She had arrived in the Fleming nursery on the 5th of October 1757, the fourth child to be born in as many years. Her father, a career soldier who had served as a lieutenant in the Royal Regiment of English Fusiliers, had at the considerable age of fifty-one only recently married her mother. The son of a minor Irish landowner in County Sligo, Fleming had followed his uncle Colonel James Fleming into the army. By his late forties, a lifelong devotion to his family regiment had still failed to provide him with the means necessary for attracting a socially acceptable wife: his loyalty to his uncle had only yielded him a single bequest of £350. Had it not been for the unusual benevolence of his commanding officer and ‘best of friends’, Lieutenant-General William Hargrave, John Fleming might have ended his days as a bachelor. Circumventing the wishes of his family, Hargrave, His Majesty’s Governor of Gibraltar, willed his entire estate to Lieutenant Fleming. In 1751, this comprised 95 acres of land and a dilapidated manor house in Brompton on the outskirts of London, as well as smaller holdings throughout Middlesex, including a new, spacious town house on Grosvenor Street. Fleming’s windfall prompted an immediate quest for a spouse and in 1753 he married Jane Colman, granddaughter of the Duke of Somerset.
The war-weathered Lieutenant Fleming and his twenty-one-year-old bride soon settled down into a routine of domesticity and urgent breeding at their Grosvenor Street home. As men in the mid-eighteenth century could not expect to live much beyond their fifth decade, John Fleming applied himself vigilantly to the production of an heir. His young, fertile wife remained in an almost constant state of pregnancy. Her childbearing began with the delivery of Jane Margaret in 1755 and ended with the birth of the last of five children she carried to full term, Margaret Mary in 1762. The much wished for male heir, Hargrave William, arrived in 1756, followed closely by Catherine Elizabeth and then Seymour Dorothy in 1757. Seymour, the surname of the Dukes of Somerset, was an odd choice of Christian name for a girl, although the practice of bestowing a mother’s maiden name or a family name of importance on a boy was common enough. There was something prophetic in this decision, as an unorthodox name came to shape an even more unusual girl.
Shortly before her sixth birthday in 1763, Seymour lost both her brother and her father within a month of one another. Whether the two deaths were related is unknown. The family monument which the newly entitled Sir John Fleming, baronet had erected in Westminster Abbey to himself and Lieutenant-General Hargrave records the dates of their demise, but not its causes. Tragically, within six years, two further names would be engraved into the marble: those of her ten-year-old sister Catherine and of her youngest sibling Margaret. Although such an extreme loss was a misfortune, it was by no means exceptional while diphtheria, scarlet fever, whooping cough and tuberculosis ran unchecked through the urban population. It is estimated that between 50 and 60 per cent of the capital’s boys and girls died before their tenth birthday. Those who survived, such as Seymour and her eldest sister Jane, frequently reaped more than the benefits of a strong immune system.
As the Brompton estate had lost its male heir in October 1763, Sir John Fleming amended his will in the final weeks of his life so that the majority of his holdings, valued at approximately £52,000, might be divided evenly between his daughters. In theory, the four girls would have each enjoyed a substantial £13,000, an amount large enough to calm the anxieties of their widowed mother. At a time when a quantifiable worth could be placed on the head of every woman of genteel birth, the Fleming girls had been blessed with exceptionally bright prospects. Their futures, like that of any eighteenth-century woman, resided upon their ability to marry within or above their class, a feat which would have been impossible without the prospect of a sufficient marriage portion. By mid-century the daughter of a landowner might feel unease if her family could not entail more than £1,000 on her. The amount of £5,000 was the smallest sum considered worthy of mention in the Gentleman’s Magazine, whereas £20,000 was regarded as an extremely generous settlement for Anne Pitt, the daughter of Baron Camelford, a minor aristocrat. As the sole beneficiaries of Sir John Fleming’s wealth, the baronet’s two little girls might one day be able to enter the most powerful and wealthy circles in Britain.
