APPENDIX I

GODOLPHIN'S WARRANT TO VANBRUGH

This very important document runs as follows:

To all to whom these presents shall come, The Right Honourable Sidney Lord Godolphin, Lord High Treasurer of England sendeth greeting. Whereas his Grace, John Duke of Marlborough, hath resolved to erect a large fabric for a mansion house, at Woodstock in the county of Oxon, Know ye, That I the said Sidney Lord Godolphin, At the request and desire of the said Duke of Marlborough have constituted and appointed, and do hereby, for, and on behalf of the said Duke, constitute and appoint John Vanbrugh Esq; to be surveyor of all the works and buildings so intended to be erected or made at Woodstock aforesaid; and do hereby authorise and empower the said John Vanbrugh, to make and sign contracts with any persons for materials, and also with any artificers or workmen to be employed about the said buildings, in such manner as he shall judge proper, for carrying out the said work in the best and most advantageous manner that may be, And likewise to employ such day labourers and carriages from time to time, as he shall find necessary for the said service, and do all other matters and things, as may be in any ways conducive to the effectual performance of what is directed by the said Duke of Marlborough in relation to the said works.

June 9th 1705.
GODOLPHIN.

From Coxe Papers, Add. MSS. 9123, f. 79.
Vanbrugh quotes it in full in his Justification.

APPENDIX II

MRS. YARBURGH

There are some difficulties here. In her letter, Lady Mary states Vanbrugh as possibly "endeavouring at the honourable state of matrimony ", as though the lady were unmarried.

Leigh Hunt, Palmer, Swain, and Ward all assume that the lady in question was a daughter of Mrs. Yarburgh, either the Henrietta he did actually marry in 1719, or an elder sister. But she had no

elder sister.

'Mrs.' of course, has no significance as to the married state, but if Lady Mary meant Henrietta, would she refer to her as a ruin? For Henrietta was some three years younger than Lady Mary, having been born in 1693-and was at the date of the letter at most twenty years of age. One is not a ruin at that period of life.

'The date of the letter.' There is some doubt here. Lord Wharncliffe in his edition of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Letters gives it as 1710, and in this he is followed by Leigh Hunt, Palmer, and Swain. Other editions give November 1713, the date preferred by Ward. If it is signed M.P. it must have been 1710, for in 1713 Lady Mary was not Pierpont but Wortley; all editions do not give the initials.

The matter is not of great importance in this connexion: we have only to consider the reference to marriage. Now Mrs. Yarburgh was evidently only met by Vanbrugh on market-days; she was but a visitor, and it is not necessary to assume that Lady Mary was well informed as to her state in life. This would not in any case affect the possibility of a friendship, or more, between her and Vanbrugh.

It is unlikely that a man of Vanbrugh's age and temperament would be attracted by a slip of a girl who was perhaps only seventeen at the time the letter was written, though of course one never knows. When he did eventually marry Henrietta she was twentysix-a great difference in those days, and had grown much older correspondingly than he had.

The case seems to me to be probably thus. In 1710 or 1713 he carried on a mild, half-humorous flirtation with the mother, to whom Lady Mary might very well refer as a ' ruin'; and when in 1718 she died, transferred his affection to her daughter, perhaps half protectively, and developed it to the stage of love. Previous biographers in wanting to make of the episode an example of touching fidelity, have been too ready to accept the ladies as the same person.

Perhaps, however, altogether too much importance is attached. to the letter of a very vivacious, not to say frisky young woman, who was evidently determined to find life as amusing as she could, and make her letters as entertaining as possible.

The authority for the Yarburgh family is C. R. Robinson's History of the Priory and Peculiar of Snaith.

APPENDIX III

'SECRET'

Did not the word occur so frequently its use might be put down to a fashion. "I descended a little on the side of that delicious vale, surveying it with a secret kind of pleasure..." That is not from a vision', but from Robinson Crusoe. "The purple sky, those wild but sweet notes of birds, the fragrant bloom upon the trees and flowers, the gentle influence of the rising sun, these and a thousand nameless beauties of nature, inspire the soul with secret transports." That is not the short-faced gentleman writing from Sir Roger's country seat, but Philonous preluding to Hylas. The first passage, written probably before Addison's death, reads suspiciously like parody. Berkeley, at the time he was writing his dialogues, was an acquaintance, and probably an admirer of Addison. Steele uses the word, but much more rarely, and less gratuitously than Addison.

APPENDIX IV

THE FRENZY

It is impossible to arrive at any certainty with respect to any of these Pope-Addison episodes. It is generally agreed that the Narrative is by Pope, though were it not for internal evidence, C. W. Dilke's contention that it is by Steele would be very convincing. It seems likely, however, that Steele knew about it, and perhaps took a minor hand in it. Addison's behaviour in this affair seems not only natural, but in conformity with his character. He could not forbid the publication, but one may doubt if his disapproval was couched in terms strong enough to dissuade Steele. Certainly, if his influence was strong enough to make Steele write that very humiliating letter to Lintot, it was strong enough for anything. One can but guess. I can only hope my version will seem to the reader familiar with the subject, to be fair to all parties concerned.

The above remarks may serve also as a note on the Homer episode, and on the thing about Wycherley'.

With regard to the latter, it is probable that Pope did send his satire on Addison (Atticus) to the subject of it. Such a procedure would not be contrary to his habit. The discovery of Gildon's book (see Times Literary Supplement, 11th May 1922, letter from Mr. George Sherburn) invalidates all previous accounts in biographies of Addison or Pope.

APPENDIX V

POPE'S LETTERS

To use Pope's letters as evidence is, of course, full of dangers. The extraordinary pranks of falsification of names and dates, the extravagant antics he went through with regard to their publication, make it almost impossible to say anything certain about them. Nor, to my thinking, does the discovery of the Caryll correspondence by any means dispose of many things. Because Pope wrote something to Caryll it does not follow he did not write the same thing to somebody else. Most of us, writing at the same period to different friends, have probably been guilty of this enormity, and possibly used the very same phrases. Where the dates are wide apart it is a different matter-but even so Pope may have kept copies, and used them; for in spite of his protestations, he certainly made a literary exercise of his letters.

I need hardly remind the reader that besides the full discussion given to this subject in Elwin and Courthope's Pope, there is an admirable short account of Pope's epistolary adventures in Sir Leslie Stephen's Life of Pope in the English Men of Letters

series.