Martha Blount

Martha Blount (1690–1762) was an English woman, a friend of many English literary figures, especially Alexander Pope. Early life Martha Blount was born on 15 June 1690 at the family seat, Mapledurham House at Mapledurham in Oxfordshire. Her parents were Martha (born Englefield) and Lister Blount. She and her elder sister Teresa were educated at the English Benedictine convent in Paris. Her family had long been of the highest position among Roman Catholic gentry. Pope and literary society She and Teresa met Pope via an introduction by their mother's father, Anthony Englefield, in 1707. From 1710 to 1715 she continued to live at Mapledurham with her widowed mother, her brother Michael, and Teresa. During this period she and Teresa were prominent figures in the fashionable world. In 1712 Pope sent them his 'Rape of the Lock' and his ‘Miscellany’ (Carruthers, p. 79); in 1713 the sisters were corresponding with James Moore Smythe, author of the comedy The Rival Modes, he as Alexis, Teresa as Zephalinda, and Martha as Parthenissa; in 1714 Pope wrote to Martha from Bath that if she would come she would be the best mermaid in Christendom; in 1715 he had two fans painted for the sisters. John Gay called them "two lovely sisters" (Gay to Pope, Welcome from Greece), Pope spoke of their "endless smiles" (Epistle to Jervas, line 61) and of Martha's "resistless charms" (his Epistle to her with Voiture's works, line 59). In their portraits, still at Mapledurham, where they appear arm in arm, they both look very charming.