“A Relic from the Cave of Pope”: Drawings of the Grotto in an Extra-Illustrated Plan of Mr. Pope’s Garden in the Huntington Library

Abstract

Alexander Pope’s Twickenham grotto was one of the most famous in England. The poet continuously renovated and expanded his “sacred cave” from 1725 until his death in 1744. But while the grotto’s picturesque Thames-side exterior was widely reproduced in prints and paintings throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, only a handful of images depicting the site’s fictively ruinous interior are known today. This essay proposes an addition to the visual culture of Popeiana in the form of six previously unpublished period drawings. The images are examined in light of their proto-gothic qualities as well as the Catholic poet’s pastoral retirement, artistic connections, and possible Jacobite leanings.

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