There are, as we have seen, two opposing accounts from persons who professed to know the facts respecting the place to which he was sent, one stating it to be Flanders, the other, with more of probability, Lisbon, with the additional information, that at Lisbon he joined the Roman Catholic Church, or that there, at least, was laid the foundation of the change in his religious profession. From that time there is a blank in his history till his thirty-fifth year, 1677, when he was living in Broad Street, London, where many of the principal merchants of the time resided or carried on their business. This we learn from a 12mo volume, printed for Samuel Lee in that year, entitled A Collection of the Names of the Merchants living in and about the City of London. Books of this kind are of some rarity, being by most persons thought worthless and are destroyed, when superseded by others of a later date. I have a copy which has survived the general wreck, and has been long in my possession. I copy from it the names of three Popes who occur in the list:—
James Pope, Abchurch Lane.
Alexander Pope, Broad Street.
Joseph Pope, Redriff.
There can be no reasonable doubt that Alexander is the Poet’s father; and it is worth observation that this is a list of “merchants” properly so called—persons engaged in the higher walks of commerce. The number of the names is about 1770. Hence we must infer that the Poet’s father was not, at that time at least, pursuing any low or mean occupation, but one in which in those days it was not unusual to place the younger sons of gentry, and sometimes even of the nobility of the land.
He was then, or very soon after, married, not to the mother of his celebrated son, but to a former wife, whose name was Magdalen, but whose surname is at present unknown. This is a recent discovery of some one whose curiosity has led him to consult the register of St. Benet Fink, the parish in which part of Broad Street is situated, where this entry was found:—“1679, August 12. bur. Magdalen, wife of Alexander Pope.” She left him one child, a daughter named Magdalen, afterwards Mrs. Racket, whose sons were the Poet’s heirs.
The next event (after another period marked by no incidents with which we are acquainted) is his marriage with Edith Turner, his second wife. This may be presumed to have taken place in 1686 or 1687, the only child, the Poet, having been born in May or June, 1688. Authorities differ respecting the day, and also the place, one naming Lombard Street, another Cheapside. The father had, therefore, changed his residence, but was still living among the trading aristocracy, and we have no reason to believe that he had receded from his original position of a London merchant.
He acquired some additional property, perhaps considerable, with his wife Edith. She seems to have been the favourite of her brother, the “general officer in Spain,” whatever that phrase may denote,—for Pope says, she inherited from him what remained of the fortunes of the family, and it must have been from him that the elder Alexander Pope acquired the valuable interest he possessed in the manor of Ruston, near Scarborough. They were both of mature age at their marriage. Fixing the time in 1686, he would be, according to his monumental inscription, forty-five, and she forty-four. This change in his position had doubtless something to do with his retirement from business very soon after the Revolution,—perhaps as much as his disgust at the political change which had taken place, or his love of retirement, the motives usually assigned for the step he took.
He did not immediately establish himself in his retreat at Binfield, for Mr. Roscoe in his Life of the Poet informs us, that he lived for a while at Kensington. No long interval, however, appears to have elapsed between his final departure from London, and his settlement on a small estate which he bought at Binfield, which is on Windsor Forest, two or three miles from the town of Wokingham.
Commerce has its vicissitudes, and the Poet’s father may have had sensible proof of this obvious fact. But there is no evidence, as far as we yet know, that he was ever “unfortunate” in his commercial career. That he did not attain to great wealth, like many of his contemporaries, is certain; but neither did he, like some others of a more adventurous disposition, sink into despondency. When one of Pope’s enemies taunted him with being the son of a person who had been a bankrupt, he calls it a “pitiful untruth,” and this at a time when there were many persons living who must have known if it had been so, and many others who would have been glad to propagate the libel. Hearne, who disliked Pope, inserted in his private note-book, for future use if necessary, that his father was “a sort of broken merchant.” The truth probably is, that he saved something in his business, and added to it by his marriage; and it is certain that he was able to live for many years an easy disengaged life, and at his death to leave his son £300 or £400 a year.