Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Wedlock by Wendy Moore Marry in haste . I n January 1777, newly widowed and once again wealthy, the young Countess of Strathmore found a proposal from a dying man impossible to resist. Andrew Robinson Stoney, romantically, was bleeding to death after fighting a duel to defend her honour. Apparently. Within days of the wedding, even the bride was questioning her reckless acceptance. Her new husband made an extraordinary recovery from wounds doctors swore were fatal. The "Captain" instantly embarked on a campaign of domestic terror. Wendy Moore's first book, The Knife Man, was a beautifully observed biography of the anatomising surgeon John Hunter. In Wedlock she offers an anatomy of an 18th-century upper-crust marriage. It was one that proved a travesty of the blossoming enlightenment ideal of loving companionship, but became a landmark case for women in the divorce courts. Stoney, an imposing Irish fortune-hunter, and the rich countess, Mary Eleanor Bowes, both used Hunter's services to deal in different ways with illegitimate babies. Each entered the prison of matrimony with something to hide. Mary's secrets were simple but significant: much of her enormous fortune was just out of reach. She had already signed a pre-nup to protect her existing offspring's future inheritance, and had recently racked up huge debts which now passed to her husband. Oh, and she was pregnant with another lover's child. Stoney's secrets were more devastating. He had managed to mask a truly vicious and calculating disposition. The duel was part of an elaborate trap to entice Mary into wedlock. His putative rival was actually his accomplice, Henry Bate, editor of the Morning Post. A notorious scandalmonger, equally quick to battle with pen or sword, Bate published provocatively defamatory letters about the countess to lay the groundwork, and then pursued Stoney for his share of the financial reward. This plot was the work of an expert in deception. Mary was fooled by her suitor's superficial charm and manipulative bravado, and she was hardly alone. (Stoney was the inspiration for Thackeray's devious anti-hero, Barry Lyndon, later the lead in Stanley Kubrick's 1975 epic.) If she had heard the rumours about his first wife, a Newcastle heiress who died under suspicious circumstances after eight years of brutality, the countess chose not to believe them. Mary was perhaps too heady with freedom at that point to realise how transitory it would prove. She had inherited one of the biggest fortunes in Europe from her coal-magnate father and had selected the ninth Earl of Strathmore from the pack of land-rich, cash-poor aristocrats who shamelessly pursued her. His early death in 1776 released her from a frustrating marriage that crushed her literary and scientific ambitions. Now Mary was living in a whirl of pleasure - organising parties to the theatre, commissioning a botanical expedition to the Cape, and thrilling to the touch of electric eels and newly acquired lovers alike - all in the public eye. Her second husband's relentless physical and mental cruelty left Mary a changed woman. Beating her behind closed doors, he controlled her obsessively in public: she could not dress, eat, or converse without his permission, and was reduced to borrowing stockings from her servants. Jessé Foot, Stoney's two-faced friend and biographer, described her altered state with uncharacteristic poignancy. Convulsive sideways movements of her lower jaw mirrored Mary's mental anguish. She was half-deaf from blows, and could barely speak. Redemption came in the figure of a female servant. Stoney's staff usually ended up his spies, pimps or concubines, but Mary Morgan was different. After seeking legal advice, she recruited a small band of colleagues prepared to help their mistress escape. The support the countess received from retainers, tenants and colliers is stirring - many suffered in the fall-out from the failed marriage. Her loyal gardener tended her beloved plants and hothouses to the bitter end, secretly sending her the occasional consolatory pineapple. Moore makes much of the irony that a statue of Lady Liberty presided over Mary's luxurious childhood home in County Durham. Riches, beauty, wit, and an excellent education bought Mary Eleanor Bowes anything but liberty. As Moore shows, nothing could save her from the fate of legal nonentity that she shared with every other married woman of her time. Neither could anything spare her the merciless scrutiny of a celebrity- obsessed press that flourished on scandal, and judged the countess author of her own woes. Years later Mary wrote a prototype misery memoir, recalling the tortures she endured, including a horrific abduction. It was a counterpoint to the Confessions her husband had bullied out of her and then published. She rightly imagined her cathartic Narrative would "stagger the belief of Posterity". Fortunately Moore resists the temptation to make her material read