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

by Hallie Rubenhold

  The Royal Hotel employed an army of such spies. In fact, Farrer assured Worsley that before he had departed from Pall Mall, he had already made some basic enquiries about the situation of the lady and the gentleman in number 14. ‘It had appeared from the people of the Hotel,’ he told Sir Richard, ‘that they passed for Husband and Wife and used and occupied only one Bed.’ This being the case, the lawyer continued, it would not be too difficult ‘to contrive that some one or other of the servants of the Hotel might go into their bedroom when they were in bed and see them in it together’. Farrer had assembled similar snares for previous clients with unequivocal success. But it was imperative ‘that the strictest precautions should be used’ so that the couple would ‘not have the least ground to suspect that any such step was being taken to procure evidence against them’. One of the surest methods of accomplishing this was to bring in servants from Worsley’s household; individuals already known to his wife and whose presence in such strained circumstances might even be welcomed. There were many among Sir Richard’s staff who would also be able to positively identify Bisset, a man they recognised as a visitor to Appuldurcombe and to the London house. At the same time, the staff at the Royal Hotel could use these visits as an excuse to gain further access to the lovers’ apartments in the hope of observing the couple’s illicit behaviour. Farrer suggested that the ideal person for the task was Mary Sotheby.

  When Sir Richard had left Lewes the doors of his house were locked behind him. Nearly forty-eight hours had passed before his servants received directions from him in London. Too encumbered by his emotions to write lucidly, Worsley had pressed John Hesse into service as his secretary. It was he who instructed Godfrey to send young Jane, her nursemaid and Mary Sotheby ‘to Sir Richard’s house in Stratford Place in a post chaise’. Seymour’s clothes and jewels were to be packed into trunks and sent with them. Godfrey and the rest of the household were to ‘follow in the most convenient manner’. Even before Farrer had advised him, the baronet had recognised the worth of this precious human and material cargo and its potential use as bait. In this developing scheme, Mary Sotheby was to become Sir Richard’s next pawn, and the house on Stratford Place an auxiliary headquarters for the operation.

  The next challenge was one of logistics. The witnesses had to move quickly, they must not find themselves drawn into conversation, they must observe and leave, all in rapid succession so as not to raise too much suspicion. Farrer himself would orchestrate the exercise, with Mr Topham acting as his assistant. To ensure the seamlessness of events, the recruitment of Mr Weston, the Royal Hotel’s proprietor would also be required. Farrer had called on him discreetly the morning before. He had taken him aside and gingerly disclosed to him that his establishment was the scene of an elopement. The unnamed lady in room 14 had run away from her husband with the gentleman currently sharing her bedchamber. The lawyer revealed that ‘The gentleman and lady were a Mr Bisset and Lady Worsley’, before continuing that he was employed to gather evidence for the divorce and ‘desired that it might be so contrived that some of the servants might have an opportunity of seeing them in Bed together and to observe both their faces’. Gripped by the intrigue of the situation, Weston agreed to help with the plan. With the groundwork in place by Friday evening, Farrer was prepared to launch his attack.

  The drama began on Saturday morning, long before the lovers’ bed curtains were even parted. Anticipating that Lady Worsley and Bisset would rise at a conventional hour, Farrer and Topham arrived at the Royal Hotel shortly after sunrise. At first they established their base in the bar, but as the morning wore into afternoon and hunger strained Farrer’s patience, they moved to the ground floor dining room. Here they could pose inconspicuously as diners while monitoring the situation as it unfolded in the rooms above. The previous evening, Mr Weston had addressed his staff and told them the true circumstances of the couple in number 14. It had been decided that Hannah Commander, the brassy twenty-one-year-old barmaid was sharp enough to spearhead the plan. She and the housekeeper, Anna Watkinson would be drafted in as the hotel’s principal spies. Farrer instructed them that their testimony would be fundamental in the ensuing crim. con. trial and in the divorce hearing. They must both endeavour ‘to see them plainly’ as they lay together in bed. Hannah was to address Lady Worsley directly, to concoct a story if necessary in the hope of luring her into disclosing her identity. To ensure that they followed his instructions, he weighted their pockets with a comfortable bribe.

