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

by Hallie Rubenhold

  Shortly after sunset, a hackney carriage pulled into the courtyard of the hotel. Connolly loaded his master’s boxes and Seymour’s assorted patchwork of items into the vehicle before handing the couple into the cab. The shades were drawn and the whip flicked against the horses’ flesh. The wheels began to turn as the lovers escaped once more into the darkness.

  It is uncertain where they headed. As a member of Lincoln’s Inn, Bisset had lodgings at the Inns of Court and it is possible that they retired here briefly until a more permanent address could be found. It is also possible that their departure was planned the day before, as they stared with mounting anxiety at the legal documents. On Friday night, Deerhurst had called upon them and stayed for dinner. In addition to offering an apology for his failures, it is likely that they discussed the future. Now that Bisset would face charges of criminal conversation he and Lady Worsley might consider taking refuge in France, as many fleeing from legal prosecution were inclined to do. However, for various reasons, this option was dismissed. With such a collection of witnesses, Sir Richard held a full house of evidence which he could use against them. The prospect of a trial would have been a menacing one, but in spite of outward appearances, Bisset had a very strong reason for believing that the Court of the King’s Bench would laugh in the face of Worsley’s legion of lawyers and tell-tale servants. Although it bore the hallmarks of a straightforward case of adultery, there were more strands to this tangled story than even Farrer had managed to unpick.

  12

  The World Turned Upside Down

  In the last months of 1781, gentlemen and ladies across England sat down at their escritoires and breathlessly spilled the latest tattle across their writing paper.

  ‘Lady Worsley has played a flaming prank at Lewes to divert the Sussex Corps,’ wrote the diarist Fanny Burney to her literary friend, Hester Lynch Thrale on the 2nd of December. Although her correspondent claimed not to ‘care for’ the woman in question, she was keen to learn the sordid details.

  Four days later, Edward Gibbon scribbled to his stepmother from the House of Commons, ‘You have heard of Lady Worsley? Your Old acquaintance, Sir Richard labours with copious materials for a divorce.’ After folding and sealing that missive, he excitedly began another to Lord Sheffield, ‘Sir Richard Worsley has opened trenches in Doctors’ Commons, and cryed down his wife’s credit with tradesmen …’ It seemed that all of Parliament was discussing Sir Richard’s affairs. Shortly before Gibbon took it upon himself to disseminate the news, the politician Anthony Storer wrote to Lord Carlisle that ‘Lady Worsley is run away from Sir Richard and taken refuge with some gentleman whose name I do not know in the army.’

  There was little the baronet could do to tether the scandal; intelligence of the elopement had broken loose. It was not long before word reached the ears of society’s gossip-monger general, Horace Walpole. From the cloisters of his pastiche Gothic palace, Strawberry Hill, he dipped his sharp-edged quill into the story:

  ‘Two young ladies are gone off–no, this is a wrong term for one of them, for she is just come to town and drives about London, for fear her adventure should be forgotten before it comes to the House of Lords, it is a Lady Worseley, sister of Lady Harrington.’

  Curiously, few of these busybodies could claim to have personally spotted the runaways. Contrary to Walpole’s letter, Seymour and Bisset were not only careful to hide themselves but by early December had fled London altogether, and retreated to Bisset’s house at Southampton. Within a matter of weeks the story had blown like a storm through London before heading south through Hampshire and across the Solent to the Isle of Wight. Even in the countryside avoiding encounters with those ready to gawp and scorn was difficult. ‘Yesterday afternoon I was surprised at the appearance of Lady Worsley and her Gallant Mr Bisset who were together at the Swan in this Town,’ wrote one of the baronet’s neighbours from an inn at Alresford. ‘They came on horseback and set out after dark for Farnham. I pity poor Sir Richard and hope he will never consent to live with such a damn’d bitch. She seemed very shy at seeing me but I did not take the least notice of her as I knew she had elop’d from her husband by a gentleman who brought the news from London.’

  As his wife and her lover took shelter in Southampton, Worsley’s period of internment at John Hesse’s home continued. Unwilling to risk a similar chance meeting with acquaintances, he did little more than stare through the windows, paralysed by his distress. The blow of his wife’s elopement and the ensuing anxiety of initiating legal proceedings had debilitated him entirely. His suit for a separation had been filed by the close of Saturday the 24th, a situation which enabled the baronet to resign himself to sleep that evening in the belief that his crisis had been contained. Regrettably, within a matter of hours misfortune would double back on him with another heavy strike.

