living can pretend to confirm, or contradict, or unravel. Nothing is so
readily believed, yet nothing is usually so unworthy of credit, as tales
learned from report, or caught up in casual conversation. A circumstance
carelessly told, carelessly listened to, half comprehended, and
imperfectly remembered, has a poor chance of being repeated accurately
by the first hearer; but when, after passing through the moulding of
countless hands, it comes, with time, place, and person, gloriously
confounded, into those of a bookmaker ignorant of all its bearings, it
will be lucky indeed if any trace of the original groundwork remains
distinguishable."

Lady Mary's most redoubtable assailants were Pope and Horace Walpole,
and both were biassed. The story of Pope's quarrel with her is told in
the following pages. Walpole, it has been suggested, disliked her much
because she had championed his father's mistress, Molly Skerritt,
against the mother to whom he was devoted. Pope, of course, knew her
well; but Walpole, who was twenty-eight years her junior, only met her
in her late middle age. Walpole's prejudice was so great what when Lady
Mary said, "People wish their enemies dead--but I do not. I say, give
them the gout, give them the stone," he reported it solemnly.

Of course, it is not to be assumed that Lady Mary had not her full share
of malice--she was undoubtedly well equipped with that useful
quality--and she did not turn the other cheek when she was assailed. She
could even stand up to the vitriolic Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, and
stand up so effectively that they tacitly agreed to an armed neutrality
that verged perilously upon friendship. The young Duke of Wharton
sometimes beat her in open fight, but she harboured no very angry
feelings towards him. As regards Pope, if it was not tit-for-tat with
him, at least she gave him hard knocks. Pope, great poet as he was,