Many of these parts she played at sixty with the sprightliness of sixteen. Churchill praised her warmly in the ‘Rosciad:’
With all the merry vigour of sixteen,
Among the merry troop conspicuous seen,
See lively Pope advance in jig and trip,
Corinna, Cherry, Honeycomb, and Snip.
Not without art, and yet to nature true,
She charms the town with humour ever new.
Cheer'd by her presence, we the less deplore
The fatal time when Clive shall be no more.
Charles Lamb describes her as ‘a gentlewoman ever, with Churchill's compliment still burnishing upon her gay honeycomb lips,’ and also as ‘the perfect gentlewoman as distinguished from the fine lady of comedy.’ Hazlitt calls her ‘the very picture of a duenna, a maiden lady, or antiquated dowager,’ and Leigh Hunt ‘an actress of the highest order for dry humour.’ Oulton declared her without a rival in duennas, and the author of the ‘Green Room,’ in 1790, declares that the question for criticism is not where she is deficient, but where she most excels; and while hesitating as to her general equality with Mrs. Clive, and disputing her value in farce, the same writer attributes her excellence to natural genius, and holds her up as an example ‘how infinitely a comedian can please without the least tincture of grimace or buffoonery, or the slightest opposition to nature.’ Her features were naturally, he says, neither good nor flexible.
A careful and worthy woman, Miss Pope lived and died respected, and the stage presents few characters so attractive. Besides keeping her father, whom she induced to retire from his occupation, she put by money enough to enable her to retire as soon as she perceived a failure of memory. She conceived a romantic attachment to Charles Holland (1768–1849?) [q. v.] the comedian, with whom she had a misunderstanding. She was also engaged to John Pearce (1727–1797), a stockbroker, but broke off the engagement when Pearce made her retirement from the stage a condition of marriage. She entertained a kindly feeling for Pearce, who died unmarried in 1797 (Sir E. R. Pearce, Family Records, pp. 22, 63). She made at her first appearance, and retained to the end, the friendship of ‘Kitty’ Clive, to whom she erected a monument in Twickenham churchyard. With the single exception of ‘Gentleman’ Smith, she was the last survivor of Garrick's company. The stage presents few characters so attractive as this estimable woman and excellent actress.
Her picture, by Roberts, as Mrs. Ford in the ‘Merry Wives of Windsor,’ is in the Mathews collection in the Garrick Club, which includes a second picture by the same artist. A half-length engraving, by Robert Laurie [q. v.], is mentioned in Smith's ‘Catalogue.’ Miss Pope extracted out of Mrs. Sheridan's ‘Discovery’ a farce called ‘The Young Couple,’ in which, for her benefit, she appeared on 21 April 1767, presumably as Lady Flutter. It was not printed.
[Genest's Account of the English Stage; Biographia Dramatica; Manager's Notebook; Dibdin's History of the Stage; Garrick Correspondence; Memoirs of James Smith by Horace Smith; Clarke Russell's Representative Actors; Wheatley and Cunningham's London Past and Present.]
POPE, Mrs. MARIA ANN (1775–1803), actress, and second wife of the actor, Alexander Pope (1763–1835) [q. v.], born in 1775 in Waterford, was the daughter of ‘a merchant’ named Campion, a member of an old Cork family. After her father's death she was educated by a relative, and, having a strong disposition for the stage, was engaged by Hitchcock for Daley, manager of the Crow Street Theatre, Dublin. Here as Monimia in the ‘Orphan,’ having only, it is said, seen two theatrical representations in her life, she made in 1792 a ‘first appearance on any stage.’ So timid was she that she had to be thrust on the boards, and immediately fainted. Recovering herself, she played with success, and was rapidly promoted to be the heroine of the Irish stage. Frederick Edward Jones [q. v.] then engaged her for his private theatre in Fishamble Street. In York she played under the name of Mrs. Spenser, and she afterwards started on a journey for America, which she abandoned, returning once more to Dublin. Here at the Theatre Royal she met William Thomas Lewis [q. v.], who, pleased with her abilities, procured her an engagement at Covent Garden, where, as Mrs. Spenser from Dublin, she made her first appearance 13 Oct. 1797, playing Monimia in the ‘Orphan.’ On 2 Nov. she played Juliet to the Romeo of Henry Erskine Johnston [q. v.] and the Mercutio of Lewis, on the 18th Indiana in the ‘Conscious Lovers,’ on the 20th Cordelia to the Lear of Charles Murray [q. v.] On 26 Jan. 1798, in ‘Secrets worth knowing,’ she was announced as Mrs. Pope, late Mrs. Spenser. Her marriage to Pope, to whom she brought an income of 200l. a year, took place two days earlier at St. George's, Hanover Square. On 13 Feb. she was the original Maria in ‘He's much to blame,’ attributed to Holcroft, and also to John Fenwick. Jane Shore, Lady Amaranth in ‘Wild Oats,’ Yarico in ‘Inkle and Yarico,’ Lady Eleanor Irwin in ‘Every one has his
