“Molly,” that is, Maria Skerritt or Skirrett, is best known for her connection with Sir Robert Walpole.  There was nothing clandestine about the relationship:  it was openly avowed.  Miss Skerritt, who was the daughter of a London merchant, had great good looks and an ample fortune, and Walpole declared that she was indispensable to his happiness.  She was received everywhere, and moved in fashionable 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 Park, and I make one of the beau monde in his train.  I desire you after this account not to name the word old woman to me any more:  I approach to fifteen nearer than I did ten years ago, and am in hopes to improve every year in health and vivacity.”