Nor were the contents of the mansion
only disposed of. The fabric itself, which had cost three hundred and
sixty thousand pounds, was sold for eight thousand pounds, it being
a condition of the sale that it should be razed and the materials
removed within a definite number of months.
Had Tylney-Long-Wellesley-Pole (for such was the polysyllabic name he
bore after his marriage) been only a spendthrift and a gambler, his
case might not have seemed remarkable. But he showed himself in every
way a heartless scoundrel as regarded his wife and his children, who
had to seek legal protection against him. About a year after the sale
of her splendid home his wife died, and the event is thus spoken of
in a leading journal of the time: "The premature death of an amiable
and accomplished lady born to large possessions, and against whom the
voice of calumny never so much as breathed a slander, calls, we think,
for a passing comment, as illustrating and furnishing, we trust, a
lasting and useful lesson to the heartlessness of too many men of the
present day. With a fortune that made her a prize for princes, this
amiable woman gave her hand and heart to the man of her choice, and
with them all that unbounded wealth could bestow. What her fate has
been all the world knows: what it ought to have been the world is
equally well aware.
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