Excerpt from Polly Peachum: Being the Story of Lavinia Fenton (Duchess of Bolton) And "the Beggar's Opera"

The Beggar's Opera - Its good luck - Lady novelists of the times - Voltaire - Pope.

Nearly two centuries ago there stood on the banks of the Thames at Twickenham a comfortable, if hardly picturesque, house, surrounded by a model garden, with shady groves, a cool grotto where a spring continually rilled, and a lawn sloping down to the placid river. This pleasant retreat was known as Pope's Villa - a name which has been handed down to the present day, but by some misconception bestowed upon quite a different house, for the original Pope's Villa has long since disappeared. When it was for sale, the poet Rogers had a great wish to buy it, but he feared it would fetch more than he could afford, and in addition he dreaded the epigrams and jibes which would certainly have been levelled at him. He writes When the Villa was finally dismantled, I was anxious that the Obelisk erected by Pope to his mother's memory should be placed in the gardens at Hampton Court, and I offered to contribute my mite for that purpose, but no l - and the obelisk is now at Gopsall, Lord Howe's seat in Leicestershire.

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