ot; that I am arrived here is as much a miracle as any in the
golden legend; and if I had foreseen half the difficulties I have met
with I should not certainly have had courage to undertake it.... I am
nailed down here by a severe illness of my poor Marianne, who has not
been able to endure the frights and fatigues that we have passed."

When, about three weeks later, Marianne had sufficiently recovered to
move on, Lady Mary was held up by a hard, impenetrable frost. The delay
irked her, and she became somewhat depressed, and said that she was
dubious, in her precarious state of health, whether she would arrive at
her destination. At the beginning of the new year, she did actually make
a start, and got half way to Helvoet, and was obliged to turn back by
the mountains of sea that obstructed the passage. "I have had so many
disappointments I can scarce entertain the flattering thought of
arriving in London," the poor lady complained; but she found comfort in
that "It is uncommon at my age to have no distemper, and to retain all
my senses in their first degree of perfection." Later in the month she
arrived in London.

Horace Walpole, who heard everything, had, of course, heard that Lady
Mary was returned to England, and in a letter of October 8, 1761,
announced her return, adding with a brutality unusual even in him: "I
have not seen her yet, though they have not made her perform quarantine
for her own dirt." However, as he discovered shortly after, it was Lady
Mary Wrottisley, and not Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who had arrived.

Of course, when Lady Mary had come to London, Walpole was one of the
first to go and see her. "I went last night to visit her," he wrote to
Sir Horace Mann on January 29. "I give you my honour, and you who know
her, would credit me without it, the following is a faithful description.
I found her in a miserable little chamber of a ready-furnished house,
with two tallow candles, and a bureau covered with pots and pans. On
her head, in full of all accounts, she had an old black-laced hood,
wrapped entirely round, so as to conceal all hair or want of hair. No
handkerchief, but up to her chin a kind of horse-man's riding-coat,
calling itself a _pet-en-l'air,_ made of a dark green (green I
think it had been) brocade, with coloured and silver flowers, and lined
with furs; boddice laced, a foul dimity petticoat sprig'd, velvet
muffeteens on her arms, grey stockings and slippers. Her face less
changed i