The Lady In Red: An Eighteenth-Century Tale Of Sex, Scandal, And Divorce

by Hallie Rubenhold

  As the Colonel of the South Hampshire Militia, Sir Thomas presided at these activities, both official and extracurricular. According to Edward Gibbon’s account of his commanding officer, the 6th baronet cut a clownish figure. ‘I know his faults and I can not help excusing them,’ he wrote somewhat apologetically. The baronet may have been a man who valued the classical lessons of stoicism and self-control but his outward personality betrayed no hint of this. Sir Thomas’s manner was distinctly ‘unintellectual’ and ‘rustic’. He was a man ‘fond of the table and of his bed’, Gibbon wrote. ‘Our conferences were marked by every stroke of the midnight and morning hours, and the same drum which invited him to rest often summoned me to the parade.’ Unreliable and fanciful, the baronet was better known for his musings on ‘sensible schemes he will never execute and schemes he will execute which are highly ridiculous’ than engaging in the practicalities of life.

  Undoubtedly this behaviour was due in part to his severe dependence on the bottle. When Gibbon first encountered him in 1759 Sir Thomas was already an incorrigible alcoholic and it was through ‘his example’ that ‘the daily practice of hard and even excessive drinking’ was encouraged among the officers of the battalion. A significant amount of time was spent in ‘bucolic carousing’ or the pursuit of drunken antics, like the incident when the inebriated Sir Thomas roused his friend, the equally intoxicated politician John Wilkes from his sleep and ‘made him drink a bottle of claret in bed’. Although hard drinking among men of the landed classes was widely accepted as a normal part of masculine behaviour, Gibbon suggests that even by the liberal standards of the era, Sir Thomas’s attachment to drink was immoderate. By 1762 he had begun to feel the effects of gout and possibly other alcohol-related disorders. In the hope that the therapeutic waters of Spa might cure him, he travelled to Belgium that summer. Upon his return, Gibbon commented that ‘Spa has done him a great deal of good, for he looks another man’, but the perceived improvement lasted only until the first glass was poured. ‘ … We kept bumperizing till after Roll-calling,’ Gibbon wrote ‘Sir Thomas assuring us with every fresh bottle how infinitely soberer he has grown.’

  While the baronet’s drinking caused his relations and friends concern, his unpolished conduct and rural habits were a source of true humiliation. He felt no obligation to own a town residence in London, as was the practice among fashionable families. Eschewing the lavish suppers and card parties which would have established his name in the capital the baronet chose to live simply and when he had to visit town, he took a modest rented house. This error of judgement left a poor impression on his associates, who in an age of conspicuous consumption interpreted scantily furnished rooms and a sparsely laid table as the hallmarks of poverty or a coarse character. Gibbon was horrified by what he encountered at Sir Thomas’s London residence. The house he described as ‘a wretched one’ and while there he was served ‘a dinner suitable to it’. Having been offered so meagre a meal, the historian stayed to finish three pints before departing ‘to sup with Captain Crookshanks’, a proper host who provided him with ‘an elegant supper’ and a variety of wines. Embarrassed at having glimpsed such a striking example of the Worsleys’ lack of cultivation Gibbon marvelled how his friend, ‘a man of two thousand pounds a year’, could make such ‘a poor figure’ in London.

  Sir Thomas’s insistence on maintaining a lifestyle of ‘great oeconomy’ did not suit the tastes of his wife, Lady Betty Worsley. As the daughter of the 5th Earl of Cork and Orrery, one of the eighteenth century’s most celebrated literary patrons, Lady Betty had enjoyed a position at the centre of cultural activity in London, Dublin and at her father’s estate in Somerset. The earl’s drawing rooms had been warmed by the witty conversation of Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Dr Johnson and his friend, the accomplished actor David Garrick. What hopes Lady Betty may have had of continuing her father’s tradition of arts patronage were quashed soon after marriage by the force of her husband’s personality. While her name and connections facilitated an entrée into the most elite circles, the ‘great contrast between the baronet and his wife’ did not go unmentioned behind fluttering fans. In her attempts to sidestep social disgrace, Lady Betty’s appearances in the capital became less frequent. She preferred to remain in Hampshire and reign as the mistress of Pylewell or to slip away to the continent where she and her husband passed several years of their marriage untouched by social obligation. It was only after Sir Thomas’s death in 1768 that Lady Betty re-established herself in London. Taking a town house on Dover Street, she made her home a centre for lively musical parties and artistic gatherings.

