My thought is: he loved her, but couldn't fully commit to her.Yes. Honestly, this is my instinct as well. What is important to remember is that the Georgians were ... peculiar. It is always an age that have been a bit alien to me, while I understand the Victorians very well.
Jane Austen's time also seems more well-ordered to me, though there were plenty of craziness then as well *g* See for instance:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Bysshe_Shelley See his wives too
It just gets wilder and wilder!
What I mean with peculiar, is that they seem to have behaved in ways that were very illogical and difficult for us to understand. I don't have the same problem with Tudor times, for instance, for all that their motives were cutthroat, they are not difficult to understand.
One thing I have been thinking about your ancestor, and that you suggested yourself, is that maybe he did not think that Mary was quite good enough for him? Not that she was the housekeeper or a servant (I am still dubious about that), but she may have been illegitimate herself or in some other way "beneath" him ? Maybe he was still bitter that the grand match he had envisioned for himself did not materialise?
Or that he had somehow gotten attached to the idea of remaining a bachelor? This is what I mean by the Georgians being peculiar. They would sometimes have these idées fixe that seem to go against all common sense. Not that that is exclusive to those times, but it seems more predominant to the Georgians somehow
So I agree. The letter seems to build up under the idea that Mary was a gentlewoman. I would think that she would have had an easier time to be accepted among people her own age, yes, and who lived perhaps in similar arrangements. So they could well have entertained and have had their set of friends. (See the link above for what I mean. The more people behaving in a certain way, the easier it is to be accepted. At least amongst themselves)
And she could have been kind and lovely, and have been appreciated for that, or she could have been charming and frivolous and been appreciated for that. *g*
Before I move on to the next subject, I wanted to address your ancestor's economic difficulties. They seem somewhat peculiar. A debt of £10 000 was of course enormous. (Do you know how these debts were incurred? Gambling, perhaps? A popular Georgian pasttime. Absolutely ruinous of course.) But an income of £3 000 wasn't bad, either. Of course, we do not know of the interests and how much his income was tied up in expenses he couldn't avoid, but if he lived frugally on £2 000 or even £1 500 a year he should have been able to discharge his debts in ten years or less. Kind of like if you had a mortgage of £1 000 000 but an income of £300 000 a year.
And to put things in context, Mr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice lives well on £2 000 a year with a wife and five children. I even wondered if that was why your ancestor waited with getting married, because a bachelor would have of course been able to live much more inexpensively than a married man with family.
This may also explain why his cousin suggested the grand sum of £10000 as a dowry for the daughter. The father clearly wasn't this wealthy and this sum was roughly it seems the equivalent of his rental income for 3 years. If indeed the daughter was the illegitimate child of two people from a similar gentry background then she would have had to have been accomplished and needed a decent dowry to attract a decent suitorYes, i think this is a sound assumption. Illegitimacy was serious business. It remained so even into our own time. My mother remembers a child that was born out of wedlock in 1970, and how incredibly shameful that was, because you were supposed to be married. "And then a few years later, that suddenly wasn't so anymore!"
Shakespeare reflects the prejudice in King Lear (different versions of the play written between 1605 and 1623):
EDMUND [an illegitimate son]: Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound. Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me,
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moon-shines
Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,
Got 'tween asleep and wake? Well, then,
Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land:
Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund
As to the legitimate: fine word,--legitimate!
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper:
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!