But successive owners have so pulled down and rebuilt it, that nothing now remains of the original house except one room, which tradition says was the poet's study. There is an engraving of this in E. Jesse's "Favorite Haunts and Rural Studies," published by J. Murray in 1847 (p. 90). The present house, formerly known as Pope's Wood, is now called Arthurstone, and belongs to J.W. Macnabb, Esq.
There is no doubt that besides the Dancastles and the other Papist families at Binfield, there were numerous Roman Catholics settled in the neighbourhood. In particular we find that Pope often visited, and was intimate with, the Blounts, of Mapledurham; the Carylls, of Ladyholt; and the Englefields, of Whiteknights. At the house of the last, he used to meet Wycherly, who introduced him to London life, and Miss Arabella Fermor, the heroine of the "Rape of the Lock." But it is not a little remarkable that the Popes at Binfield appear to have associated exclusively with their Roman Catholic friends. Throughout the whole of Pope's letters there does not appear a single allusion to the other county families that were undoubtedly residing at Binfield at this time, and whose gravestones cover a goodly portion of the floor of the church; for instance, the two branches of the Lee family and the Alexanders, Earls of Stirling.
Here then, from the age of twelve, the poet grew up a solitary, precocious child. He had indeed a half-sister, Magdalen, the only child of Mr. Pope's first wife. But she was a good deal, at least ten or twelve years, older than her brother, and at this time, or soon after, was married to a Mr. Rackett, and lived at Hall Grove, on Bagshot Heath. For a short time, a few months only after the settlement at Binfield he was placed under the charge of a priest, the fourth that had taught him in succession. "This," he says, "was all the teaching I ever had, and, God knows, it extended a very little way."
His parents indulged his every whim, and accordingly the boy spent his mornings in desultory reading, ranging freely and widely at will through English, Italian, and Latin literature. In the afternoons he wandered alone amidst the surrounding woods, and fed his imagination with musings upon the studies of the morning, or feasted his eyes with the beautiful landscape around him. In particular he is known to have haunted a grove of noble beech trees, still called Pope's Wood, which grew about half-a-mile from his father's house. On one of these was cut the words "Here Pope sang;" and for many years the letters were annually refreshed by the care of a lady residing near Wokingham. This tree was blown down in a gale, and the words were carved anew upon the next tree; but when this also fell some years ago the inscription was not renewed.[6]
Every evening on his return home the "marvellous boy" committed to paper the results of his communing with the Muses in the leafy grove. In this way he composed and wrote out many juvenile verses, amongst others an epic poem of more than four thousand lines, which in after years his matured taste consigned to the flames. So close an application, combined with complete isolation from all companionship of children of his own age, was certain in the end to affect disastrously his mental constitution as well as his bodily health. Accordingly we find that he never shook off the morbid self-consciousness which his solitary childhood had developed in him. And there is no doubt that his singular propensity to tricks and plots, which increased upon him with increasing age, even to the end of his life, was fostered by the atmosphere of evasion and deceit, in which, owing to the severe penal laws against Papists, he was necessarily brought up, and which in his case was never corrected by the wholesome training, if rough experience of a public school.
At the same time his intense application, untempered by any distraction of games or amusements, produced its natural results in a constitution by nature weakly, and began by the time he was sixteen years of age seriously to affect his health. He tried many physicians to no purpose, and finding himself daily growing worse thought he had not long to live. He therefore calmly sat down and wrote to take leave of all his friends. Amongst others he sent a last farewell to the Abbé Southcote, who lived near Abingdon. The Abbé, thinking that Pope's malady was mental rather than physical, went to his friend Dr. Radcliffe, the famous physician of Oxford, and described to him the boy's condition. Armed with full directions the Abbé hastened to Binfield, to enforce with all the ardour of friendship the doctors chief prescriptions—strict diet, less study and a daily ride in the open air.
In this way Pope, while riding in the Forest, began first to meet, then to know, and finally to be intimate with the squire of the neighbouring village. Easthampstead Park was at this time occupied by the veteran statesman, Sir William Trumbull, Knt. He had lived abroad for many years as ambassador, first at Paris and then at Constantinople. On his return home he had been appointed Secretary of State to William III., and now quite recently, in 1697, he had resigned all his appointments and had retired to end his days peacefully at home.
At this time he was a widower, his first wife, Lady Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir Charles Cotterell, having died in July, 1704. He soon after married Lady Judith Alexander, youngest daughter of Henry, 4th Earl of Stirling, who at that time was residing at Binfield, though in what house is not now known. Sir William was then almost seventy years of age, having been born apparently about the year 1636, and had no children. And thus it is easy to understand how the forlorn old man, riding often no doubt in the direction of Binfield in search of his second wife, frequently met the invalid poet as he left home in search of health, through the devious maze of drives in Windsor Forest, on which even then he was meditating to write a poem.
Long residence in France and Turkey had no doubt made Trumbull a citizen of the world. His capacious mind would have no room in it for the prejudices against Papists, which in England at that time were very strong, and in country districts banished them from ordinary society.