  Between Lady Betty’s graciousness and Sir Thomas’s boorish temperament, it appeared to some observers that the heir of Appuldurcombe had taken on more of the roughness of his father’s character than the smooth gentility of his mother’s. Like the baronet, Richard had a hungry intellect which thrived on classical history, philosophy and mathematical conundrums, but while his mind had been honed, his manners had been left untended. Lady Holland, who encountered the boy in Naples, thought him to be ‘rather pert’; the product of parents whom she dismissed as ‘mighty good but deadly dull’. Described as ‘an honest, wild English buck’ Sir Thomas’s son had the smell of the country about him. Fresh faced and unaffected, Richard had enjoyed a rural boyhood, removed from the unhealthy air and corrupting morality of London. But although this upbringing represented the era’s ideal childhood, it had left the young man unfinished, gauche and lacking in gentlemanly manners. This was a situation which his mother, his godfather, Sir William Oglander and his father’s cousin, James Worsley, thought required an urgent remedy.

  Since the 23rd of September 1768 responsibility for Richard Worsley’s education had been placed in their hands. After a year of declining health, Sir Thomas’s exhausted liver and kidneys finally failed him. It became common knowledge that the baronet had made himself ‘a sacrifice at the shrine of Bacchus’ at the relatively young age of forty. The door of the family tomb had hardly swung shut when preparations for his son’s grand tour of Europe began. At the time of his father’s death, the 7th baronet, who now proudly bore the title of Sir Richard Worsley, had been wearing the velvet cap and silk gown of a privileged ‘gentleman commoner’ at Corpus Christi College in Oxford. His guardians would not have him waste his time or his mind in the collegiate environment for long. Like most gentlemen they recognised that Oxford and Cambridge offered little in the way of a useful education. In the eighteenth century few who began their studies at a university did so to obtain a degree. The colleges were home to an assortment of wealthy young men, idling their time away before inheriting their fathers’ estates or marrying. It was widely acknowledged that drunkenness and gossip preoccupied the tutors while their students were left to engage ‘in every disgraceful frolic of juvenile debauchery’. The guileless 7th baronet would never receive the refinement his character required in such an environment. For this it was necessary that he go abroad.

  The traditional grand tour was designed to plug the deficiencies in a young man’s education. A period which might span several months or several years was spent under the direction of a specially appointed tutor, or ‘bear leader’, who escorted his charge around the major sights and cities of Europe in pursuit of intellectual and personal improvement. The standard curriculum generally included immersion in the languages, art, architecture, geography and history of the countries visited, but also might involve instruction in additional subjects such as music, fencing and dance. As the study of classical and Renaissance art and architecture was the focal point of most tours, Italy was given precedence on the itinerary. A stay in Paris where a gawky young man might better his deportment and dress sense was also considered de rigueur, while a test of nerve in the form of an Alpine crossing by mule or sedan chair rounded the experience. At a time when the cost of travel was beyond the reach of those without a considerable fortune, the grand tour was a luxury reserved primarily for the elite male. Multiple visits to Euro
pe for the purpose of study were a rarity and so the decision Sir Richard’s guardians made to send him abroad for a second time in less than five years would not have been undertaken lightly. In return for this extravagant investment, the results would need to be demonstrable. Richard Worsley was to return to Pylewell with his rustic edges smoothed and his character shaped into that of a fully formed gentleman.