  Farrer and his two assistants waited all morning for number 14 to tug on their bell rope. It was not until one o’clock that the bell on the board below stairs tinkled. Hannah and Mrs Watkinson snapped into action. As the couple had only just roused themselves from sleep, the housekeeper could enter their lodgings on the pretext of lighting their fire. While their room remained unheated, the pair were more likely to huddle together in bed, providing Hannah with a narrow opportunity of spying them entwined.

  Mrs Watkinson rapped on the door and slipped unobtrusively into the room. As she crouched by the grate, Hannah strode in behind her. Charged by the thrill of flouting the hotel’s decorous code of conduct, the barmaid insolently yanked back the couple’s bed curtains. The lovers jumped in fright. In the commotion, Seymour ‘lifted up her arm … and endeavoured to hide the gentleman’s face’, though she failed to obscure it from the barmaid’s fixed gaze. She stared at them as they cowered beneath the bedding. ‘With an apology to the Lady for this intrusion’, Hannah began, ‘Madam, there is a riding habit left for a Lady in this House and there being no Lady in the House but yourself, may I crave the favour of your name?’

  ‘What?!’ Lady Worsley asked indignantly.

  Hannah ‘repeated her message’. Anna Watkinson, using the disturbance as an excuse to peer into the bed, was now examining the pair.

  Bisset was furious. ‘Ask who it is,’ he commanded, whereupon Hannah replied that ‘she did not know’.

  ‘Go down and enquire who it is,’ Seymour instructed her.

  Hannah and the housekeeper scurried from the room, flew down the stairs and appealed to James Farrer for advice. The lawyer returned them both to number 14, with a lie and specific directions that Hannah squeeze the lady’s name from her lips.

  Unshaken in her resolve to corner the pair, the barmaid reappeared at the bedside. She fed Seymour the invented identity of the riding habit’s bearer. Farrer’s ruse had unlocked Seymour’s guard. ‘Might I beg the favour of Madam’s name?’ Hannah enquired.

  ‘Lady Worsley,’ came the voice from behind the bed hangings.

  In the ground floor dining room, Hannah relayed her tale to Farrer who listened intently. Not only had she caught sight of the couple in bed and confirmed the identity of the wayward wife, but she had observed further evidence that the pair had given in to their wanton, adulterous lusts. ‘The Gentleman’s coat and dressing gown were lying on a chair at the bed’s foot,’ she told the lawyer, ‘and the Lady’s petticoats and stockings … were lying on the floor by the bed’s side.’ Farrer was pleased with the services of his recruit and would use her again, later in the afternoon in the launch of his rearguard assault.

  James Farrer now had to move quickly. After being served with legal papers, the couple in number 14 felt exposed and might view anything unusual as a potential threat. Their suspicions would only be heightened when the suggested riding habit failed to materialise. The lawyer would have to play his final cards under increasingly difficult circumstances.

  He and Topham went immediately to Stratford Place to see Mary Sotheby. They interrogated her closely and reminded her of the seriousness of the situation. For a young woman from rural Kent, this entire circus of events in which she had accidentally found herself was disconcerting and overwhelming. Farrer and Topham made it clear that they hadn’t much time. They enquired ‘whether she should have any objections to seeing Lady Worsley again’ and also ‘whether she knew enough of Mr Bisset to be certain as to his person upon seeing him’. Mar
y nodded to both questions. ‘Then’ the lawyer directed her ‘to put up a few of Lady Worsley’s most ordinary things to take to her’. In fact, Farrer’s orders contained a deliberate barb which Mary Sotheby omitted from her deposition statement. Whether the design of Sir Richard or his attorney, a decision was made to keep Lady Worsley parted from any useful element of her wardrobe. As Mary rummaged through her mistress’s boxes, Farrer would have been standing over her, monitoring her choices. She was to receive nothing of value nor any item which would ease her distress. Lady Worsley later complained at the cruelty of this act, that she was purposefully sent ‘but very few cloaths … and that such as she had received did not amount to a single compleat dress or a hundredth part of her wearing apparel’.

