e
society. It was to Lady Walpole and Molly Skerritt that Gay alluded in
the song that he put in the mouth of Macheath (who was meant for Robert
Walpole):

"How happy could I be with either,
Were t'other dear Charmer away!"

Lady Walpole survived until the summer of 1738, and after her death the
others married. The second Lady Walpole died of a miscarriage in June,
1739, to the great and enduring sorrow of her husband. For the surviving
child, Walpole, when he accepted a peerage in 1742, secured the rank of
an earl's daughter.

Lady Mary now spent her time between London and Twickenham. At Court,
she was as popular as ever with the King; and she was liked in literary
circles, and on good terms with Young, Arbuthnot, Garth, and the rest of
the set. "I see every body but converse with nobody but _des amies
choisses_; in the first rank of these are Lady Stafford and dear Molly
Skerritt, both of whom have now the additional merit of being old
acquaintances, and never having given me any reason to complain of
either of 'em. I pass some days with the Duchess of Montagu, who might
be a reigning beauty if she pleased. I see the whole town every Sunday,
and select a few that I retain to supper. In short, if life could be
always what it is, I believe I have so much humility in my temper I
could be contented without anything better than this two or three
hundred years but, alas!

'Dulness, and wrinkles, and disease, must come,
And age, and death's irrevocable doom.'"

Lady Mary, who had some two-score years still to live, began at this
time to deplore her increasing age. "For my own part," she wrote to
Lady Mar, "I have some coteries where wit and pleasure reign, and I
should not fail to amuse myself tolerably enough, but for the d----d
d----d quality of growing older every day, and my present joys are made
imperfect by fears of the future." However, this depression was not
always on her, and later she was writing:

"I think this is the first time in my life that a letter of yours has
lain by me two posts unanswered. You'll wonder to hear that short
silence is occasioned by not having a moment unemployed at Twickenham;
but I pass many hours on horseback, and, I'll assure you, ride
stag-hunting, which I know you'll stare to hear of. I have arrived to
vast courage and skill that way, and am as well pleased with it as with
the acquisition of a new sense: his Royal Highness [the Prince of Wales]
hunts in Richmond