Part 12 (1/2)
Pope's letters of this period to Lady Mary were all written in a strain of adulation, which may well have pleased Lady Mary and must certainly have amused her. She can, however, scarcely have been led into any self-deception as regards the sincerity of her correspondent, in spite of the fact that in one of the earliest epistles he addressed to her he subscribed himself: ”I am, with all unalterable esteem and sincerity, Madam, your most faithful, obedient, humble servant.” Yet, no doubt, she was pleased enough to read: ”I communicated your letter to Mr. Congreve; he thinks of you as he ought, I mean as I do, for one always thinks that to be just as it ought.... We never meet but we lament over you: we pay a kind of weekly rites to your memory, when we strew flowers of rhetoric and offer such libations to your name as if it were a profaneness to call toasting.” Well, alcoholic refreshment by any other name is just as potent. It must have been grateful and comforting to be told when in exile: ”I must tell you, too, that the Duke of Buckingham has been more than once your high priest in performing the office of your praises: and upon the whole I believe there are few men who do not deplore your departure, as women that sincerely do.”
Most excellent Pope, who would play at make-believe. It is almost a pity that he could not persuade the lady that he meant even a t.i.the of what he wrote to her. Listen to him again: ”For my part, I hate a great many women for your sake, and undervalue all the rest. 'Tis you who are to blame, and may G.o.d revenge it upon you, with all those blessings and earthy prosperities which the divines tell us, are the cause of our perdition: for if He makes you happy in this world, I dare trust your own virtue to do it in the other.” These poets!
Lady Mary took all this in the right way, and as love-letters appraised them at their true value. ”Perhaps you'll laugh at me for thanking you very gravely for all the obliging concern you express for me,” she wrote from Vienna in September, with, perhaps, just a touch of irony. ”'Tis certain that I may, if I please, take the fine things you say to me for wit and raillery; and it may be, it would be taking them right. But I never in my life was half so well disposed to believe you in earnest; and that distance which makes the continuation of your friends.h.i.+p improbable, has very much increased my faith for it, and I find that I have (as well as the rest of my s.e.x), whatever face I set on't, a strong disposition to believe in miracles.” As regards the rest, her side of the correspondence was matter-of-fact to such a degree that it suggests that she adopted that tone in order to lease him. Her replies can scarcely have given Pope any satisfaction. From Vienna she gave him a detailed account of the opera and the theatre; from Belgrade she told him of the war and of an Arabic scholar and also of the climate; from Adrianople she discoursed of the Hebrus, of the lads of the village, of Addison and Theocritus, pays him compliments on his translation of Homer, and a copy of some Turkish verses; and so on. The most striking thing about her letters is the absence of the personal note, which is so often introduced when she was writing to others. They read more like essays than communications to a friend.
Pope, in a letter dated September 1, 1718, sent Lady Mary a copy of his verses.
ON JOHN HUGHES AND SARAH DREW
When Eastern lovers fear'd the fun'eral fire On the same pile the faithful pair expire!
Here pitying Heav'n that virtue mutual found, And blasted both, that it might neither wound.
Hearts so sincere th' Almighty saw well pleas'd, Sent his own lightning and the victims seiz'd.
I Think not by vig'rous judgment seiz'd, A pair so faithful could expire; Victims so pure Heav'n saw well pleas'd, And s.n.a.t.c.h'd them in celestial fire.
II Live well, and fear no sudden fate: When G.o.d calls virtue to the grave; Alike 'tis justice, soon or late, Mercy alike to kill or save.
Virtue unmov'd can hear the call.
And face the flash that melts the ball.
These verses she acknowledged in a letter which, written while on the homeward path, she sent from Dover, where she arrived at the beginning of November.
”I have this minute received a letter of yours, sent me from Paris. I believe and hope I shall very soon see both you and Mr. Congreve; but as I am here in an inn, where we stay to regulate our march to London, bag and baggage, I shall employ some of my leisure time in answering that part of yours that seems to require an answer.
”I must applaud your good nature, in supposing that your pastoral lovers (vulgarly called haymakers) would have lived in everlasting joy and harmony, if the lightning had not interrupted their scheme of happiness.
I see no reason to imagine that John Hughes and Sarah Drew were either wiser or more virtuous than their neighbours. That a well-set man of twenty five should have a fancy to marry a brown woman of eighteen, is nothing marvellous; and I cannot help thinking, that, had they married, their lives would have pa.s.sed in the common track with their fellow paris.h.i.+oners. His endeavouring to s.h.i.+eld her from the storm, was a natural action, and what he would have certainly done for his horse, if he had been in the same situation. Neither am I of opinion, that their sudden death was a reward of their mutual virtue. You know the Jews were reproved for thinking a village destroyed by fire more wicked than those that had escaped the thunder. Time and chance happen to all men. Since you desire me to try my skill in an epitaph, I think the following lines perhaps more just, though not so poetical as yours:
Here lies John Hughes and Sarah Drew; Perhaps you'll say, what's that to you?
Believe me, friend, much may be said On this poor couple that are dead.
On Sunday next they should have married; But see how oddly things are carried!
On Thursday last it rain'd and lighten'd; These tender lovers, sadly frighten'd, Shelter'd beneath the c.o.c.king hay, In hopes to pa.s.s the storm away; But the bold thunder found them out (Commissioned for that end, no doubt), And, seizing on their trembling breath, Consign'd them to the shades of death.
Who knows if 'twas not kindly done?
For had they seen the next year's sun, A beaten wife and cuckold swain Had jointly curs'd the marriage chain; Now they are happy in their doom, For P. has wrote upon their tomb.
”I confess, these sentiments are not altogether so heroic as yours; but I hope you will forgive them in favour of the two last lines. You see how much I esteem the honour you have done them; though I am not very impatient to have the same, and had rather continue to be your stupid living humble servant, than be celebrated by all the pens in Europe.
”I would write to Mr. Congreve, but suppose you will read this to him, if he enquires after me.”
CHAPTER XI
AT TWICKENHAM