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

by Hallie Rubenhold

  The routine at Coxheath had grown boring and the men were becoming indolent. While their fellow officers in America were facing down the Continental Army at the Battle of Monmouth and expiring from heatstroke in oppressive conditions, they were idling in the Kentish fields. ‘I find it a very easy thing to be a soldier,’ Morton Pitt wrote from his shady tent; ‘it is however, too much of a lounge …’ Even Sir Richard was becoming fat and listless under a regime of bacchanalian indulgence. His personal physician, Dr Scot was concerned enough to scold him: ‘You may fight like Caesar, but you can not drink like Antony. You may write like Pliny but you can not cope with Apicius. You can be all that you ought to be, but you can not deviate; you are severely punished when you descend to the baseness of a toastmaster …’

  Drinking, dining and gambling were not the only diversions popular among the officers and ladies at Coxheath. Ennui was easily dispelled with a bit of intrigue and adultery. As the Duchess of Devonshire had noted, the camp was bristling with handsome young gentlemen with little more to do than scribble billets-doux, flirt over card tables and visit ladies in their husbands’ tents. In the five months between June and early November the Duke of Devonshire took Lady Jersey as his mistress, Lady Melbourne became pregnant with the Earl of Egremont’s child and Lady Clermont aborted a baby she had conceived through a liaison with a local apothecary. Over that summer as well, the Countess of Derby threw caution to the wind and openly pursued a flirtation with the Duke of Dorset, for whom she later left her husband and destroyed her reputation. It is hardly surprising that Coxheath soon became renowned as a cesspit of moral laxity, one which both outraged and titillated the public. In a matter of months, lampoons such as J. Mortimer’s A Trip to Cocks Heath which featured penis-shaped cannons being admired by sexually aggressive women were appearing in London’s print shop windows, ensuring that the licentious behaviour of 1778 was committed firmly to record.

  When in 1781 a return to Coxheath was proposed, the prospect must have met with roguish smiles from the officers of the South Hampshire Militia. In response to the continuing American conflict, Sir Richard’s regiment had spent the past three years marching around the south of England, from the Isle of Wight to High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. Only their posting to London after the Gordon Riots of 1780 interrupted their circular progress. It would have been with memories of an earlier, less war-weary summer that they erected their tents on the fields outside of Maidstone for a second time. Once again, Lady Worsley followed her husband to Coxheath. However, on this occasion she was in the third trimester of a pregnancy and accompanied by her lover.

  Throughout the period of their encampment, from June through to early November, the recently enlisted Maurice George Bisset was to be found at her side or in the company of her husband. According to the regiment’s surgeon Richard Leversuch, the baronet and his wife could be seen ‘at the camp almost every day attended by … Mr Bisset’. Observers did not fail to notice that the captain and the commander’s wife often slipped away together. In fact, the sight of George Bisset ‘attending Lady Worsley in riding and on horseback’ was so ubiquitous that mention of it appeared in the Morning Post. It was quipped that the captain’s ‘attention to a certain belle militaire at Coxheath’ had earned him ‘the appellation of Lady Worsley’s aid de camp’. While these coquettish activities may have raised eyebrows, the true complexity of their triangular relationship remained submerged.

  By 1781, the fad for living between canopies of canvas on Coxheath had passed. Instead, the majority of officers and their wives opted for sensible accommodation in Maidstone. Sir Richard hired a spacious house for the summer and insisted that his friend Bisset take ‘an apartment’ (a set of rooms) within it. This was an unusual gesture, particularly when the baronet might have offered lodgings to his cousin, Thomas Worsley, who was also among his captains. Equally peculiar was his decision to hire an entirely new team of domestic staff for his period of residence there. Traditionally, owners of large households transported a handful of their most trusted servants between their homes, hiring additional help when required, but when the Worsleys moved to Maidstone not so much as a lady’s maid or a gentleman’s valet was retained. Several months later, when the regiment decamped to winter quarters at Lewes, the entire household was promptly dismissed again. However, in order to lessen the practical difficulties of the move, Seymour was permitted to keep her new maid, Mary Sotheby. Whatever transpired between the baronet, his wife and her lover at Maidstone demanded the utmost secrecy.