  The man whom Sir William Oglander and James Worsley employed to implement the young baronet’s metamorphosis was an individual well known to the Hampshire gentry. Since 1766, Edward Gibbon had been hosting the Swiss writer and scholar Jacques Georges Deyverdun under his roof at Buriton. Gibbon’s ‘dear friend’ had been hoping to find an income as ‘the travelling governor of some wealthy pupil’ when the historian recommended him to Sir Richard Worsley. As his student had already acquired a substantial knowledge of Italy, both modern and ancient, Deyverdun devised a course for Sir Richard which departed from the usual grand tour programme. On the 22nd of April 1769, the pair embarked on a fourteen-month exploration of the less traversed regions of Switzerland, France and northern Italy. They were also to spend several months in Paris and at least a full year in the scenic surrounds of Lausanne, the town of Deyverdun’s birth. This bracing location beside Lake Geneva was an ideal spot for the improvement of the mind, body and soul. As Gibbon, who had lived in Lausanne several years earlier had found, Switzerland was devoutly Calvinist. Laws prohibiting gambling, and in some towns attendance at the theatre, made evenings in this region quieter than in other European countries, while Voltaire’s decision to reside near Geneva brought serious scholars of philosophy to its shores.

  Under Deyverdun’s guidance, Sir Richard applied his intellect to a critical investigation of the ‘French and Latin classics’. Where previously the baronet’s education had focused on achieving a grasp of the Italian language, he had come to Lausanne to improve his French and possibly to learn German. His tutor was fluent in both languages but as Deyverdun ‘never acquired the just pronunciation and familiar use of the English tongue’ it is likely that they conversed almost exclusively in French and Latin.

  Months were spent scrutinising and discussing the works of great historians, orators and poets. Yet, remarkably, Sir Richard’s travel journal demonstrates very little intellectual growth. Its rambling pages read like a roll call of inanimate objects and sights between Paris and Turin. Void of objectivity or analysis and with barely a note to document human interaction on any level, Sir Richard’s method of regarding the world around him was perfectly scientific, stoic and absolutist. Only the factual was recorded; the distance they rode between villages, the length and width of fortress walls, the age and height of a cathedral. On the rare occasion that he gives an opinion it comes in the form of a pronouncement. He provides no elaboration and no explanation of his conclusions. Towns, roads, inns and churches are rated as either ‘miserable’ or ‘of the greatest merit’, ‘execrable’ or ‘the finest example’, and whether he referred to a work of art as being ‘fine’ or ‘excellent’, what made it so was never discussed or even questioned. Sir Richard’s universe was one of blacks and whites and by engaging in the ordering and ranking of it he demonstrated his eagerness to assess his own place within its grand scheme. At the same time his adherence to accepted perceptions limited what he was able to see. In spite of his learnedness his diaries reveal a persistent fear of independent thought.

  Attaining an understanding of one’s role in society formed the very essence of the grand tour’s purpose. Its broad syllabus was designed to introduce an elite young gentleman to his inherent privileges and responsibilities. Intellectual polishing played a large role in this, but learning was not confined exclusively to an investigation of antiquity. The tourists were also expected to gain an insight into the workings of contemporary Europe, from its politics to its agriculture. A knowledge of its people and cultural habits, its topography and technology could only add to a gentleman’s effectiveness as a law maker when he returned to his own country. Likewise, it was held that an inspection of the practices of Catholic Europe might serve to bolster his natural Protestant biases and patriotism. The acquisition of the precepts of taste, where it applied to art, was also considered instrumental to well-rounded education. Wealthy men were society’s patrons; their inclinations dictated the tone of paintings and architecture and it was their duty to impart their exalted wisdom to the plebeians. The grand tour provided a baptism in the waters of eighteenth-century manhood. From this formative experience the tourist was to emerge with good deportment, confidence, and a command of etiquette useful in a variety of scenarios, from how to address a monarch to how one might undress a lady of pleasure. As it was considered preferable for a boy to learn nature’s lessons from the degenerate women of France and Italy than from his father’s household servants, sex also featured on the grand tour’s agenda. Upon his return home, the sly smiles of a young man’s guardians would belie a shared acknowledgement of that which had come to pass in a foreign bedchamber.

