JOHN HERVEY, Baron Hervey of Ickworth born; In the 1730s, one of the most famous and venomous literary feuds in history broke out between Baron Hervey and Alexander Pope. Pope, supposedly jealous that his friend, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu had taken up with Hervey, began satirizing Hervey’s effeminacy in his poetry, most notably as “Lord Fanny” in Imitations of Horace as “Sporus” in the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.

If Pope’s picture of the mincing Lord Fanny had not set London laughing, the reference to Sporus had literate London holding its sides, since Sporus was the boy “bride” of Nero who would bare his rear for the emperor to “have at” in public. (At the time, Nero’s “husband” was Doryphorus, who would return the favor in kind – also in public.)

Hervey, upset by these jibes, responded with verses of his own that ridiculed the crippled poet’s hideous hump and his less than noble birth. London found this hilarious too. Eventually the feud died down and was forgotten. Unfortunately for Hervey, however, he has remained Lord Fanny and Sporus for the past two centuries and probably forever. The trouble is that in school everywhere, everyone reads Pope, and no one reads Hervey. (Incidentally, it has long been rumored that Alexander Pope himself had more to hide than his hump.)