  It is no coincidence that the arrival of George Bisset in both of their lives heralded a sudden reinvigoration of Worsley’s interest in his wife. Far from being ignorant of Seymour’s affair with their neighbour, her husband openly encouraged it. The situation provided him with the vicarious sexual thrill of observing another man adore his spouse; of watching a lustful interloper covet and enjoy his possession. The possibility that Sir Richard harboured homosexual longings for Bisset cannot be discounted. The eagerness with which the baronet pulled his neighbour into his life, the intensity and regularity of their companionship which observers described as existing on ‘the strictest footing of intimacy’, is behaviour unmatched in any of Worsley’s other friendships. Whether or not such feelings were reciprocated or acted upon may never be known. In the eighteenth century, the crime of sodomy carried the death penalty and an accusation of an inappropriate relationship between two men was a serious matter. Any unorthodox desires or interactions would have to be painstakingly hidden or repressed altogether.

  By inviting Bisset into his home as a lodger the baronet was able to varnish the trio’s practices with an innocent veneer, while a household of temporary servants ensured that suspicious tales were never conveyed back to the Isle of Wight. The Georgian elite with their innate sense of entitlement felt free to pursue a sexual code which differed markedly from the accepted norm. Fashionable society was particularly notorious for its liberal attitude. Among the Worsleys’ acquaintances, the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire both enjoyed a string of lovers before settling into a state of concubinage with Lady Elizabeth Foster. Similarly, the baronet’s friend Sir William Hamilton was later to share his wife, Emma, with her lover, Lord Nelson. Title, wealth and influence often shielded the highly privileged from destructive criticism. It was also to their benefit that society was still of a mind to accept innocent explanations for suspicious situations so long as any incriminating behaviour was scrupulously concealed from view. The drawing of an opaque curtain of discretion across a love affair was considered essential.

  Such a curtain had been pulled over the parentage of Lady Worsley’s second child. As convention dictated, she left the camp in July to begin her period of confinement in London. On the 4th of August 1781 she gave birth to Bisset’s daughter who was baptised twenty-one days later as Jane Seymour Worsley, the acknowledged offspring of Sir Richard. Like many fathers of the landed class who wished to avoid the taint of scandal, the baronet was prepared to accept the illegitimate girl as his own. Five years had elapsed since Robert Edwin had arrived in their nursery and the birth of Jane would quiet speculation about relations between Worsley and his wife. It would also commit their ménage à trois to a pact of absolute silence. Unfortunately, their slippery secret was a difficult one to contain amid the prying eyes of Coxheath.

  By the time of Lady Worsley’s return to camp in early September many had already guessed the nature of relations between Captain Bisset and the commander’s wife. With a renewed sense of passion in the wake of their reunion, the lovers were growing careless. Sir Richard himself was among those to note the couple’s increasingly blatant behaviour. On one occasion after ‘coming rather abruptly into the company of his brother officers’ the baronet was embarrassed to discover ‘Lady Worsley sitting on the Captain’s knee’. He found this compromise of their clandestine agreement alarming. ‘You know that Lady Worsley loves you, Bisset,’ he reprimanded his friend, ‘but you should not take liberties before company, bec
ause it will make idle and censorious people talk.’ However, as the summer diminished into autumn so did the baronet’s insistence on circumspection.

  It had been a balmy, lazy afternoon at camp when Sir Richard, Lady Worsley and the captain decided to visit Maidstone’s cold baths, which lay on the outskirts of the town. They were in high spirits as they strolled through the sun-burnished landscape. In the distance, harvesters shading their faces beneath straw hats moved through the hop fields. The cool stone bathhouse beckoned to them as they approached through the dust. A male and female entrance lay on either side of the structure, directing the sexes to their respective pools where they could strip off and luxuriate in the water. It was not a busy day for bathing and the three were pleased to find they had the facilities to themselves. The gentlemen escorted Lady Worsley to the women’s door before setting off to bathe together in the privacy of the men’s side. Once they had finished, they dressed and went to wait for Seymour beside the female entrance.

