Lady Mary returns to the West with knowledge of the Ottoman practice of inoculation against smallpox, known as variolation.

She had had the embassy surgeon, Charles Maitland, in March 1718 inoculate her five-year-old son.

Before starting for the East she had met Alexander Pope, and during her absence he had written her a series of extravagant letters, which appear to have been chiefly exercises in the art of writing gallant epistles.

While Pope may have been fascinated by her wit and elegance, Lady Mary's replies to his letters reveal that she was not equally smitten.

Very few letters pass between them after Lady Mary's return, and various reasons have been suggested for the subsequent estrangement and violent quarrel.

The last of the Istanbul letters to Pope purports to have been written on November 1, 1718, from Dover

It contains a parody on Pope's Epitaph on the Lovers Struck by Lightning.

The manuscript collection of these letters is passed round a considerable circle, and Pope may have been offended at the circulation of this piece of satire

Jealousy of her friendship with Lord Hervey has also been alleged, but Lady Louisa Stuart says Pope had made Lady Mary a declaration of love, which she had received with an outburst of laughter

In any case Lady Mary always professes complete innocence of all cause of offense in public.

Lady Mary writes that nowhere else are women as free as they are in the Ottoman Empire.