Note 266a — JOURNAL TO STELLA (continued 6)

Thomas Coke, M.P., of Derbyshire, was appointed a Teller of the Exchequer in 1704, and Vice-Chamberlain to the Queen in 1706. In 1706 he married—as his second wife—Mrs. Hale, one of the maids of honour (Luttrell, v. 411, 423; vi. 113, 462; Lady Cowper’s Diary, 15, 16), a lady whose “piercing” beauty it was, apparently, that Steele described under the name of Chloe, in No. 4 of the Tatler. Jervas painted her as a country girl, “with a liveliness that shows she is conscious, but not affected, of her perfections.” Coke was the Sir Plume of Pope’s Rape of the Lock.