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

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HAMPTON COURT
tocratic contempt. Pope was in all these things a
contrast to his enemy. Again, Lord Hervey was
for a long time more intimate, as an individual, with
the inner life of the King and Queen and the court
than any other man in England. He had claims to
be a statesman: he had the deserved reputation of
a wit: and he had the misfortune to attempt to be
a poet and a satirist — to shine in verse in the manner
in which Pope was supreme.
Pope and Lord Hervey represent not inadequately
to us the literary associations of Hampton Court,
and it is that Palace which first makes us link their
names together. It was the charming maids of
honour, Miss Lepel and Miss Bellenden, who brought
the poet to Hampton Court, taking him none too
seriously,
"Tuneful Alexis on the Thames' fair side,
The ladies'plaything and the Muses' pride."
And here it was, or at Richmond, that Lord Hervey
found a home when his kindred were engaged in
their duties of waiting on the Prince and Princess
of Wales — "dapper George" and "cette diablesse
la Princesse." Soon he won the heart of the charming
half French beauty, than whom, says Lady Louisa
Stuart, " there never was so perfect a model of the
finely polished, highly bred, genuine woman of
fashion." In 1720 the attachment was notorious.
" Now Hervey, fair of face,Imark full well
With thee youth's youngest daughter, sweet Lepel,"