Note 91 — Chapter XIV

The history of Martha will remind some readers (though the facts are very different) of that of Mary Robinson, commonly called “The Beauty of Buttermere,” who was betrayed into a marriage by the notorious Hadfield, under the feigned name of Colonel Hope. Hadfield was a man of good birth and education, and was afterwards hanged for forgery. Mary died not long since, the mother of a large family, in a good old age, a subject of notoriety and curiosity to her dying day. Yet Robert Walker loved his dead Martha quite as much as his living Mary!