Peregrine Pickle, however, Lady Mary had read shortly after its appearance in 1751: 

“I began by your direction with Peregrine Pickle.  I think Lady Vane’s Memoirs[14] contain more truth and less malice than any I ever read in my life.  When she speaks of her own being disinterested, I am apt to believe she really thinks herself so, as many highwaymen, after having no possibility of retrieving the character of honesty, please themselves with that of being generous, because, whatever they get on the road, they always spend at the next ale-house, and are still as beggarly as ever.  Her history, rightly considered, would be more instructive to young women than any sermon I know.  They may see there what mortifications and variety of misery are the unavoidable consequences of gallantries.  I think there is no rational creature that would not prefer the life of the strictest Carmelite to the round of hurry and misfortune she has gone through.  Her style is clear and concise, with some strokes of humour, which appear to me so much above her, I can’t help being of opinion the whole has been modelled by the author of the book in which it is inserted, who is some subaltern admirer of hers.  I may judge wrong, she being no acquaintance of mine, though she has married two of my relations.  Her first wedding was attended with circumstances that made me think a visit not at all necessary, though I disobliged Lady Susan by neglecting it; and the second, which happened soon after, made her so near a neighbour, that I rather choose to stay the whole summer in town than partake of her balls and parties of pleasure, to which I did not think it proper to introduce you; and had no other way of avoiding it, without incurring the censure of a most unnatural mother for denying you diversions that the pious Lady Ferrers permitted to her exemplary daughters.  Mr. Shirley has had uncommon fortune in making the conquest of two such extraordinary ladies, equal in their heroic contempt of shame, and eminent above their sex, the one for beauty, and the other wealth, both which attract the pursuit of all mankind, and have been thrown into his arms with the same unlimited fondness.  He appeared to me gentile [sic], well bred, well shaped and sensible; but the charms of his face and eyes, which Lady Vane describes with so much warmth, were, I confess, always invisible to me, and the artificial part of his character very glaring, which I think her story shows in a strong light.”

[Footnote 14:  Frances Anne Hawes (1713-1788) married Lord William Douglas in 1731, and after his death, William, second Viscount Vane, in 1735.  She was notorious for profligacy and extravagance of all kinds.  She was responsible for the scandalous Memoirs of a Lady of Quality which she paid Smollett to insert in Peregrine Pickle.]

Of minor novelists Lady Mary had also something to say from time to time.