Wednesday. Lord Peterborough is just arrived. LETTER XLVIII. TO MARTHA AND TERESA BLOUNT. Tuesday the I HOPE this will find you both settled in peace and joy at Bath; that your court is numerous enough to keep a court and town lady in spirits, and yet not so importunate as to deprive you of rest. Your health, nevertheless, is my chief concern; which to ladies or gentlewomen, young, or advancing into wisdom (but never above pleasures), is a most comfortable and necessary thing, with or without admirers, even from Lady W -y, to her great granddaughter born last. week. I saw Dr. Arbuthnot, who was very cheerful. I passed a whole day with him at Hampstead; he is at the Long Room half the morning, and has parties at cards every night. Mrs. Lepell, and Mrs. Saggioni the singer, and his son and his two daughters are all with him. He told me he had given the best directions he could to yourself, and to Lady Suffolk separately; that she ought to bleed, and you not; that it is his opinion the waters will not be of service to you, and that there can be no ill consequence if they should heat you; it could only bring out the rash at worst, which he says might be the means to free your blood from it a long time. 4 I hope by this time the pink-coloured riband in your hat is pulled off, and the pink-coloured gown 4 As the mention of this disorder occurs in Dean Swift's Letter to Miss Blount, it seems to fix the date of this Letter in 1727, or 1728. C.Bowles. put on. I will not joke upon that, though I did upon the riband, because, when people begin to sin, there may be hopes of amendment; but when the whole woman is become red as scarlet, there is no good to be done. Lady Suffolk has a strange power over me. She would not stir a day's journey either east or west for me, though she had dying or languishing friends on each quarter, who wanted and wished to see her. But I am following her chariot-wheels three days through rocks and waters, and shall be at her feet on Sunday night. I suppose she will be at cards, and receive me as coldly as if I were archdeacon of the place. I hope I shall be better with you, who will doubtless have been at mass (whither Mr. Nash at my request shall carry you constantly when I come), and in a meek and Christian-like way. I have no more to say to either of you, but that which we are all obliged to say even to our enemies. The Lord have mercy on you! and have you in his keeping. Adieu. I intended you this by the last post, but it was too late; so that you will hardly receive it sooner than we shall come. I was willing just to have told Lady Suffolk before, that one of my chief motives was to see her in a place of liberty and health, and to advertise you, Madam, not to be discouraged if the waters did heat you, but to lose no time in them. LETTER XLIX. TO MRS. MARTHA BLOUNT. Cirencester. IT is a true saying, that misfortunes alone prove one's friendship; they show us not only that of other people for us, but our own for them. We hardly know ourselves any otherwise. otherwise. I feel my being forced to this Bath journey as a misfortune; and to follow my own welfare preferably to those I love, is indeed a new thing to me: my health has not usually got the better of my tendernesses and affections. I set out with a heavy heart, wishing I had done this thing the last season: for every day I defer it, the more I am in danger of that accident which I dread the most, my mother's death (especially should it happen while I am away). And another reflection pains me, that I have never, since I knew you, been so long separated from you, as I now must be. Methinks we live to be more and more strangers, and every year teaches you to live without me. This absence may, I fear, make my return less welcome and less wanted to you, than once it seemed, even after but a fortnight. Time ought not in reason to diminish friendship, when it confirms the truth of it by experience. The journey has a good deal disordered me, notwithstanding my resting place at Lord Bathurst's. My Lord is too much for me, he walks, and is in spirits all day long; I rejoice to see him so. It is a right distinction, that I am happier in seeing my friends so many degrees above me, be it in fortune, health, or pleasures, than I can be in sharing either with them: for in these sort of enjoyments I cannot keep pace with them, any more than I can walk with a stronger man. I wonder to find I am a companion for none but old men, and forget that I am not a young fellow myself. The worst is, that reading and writing, which I have still the greatest relish for, are growing painful to my eyes. But if I can preserve the good opinion of one or two friends, to such a degree, as to have their indulgence to my weaknesses, I will not complain of life: and if I could live to see you consult your ease and quiet, by becoming independent on those who will never help you to either, I doubt not of finding the latter part of my life pleasanter than the former or present. My uneasiness of body I can bear; my chief uneasiness of mind is in your regard. You have a temper that would make you easy and beloved, (which is all the happiness one needs to wish in this world,) and content with moderate things. All your point is not to lose that temper by sacrificing yourself to others, out of a mistaken tenderness, which hurts you, and profits not them. And this you must do soon, or it will be too late: habit will make it as hard for you to live independent, as for L ** to live out of a court. You must excuse me for observing what I think any defect in you: you grow too indolent, and give things up too easily which would be otherwise, when you found and felt yourself your own: spirits would come in, as ill-usage went out. While you live under a kind of perpetual dejection and oppression, nothing at all belongs to you, not your own humour, nor your own sense. You cannot conceive how much you would find resolution rise, and cheerfulness grow upon you, if you would once try to live independent for two or three months. I never think tenderly of you but this comes across me, and therefore excuse my repeating it, for whenever I do not, I dissemble half that I think of you. Adieu, pray write, and be particular about your health 5. LETTER L. TO MRS. MARTHA BLOUNT. Nov. (1732.) YOUR letter dated at nine a clock on Tuesday (night, I suppose) has sunk me quite. Yesterday I hoped; and yesterday I sent you a line or two for our poor friend Gay, inclosed in a few words to you; about twelve or one o'clock you should have had it. I am troubled about that, though the present cause of our trouble be so much greater. Indeed I want a friend, to help me to bear it better. We want each other. I bear a hearty share with Mrs. Howard, who has lost a man of a most honest heart; so honest an one, that I wish her master' had none less honest about him. The world after all is a little pitiful thing; not performing any one promise it makes us for the future, and every day taking away and annulling the joys of the past. Let us comfort one another, and, if possible, 5 This obscure letter seems to imply a wish, that she would throw off the restraints of her family, &c. and live with him.—Bowles. This is another of those insinuations, which Mr. Bowles omits no opportunity of throwing out against the motives of Pope's conduct with regard to Martha Blount; but for which the letter affords not, in any unprejudiced mind, the slightest ground. That some dissatisfaction subsisted between her and the family with whom she resided is apparent, and Pope earnestly advises her to consult her own happiness and live independent; not by residing with him, but in a situation where " she found and felt herself her own." This perpetual reference of every sentiment to an improper motive, without any allowance for the occasional wit and levity of the writer, the familiarity of friendship, and the manners of the times, seems intended to throw an air of licentiousness over this correspondence, which exists rather in the imagination of the commentator, than in the mind of the author. 6 Mr. Gay's death, which happened in Nov., 1732, at the Duke of Queensbury's house in London, aged 46.-Pope. 7 George II. |