_Upton Court_ (Vol. iv., p. 315.).--My friend Miss Mitford gives a most
interesting account of Upton Court in the _Ladies' Companion_ for August
1850, which, as I know the place well, I believe to be perfectly
correct. A short extract may not be unwelcome:
"Fifty years ago a Catholic priest was the sole inhabitant of this
interesting mansion. His friend, the late Mrs. Lenoir, Christopher
Smart's daughter, whose books, when taken up, one does not care to put
down again, wrote some verses to the great oak. Her nieces, whom I am
proud to call my friends, possess many reliques of that lovely
Arabella Fermor of whom Pope, in the charming dedication to the most
charming of his poems, said that 'the character of Belinda, as it was
now managed, resembled her in nothing but beauty.'
"Amongst these reliques are her rosary, and a portrait, taken when she
was twelve or thirteen years of age. The face is most interesting: a
high, broad forehead; dark eyes, richly fringed and deeply set; a
straight nose, pouting lips, and a short chin finely rounded. The
dress is dark and graceful, with a little white turned back about the
neck and the loose sleeves. Altogether I never saw a more charming
girlish portrait, with so much of present beauty and so true a promise
of more,--of that order, too, high and intellectual, which great poets
love. Her last surviving son died childless in 1769, and the estate
passed into another family.
"Yet another interest belongs to Upton; not indeed to the Court, but
to the Rectory. Poor Blanco White wrote under that roof his first
work, the well-known _Doblado's Letters_; and the late excellent
rector, Mr. Bishop, in common with the no less excellent Lord Holland
and Archbishop Whately, remained, through all that tried and alienated
other hearts, his fast friend to his last hour."
The portrait of Arabella Fermor is in Reading, purchased at a sale at
Upton Court many years ago, when the property changed hands.