Woman and fool are two hard things to hit; For true no-meaning puzzles more than wit.' But what are these to great Atossa's mind ?' Scarce once herself, by turns all womankind!' Who, with herself, or others, from her birth Finds all her life one warfare upon earth :' Shines, in exposing knaves, and painting fools," Yet is, whate'er she hates and ridicules. This is downright rudeness without a spark of wit. -RUFFHEAD. 2 External evidence proves beyond all question that the original of this portrait was Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, daughter of John Jennings, Esq., and wife of John, Duke of Marlborough; and the fidelity of the likeness is undeniable. On the other hand, there are grounds for supposing (see Introductory Remarks) that Pope intended to publish it as the character of Katharine, Duchess of Buckingham, natural daughter of James II., and sister of the Pretender, known among the Jacobites as James III. The choice of the name would in this case have been highly appropriate, for Atossa was the daughter of Cyrus and sister of Cambyses. The general conception of the character is certainly not so applicable to the Duchess of Buckingham as to the Duchess of Marlborough; but Pope, after being intimate with the former, had quarrelled with her, and the exaggeration of the features might easily be attributed to personal feeling. Some of the particular strokes again are not true of the Duchess of Marlborough, and were perhaps added, when the lines were prepared for publication, to increase the resemblance to the Duchess of Bucking. ham. The notes that follow will indicate from internal evidence the traits which appear applicable to the two Duchesses respectively. 115 120 3 So Dryden, in the character of Zimri : A man so various that he seemed to be 4 This was true generally of the Duchess of Marlborough, in so far as her termagant temper was concerned. It has, however, an application, though a less pointed one, to the Duchess of Buckingham. Her father had been driven into exile. While she was yet a girl she sued successfully for a divorce from her husband, the Earl of Anglesea, on the ground of cruelty. She was engaged in constant law-suits with the Duke of Buckingham's natural children. The Duchess of Buckingham might have been said to shine "in exposing knaves," having obtained a conviction against John Ward, M. P. for Weymouth, for forgery. She did not, however, "shine in painting fools"; indeed, her own folly was notorious. But Pope, if asked to account for this inconsistency, might have urged (as he had urged to Caryll respecting Timon, in his letter of March 29, 1732) that in characters of this kind something must be allowed for poetical effect. The fool whom the Duchess of Marlborough painted was no doubt Lord Grimston (the "booby Lord" of Imitation of Horace, Satire ii. Book ii. 176), whom she caused to be caricatured as an elephant dancing on a tight rope. No thought advances, but her eddy brain From loveless youth to unrespected age, 5 The pleasure missed her, and the scandal hit." 1 In the MS. after this verse : Oppressed with wealth and wit, abundance sad, One makes her poor, the other makes her mad. 2 The Duchess of Marlborough was 84 when these lines were prepared for publication by Pope; the Duchess of Buckingham had died the year before, aged 61. 3 This couplet and the next four form, of course, the backbone of the haracter, and their truth as applied to the Duchess of Marlborough, is attested by Swift's description of her : "She has preserved a tolerable Court reputation with respect to love and gallantry; but three Furies reigned in her breast, the most mortal enemies of all softer passions, which were sordid Avarice, disdainful Pride, and ungovernable Rage; by the last of these, often breaking out in sallies of the most unpardonable sort, she had long alienated her sovereign's mind before it appeared to the world." (Last Years of Queen Anne, Book i.) 125 130 135 The verses at the same time form a kind of burlesque on the qualities claimed for herself by the Duchess of Buckingham in the Character, which she had shown to Pope in MS. 4 This couplet is indebted perhaps to Gay, Epistle xiv. : Satire the Muse that never fails to hit, For if there's scandal, to be sure there's wit.-WAKEFIELD. 5 Ruffhead says of the Duchess of Marlborough (Life of Pope, p. 490), that she secured five thousand pounds to Hooke for writing the account of her public conduct, but that "soon after she took occasion, as was usual with her, to quarrel with him.” For the application of this line to the sudden and unexpected rupture between Pope and the Duchess of Buckingham, see note to ver. 137. 6 A fine and subtle thought, for an inferior not dependent, is in a sense an equal. Instances of the pride of the Duchess of Buckingham are given in Walpole's letter to Mann, Christmas Eve, 1741. Offend her, and she knows not to forgive;' Oblige her, and she'll hate you while you live;" Pope says of the Duchess of "There was another character written of Her Grace by herself (with what help I know not), but she showed it me in her blots, and pressed me by all the adjurations of friendship to give her my sincere opinion of it. I acted honestly and did so. She seemed to take it patiently; and, upon many exceptions which I made, engaged me to take the whole, and to select out of it just as much as I judged might stand, and return her the copy. I did so. Immediately she picked a quarrel with me, and we never saw each other in five or six years." There is no evidence that Pope had any private quarrel with the Duchess of Marlborough, though his estimate of the strength of her resentment was no doubt correct. * Pope had obliged the Duchess of Buckingham by helping her in the prosecution of Ward. On this occasion she wrote to him: "There is nobody who can be obliged whose gratitude is so useless as a woman's and a child's; but I'll answer for the first having a great share of it, and I hope the other will always show the same disposition." After the quarrel, it would appear from a mysterious correspondence between Pope and Caryll, and Pope and Atterbury, that the sense of obligation made the 140 145 Duchess uneasy, and that she endeavoured to rid herself of the debt, by sending to the poet through Caryll a Bank bill for £100, which he returned with indignation. Pope, till quite the last years of his life, was never on such terms with the Duchess of Marlborough as would have enabled him to confer an obligation on her. The verse, in her case, would merely express his view of her character. 