They became the
attraction of an English regiment recently stationed in the town, and
Marguerite was soon married, through the insistence of her father, to
a Captain Farmer, when less than fifteen years of age. This was the
great misfortune of her life.
Her husband was subject to fits of insanity, and her whole feeling
towards him was that of aversion. Cruelty and caprice were the chief
components of his character. From his tyranny she fled,--first to her
father's house, but was denied solace there, so sought it elsewhere.
She led a somewhat vagabond existence for about nine years, living
first with one friend, then with another; thankful for any home, and
accommodating herself to any companions. Of this period of her life
not much is recorded, save her beauty, for it was shortly after this
that her peerless portrait was painted, ere her sorrow and suffering
had time to efface the vivacity of youth, but only to give depth to
the eyes and interest to the face. She lived in London with her
brother Robert until in 1817, when her husband's death occurred by his
falling out of a window when in a state of drunken frenzy. Four months
after this she became the second wife of an Irish nobleman of a
dashing person and little brains, Charles John Gardiner, second Earl
of Blessington, when she was twenty-eight and he was thirty-five years
of age.
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