Trial of Mary Blandy | Page 3

Blandy,
as a man of old family and a busy and prosperous practitioner, had
become a person of some importance in the county. His professional
skill was much appreciated by a large circle of clients, he acted as
steward for most of the neighbouring gentry, and he had held
efficiently for many years the office of town-clerk.
But above the public respect which his performance of these varied
duties had secured him, Mr. Blandy prized his reputation as a man of
wealth. The legend had grown with his practice and kept pace with his
social advancement. The Blandys' door was open to all; their table,
"whether filled with company or not, was every day plenteously
supplied"; and a profuse if somewhat ostentatious hospitality was the
"note" of the house, a comfortable mansion on the London road, close
to Henley Bridge. Burn, in his History of Henley, describes it as "an
old-fashioned house near the White Hart, represented in the view of the
town facing the title-page" of his volume, and "now [1861] rebuilt."
The White Hart still survives in Hart Street, with its courtyard and
gallery, where of yore the town's folk were wont to watch the
bear-baiting; one of those fine old country inns which one naturally
associates with Pickwickian adventure.
In such surroundings the little Mary, idolised by her parents and spoiled
by their disinterested guests, passed her girlhood. She is said to have

been a clever, intelligent child, and of ways so winning as to "rapture"
all with whom she came in contact. She was educated at home by her
mother, who "instructed her in the principles of religion and piety,
according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England." To
what extent she benefited by the good dame's teaching will appear later,
but at any rate she was fond of reading--a taste sufficiently remarkable
in a girl of her day. At fourteen, we learn, she was mistress of those
accomplishments which others of like station and opportunities rarely
achieve until they are twenty, "if at all"; but her biographers, while
exhausting their superlatives on her moral beauties, are significantly
silent regarding her physical attractions. Like many a contemporary
"toast," she had suffered the indignity of the smallpox; yet her figure
was fine, and her brilliant black eyes and abundant hair redeemed a
face otherwise rather ordinary. When to such mental gifts and charm of
manner was added the prospect of a dower of ten thousand
pounds--such was the figure at which public opinion put it, and her
father did not deny that gossip for once spoke true--little wonder that
Mary was considered a "catch" as well by the "smarts" of the place as
by the military gentlemen who at that time were the high ornaments of
Henley society.
Mr. Blandy, business-like in all things, wanted full value for his money;
as none of Mary's local conquests appeared to promise him an adequate
return, he reluctantly quitted the pen and, with his wife and daughter,
spent a season at Bath, then the great market-place of matrimonial
bargains. "As for Bath," Thackeray writes of this period, "all history
went and bathed and drank there. George II. and his Queen, Prince
Frederick and his Court, scarce a character one can mention of the early
last century but was seen in that famous Pump Room, where Beau
Nash presided, and his picture hung between the busts of Newton and
Pope." Here was famous company indeed for an ambitious little
country attorney to rub shoulders with in his hunt for a son-in-law. It is
claimed for Miss Blandy by one of her biographers that her vivacity,
wit, and good nature were such as to win for her an immediate social
success; and she entered into all the gaieties of the season with a heart
unburdened by the "business" which her father sought to combine with
pleasures so expensive. She is even said to have had the honour of

dancing with the Prince of Wales. Meanwhile, the old gentleman,
appearing "genteel in dress" and keeping a plentiful table, lay in wait
for such eligible visitors as should enter his parlour.
The first to do so with matrimonial intent was a thriving young
apothecary, but Mr. Blandy quickly made it plain that Mary and her
£10,000 were not to be had by any drug-compounding knave who
might make sheep's eyes at her, and the apothecary returned to his
gallipots for healing of his bruised affections. His place was taken by
Mr. H----, a gentleman grateful to the young lady and personally
desirable, but of means too limited to satisfy her parents' views, a fact
conveyed by them to the wooer "in a friendly and elegant manner,"
which must have gone far to assuage his disappointment. The next
suitor for "this blooming virgin," as