  Seymour’s maid clutched the small package of mismatched clothing as the two gentlemen escorted her to the Royal Hotel. ‘You must not say anything to Mr Bisset when you see him,’ he instructed her on the way. ‘You must only satisfy yourself as to his person and also as to Lady Worsley’s. You must leave the bundle of cloaths for her and then come away.’ Farrer knew the difficulty that a loyal lady’s maid might have in completing this task when seeing her mistress’s sympathetic expression. Mary Sotheby would have been quivering.

  On their arrival, Farrer handed Mary into the care of Hannah Commander, who had already grown comfortable exceeding the limits of her domain within the hotel. She confidently showed the maid to the lovers’ apartments. Once more, Hannah boldly pushed open the door to the Apollo dining room. Standing on the threshold, Mary Sotheby came face to face with a surprised George Bisset. Before either could properly draw breath, Hannah pulled Mary away and shut the door. She heard Bisset call out to her, but the barmaid had already pushed the girl across the hallway to Lady Worsley’s bedchamber. The door to the Apollo swung open. ‘Mary!’ Bisset shouted after her, pursuing her to the door of number 14 where he watched her approach Seymour. Mary found her mistress ‘at the dressing table’ with Ann Ekelso in her rightful place, ‘attending and dressing her’. Catching sight of her, Lady Worsley stopped suddenly ‘and appeared much startled’. ‘I am quite surprised at seeing you here,’ she spoke cautiously.

  Mary Sotheby could not meet her mistress’s glance. Gently, she laid the bundle of clothing on the table. ‘I am come by Sir Richard’s orders to bring your Ladyship a few things,’ she stated.

  ‘Have you any further messages?’ Seymour asked hopefully.

  ‘No, Madam. I have nothing further,’ she said stonily before retiring, following Farrer’s instructions.

  As the lawyer had anticipated, this meeting shook Mary considerably. Hannah took her down the stairs, and she left immediately. In her eagerness to escape, she passed by Philip Deighton, the Worsleys’ groom, who had unexpectedly appeared in the servants’ entry. The two exchanged puzzled looks but Mary said nothing before fleeing down the road.

  The encounter startled Deighton equally. Unlike his fellow servant, the groom had been summoned by a cryptic note instructing him to come to the Royal Hotel in Pall Mall. He knew nothing of the role he was about to play in Farrer’s scheme.

  When hatching his plot, the lawyer had asked Sir Richard whether there was a trusted member of staff among his household who had worked for him for ‘a respectable number of years’. Worsley had mentioned Philip Deighton, the head groom of his stables at Appuldurcombe, who not only had ‘lived in the service of Sir Richard … for upwards of 10 years’, but who ‘had known Lady Worsley … since the time of marriage’. Deighton was also familiar with Bisset whom ‘he saw very often visiting the house’.

  For whatever reason, Farrer thought it necessary that the groom remain ignorant of his mission until the last possible moment. It was only when he was shown through the door and into the hotel bar that he received his instructions. As she had with Mary Sotheby, Hannah took the groom ‘up one pair of stairs’ and led him across the corridor to number 14. She opened the door, but Deighton, a male servant and one whose concern was the welfare of horses rather than ladies, recoiled at the impropriety of this uncomfortable situation. In order to confirm her identity, Farrer had instructed him to examine Lady Worsley as closely as he could, but shame held him back and he hovered tentatively at the threshold. To worsen matters, his employer’s wife was in a state of dishabille ‘with her hair down as if preparing for dressing’. Articles of her clothing were indecently strewn about and he observed ‘the room to be very much in a litter’. Deighton had no desire to see a once-respected woman in such an undignified state. He could not even bring himself ‘to go far enough to take notice whether it was a bed chamber or not’. However, Lady Worsley caught sight of his silhouette at the edge of the door. ‘Philip,’ she said abruptly, ‘I can not see you now’, and at this cue, Hannah drew him away. She then took him to the dining room and sent him inside. Deighton was told to approach Bisset, and this he did, quite literally stepping ‘nearly up to the gentleman so as to be perfectly satisfied it was him’. This was a threatening move and one which took Bisset by surprise, rendering him aghast, either at the audacity of the groom for so bold a breach of etiquette or from fear alone. Satisfied, Deighton ‘then retired’. Not a word had passed between them.

