Lady Louisa Stuart, writing in 1837--that is, seventy-five years after the death of her grandmother, Lady Mary--wrote indignantly of the attacks that had been made upon her ancestress. "The multitude of stories circulated about her--as about all people who were objects of note in their day--increase, instead of lessening, the difficulty," she said. "Some of these may be confidently pronounced inventions, simple and purely false; some, if true, concerned a different person; some were grounded upon egregious blunders; and not a few upon jests, mistaken by the dull and literal for earnest. Others, again, where a little truth and a great deal of falsehood were probably intermingled, nobody now 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, never played fair in war.