  As it always did on a Sunday, morning broke to a rising chorus of church bells. While the tolling echoes rolled through the capital’s narrow lanes and squares, a sea-worn frigate dropped anchor along the Thames. The ship had left the American colonies thirty-eight days earlier burdened with a weighty cargo. A letter was handed to a messenger who tore through the Sabbath streets with an urgent delivery. At midday, Lord North, the Prime Minister was handed the news: General Cornwallis had surrendered to George Washington at Yorktown on the 19th of October 1781. As suggested by the title of the tune played on that historic occasion, the world had turned upside down. For more than a year the Prime Minister had battled against the war’s unpopularity in Parliament. The conflict had dragged on with little indication of success or resolution and this latest defeat would only heighten calls for a swift withdrawal. Caught between the King’s determination to fight on and a parliament demanding an end to hostilities, Lord North soon recognised that his ministry was doomed to fall. His entire administration would be pulled down with him, including one of His Majesty’s most stalwart supporters, Sir Richard Worsley.

  In a string of seven terrible days, Worsley’s entire personal philosophy, one that he had hewn from the solid precepts of honour, duty and place, had been overturned. A wife destroyed the sanctity of marriage, a trusted friend the inviolability of a fraternal bond, an officer the sacrosanct code of respect and deference, and a band of rebels had dishonoured their King and country. A world which had abandoned its natural structures of hierarchy and its sense of order was an inconceivable one to Sir Richard, and it is likely that he struggled with the horror of this concept as much as he did with the unforgivable actions and their consequences. Worsley would have recognised that this latest calamity held grave implications for him. The political influence he enjoyed as part of North’s government would soon crumble. His aspirations, for the time being, would be thwarted.

  The final days of a tragic November had given way to winter, but Sir Richard remained frozen with grief, unable to contend with even the most basic correspondence. Until late December all matters of importance had been deferred to the care of his steward, Richard Clarke and the long-suffering John Hesse who had granted him asylum. However, the arrival of a letter in the period before Christmas shook the baronet from his despondent state and forced him to gather his wits. Although Bisset had hired a team of attorneys to begin plotting his defence the couple had privately hoped that Sir Richard’s heart might soften towards them. Roughly a month after the elopement their expectations had withered, prompting Lady Worsley to resort to a more extreme tack: blackmail.

  Seymour put pen to paper and announced in plain terms to her husband that she had ‘resolved to go to all lengths to circumvent his designs’. ‘If he persisted in … prosecuting the Captain’, she warned, he could expect a counter-suit to be launched against him ‘for the deficiency of her pin money which he had not regularly paid, and which had occasioned her to apply to many others for relief’. Furthermore, if he was ‘still to remain obstinate’ she would see to it ‘that he was exposed’ and made ‘the object of universal condemnation’. As the caretaker of his most volatile secrets, i
t lay in Lady Worsley’s power to do precisely this.

  Under the shadow of this threat Sir Richard agreed to negotiate. The baronet turned to Hesse and his colleague Richard Leversuch to assist with the bargaining. The proposition issued was simple: Lady Worsley was to end her affair with Bisset and ‘return to her conjugal fidelity’. By the 29th of January 1782 the Morning Herald was optimistically reporting that ‘a Rt. Hon. Baronet has offered overtures of reconciliation of a very affectionate nature to his lady’ and that the possibility of this ‘desirable and much wished for event’ occurring was ‘confidently whispered among the beau monde’. However, as Lady Worsley had stated in the message Lord Deerhurst had delivered to John Hesse, she refused absolutely to ever return to Sir Richard and the life of ‘slights and inattentions’ from which she had fled. This being the case and in order to preserve his dignity, Worsley had no choice but to persevere with his suit for criminal conversation and his plans for a separation. Like a gentleman facing his opponent’s pistol in a duel, retreat at the point of danger would be seen as cowardice. Instead, Sir Richard would have to stand courageously as he would have on a field of honour and endure the assault aimed at him.

