The brilliant Alexander Pope was a poet, critic, essayist, satirist, garden designer, art connoisseur, letter-writer and wit. He was dogged throughout his life by ill health; this was attributed to his spending too much time at his book, but in fact he had tuberculosis of the bone, contracted in infancy, which left him small, crippled and plagued with various tiresome ailments. He was a great feuder, but also had a large circle of devoted friends. He loved female society and was clearly extraordinarily charming, but while women enjoyed his attentions and his wit, his deeper feeling were never reciprocated.
Particular among his friends were two sisters, Martha and Teresa Blount, and he corresponded with both, writing at one point to Teresa, ‘My violent passion for your fair self and your sister had been divided, and with the most wonderful regularity in the world. Even from my infancy I have been in love with one after the other of you week by week’ Pope never married, and Martha was the chief beneficiary of his will.
Four letters follow: one to each of the Blount sisters, and two to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, another intimate, married to a diplomat and living in Constantinople.

To Martha Blount, 1714
Most Divine,
It is some proof of my sincerity towards you, that I write when I am prepared by drinking to speak truth; and sure a letter after twelve at night must abound with that noble ingredient. That heart must have abundance of flames, which is at once warmed by wine and you: wine awakens and expresses the lurking passions of the mind, as varnish does the colours that are sunk in a picture, and brings them out in all their natural glowing. My good qualities have been so frozen and locked up in a dull constitution at all my former sober hours, that it is very astonishing to me, now I am drunk, to find so much virtue in me.
In these overflowing of my heart I pay you my thanks for these two obliging letters you favoured me with of the 18th and 24th instant. That which begins with ‘My charming Mr. Pope!” was a delight to me beyond all expression; you have at last entirely gained the conquest over your fair sister. It is true you are not handsome, for you are a women, and think you are not: but this good humour and tenderness for me has a charm that cannot be resisted. That face must needs be irresistible which was adorned with smiles, even when it could not see the coronation! I do suppose you will not show this epistle out of a vanity, as I doubt not your sister does all I write to her….