Martha Blount

Martha Blount (1690–1763) 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. Maynard Mack, Pope's definitive biographer, noted, "It is impossible to be sure whence Johnson had this story, so obviously intended to discredit Martha," and adds that "It would come quite plausibly . . . from any source close to Warburton, who hated Bolingbroke" and "did not care for Martha Blount." Mack takes a more sympathetic interpretation of Martha in this story, stating that, "To be sure, Martha may have made the remark in question and perhaps in these very words. One would still, before judging her, need to know how close in tone she came to 'What, is he not yet out of his pain?' —which is to say, 'Am I not out of mine?'"

Pope bequeathed her £1000, 60 of his books, his household goods, chattels, and plate, the furniture of his grotto, the urns in his garden, and the residue after all legacies were paid.

Post Pope life Miss Blount retained her place in the fashionable world after Pope's death. She lived at last in Berkeley Row, by Hanover Square, and there Henry Swinburne the traveller, her relative, visited her (Roscoe, i. 581 note). He found her a little, neat, fair, prim old woman, easy and gay in her manners. By her will she left the residue of her property to her "dear nephew," Michael Blount, of Mapledurham. She died 12 July 1763, aged 73. A pleasing portrait is in Ayre's Pope, vol. ii. facing page 17.