3-052-406 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"She had captivated a widower with five daughters...", 1880. 'Miss Tabitha Monckton, a single lady who lives in her neighbourhood,...grew almost ferocious after forty-five, when her last castle in the air faded into nothingness. She had captivated a widower with five daughters, and had put all the heart she had left into that venture. She would have made him a blameless wife, and would have been capable of any sacrifice for the sake of his children. But she could not shake the widower till he asked her to become his wife; and so, after mooning about for some time in an irresolute way, he married his cook. Thenceforth she had no companions but her dogs, whom she kissed and scolded by turns. When past all hope of happiness, and brooding over her wasted life, she inherited a large property; but it only made her more bitter with the world. She made no change in her way of living, and torments her kinsfolk, as she herself was once tormented, by visions of legacies she will never leave them. She comes twice or thrice a week from her cold hearth to pour all these things in a continuous stream before her gentle, high-souled neighbour, and not a reputation in the county is safe from her acrid and vengeful tongue'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.