Unencumbered by concerns for her daughters’ welfare, Lady Fleming now in her early thirties entered the enviable state of wealthy widowhood. Described as ‘wonderfully agreeable’, ‘animated’, and possessing ‘charming, easy’ and ‘polite’ manners, she knew how best to represent herself among society’s eligible gentlemen. Where financial considerations and family obligations had played a role in the selection of her first husband, personal preference alone would dictate her choice of a second. This was to be Edwin Lascelles, a widower who was only slightly younger than the man whom she had lost. Lascelles, the long-reigning MP for Yorkshire was a man of bold political and personal ambitions who, according to George Selwyn, could ‘divert’ his friends ‘beyond imagination’ with his hearty conversation. He was also staggeringly rich.
Born in Barbados to a family who had accumulated their wealth through the trade of sugar, slaves and the provision of rations to the navy, his combined fortune was believed to have been worth £166,666, £53,000 of which was invested in his land. His secluded estate, Harewood, lay spread across 4,000 acres of rugged Yorkshire hills, pasture and woodland, eight miles north of the growing industrial centre of Leeds. When he met and married Lady Fleming in 1770, his mind was full of building plans. The construction of his country seat, Harewood House, had begun eleven years earlier and after much disputing and fist-pounding, the schemes of his architects, John Carr and Robert Adam had nearly been brought to completion. It would be another twelve months before the house would make a dignified residence for his wife and two stepdaughters who in the interim passed their time between London and Knaresborough, near to the developing hot-spring resort of Harrogate.
Edwin Lascelles’s commanding residence had been constructed on the crest of a hill where its creamy-white stone shone beacon-like in the sunshine. It had been built to attract attention, in the hope of pulling political influence into its gleaming rooms. At fifty-eight, what Lascelles coveted most was a peerage. But the cold magnificence of Harewood alone could not achieve this. Its neo-classical rooms festooned in reds and blues required the expert touch of a sophisticated chatelaine to make both his home and his ambitions come to life. With her ‘active temperament, fashionable appearance and wide interests’, as well as her occasionally ‘saucy’ disposition, Lady Fleming brought the vibrancy that Lascelles needed. As a couple who both harboured aspirations they were well matched.
The new mistress of Harewood arrived in the summer of 1771 determined to place herself and her husband at the centre of Yorkshire high society. In an unusual move, she sought to assert her status by retaining her title rather than to take a demotion by becoming simply Mrs Lascelles. She would remain Lady Fleming until her husband was awarded a barony in 1790. In addition to hosting the local gentry in the salons of Harewood, Lady Fleming drew her husband from his estate into the public arena. At the theatre in Leeds her name was attached to numerous benefit performances and at York the couple regularly attended the races, a fashionable haunt even for the grandees of London’s haut ton. When not enjoying northern society, Lady Fleming was preoccupied with the fine tuning of Harewood’s décor. Just as the architects and builders had found her husband difficult to please, they found his wife equally fussy about fabrics and upholstering. As the rooms filled with carpets, lamps, girandoles, mirrors and furniture shipped from the London workshops of Messrs Chippendale and Haig, Lady Fleming was often on hand to inspect the arrangement. Under her direction, cages of chirping birds enlivened the rooms and examples of her own needlepoint were laid over the seats of chairs. When adjustments to the interior were concluded she busied herself with the design of the ornamental garden and the layout of the estate’s pleasure grounds. Her role as mistress of a country house carried with it a variety of novel distractions and duties. Now, as Edwin
Lascelles’s spouse, her obligations were no longer those of a widowed mother of two girls but those of the prominent wife of a powerful landowner whose priorities and agenda transcended the requirements of all else.
Lady Fleming’s remarriage was to alter the lives of everyone. Her daughters who had lived for seven years without a father would be expected to adapt not only to Mr Lascelles but to the unfamiliar routines of an alien house ordered by an army of suspicious staff. The move to Yorkshire was a startling change of scenery to Jane and Seymour, aged sixteen and thirteen, who had known only the swaggering manners of Mayfair and the stench of London’s streets. Harewood was a two-day ride from the capital through rocky, tufted landscapes and stony villages from which the odd expression of modern technology, a thumping mill or glowing furnace might be seen. The north was a desolate and wild place. From their top floor rooms at Harewood they could hear the nocturnal scream of foxes, while the harsh Yorkshire weather, the ripping winds and curtains of rain made the terrain seem both inhospitable and intriguing.
