the greater part of her adult life. Pope took care of her financially, settling on her in 1718 an annuity that was to be paid until her death. Her relationship with Martha was fraught, but they remained close to each other. Teresa never married, but when she was in her forties she conducted a long-running affair with a married man named Captain Bagnall. Martha and Alexander strenuously disapproved.

  John Caryll finally managed to relieve himself of responsibility for his large brood of children by arranging for them to enter into well-appointed nunneries and monasteries in France. His eldest son, the only one of his children to marry, became a man of considerable prosperity. Caryll successfully dissociated himself from further suspicion of Jacobitism, and lived out his days happily and peacefully in Berkshire, in company with his much-loved wife.

  Charles Jervas remained the most fashionable portrait painter of his day, winning the patronage of the prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, and eventually becoming the official portraitist to King George I in 1723. In 1726 he married a wealthy heiress, whose money enabled him to maintain a house in the country, but he always kept the house in town where Pope had stayed in his youth.

  Mary Pierrepont eloped with Edward Wortley Montagu in 1714, thereby relinquishing the fortune she would have inherited. In 1716 she traveled to Turkey, where Wortley was posted as ambassador, and published a record of this trip in her famous collection, The Turkish Embassy Letters. As a result of her observations and experiences in Turkey she introduced the smallpox inoculation to England in 1721. She and Pope became close friends, but eventually had a bitter falling-out and remained implacable enemies. In the 1730s, Lady Mary abandoned her husband and went to live in Italy and France, becoming an eccentric, unconventional, celebrated woman of lett
ers.

  Jonathan Swift went on to write Gulliver’s Travels, one of the most famous books, and probably the most famous satire, ever written. He worked as a political writer and adviser to the Tory government in London until 1714, hoping that his work would secure him a high-ranking clerical position in the Church of England. But when Queen Anne died and the Tories were superseded by a powerful Whig government, Swift was forced to return to Ireland, where he became Dean of St. Patrick’s Church in Dublin. He lived there for the rest of his life, becoming celebrated as a great champion and defender of Ireland, a role about which he always felt a great deal of ambivalence. He and Pope remained close friends.

  Richard Steele is remembered as the cowriter and editor (with Joseph Addison) of the Tatler and the Spectator, groundbreaking periodicals, and the forerunners of the New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, The New Statesman, and The Spectator (descended from Steele’s own journal).

  John Gay later wrote The Beggar’s Opera, another of the most important and inventive works of English literature. The play was a runaway success; it ran for longer than any previous drama; it inspired a deluge of play-related “merchandise” and made Gay’s fortune.

  THE RAPE OF THE LOCK*

  CANTO I

  What dire offence from am’rous causes springs,

  What mighty quarrels rise from trivial things,

  I sing—This verse to C—l, Muse! is due:

  This, ev’n Belinda may vouchsafe to view:

  Slight is the subject, but not so the praise,

  If she inspire, and he approve my lays.

  Say what strange motive, goddess! could compel

  A well-bred lord t’ assault a gentle belle?

  O say what stranger cause, yet unexplored,

  Could make a gentle belle reject a lord?

  And dwells such rage in softest bosoms then,

  And lodge such daring souls in little men?

  Sol through white curtains did his beams display,

  And ope’d those eyes which brighter shine than they,

  Shock just had giv’n himself the rousing shake,

  And nymphs prepared their chocolate to take;

  Thrice the wrought slipper knocked against the ground,

  And striking watches the tenth hour resound.

  Belinda rose, and midst attending dames,

  Launched on the bosom of the silver Thames:

  A train of well-dressed youths around her shone,

  And ev’ry eye was fixed on her alone:

  On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore

  Which Jews might kiss and infidels adore.

  Her lively looks a spprightly mind disclose,

  Quick as her eyes, and as unfixed as those:

  Favours to none, to all she smiles extends;

  Oft she rejects, but never once offends.

  Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike,

  And, like the sun, they shine on all alike.

  Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride,

  Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide:

  If to her share some female errors fall,

  Look on her face, and you’ll forgive ’em all.

  This nymph, to the destruction of mankind,

  Nourished two locks, which graceful hung behind

  In equal curls, and well conspired to deck

  With shining ringlets her smooth iv’ry neck.

  Love in these labyrinths his slaves detains,

  And mighty hearts are held in slender chains.

  With hairy springes we the birds betray,

  Slight lines of hair surprise the finny prey,

  Fair tresses man’s imperial race insnare,

  And beauty draws us with a single hair.

  Th’ adventurous baron the bright locks admired;

  He saw, he wished, and to the prize aspired.

