Hampton Court ... Illustrated with forty-three drawings by Herbert ...

214
HAMPTON COURT
Court preserves Belinda, the Baron, and Sir Plume;
and Pope's immortality is safe in its keeping.
What served the most polished of poets for the
setting of his true (but not too true) story served
him also for subject when he wrote some of the
pleasantest of his very artificial letters. " Iwent by
water," he wrote1 in 1717, "to Hampton Court,
unattended by all but my own virtues, which were
not of so modest a nature as to keep themselves or me
concealed; or met the Prince, with all his ladies,
on horseback, coming from hunting. Mrs. B. and
Mrs. L.2 took me into protection, contrary to the
laws against harbouring papists, and gave me a
dinner, with something Iliked better, an opportunity
of conversing with Mrs. H.3 We all agreed
that the life of a Maid of Honour was of all
things the most miserable, and wished that every
woman who envied it had a specimen of it. To
eat Westphalia ham in morning, ride over hedges
and ditches on borrowed hacks, come home in
the heat of the day with a fever, and (what is
worse an hundred times) with a red mark on the
forehead from an uneasy hat — all this may qualify
them to make them excellent wives for foxhunters,
and bear abundance of ruddy-complexioned children.
As soon as they can wipe off the sweat of the day,
1"Works," ed. Warburton (1751), vol. vii.p. 132.
2 Mary Bellenden, whom Horace Walpole says contemporaries
always remembered as the most perfect creature they had ever
known;and " dear Molly Lepel."
3 Mrs. Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk.