Among the merry groups conspicuous seen,
See lively Pope advance to jig and trip,
Corinna, Cherry, Honeycombe, and Snip!
Not without art, but yet to nature true,
She charms the town with humour, just, yet new,
Cheered by her promise, we the less deplore,
The fatal time when Clive shall be no more."
Such was she in Churchill's eyes, in 1761. The fairy of that day; but, in 1807, the fairy had expanded into "a bulky person, with a duplicity of chin." Such was she in the eyes of James Smith, to whom she told her love for handsome but fickle Holland, losing—or casting off whom—she never after heeded suit of mortal man.
In the drawing-room of her and her brother's house in Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, two doors east of the Freemasons' Tavern, in that richly-furnished apartment, where, for forty years, Miss Pope lived—among choice portraits of Mrs. Oldfield and her little son, afterwards General Churchill; of Lord Nuneham, who, as Earl of Harcourt, visited Miss Pope with as much ceremonious courtesy as if she had been a princess; of Garrick and of Holland—the old lady told the tale of her young love, her hopes and her disappointment, to James Smith. Garrick, or "Mr. Garrick," as Miss Pope, with the old habit of reverence, used to call him, had observed the intimacy and growing attachment between the young actor and actress, and, guardian of the happiness of those whom he regarded, he warned the lady of the waywardness, instability, and recklessness of the swain. But Holland could persuade in his own cause more successfully than Garrick could urge against him; and Miss Pope, trusting the man she loved, looked confidently forward to the day when she would become his wife. Ere that day arrived, she went in the old Richmond coach, on her way to pay a visit to Mrs. Clive at Twickenham; and on the road she passed a postchaise, in which were Holland and a lady. The perplexed Miss Pope rode thoughtfully on, and, alighting at Richmond Bridge, walked meditatively along the meadows to Strawberry Hill. Her jealous attention was attracted by a boat on the river, opposite Eel Pie Island, the rower of which could not so hurriedly but confusedly pull through the weeds to the Richmond side, before she saw that he was her faithless swain, Holland, making a day of it with that seductive piece of mischief, Mrs. Baddeley. Poor Miss Pope might fairly confess to the "pang of jealousy," which she then endured.
Shortly after they met at rehearsal. He, being conscious of wrong and incapable of confessing it, assumed a haughty bearing, but the injured woman was as proud as he; and from that time they never exchanged a word, except in acting. The foolish, weak, and ungrateful fellow went philandering on; "but I have reason to know," said Miss Pope, "that he never was really happy." And forty years after this rude waking from a happy illusion, and in presence of the counterfeit presentment of her faithless lover, the lady, whose heart at least never grew old, shed tears as she told the one love passage of her life, and thought of the dream of the bygone time.