In 1716 George was anxious to visit his beloved Hanover, but he was torn between the desire to do so and the dislike to leave his son in England as Regent during his absence.  Indeed, he almost decided not to go, unless he could join others with the Prince in the administration and limit his authority by the most rigorous restriction.  To this, however, the Government could not consent, and Townshend stated that “on a careful persual of precedents, finding no instance of persons being joined in commission with the Prince of Wales, and few, if any, restrictions, they were of opinion that the constant tenour of ancient practice could not conveniently be receded from.”

Lady Mary, like the rest of the world, found the Court dull, and she much preferred to spend her time in the more congenial society of men of letters.  Addison, she knew, and Steele, and Arbuthnot, and Jervas, and Gay, who presently paid her a pretty compliment in Mr. Pope’s Welcome from Greece, wherein he inserted tributes to the ladies of the Court: 

“What lady’s that to whom he gently bends? 
Who knows her not?  Ah, those are Wortley’s eyes. 
How art thou honour’d, number’d with her friends;
For she distinguishes the good and wise.”

Pope, too, wrote of her with appreciation: 

TO LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU

         I

In beauty or wit,
No mortal as yet
To question your empire has dared. 
But men of discerning
Have thought that in learning,
To yield to a lady was hard.

II

    Impertinent schools,
    With musty dull rules,
  Have reading to females denied;
    So Papists refuse
    The Bible to use
  Lest flocks should be wise as their guides.

       III

    Twas woman at first
    (Indeed she was curst)
  In knowledge that tasted delight,
    And sages agree
    The laws should decree
  To the first possessor the right.

IV

Then bravely, fair dame,
Resume the old claim,
Which to your whole sex does belong;
And let men receive
From a second bright Eve
The knowledge of right and of wrong.

         V

But if the first Eve
Hard doom did receive,
When only one apple had she,
What a punishment new
Shall be found out for you,
Who tasting, have robb’d the whole tree!

The acquaintance with Pope began shortly after Lady Mary came to town in the autumn of 1714.  It soon developed into friendship.  “Lady Mary Wortley,” Jervas wrote to the poet, probably in 1715 or early in the following year, “ordered me by express this morning, cedente Gayo et ridente Fortescuvio, to send you a letter, or some other proper notice, to come to her on Thursday about five, which I suppose she meant in the evening.”