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Fitzgerald, Mary (wainwright), Lady

Daughter of a poor clergyman in Dorsetshire, whose early marriage to an unscrupulous profligate forms the key to the story of Castle Richmond. After her husband had absconded and was reported dead, she married Sir Thomas Fitzgerald.

"They who remembered her in those days told wondrous tales of her surprising loveliness;- how men from London would come down to see her in the parish church; how she was talked of as the Dorsetshire Venus...." In later life, "Her hair was gray, and her eyes sunken, and her lips thin and bloodless; but yet never shall I see her equal for pure feminine beauty, for form and outline, for passionless grace, and sweet, gentle, womanly softness" - Castle Richmond.