Lady Mary followed this narrative with her reflections. She was sure
that all these adventures proceeded from artifice on one side and
weakness on the other. "An honest, tender mind," she says, "is betrayed
to ruin by the charms that make the fortune of a designing head, which,
when joined with a beautiful face, can never fail of advancement, except
barred by a wise mother, who locks up her daughters from view till
nobody cares to look on them." She instanced the case of "my poor
friend" the Duchess of Bolton, who "was educated in solitude, with some
choice books, by a saint-like governess: crammed with virtue and good
qualities, she thought it impossible not to find gratitude, though she
failed to give passion; and upon this plan threw away her estate, was
despised by her husband, and laughed at by the public." Lady Mary
compared the case of the Duchess with that of "Polly, bred in an
ale-house, and produced on the stage, who has obtained wealth and title,
and found the way to be esteemed." This particular instance hardly
furnishes the basis for the general rule laid down by her: "So useful is
early experience--without it half of life is dissipated in correcting
the errors that we have been taught to receive as indisputable truths."
According to all accounts Charles Paulet, third Duke of Bolton, was at
the age of twenty-eight forced by his father to marry Lady Anne Vaughan,
only daughter and heiress of John, Earl of Carbery. When the old Duke
died in 1722 they separated. Some years later the Duke took for his
mistress Lavinia Fenton, the "Polly" in Gay's "Beggar's Opera." On the
death of his wife in 1751 he married her.

Henry Fielding, was Lady Mary's second cousin; but there had never been
any intimacy between them, although some acquaintance. The novelist was
eighteen years the younger. In 1727, when he was twenty and near the
beginning of his career as a playwright, he had consulted her about his