Whom Did He Mean? The Restoration Context of Pope’s “Phryne” and “Artimesia”

Alexander Pope’s verse satires “Phryne” and “Artimesia,” both modeled on the Earl of Dorset,¹ appeared in his Works of 1736 among the “Imitations of the English Poets. Done by the Author in his Youth,”² although they were first published in 1728 in the third volume of the Swift-Pope Miscellanies.³ By 1728, Pope was approaching forty years of age and past whatever might qualify as his youth; it remains uncertain at what age he composed the two poems and why he had apparently set them aside for some years. Pope’s editors and critics have raised other questions: were they conceived as companion pieces, and was he satirizing formulaic “types,” or individuals? If the latter, whom did he mean to satirize? Among the proposals put forward, the best established is that of Kathleen Mahaffey in her 1970 article on the poems, in which she contends that “though . . . [the satires] are early works, they are in no sense juvenilia”⁴ and that Pope refrained from publishing them for many years because they refer respectively to George I’s mistress, Ehrengard Melusine von der Schulenburg—made Duchess of Kendal in 1719—and the king’s half-sister, Sophia von Kielmansegg, created Countess of Darlington in 1722. The countess was often taken to be another of George’s mistresses and was notably large.

If, as Mahaffey argues, these women’s identities would have been evident to Pope’s readers, it is unsurprising that he kept both satires from print until after George’s death in June 1727 (466); at the same time, there is a manuscript draft of “Phryne” in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s hand, suggesting that it was passed among her circle “during the period of her close association with Pope, between 1715 and 1721” (469).⁵ The draft’s existence tells us nothing more concrete about the poem’s composition date. As to the poems’ targets, Mahaffey’s observations on “Phryne” are persuasive in some respects, whereas her judgment that “Artimesia” satirizes Kielmansegg seems far more impressionistic and unconvincing. A reconsideration of both proposals is overdue, particularly as they have become entrenched with time. In this essay I will reappraise the arguments put forward concerning each satire and present grounds for reaching different conclusions on their subjects.

To date, Mahaffey’s views on Pope’s victims have been referenced or paraphrased in monographs by Valerie Rumbold and Claudia Gold, who cite Mahaffey’s work but do not pursue the research any further.⁶ Over a century before her 1970 article, Robert Carruthers, in his 1853 edition of Pope’s Works, also mooted possible targets, but his speculations are doubtful to say the least. An extended footnote remarks that “Artimesia” is “supposed to be the Princess, afterwards Queen Caroline [consort of George II], whom Bolingbroke also ridicules for her affectation of learning and learned society” but does not cite any other features of the portrait that would strengthen that reading. Carruthers adds that some lines in the poem—as also in the opening verses of “Phryne”—may glance at Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, whose intellectual leanings were mocked by Pope and Horace Walpole and who was alleged to wear dirty linen, as well as being an extensive traveler. In commenting on “Phryne,” however, he finds a closer fit with Aphra Behn, noting her time spent in Surinam and her role as a British spy in Holland.⁷ The weakness of the last suggestion is that these connections would embrace, at most, only the poem’s first two stanzas, since Behn’s personal history scarcely aligns with the theme of social elevation so much stressed in the final two.⁸ His summary comments propose that overall, “the Phryne of this piece must be a fancy picture,” not a sustained personal satire. This conclusion comes nearer to John Butt’s (or Norman Ault’s) stance on both poems in the Twickenham edition of Pope’s works; a note declares that “it is unnecessary to search, with earlier commentators, for prototypes of these two type-characters.”⁹

One could of course suggest...