At the time Lady Frances returned to England, Mrs Lee was taken out of
the convent to be married. Her parents, dazzled with Mr Lee's wealth,
forgot to attend to other requisites to render that state happy. Without
his being a man of very shining parts, he had such talents as made
him acceptable to women, in particular to a girl so young as she was
when this alliance took place. He sung and danced well, was lively to
extravagance, full of agreeable trifling, and always in good humour:
add to this, he was handsome in his person, liberal to excess, and
calculated for the seduction of the fair. Mrs Lee's great beauty, her
parents partially flattered themselves would fix his affections.--All
the graces of which the figure and emotions of a female were capable,
were united in her; but his love for her was nothing but an impulse
of passion which soon subsided. Addicted by his natural disposition
to pleasure, he despised those which a tender sensibility renders
so exquisitely delightful; such would have trespassed too much on
his vanity. Unexperienced and artless, his innocent wife could not
long retain his affections, and in the few years she lived with him,
encountered many mortifications; first from the alienation of his
affections, afterwards from the distressed situation of his affairs,
which entirely changed his temper, rendering him impatient and
passionate. His very footmen were taught to insult her, and every one
in the family knew the most effectual way to ingratiate themselves with
him, was to disregard his wife. Yet she bore it all with patience,
and acted her part with prudence, endeavouring to disarm his anger
with gentleness. She sometimes, indeed, lamented and complained, but
the dove and the lamb do so too--'The poison of grief exhales only in
complaints.'--She was neither sullen nor gay when he was out of humour;
nor impertinent or melancholy when he was pleased--She obliged her
affections to wait and submit to the various turns of his temper--trying
to bribe his passions to her interest. She endeavoured also, by economy
and proper attention, to retard as long as possible, the ruin that
threatened him; and considerably diminished the household expenses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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