3 The Duchess of Marlborough erected a monument to Queen-Anne at Blenheim, which she afterwards neglected. The lines, however, are also substantially true of the Duchess of Buckingham. On the one hand, she had set up pompous monuments in honour of her husband and her son; on the other, her piety seems to have been largely mixed with ostentation. Walpole says of her in his Reminiscences: "She always stopped at Paris, visited the church where lay the unburied body of James, and wept over it. A poor Benedictine of the Convent, observing her filial piety, took notice to her Grace that the velvet pall that covered the coffin was become threadbare-and so it remained." 4 Probably this couplet was added with reference to the Duchess of Buckingham, for it is scarcely credible that the Duchess of Marlborough should have complained of the Duke's Atossa, cursed with every granted prayer, 150 155 Pictures like these, dear Madam, to design,' Asks no firm hand, and no unerring line; Some wandering touches, some reflected light, Some flying stroke alone can hit them right: For how should equal colours do the knack? Cameleons who can paint in white and black? will, of which Archdeacon Coxe says: "As the manor of Woodstock and the manor of Blenheim were already settled on her by Act of Parliament, the terms of the will indicate no less his wish that she should be considered as his representative, than the gratitude which he invariably expressed for her affection and tenderness: 'And whereas, in and by my hereinbefore recited will, I give my said wife and her assigns, during the term of her natural life, £10,000 per annum, clear of taxes; and whereas my personal estate which is since greatly increased, and my said wife has been very tender and careful of me, and had great trouble of me during my illness, and I intending for the consideration aforesaid, and out of the tender affection, great respect and gratitude which I have and bear to her, and for the better support of her title and honour, to increase her said annuity £5000 a year.'"-Life of Marlborough, vol. iii. 425. was true in a much less witty, but in a cruelly literal sense, of the Duchess of Buckingham, who had five children by the Duke. All of them died before her, and the title became extinct in 1735. The Duchess of Buckingham was involved in many lawsuits in consequence of the reversionary interests which her husband left in his will to his natural children. 1 This couplet has, of course, a very pointed application to the Duchess of Marlborough, who had quarrelled with all her children, and most of her grandchildren, and who might therefore be supposed to have a difficulty in finding an heir. It 2 On the death of the Duchess of Buckingham there was a trial at bar to prove who was heir-at-law to the late Duke of Buckingham, when the Misses Walsh of Ireland were found to be his heirs.-DILKE. After ver. 148 in the MS. : This Death decides, nor lets the blessing fall more If any part should wander to the poor. Yet Pope told Spence : 'The old Duchess of Marlborough has given away in charities, and in presents to granddaughters and other relatives, near three hundred thousand pounds in her life-time." The suppression of the lines in the MS., and the substitution of the concluding couplet, taken in connection with Warburton's note on the Character of Katherine, Duchess of Buckinghamshire, (see Introduction) indicate pretty plainly that Pope inserted the allusion to the "heirs unknown," after the death of the Duchess of Buckinghamshire, and the trial at bar above mentioned. 3 These lines, which in the early editions followed ver. 114, are not appropriately placed after the character of Atossa. "Yet Chloe sure was formed without a spot." Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour, So very reasonable, so unmoved, She, while her lover pants upon her breast, Can mark the figures on an Indian chest ; 1 These lines were first published, separately, in the octavo edition of 1738. They refer to Henrietta, daughter of Sir Henry Hobart ; wife of Charles Howard, who in 1731 became Earl of Suffolk; and mistress of George II. She was long Lady of the Bedchamber to the Princess (afterwards Queen) Caroline. In 1731, on becoming Countess of Suffolk, she was made Mistress of the Robes. She retired from Court in 1734; married for her second husband the Hon. George Berkeley, in 1735, and died 1767, aged 79. The name of Chloe was taken from a song of Lord Peterborough's on Mrs. Howard, beginning, "I said to my heart between sleeping and waking." 2 i.e., Did not deliberately transgress her own rule (of making women inconsistent with themselves), but forgot to complete Chloe's character by giving her a heart. 160 165 170 175 3 Her own estimate of herself was different. "I find, my dear Lady Hervey," she says in a letter to that lady, "I want your head and hand to answer your last; but I do not want a heart, for I have one truly sensible for my friends, and more capable of feeling than expressing tenderness."-Letters to and from Henrietta, Countess of Suffolk, vol. i. 323. This, too, is the character given her by Lady Betty Germaine in her letter to Swift, of Feb. 28, 1733, and by Lord Hervey in his Memoirs. 4 Lady Suffolk was called by her friends, "the Swiss," probably on account of her caution and neutrality, and her apartments had the name of the Swiss Cantons. See Suffolk Letters, passim. 5 The suggestion that Lady Suffolk had numerous lovers is quite un |