  Resolved to win, he meditates the way,

  By force to ravish, or by fraud betray;

  For when success a lover’s toil attends,

  Few ask if fraud or force attained his ends.

  For this, ere Phoebus rose, he had implored

  Propitious heav’n, and every pow’r adored,

  But chiefly Love—to Love an altar built,

  Of twelve vast French romances, neatly gilt.

  There lay the sword-knot Sylvia’s hands had sewn

  With Flavia’s busk that oft had wrapped his own:

  A fan, a garter, half a pair of gloves,

  And all the trophies of his former loves.

  With tender billets-doux he lights the pire,

  And breathes three am’rous sighs to raise the fire.

  Then prostrate falls, and begs with ardent eyes

  Soon to obtain, and long possess the prize:

  The pow’rs gave ear, and granted half his pray’r,

  The rest the winds dispersed in empty air.

  Close by those meads, for ever crowned with flow’rs,

  Where Thames with pride surveys his rising tow’rs,

  There stands a structure of majestic frame,

  Which from the neighb’ring Hampton takes its name.

  Here Britain’s statesmen oft the fall foredoom

  Of foreign tyrants, and of nymphs at home;

  Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,

  Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea.

  Hither our nymphs and heroes did resort,

  To taste awhile the pleasures of a court;

  In various talk the cheerful hours they passed,

  Of who was bit, or who capotted last;

  This speaks the glory of the British queen,

  And that describes a charming Indian screen;

  A third interprets motions, looks, and eyes;

  At ev’ry word a reputation dies.

  Snuff, or the fan, supply each pause of chat,

  With singing, laughing, ogling, and all that.

  Now when, declining from the noon of day,

  The sun obliquely shoots his burning ray;

  When hungry judges soon the sentence sign,

  And wretches hang that jurymen may dine;

  When merchants from th’ Exchange return in peace,

  And the long labours of the toilet cease,

  The board’s with cups and spoons, alternate, crowned,

  The berries crackle, and the mill turns round;

  On shining altars of Japan they raise

  The silver lamp, and fiery spirits blaze:

  From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide,

  While China’s earth receives the smoking tide.

  At once they gratify their smell and taste,

  While frequent cups prolong the rich repast.

  Coffee (which makes the politician wise,

  And see through all things with his half-shut eyes)

  Sent up in vapours to the baron’s brain

  New stratagems, the radiant lock to gain.

  Ah cease, rash youth! desist ere’t is too late,

  Fear the just gods, and think of Scylla’s fate!

  Changed to a bird, and sent to flit in air,

  She dearly pays for Nisus’ injured hair!

  But when to mischief mortals bend their mind,

  How soon fit instruments of ill they find!

  Just then, Clarissa drew with tempting grace

  A two-edged weapon from her shining case:

  So ladies, in romance, assist their knight,

  Present the spear, and arm him for the fight;

  He takes the gift with rev’rence, and extends

  The little engine on his fingers’ ends;

  This just behind Belinda’s neck he spread,

  As o’er the fragrant steams she bends her head.

  He first expands the glitt’ring forfex wide

  T’ enclose the lock; then joins it, to divide;

  One fatal stroke the sacred hair does sever

  From the fair head, for ever, and for ever!
r />   The living fires come flashing from her eyes,

  And screams of horror rend th’ affrighted skies.

  Not louder shrieks by dames to heav’n are cast,

  When husbands die, or lapdogs breathe their last;

  Or when rich china vessels, fall’n from high,

  In glitt’ring dust and painted fragments lie!

  “Let wreaths of triumph now my temples twine,”

  The victor cried, “the glorious prize is mine!

  While fish in streams, or birds delight in air,

  Or in a coach and six the British fair,

  As long as Atalantis shall be read,

  Or the small pillow grace a lady’s bed,

  While visits shall be paid on solemn days,

  When num’rous wax-lights in bright order blaze,

  While nymphs take treats, or assignations give,

  So long my honour, name, and praise shall live!”

  What time would spare, from steel receives its date,

  And monuments, like men, submit to fate!

  Steel did the labour of the gods destroy,

  And strike to dust th’ aspiring tow’rs of Troy;

  Steel could the works of mortal pride confound,

  And hew triumphal arches to the ground.

  What wonder then, fair nymph! thy hairs should feel

  The conqu’ring force of unresisted steel?

  CANTO II

  But anxious cares the pensive nymph oppressed,

  And secret passions laboured in her breast.

  Not youthful kings in battle seized alive,

  Not scornful virgins who their charms survive,

  Not ardent lover robbed of all his bliss,

  Not ancient lady when refused a kiss,

  Not tyrants fierce that unrepenting die,

  Not Cynthia when her manteau’s pinned awry,

  E’er felt such rage, resentment, and despair,