  Downstairs, he was interviewed by Farrer, who wanted confirmation that the groom was ‘certain he knew and remembered the persons he had seen’.

  ‘Yes,’ Deighton responded, he ‘knew them very well’.

  ‘Then I have no further command for you and you may go home again,’ the lawyer concluded.

  By late afternoon, guests at the Royal Hotel would have noticed that the two questionable gentlemen who had for most of the day fraternised with the servants had at last settled their bill and left. For Farrer and Topham, this had been a profitable excursion, one that they were certain would pay Worsley handsomely.

  No sooner had Farrer gone than the Apollo’s bell began to jingle. Thomas Fort was sent to answer the call. When he entered the dining room he found Bisset in curling papers, having his hair dressed and pomaded by Joseph Connolly. The captain was incandescent.

  ‘Who was that damned impertinent bitch who had shewn those people into these rooms?’ he asked.

  ‘It was the bar keeper, Sir,’ answered Fort.

  ‘She is a damned impertinent bitch!’ he spat. ‘If she comes up in that manner again I will shoot her!’

  This was a distressing matter. From the moment they woke up he and Lady Worsley had been affronted grossly by hotel staff, by servants taking brazen liberties with their position. Their doors had been thrown open to intrusion, their bed hangings rudely parted, they had been subjected to deceptions and disrespect. Such behaviour from domestic staff would always be regarded as unconscionable but in Bisset and Lady Worsley’s perception, these disturbances assumed a sinister shape. By late afternoon the couple knew they had been discovered. Those who had wandered into their rooms unannounced were Worsley’s spies. Their presence and their games were intended to cause as much alarm as possible. It was now unsafe to remain at the Royal Hotel and immediate action was required to prevent further mischief. Connolly was ordered to begin packing his master’s belongings.

  While preparations were being made for their departure, Bisset rang for Hannah Commander to be shown up to the Apollo. There he and Lady Worsley received her with stern faces.

  ‘How,’ the captain asked, ‘did you come to shew such a person as Lady Worsley’s groom up to her bedroom?’

  With an unrepentant retort, Hannah answered plainly, ‘The Servant had desired it.’ She then added, ‘And … a gentleman below stairs had also desired it.’

  Bisset’s temper flared. ‘You should not have done it and ought to have known better!’ he snapped, as if chastening a child. ‘I do not know of any reason why you should have done it. It would be of great injury to this House if it was known that persons of quality had been treated here as we have been.’

  Hannah swallowed her punishment with at least the pretence of humility. Downstairs, however, the sta
ff were feasting on the enormous portion of gossip Farrer had left for them. Their names were Lady Worsley and Captain Bisset, they repeated to one another, and she had run away from her husband. These revelations were certain to have lightened the mood in the Royal Hotel’s kitchens, pantries and laundry but such excitement needed to be managed prudently. Even before Bisset and Lady Worsley had departed, Mr Weston gathered the members of his staff who had attended them–Thomas Fort, Anna Watkinson, Sarah Richardson, Ann Ekelso and the incorrigible Hannah Commander–and gave them a sombre warning. No servant at the Royal Hotel was to ‘mention their names or own who they were’, as ‘it was more than their places were worth’. This held even if they were to have ‘positive orders to the contrary’ by any visitor or enquirer who came to the establishment thereafter. Weston must have mopped his brow as he contemplated the coming months and the inevitability of a very public criminal conversation trial. The Royal Hotel would receive a good deal of publicity, but in the wrong sort of publication.