He really did not care about living in such a mansion, and had purchased the property as a speculation, intending to sell it at a profit.

But having fallen in with Mrs.Saxon, then a hard-up widow, she not only induced him to marry her, but, when married, she insisted that the house should be retained, so that she could dispense hospitality to a literary circle.
Mrs.Octagon was very literary.

She had published several novels under the nom-de-plume of "Rowena." She had produced a volume of poems; she had written a play which had been produced at a matinee; and finally her pamphlets on political questions stamped her, in the opinion of her immediate circle, as a William Pitt in petticoats.

She looked upon herself as the George Eliot of the twentieth century, and dated events from the time of her first success.

"That happened before I became famous," she would say.