[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?

   P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
       This painted Child of dirt, that stinks and stings;
       Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
       Yet wit ne’er tastes and beauty ne’er enjoys: 
       So well-bred spaniels civilly delight
       In mumbling of the game they dare not bite. 
       Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,
       As shallow streams run dimpling all the way. 
       Whether in florid impotence he speaks,
       And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks;
       Or at the ear of Eve,[8] familiar toad. 
       Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad,
       In pun, or politics, or tales, or lies. 
       Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies. 
       His wit all see-saw, between that and this,
       Now high, now low, now make up, now miss,
       And he himself one vile antithesis. 
       Amphibious thing! that acting either part,
       The trifling head, or the corrupted heart;
       Fop at the hostel, flatterer at the board,
       Now trips a lady, and now struts a Lord. 
       Eve’s tempter thus the Rabbins have expressed,
       A cherub’s face—­a reptile all the rest. 
       Beauty that shocks you, parts that none can trust,
       Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.”

[Footnote 8:  Queen Caroline.]

This was a heavy price to pay for the favours even of Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu.

Whatever the relations between Lady Mary and Hervey, Lady Hervey was not indulgent to them, which may have inspired Lady Mary to write to her sister:  “Lady Hervey, by aiming too high, has fallen very low; and is reduced to trying to persuade folks she has an intrigue, and gets nobody to believe her; the man in question taking a great deal of pains to clear himself of the scandal.”  Lady Hervey and Mrs. Murray were active partisans of Lord Grange in his persecution of Lady Mary, and aided him in his attempts to get possession of her sister, Lady Mar.