  Lady Worsley had hardly emerged from the bath and slipped on her shift (the basic linen undergarment worn by men and women) when she heard her husband and her lover beside the entrance. ‘Seymour! Seymour!’ Sir Richard called out to her, ‘Bisset is going to get up and look at you!’ Suddenly the captain’s face appeared in the window above the door. As he smiled at her, Lady Worsley stepped from the darkness of the alcove where Mary Marriott, the bathing woman was helping her to dress. Moving into the full view afforded by the porthole, she displayed herself openly. The baronet held Bisset tightly in place for five minutes, permitting him to savour the spectacle of his half-naked wife as she teasingly drew on her clothing.

  Once respectably garbed, Lady Worsley threw open the door. At her appearance, the men exploded with laughter, rejoicing in the audacity of their lark. Seymour soon joined them, their light-hearted mirth ringing through the warm air. The three were behaving with particular smugness. On that day the bonds they shared must have seemed unbreakable.

  Their visit to the Maidstone baths could not have lasted more than an hour or so. It was a collection of minutes which Sir Richard would review in his mind repeatedly. The colour of the details would fail to degrade with the years. He would recall it vividly; the words that were spoken, the weight of George Bisset on his shoulders, the heady recklessness of it. Over the next few months he would remember the afternoon with fondness. After that, he would rue it as the most regrettable day of his life.

  6

  A Plan

  The arrival of the chilly rain of October brought change for everyone at Coxheath. As the season began to close its damp grip on the campfires and canvas, the regiment was ordered into winter quarters in Sussex. For several weeks a lengthy convoy of horses, carriages, equipment and wagons wound their way through the muddy countryside to Lewes, a mid-sized coaching town roughly 40 miles from Maidstone. The inhabitants of its steep, cobbled streets watched with excitement as men in scarlet uniforms marched through the thoroughfares. Lewes’s stables were soon occupied by the militia’s sturdy mounts, while the town’s houses were filled by a brigade of strangers: officers, ladies, servants and children. That winter, family residences large enough to accommodate a household of dependants were difficult to find and for the first few days after their arrival, Lady Worsley and Sir Richard were squeezed into cramped rooms at the Starr Inn. Eventually, a suitable house was secured along the fashionable High Street near to their friends, Richard Leversuch and his wife, and Captain and Mrs Isham Chapman. As the Worsleys’ new home was more compact than their Maidstone house, the couple’s ‘lodger’, George Bisset, was forced to seek a bed at one of the inns scattered through the town. He managed to secure a set of apartments at the lodging house of Mr Joseph Tubb, near the Castle Green, only a short uphill walk from the Worsleys’ door.

  This change of circumstance–Bisset’s removal to another house and the shift from the lazy routine of the Coxheath encampment–was certain to have unsettled the lovers. In the weeks that passed between the birth of their child in August and the move to Lewes, it is not unreasonable to believe that the couple’s feelings for each other had intensified. Undoubtedly Lady Worsley had become accustomed to Bisset’s constant presence under her husband’s roof where they, along with the infant Jane were able to live as a small family ensconced in a larger one. The new arrangements at Lewes would have come as a jolt and an unpleasant reminder that while Seymour’s husband had the authority to dictate the terms of their relations, periods of indefinite separation would be inevitable. Although at the time he permitted their relationship, there might come a period when he would not. As the months progressed, the pair began to contemplate the possibility of cutting themselves free entirely from the baronet’s constraints.

  It would not have been an easy decision: the elopement of an unmarried man with his friend’s wife would be regarded as one of the grossest infractions of morality and honour conceivable. Had their heads not been fogged with passion they might have considered the consequences of their proposed action more closely. While it remained shrouded in discretion, their romantic attachment along with their respectable names might have survived intact, but to abscond together would throw their relationship unapologetically into the public gaze and lay them open to the most pointed ostracism. They would forfeit their reputations as honourable individuals and as a result, lose the goodwill of many friends and family members. To make matters worse, both Lady Worsley and Bisset could expect to be dogged by a range of financial and legal difficulties.

