Hair of a warm golden shade, a slender neck and sloping shoulders, almond-shaped eyes with well-formed level eyebrows, are characteristic of them all. In fact, . . . the representations of beauty which artists have handed down. to us fully bear out the praises of contemporary writers.'

Arabella Fermor was married to Francis Perkins, Esquire, of Ufton Court, in Berkshire, in 1714, or very early in 1715.1 This is proved by a post-nuptial settlement made upon her by her husband in June, 1715, which is expressed to be made betweenFrancis Perkins of Ufton Court and Arabella his wife of the first part, &c.' One of the trustees of this settlement was William, Lord Stawell, who was Gentleman of the Bedchamber to George, Prince of Denmark, the Prince Consort; and the deed gives the portion which Arabella brought her husband at her marriage as £4,500.

Pope had written her a charming letter of congratulation on her marriage, of which we have not space to quote more than one sentence. 'You are now,' he writes, a married woman, and in a way to be a great many better things than a fine lady; such as an excellent wife, a faithful friend, a tender parent, and, at last, as the consequence of them all, a saint in heaven.'

There were four children of the marriage, all sons, viz:

Francis, who died unmarried in 1750.

James, who died unmarried in 1755.
Charles, who died unmarried in 1762.
John, who died without issue in 1769.

The date 1714 is (on the authority of Croker) prefixed by Elwin to Pope's letter to Martha Blount in which he says "It was but the other day I heard of Mrs. Fermor's being actually and directly married'; and also to the letter from Pope to Mrs. Arabella Fermor on her marriage. The Howard and Burke' pedigree has 1736 as the date of Arabella's marriage, but the mistake is pointed out.

Mr. Perkins died in 1736; his widow survived him only two years, and was buried at Ufton on March 9, 1737.

5. Sir Plume, Belinda's champion in the poem, has been identified by many authorities, including Burke and Mrs. Bryan Stapleton, with George, the only son of Sir Charles Browne of Kiddington, in Oxfordshire. It is likely enough that this George Browne may have been acquainted with the lady, for they were neighbours. Indeed, in after years he married, for his third wife, the widow (née Frances Sheldon) of Arabella's nephew Henry ; but in 1711 he was only a lad of seventeen, and moreover did not become 'Sir George Browne' till some forty years afterwards. It is more likely that the Sir George Browne meant was Sir George Browne of Caversham, who was a first cousin of Arabella's mother, and who had succeeded to his brother's title in 1692. It is not clear what his age was in 1711, but he cannot have been very young, as two of his brothers had preceded him in the Baronetcy. Spence says that the description of him in The Rape of the Lock was The very picture of the man'. He had been an officer in the Austrian service, and had married, as his first wife, Gertrude Morley, a sister of John Morley, the 'land-jobber' (Swift's' rascally butcher '), who was a friend of Pope's in later years.

6. This John Morley had himself married Sir George's sister Elizabeth, and it is she who figures as Thalestris in the poem. Her age in 1711 is also a matter for conjecture.

The accompanying pedigree will serve, it is hoped, to make the various relationships more clear to the reader.

It is this lady to whom Horace Walpole refers in a letter to Miss Mary Berry of August 17, 1796: So you found a picture of your predecessor! She had had a good figure; but I had rather it had been a portrait of her aunt, Mrs. Arabella Fermor, the heroine of the Lock, of whom I never saw a resemblance.'

IV

The first version of The Rape of the Lock did not meet with warm welcome from the Fermor family. In after years, indeed, Pope told Spence that 'it was well received and had its effect in the two families. Nobody but Sir George Browne was angry, and he was a good deal so, and for a long time. He could not bear that Sir Plume should talk nothing but nonsense.' But he was speaking of the enlarged version; and he himself wrote to Caryll on November 8, 1712, 'Sir Plume blusters, I hear; nay, the celebrated lady herself is offended, and, which is stranger, not at herself, but me.'

The offended attitude of the Fermors can be readily understood and appreciated, and it was perhaps the real cause of the enlarged version of the poem, which seems to have been written with the idea, on Pope's part, of rendering it less personal, and so propitiating the family. In this he would appear to have at all events partly succeeded. Thus on December 15, 1713, he writes to Caryll, I have been employed, since my being here in the country, in finishing the additions to The Rape of the Lock, a part of which I remember I showed you. I have some thoughts of dedicating that poem to Mrs. Fermor by name, as a piece of justice in return to the wrong interpretations she has suffered on the score of that piece.' And, a month later, As to The Rape of the Lock, I believe I have managed the dedication so nicely that it can neither hurt the lady nor the author. I writ it very lately, and upon great deliberation. The young lady approves of it, and the best advice in the kingdom, of the men of sense, has been made use of in it, even to the Treasurer's [Lord Oxford]. A preface which salved the lady's honour, without affixing her name, was also prepared, but by herself

superseded in favour of the dedication. Not but that, after all, fools will talk, and fools will hear them.'

The foregoing passages enable us to read between the lines of the Introductory Letter, and especially of the two concluding paragraphs. There is next to no evidence forthcoming as to how far the family indignation was allayed; they probably, having nominally forgiven the offence, still retained a subdued feeling of annoyance, as is reflected in the words of Dr. Johnson, who says, 'Whether all this be true I have some doubt; for at Paris, a few years ago [he was writing in 1778] a niece of Mrs. Fermor, who presided in an English convent,1 mentioned Pope's work with very little gratitude, rather as an insult than an honour; and she may be supposed to have inherited the opinion of her family.' 2

Be this, however, as it may, there is no question but what the enlarged version was well received by the public. Ten days after it appeared Pope informed Caryll that 3,000 copies had been sold in four days, and that it was already 'reprinted'. Pope, who had received £7 from Lintot for the first version, was paid a further sum of £15.

The next step upon Pope's part is somewhat curious. It is conceivable that it may have been in some degree a device for mending matters still further with the Fermors, or it may have been merely an attempt on the part of Pope to feed the interest which the poem had excited in a surreptitious manner, for he delighted in such tortuous proceedings, quite apart from the point of view of mere gain. But, however this may be, in the following year there appeared a

1 Two of Arabella's nieces, Bridget and Frances, were Augustine nuns in Paris in 1781. Frances, whose name in religion was Mary Agnes, died at the age of 76, on March 9, 1794.

'Boswell's Johnson, ed. G. Birkbeck Hill, ii. 392.