y 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,
never played fair in war.

"Lady Mary, quite contrary," she might have been dubbed, for she was
frequently in trouble. The Remond scandal, that will presently be
unfolded, was a thing apart; but her witty tongue made her many enemies
and cost her many friends. Had the contents of her letters about London
society become known at the time, nearly every man's and all women's
hands would have been against her. She had, in fact, little that was
kind to say about people; when she had, she usually refrained from
mentioning it.

In this work Lady Mary's letters, either whole or in part, are given
only in so far as they have biographical or historical value. At the
same time I have, wherever possible, allowed Lady Mary to tell her
story, or to give her impressions, in her own words. The quotations have
been taken, by kind permission of Messrs. J.M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., from
the edition of the letters in their "Everyman Library" (edited by Mr.
Ernest Rhys), with an introduction by Mr. R. Brimley Johnson.

The first edition of the letters appeared in three volumes in 1763,
believed to have been edited by John Cleland. A fourth volume, issued in
1763, is regarded by Sir Leslie Stephen as of doubtful authenticity.
James Dallaway, in 1803, brought out an enlarged collection and added to
it the poems, and a second edition, with some new letters, appeared
fourteen years later. Lady Mary's great-grandson, Lord Wharncliffe,
edited the correspondence in 1837, and this, revised by Mr. Moy Thomas,
was reprinted in 1861 and again in 1887.

There have been published selections from the correspondence by Mr. A.R.
Ropes (1892) and by Mr. Hannaford Bennett (1923).

The principal authorities for the life