"Before he would be so governed by a wife, he said, especially
such an ugly b-- (for, indeed, she was not a regular beauty, but very
agreeable and extremely genteel), he would see all the women upon
earth at the devil, which was a very usual phrase with him. He said,
he wondered what I could see in her to be so charmed with her company:
since this woman, says he, hath come among us, there is an end of your
beloved reading, which you pretended to like so much, that you could
not afford time to return the visits of the ladies in this country;
and I must confess I had been guilty of a little rudeness this way;
for the ladies there are at least no better than the mere country
ladies here; and I think I need make no other excuse to you for
declining any intimacy with them.
"This correspondence, however, continued a whole year, even all
the while the lieutenant was quartered in that town; for which I was
contented to pay the tax of being constantly abused in the manner
above mentioned by my husband; I mean when he was at home; for he
was frequently absent a month at a time at Dublin, and once made a
journey of two months to London: in all which journeys I thought it
a very singular happiness that he never once desired my company;
nay, by his frequent censures on men who could not travel, as he
phrased it, without a wife tied up to their tail, he sufficiently
intimated that, had I been never so desirous of accompanying him, my
wishes would have been in vain; but, Heaven knows, such wishes were
very far from my thoughts.
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