Horace Walpole, who heard everything, had, of course, heard that Lady Mary was returned to England, and in a letter of October 8, 1761, announced her return, adding with a brutality unusual even in him: "I have not seen her yet, though they have not made her perform quarantine for her own dirt." However, as he discovered shortly after, it was Lady Mary Wrottisley, and not Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who had arrived.
Of course, when Lady Mary had come to London, Walpole was one of the first to go and see her. "I went last night to visit her," he wrote to Sir Horace Mann on January 29. "I give you my honour, and you who know her, would credit me without it, the following is a faithful description. I found her in a miserable little chamber of a ready-furnished house, with two tallow candles, and a bureau covered with pots and pans. On her head, in full of all accounts, she had an old black-laced hood, wrapped entirely round, so as to conceal all hair or want of hair. No handkerchief, but up to her chin a kind of horse-man's riding-coat, calling itself a pet-en-l'air, made of a dark green (green I think it had been) brocade, with coloured and silver flowers, and lined with furs; boddice laced, a foul dimity petticoat sprig'd, velvet muffeteens on her arms, grey stockings and slippers. Her face less changed in twenty years than I could have imagined; I told her so, and she was not so tolerable twenty years ago that she needed to have taken it for flattery, but she did, and literally gave me a box on the ear. She is very lively, all her senses perfect, her languages as imperfect as ever, her avarice greater. She entertained me at first with nothing but the dearness of provisions at Helvoet. With nothing but an Italian, a French, and a Prussian, all men-servants, and something she calls an old secretary, but whose age till he appears will be doubtful; she receives all the world who go to homage her as Queen-mother, and crams them into this kennel. The Duchess of Hamilton, who came in just after me, was so astonished and diverted, that she could not speak to her for laughing. She says that she left all her clothes at Venice. I really pity Lady Bute; what will the progress be of such a commencement?"
Lady Mary rented a house in Great George Street, Hanover Square, whither her daughter and grandchildren came often. Occasionally she went about, and from time to time would grace an assembly with her presence. Horace Walpole saw her at some gathering, dressed in yellow velvet and sables, with a decent laced head and a black hood, almost like a veil, over her face. His prognostication that she would by her interference and demands for "jobs" make life hideous for Lord and Lady Bute proved to be unfounded, and he had the grace to say, "She is much more discreet than I expected, and meddles with nothing"; but he could not refrain from saying that "she is woefully tedious in her narrations."
Lady Mary was suffering from cancer, which she concealed from her family and acquaintances until about the beginning of July (1762). Then it burst, and there was no hope of her life being much prolonged. On July 2 she wrote her last letter to Lady Frances Steuart, saying, "I have been ill a long time, and am now so bad I am little capable of writing, but I would not pass in your opinion as either stupid or ungrateful. My heart is always warm in your service, and I am always told your affairs shall be taken care of." If she was a bad woman to cross, at least even on her deathbed she tried to do service to her friends. Death had no terrors for her; she said she had lived long enough; and she died, as she had lived, with great fortitude.
Lady Mary passed away on August 21, 1762, at the age of seventy-three.
Her remains were interred in the graveyard of Grosvenor Chapel, where
also lie Ambrose Phillips, David Mallett, Lord Chesterfield, William
Whitehead, John Wilkes, and Elizabeth Carter.
All that Lady Mary possessed, except some trifling legacies, she left to Lady Bute. Her fortune is believed to have been inconsiderable, except for some valuable jewels. Walpole had one last gibe: "With her usual maternal tenderness and usual generosity, she has left her son one guinea." The gibe was unworthy, because Walpole knew quite well the career of that son, who, anyhow, was sufficiently provided for. It may be that it was the pricking of Walpole's conscience for this last outburst that made him later administer a stern rebuke to Lady Craven. "I am sorry to hear, Madam, that by your account Lady Mary Wortley was not so accurate and faithful as modern travellers. The invaluable art of inoculation, which she brought from Constantinople, so dear to all admirers of beauty, and to which we owe, perhaps the preservation of yours, stamps her an universal benefactress; and as you rival her in poetic talents I had rather you would employ them to celebrate her for her nostrum, than detect her for romancing."
End of Project Gutenberg's Lady Mary Wortley Montague, by Lewis Melville