Trial of Mary Blandy | Page 3

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 her biographer names her, had the recommendation of being a soldier. Mr. T----, too, found favour with the damsel. His fine address was much appreciated by her mamma, who, being a devotee of fashion, heartily espoused his cause; but again the course of true love was barred by the question of settlements as broached by the old lawyer, and the man of war "retired with some resentment." There was, however, no lack of candidates for Mary's hand and dower. Captain D---- at once stepped