Lady Fleming’s daughters would not have been left entirely to their own devices in this new environment, but they could no longer rely on their mother’s supervision. This situation would not be as detrimental to Jane as it would be to her younger sister. As the elder of the two girls, Jane, described as ‘an ornament to her sex’ fulfilled the feminine ideal in every respect. Pretty and graceful, her delicate features and long, noble nose distinguished her as the more attractive of the Fleming sisters while her impeccable behaviour led Roger Lamb to describe her as ‘a pattern, not merely of engaging manners but of the most amiable and virtuous life’. Seymour could not compete with her sister’s perfection. She was judged more severely as headstrong and wilful, and was condemned for ‘possessing more forwardness than discretion’. In spite of the efforts of her tutors, Seymour’s education suffered. Her poorly written letters, riddled with basic spelling errors indicate a lack of regular instruction or of interest in learning. Intellectual pursuits did not appeal to her, instead Seymour preferred physical activities and sport. Access to her stepfather’s new stables and expansive estate enabled her to hone her skills as a horsewoman and eventually to make her name among society as ‘an equestrienne’. She also excelled at card games. As a teenage girl she not only gained a reputation for being ‘very assiduous in calculating the odds at whist and piquet’ but also ‘distinguished herself in the rooms at Bath with her dancing as well as her personal charms’.
In truth, a sparkling intellect would not have made either Seymour or Jane more desirable as a potential wife. Their knowledge of appropriate etiquette and deportment, their conversational skills and their mastery of the traditional female accomplishments such as music and dance, an understanding of French and elegant penmanship was what genteel society required. In the Fleming sisters’ circumstances, as one pundit wrote, had neither girl ‘possessed one personal attraction’ they ‘had at least seventy thousand charms which every fortune hunter contemplated with inexpressible admiration’.
As Jane and Seymour edged towards marriageable age, the inevitable rumours about the size of their respective inheritances had begun to bubble through society. No one was certain of the precise sum. The distended figure seemed to swell with every gasp of astonishment. The London newspapers mentioned that each sister was entitled to £70,000, while Edward Gibbon believed that it was £80,000. The Leeds Mercury exceeded all estimations with the claim that it was in fact £100,000. Lady Fleming remained complacently silent on the subject. It was in neither of her daughters’ interests to quiet the whispers. The true total, as reflected in family documents was closer to £52,000 each, a gargantuan amount roughly equivalent to £66.2 million today. The majority of this, like most wealth in the eighteenth century, was tied to land and the rents that might be demanded from it. Only a fraction was readily accessible as cash, but this hardly mattered when fortune of any description papered over all ills. Wealth was the century’s panacea and the acquisition of it, especially through marriage became one of the period’s obsessions. In an age of change and instability, money purchased security. It also unlocked the door to the halls of power. It promised access to comfort, respect, success, and a political voice. A large enough sum offered a life of opulence and the prospect of a peerage. A marriage portion the size of that entailed upon the Fleming girls might buoy up another family’s declining fortunes or catapult their husbands into influential realms of government. With such prizes at stake Seymour and Jane would not lack for suitors; their principal concern would be to find gentlemen who could offer them titles in exchange for their riches.
Among the many hopefuls who paid their respects to the Miss Flemings was Sir Richard Worsley. When he announced to Gibbon in 1772 that he intended ‘to marry in five months’ it was Jane on whom he had set his designs. In spite of the criticisms levelled at him for arrogance and aloofness, Sir Richard had grown into a temptingly handsome man. At twenty-one he was described as being tall, with an ‘athletic figure and manly exterior’ which ‘might prejudice a woman in his behalf’. His boyish features had strengthened into ‘an agreeable countenance’ and his large grey eyes, full mouth and a firm jaw line were complemented by a head of dark hair. At the time, the rent on Worsley’s estates was believed to bring him an annual income of between £2,000 and £3,000, the equivalent of roughly £2.5–£3 million today. In an era when a middle-class man and his family might live in comfort for £400 per year, Sir Richard’s assets rendered him soundly rich. With a baronetcy to crown his fortune and a provision of good looks ample enough to sway young ladies and their hesitant mamas, Worsley would have ranked highly on any list of marriage candidates.
