So early as 1721, Lady Mary, writing to Lady Mar, mentions that "the most considerable incident that has happened a good while, was the ardent affection that Mrs. Hervey and her dear spouse[7] took to me. They visited me twice or thrice a day, and were perpetually cooing in my rooms. I was complaisant a great while; but (as you know) my talent has never lain much that way. I grew at last so weary of those birds of paradise, I fled to Twickenham, as much to avoid their persecutions as for my own health, which is still in a declining way." Lady Mary did not like Lady Hervey, the beautiful "Molly" Lepell, whom Gay eulogised: "Hervey, would you know the passion You have kindled in my breast? Trifling is the inclination That by words can be expressed. In my silence see the lover; True love is by silence known; In my eyes you'll best discover, All the power of your own." [Footnote 7: The Hon. John Hervey (1696-1743), younger son of John, first Earl of Bristol; known as Lord Hervey after the death of his elder brother Carr in 1723; Vice-Chamberlain of George II's Household, 1730; created Baron Hervey of Ickworth, 1733, Lord Privy Seal, 1740-1742.] For Hervey, however, Lady Mary came to have a strong liking that many believed to have, as she would have said, bordered upon "the tender"; although it is on record that she once remarked that she divided the human race into men, women, and Herveys. They met whenever they could; when they could not meet they corresponded. Pope bitterly resented the intimacy between Lady Mary and Hervey, and in the _Epistle of Arbuthnot_ gave vent to the malignity with which his soul had been for years overflowing: "P. Let Sporus tremble. A. What? That thing of silk; Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk? Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel? Who breaks a butterfly on the wheel?