![]() ![]() It had proved the turning-point of Henrietta’s life, freeing her from the clutches of a violent and drunken husband and propelling her to the very heart of fashionable society. Their affair had begun many years before, while he was Prince of Wales. Henrietta had been the long-term mistress of George II, the irascible Hanoverian King who had succeeded to the throne in 1727. This was ironic, given that it was to the latter that Henrietta owed her elevated social position. Hailed as ‘A Woman of Reason’, Henrietta attracted some of the greatest intellectuals of the Georgian age to her receptions and supper parties, invitations to which soon became the most sought after in London – even more so than those to the royal court. Pope was one of many celebrated poets and artists who flocked to the Thames-side retreat of Henrietta Howard, Countess of Suffolk, in the fashionable village of Twickenham. ‘There is a greater court now at Marble Hill than at Kensington’, wrote Alexander Pope to a friend in August 1735, ‘and God knows when it will end.’ ![]()
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