  Although he possessed a familiarity with the sights and customs of Europe, until his second continental excursion Sir Richard had not yet experienced all that a grand tour had to offer. The gap in his knowledge was only filled upon his arrival in Paris, a capital believed to be ‘a theatre of more vice than any city in the world’, where it was impossible to escape the noise, filth, prostitutes and beggars, even in the more fashionable quarters.

  The lodgings which had been arranged for the baronet lay on the rue Saint-Honoré, in one of Paris’s better areas. From his windows on the first floor at the hôtel des Quatre Nations he enjoyed a clear view into the glowing rooms of the opposite building. After observing for some time its female occupants open and close the shutters or carelessly leave the drapery askew, he was able to conclude that the residence ‘was a bordel deternie, or a positive brothel’. Naturally curious, the young man became compulsively drawn to his window. His stares were soon discovered by his powdered and rouged neighbours, who began ‘paying him not only their respects by ogles and signals, but verbal communication’. Over the course of several days the baronet’s will was sufficiently eroded for ‘their charms … to conquer his virtue’. One evening he determined that he would cross the road and pay them a visit. However, before he departed, the hotel’s proprietress asked to speak with him. She had heard of the baronet’s plans from his manservant and had grown anxious. Where brothels were concerned, the establishment across the road did not bear a good reputation, she warned, and ‘gave him such cautions as induced him to forgo the expected pleasures he had promised himself’. It was a fortunate escape, ‘for that night a man was murdered in the house’. The following morning his body ‘was found after the ladies and their bravoes had decamped’. Sir Richard had observed it from his window. It was a sight which bled deeply into his consciousness. The prostrate customer lay stretched out on a drenched bed, ‘naked and … stript of all he had been possessed of’. The baronet could not shake the belief that the corpse might have been his own. The experience made him ‘very cautious how … he viewed females’ and persuaded him in part that the sexual act was best enjoyed when observed from afar. Beyond everything he had learned on his grand tour, it was this lesson which would shape the events of his life.

  Sir Richard’s homecoming in the early spring of 1772 had been greatly anticipated by his relations and friends, who were eager to see how his experiences had changed him. Indeed there were alterations, as Gibbon remarked, but surprisingly ‘little improvement’. The young man knew that his guardians had expectations and was determined not to disappoint. The new master of Pylewell hid his youthful lack of confidence behind a grandiose façade. He believed that his studies had made him a sage at the considerable age of twenty-one. ‘Sir Richard Worsley … has grown a philosopher,’ Gibbon proclaimed archly. While ‘Lord Petersfield displeases everybody by the affectation of consequence; the young baronet disgusts no less by the affectation of wisdom’. This attitude was not what eit
her Sir William or James Worsley had had in mind for their ward and they were quick to chasten him, pointing out ‘that such behaviour, even were it reasonable, does not suit this country’. But behind the puffed-up projection of himself was a son, wrought with insecurities and desperate to demonstrate that he was not the inebriated, bumbling image of his father. Instead, the 7th baronet embraced an entirely different persona. Gibbon was astonished. ‘He speaks in short sentences, quotes Montaigne, seldom smiles, never laughs, drinks only water’ and, most importantly, ‘professes to command his passions’. To this list was added one further detail. Ready to assume all the responsibilities of adulthood, Sir Richard made it known that ‘he intends to marry in five months’ time’.

  2

  A Girl Called Seymour

  In an era that valued attractiveness above all other feminine attributes, no one ever raved about Seymour Dorothy Fleming’s beauty. No poet ever sang the praises of her prettiness, no gossipy matron ever remarked on her fine figure and in the many printed paragraphs which appeared during her life, at no point did any writer mention her comely features. Although she was not plain, her blue, almond-shaped eyes and mousy hair were considered distinctly ordinary. She had inherited her small stature and later her predisposition to plumpness from her mother, Jane Colman. From her father, Sir John Fleming, she had inherited an enormous fortune.