Alexander Pope (1688-1744) - photo 1
Alexander Pope (1688-1744) - photo 2
Alexander Pope (1688-1744) - photo 3
Alexander Pope (1688-1744) - photo 4

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

Lot 151
15.12.2023 11:00UTC +01:00
Classic
Sold
£ 2 772
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 1108950
Lot 151 | Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Estimate value
£ 2 000 – 3 000
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Autograph letter signed (‘A Pope’) to George Lyttelton, secretary to Frederick, Prince of Wales, n.p. [London], n.d. [c.1 November 1738]
4½ pages, 228 x 182mm, bifolium with additional quarto sheet containing integral address leaf and preserving remains of a black seal. Provenance: from the papers of George, first Baron Lyttelton (1709-1773); sold Sotheby's London, The Lyttelton Papers: The Property of the Viscount Cobham, 12 December 1978, lot 123.

Pope reports on a plan to install Lyttelton’s master, Frederick, Prince of Wales, as leader of the Tory party, following a meeting with Sir William Wyndham. Pope humbly introduces himself: ‘poets are but like heralds … and the best you can make of me is that I am her poor trumpeter.’ He reports on the recent affairs of the Tory party, and ‘the result of ye conference with Sr. W. W. [William Wyndham] and the disposition in which it left him.’ He writes that Wyndham ‘seemed strongly touch’d with a sence of the indignity, the folly, and the danger, that attend the present state & conduct of the opposition’. For Wyndham, Pope writes, the Tory party as it stands is ‘nothing more than a bubble-scheme, wherein multitudes who intended the publick service, would be employ’d to no purpose than to serve private ambition.’ He moves on to relate a secret plot to have ‘his R. H.’ take over as head of the party. For this to succeed, members of the party must be pushed to the ‘dilemma, of joyning with the court, or of following their friends with no good grace.’ All this will require is for one prominent peer to come out in favour – namely, Lord Thomas Saunderson, followed by ‘any 2 or 3 old members more, with the phalanx of young members’. Then, ‘a new opposition would be thus created, (or rather the old one reviv’d)’. Pope concludes with a rather fawning statement of obedience to Lyttelton’s master, the Prince: ‘I wish him at the head of the only good party in the kingdom, that of honest men; I wish him head of no other party and I think it a nobler situation, to be at the head of the best men of a kingdom than at the Head of any Kingdom upon earth.’
Place of origin:England
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