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,