  As it was not within a wife’s legal prerogative to sue her husband for divorce the lovers would have to weather these risks in order to force Sir Richard to initiate proceedings. This would be an enormous gamble. Ultimately, their hopes would reside on the aggrieved baronet selecting a course of action that accorded with their wishes: a parliamentary divorce. This route had been taken by many members of the landed classes, such as the Duke of Grafton and Viscount Bolingbroke. It was expensive and would involve a humiliatingly public dissection of the Worsleys’ private lives by the baronet’s friends, political colleagues and rivals in Westminster. It was, however, the only way by which a husband and wife could dissolve a union with a provision for remarriage. It would have been the most amicable of solutions for both parties. The other option, a suit for ‘Separation from Bed and Board’ through Doctors’ Commons was also frequently sought by wealthy husbands wanting to rid themselves of an adulterous wife, though the outcome provided by this type of action would not have been what Seymour and Bisset desired. As Doctors’ Commons (based near St Paul’s Cathedral) was an ecclesiastical court that dealt with disputes of a religious nature (marriage being among them), its rulings were fixed to Christian doctrine. Through this court, spouses could achieve a form of divorce through a legal separation but remarriage for either husband or wife was forbidden. In the end, the choice was entirely left to Sir Richard. He alone could decide whether to exercise vengeance or compassion.

  As Lady Worsley contemplated elopement and divorce, it is more than likely that the Countess of Derby’s cautionary tale entered her thoughts. The Countess’s misadventure had rattled the tea tables of St James’s when it erupted in December 1778. At the beginning of that month the Earl, in a fit of rage, had locked his wife out of their town house. According to furiously circulating rumours he had taken this step to demonstrate that he would no longer tolerate her affair with the Duke of Dorset, a man with whom she had been romantically linked for several years. It was believed that Lady Derby had taken refuge with her lover in the countryside to await her husband’s next move. It had been expected that the Earl, who was himself a dedicated philanderer, would deal with the situation affably, that an agreement would be reached and a divorce secured which would free his wife to marry the man she loved. However, this was not to be the case. The Earl refused to apply for a full divorce through Parliament and therefore condemned his separated wife to a ruinous state of limbo where she remained neither respectably wedded nor free to rema
rry and salvage her damaged reputation. With the hope of sealing their union gone, the Duke of Dorset soon lost interest and comforted himself in the embrace of the opera dancer, Giovanna Baccelli.

  In a period when the public contravention of sexual norms was considered unforgivable in a woman the results for the Countess were devastating. Once tainted by sinful behaviour a woman was regarded as no longer fit to interact with virtuous ladies. Concern for their own reputations would prevent them from keeping company with one who had abandoned her husband and children to lead a life of debauchery. Such adulteresses, Lady Mary Coke wrote, ‘offended against the laws of man and God’. In order to escape the hail of condemnation the Countess eventually fled to the continent in 1780. Now abandoned by her friends and relations, Lady Derby was looked upon as no better than a courtesan, her name uttered by Seymour’s acquaintances with a sneer. Lady Worsley might suffer a similar fate, should her plans fail. It would be her they whispered about. Like Lady Sarah Bunbury, who had also eloped from her husband in 1769, Seymour faced the probability of even being shunned by her own sister, the highly regarded Countess of Harrington. She would certainly no longer be welcomed at Harewood. A fallen woman might expect to find herself entirely shut out.

  At the time, Seymour may have believed that her great wealth would shield her. She had come to her marriage as an heiress in her own right, with a fortune tied to the Brompton estate, and invested in West End houses and Appuldurcombe’s lands. However, on the day of her wedding any assets were passed directly into the custody of her husband to use and distribute as he saw fit. As women were not legally permitted to hold property, Sir Richard had inscribed his name to the legal documentation as one of his wife’s trustees. In the eventuality of his death these possessions would be restored to her and she would be able to nominate another male trustee to safeguard her interests in place of him. The marriage contracts of substantially endowed heiresses often contained clauses which ensured their rights and even an income in unforeseen circumstances. It is probable that Lady Worsley mistakenly believed that divorce, like death would also free her fortune and enable her to remarry as she chose. Regrettably, neither the stipulations of her marriage contract nor the law provided for this. The harsh truth of the situation was that if she chose to leave her husband’s protection she would also relinquish access to any funds. The law was constructed so that women were dependent on the largesse of men: fathers, brothers, uncles, husbands and, in widowhood, their sons. Runaway adulteresses, like whores, were expected to live off the charity of their lovers.