The baronet’s introduction to Edwin Lascelles and his wife probably occurred in London, as a result of their shared political interests. In the spring or summer of 1772, Sir Richard received an invitation to visit the family at Harewood, where the spacious rooms still smelt of freshly cut oak and clean fabric. At the time, the baronet was contemplating a grand scheme for the renovation of Appuldurcombe and doubtlessly was eager to inspect the recent achievements of Lascelles’s architects. The possibility of wooing the eldest of the two Fleming sisters was another motive for undertaking an inconvenient and expensive excursion to Yorkshire. Determined to make an impression on his potential in-laws Worsley equipped himself with ‘a new carriage, new liveries, and every external requisite’. Accompanying him was his steward, Richard Clarke, a man on whose friendship and advice he would lean for most of his life. Accounts of his early relations with the Fleming sisters suggest that in spite of his tailored appearance, his impressive brigade of shiny-buckled servants and his shellacked carriage, the object of his attentions failed to warm to him. After several days in his company Jane ‘soon discovered the emptiness of her admirer’. However, before his departure Worsley was determined to make a bid for her hand. Unable to read or comprehend her apparent lack of interest, his persistence forced her to ‘reject him with disdain,’ and ‘give him a positive refusal on his outset’.
As this romantic spectacle unfolded, the fourteen-year-old Seymour had been studying its male protagonist with fascination. As Jane’s junior by nearly three years, she was still considered too young to enter into the game of courtship, but this did not deter Seymour from youthful attempts at flirtation nor did it prevent Sir Richard reciprocating with playful overtures of his own. By the time the gates of Harewood were opened to Worsley’s London-bound carriage, the seeds for a successful later encounter had already been sown.
It was 1775 when the younger Miss Fleming, aged seventeen, next dropped a curtsy to Sir Richard. They ‘renewed their former acquaintance’ amid the feathers and fans of the assembly rooms at York Races. Not wishing to hurry either of her daughters into a hasty union, Lady Fleming adopted the strategy of dangling her lavishly endowed girls under the noses of as wide a range of potential husbands as the passing years would permit. A suggested engagement between Jane and Lord Algernon Percy had recently amo
unted to nothing while Seymour had yet to encourage the advances of any suitor. This was her second spring on the marriage market and having shed the last of her childish figure she appeared before Sir Richard with the confidence of one accustomed to moving in elite society. In recounting the tale of their courtship, an anonymous Grub Street gazetteer records that the two took magnetically to one another, ‘he danced with her the whole evening; the next day they were inseparable, and the day after that they were constant companions upon the [race] course and at the assembly’. ‘Before the end of the week’, he continues, Worsley ‘had obtained a promise of her hand’. It is likely that their affections were sealed nearly as quickly as the author intimates. The racing season at York opened in May and by the 17th of June Gibbon writes about a dinner he gave at which Sir Richard announced to the assembled guests that ‘He is going to marry the youngest Miss Fleming’. He surmised that his friend was not compelled by passion alone, but rather by ‘love and £80,000’.
Indeed, pecuniary issues more than emotional desires played the largest role in dictating when a couple might marry. While fashion now demanded that love or at least an abiding mutual affection should form the foundation of a marital union, a marriage contract which committed to writing the financial expectations and arrangements of both parties always lay at the core. Negotiations between the solicitors and trustees representing Sir Richard and Seymour’s respective interests began shortly after the confirmation of their engagement and took several months to complete. As a woman and a minor, Seymour’s concerns were represented by her uncles, Francis and Edward Colman who held legal responsibility for her share of her father’s estate and for the decisions made on her behalf. By August it had been agreed that Seymour would deliver to her husband on their wedding day ‘for his sole use and benefit’ a parcel of property and ready cash. From a total of £52,000, £19,645 11s. 6d. was to be invested in the purchase of lands adjacent to the existing Appuldurcombe estate, a gesture which would expand Sir Richard’s holdings and therefore his political influence. At Worsley’s insistence, a further £4,789 15s. would be put towards the purchase of an appropriate London town house for the couple. The bitterness of his father’s disgrace still lingered in his thoughts. He had learned from Sir Thomas’s mistake that an impressive house in town was essential to a gentleman’s self-respect. Accordingly, before their wedding the deeds of sale were signed for a recently built property on Stratford Place, a short street off the western end of Oxford Road, near enough to Mayfair to be considered within the pale of fashion.
The Lady In Red: An Eighteenth-Century Tale Of Sex, Scandal, And Divorce Page 3