like fiction. At the time, every revelation - past abortions, maternal failures, creaking bedsprings, imprisonment - was a gift to Grub Street. This battle was fought in and through the press. Wedlock is set in immaculate historical context, allowing new insights into events that have been well picked over by a prurient public. Recovering from the archives every complexity of her subjects' lives and legal embroilments, Moore has meticulously constructed an ever more compelling tale. Mary's escape from wedlock was a significant step in the struggle for women's property rights, but it hardly curbed her ex-husband's abusive habits. Imprisoned for debt for the rest of his life, Stoney kept captive the object of another seduction, Polly Sutton. In her locked cell, she bore him five children, and never wrote a Narrative. Lydia Syson's Doctor of Love: James Graham and His Celestial Bed is published by Alma Books. Wedlock. The world’s #1 eTextbook reader for students. VitalSource is the leading provider of online textbooks and course materials. More than 15 million users have used our Bookshelf platform over the past year to improve their learning experience and outcomes. With anytime, anywhere access and built-in tools like highlighters, flashcards, and study groups, it’s easy to see why so many students are going digital with Bookshelf. titles available from more than 1,000 publishers. customer reviews with an average rating of 9.5. digital pages viewed over the past 12 months. institutions using Bookshelf across 241 countries. Wedlock The True Story of the Disastrous Marriage and Remarkable Divorce of Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore by Wendy Moore and Publisher Crown. Save up to 80% by choosing the eTextbook option for ISBN: 9780307452238, 0307452239. The print version of this textbook is ISBN: 9780307383365, 0307383369. Wedlock The True Story of the Disastrous Marriage and Remarkable Divorce of Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore by Wendy Moore and Publisher Crown. Save up to 80% by choosing the eTextbook option for ISBN: 9780307452238, 0307452239. The print version of this textbook is ISBN: 9780307383365, 0307383369. Wedlock. With the death of her fabulously wealthy coal magnate father when she was just eleven, Mary Eleanor Bowes became the richest heiress in Britain. An ancestor of Queen Elizabeth II, Mary grew to be a highly educated young woman, winning acclaim as a playwright and botanist. Courted by a bevy of eager suitors, at eighteen she married the handsome but aloof ninth Earl of Strathmore in a celebrated, if ultimately troubled, match that forged the Bowes Lyon name. Yet she stumbled headlong into scandal when, following her husband’s early death, a charming young army hero flattered his way into the merry widow’s bed. Captain Andrew Robinson Stoney insisted on defending her honor in a duel, and Mary was convinced she had found true love. Judged by doctors to have been mortally wounded in the melee, Stoney persuaded Mary to grant his dying wish; four days later they were married. Sadly, the “captain” was not what he seemed. Staging a sudden and remarkable recovery, Stoney was revealed as a debt-ridden lieutenant, a fraudster, and a bully. Immediately taking control of Mary’s vast fortune, he squandered her wealth and embarked on a campaign of appalling violence and cruelty against his new bride. Finally, fearing for her life, Mary masterminded an audacious escape and challenged social conventions of the day by launching a suit for divorce. The English public was horrified–and enthralled. But Mary’s troubles were far from over . Novelist William Makepeace Thackeray was inspired by Stoney’s villainy to write The Luck of Barry Lyndon, which Stanley Kubrick turned into an Oscar-winning film. Based on exhaustive archival research, Wedlock is a thrilling and cinematic true story, ripped from the headlines of eighteenth-century England. AN AFFAIR OF HONOUR London, January 13, 1777. Settling down to read his newspaper by the candlelight illuminating the dining room of the Adelphi Tavern, John Hull anticipated a quiet evening. Having opened five years earlier, as an integral part of the vast Adelphi development designed by the Adam brothers on the north bank of the Thames, the Adelphi Tavern and Coffee House had established a reputation for its fine dinners and genteel company. Many an office worker like Hull, a clerk at the government’s Salt Office, sought refuge from the clamor of the nearby Strand in the tavern’s upper- floor dining room with its elegant ceiling panels depicting Pan and Bacchus in pastel shades. On a Monday evening in January, with the day’s work behind him, Hull could expect to read his paper undisturbed. Wedlock by Wendy Moore - review. When George Bowes bought Hogarth’s popular print series Marriage à la Mode in 1746 to hang in the entrance hall of his house at Gibside in County Durham, he little dreamt of how prophetic it would prove to be for his daughter, Mary.