  With a trial date set for the 21st of February 1782 and Parliament adjourned for its Christmas recess, the baronet quietly retreated to the solitude of Appuldurcombe. On account of his ‘distressed state of mind’ and ‘most melancholy situation’, Richard Clarke watched him closely. He had reason to worry. Within a matter of weeks stories had begun to circulate that once behind the gates of his estate, Worsley’s gloom had hardened into rage. In his dangerously black mood, his return to the cold, empty rooms of his matrimonial home had proven too much. ‘In an aggregate fit of jealousy’ Sir Richard had opened the door to his wife’s dressing room, crossed the floor to her vanity table arrayed with its delicate porcelain boxes and figurines and laid waste to it. Once he had ‘broke all her china’ he turned his savagery on her other keepsakes. He raided her collection of miniature portraits, the small oval faces of her friends and family, and tipped them into the flames of her hearth. Later, he found his own miniature of his wife and ‘threw her picture into the fire’. Worrying reports of the conflagration at Appuldurcombe reached the ears of Lady Worsley by the end of January. It was rumoured that ‘the whole of her former wardrobe had been literally burnt by the hands of Sir Richard’. This was a distortion of the truth, but not an enormous one.

  In effect, the newspapers had combined several pieces of information they had received about Lady Worsley’s continuing struggle to obtain her clothing and jewels. Since the day of her elopement, Sir Richard had held on to the things his wife required most for her comfort and peace of mind: her baby and her belongings. The baronet was venturing that his wife’s anxiety for her child and lack of appropriate clothing would eventually wear her into a pliable state, rendering her desperate enough to make any concession.

  In her time of crisis, Lady Worsley’s considerable wardrobe along with her collection of jewellery was the most precious asset she owned. For a woman of Seymour’s position, wealth was worn. A lady arrayed herself in the latest fabrics and flounces not merely for the sake of fashion but to demonstrate her social status. The nuances of dress, the breadth and variation of wardrobe, the quality of silk and lace were important indicators of rank. Shabby clothing merited suspicion, disdain or indifference, tawdry over-blown attire indicated a lack of breeding, as did dress inappropriate for specific occasions. Lady Worsley’s single suit of clothing, her fashionable but functional brown riding habit, would be wholly inadequate for her needs. Even if she had wanted to flout the rules of convention and appear defiantly in public on her lover’s arm, she was ill-equipped to do so. Her state of distress would be apparent from her increasingly worn skirt and jacket and the falling plumes of her once jaunty hat. Without her billowing sacque dresses, ribboned stomachers and twinkling buckles, she was incapable of making triumphant appearances. Sir Richard had not lost control of his wife entirely so long as he held fast to her petticoats.

  However, the baronet had other reasons for withholding Lady Worsley’s belongings. He did so not merely for reasons of manipulation but out of principle. Worsley understood the value of his wife’s wardrobe in financial terms. Of her marriage portion, £3,000 had been converted into the linen and lace of her trousseau, with further acquisitions made in the years following her wedding. Seymour herself admitted that since 1775 she had ‘expended various considerable sums in the purchase of other wearing apparel and ornaments’. An inventory of her clothing listed among her holdings more than twenty-four gowns in a variety of styles made from muslin, chintz, silk, satin, calico and tabby, in lilac, orange, black, white, green, bearing stripes, embroidery, beads and ruffles. The crowning glories of her collection were two exceptionally expensive ‘suits of point lace with a considerable quantity of other valuable lace’, probably purchased for wear at court. In addition to this she possessed endless pairs of gloves in grey and yellow leathers, boxes of feathers and paper flowers for decorating hats, an assortment of petticoats, tippets, muffs, aprons, cloaks, twelve riding waistcoats, and nine riding hats. This comprised only a fraction of the smaller pieces of attire which she could put on in order to change an outfit’s appearance. In just over six years of marriage, the additions Lady Worsley had made to her wardrobe had increased its value from £3,000 to between £4,000 and £5,000, according to her lawyers’ estimate. When combined with the contents of her jewellery box, believed to be worth £7,000 alone, the total value of her ‘wearing apparel’ might be calculated at roughly £12,000, the equivalent of £15.2 million today.

  In Sir Richard’s eyes, this tremendous asset belonged to him. He had paid the majority of his wife’s millinery and dressmaking bills and therefore felt entitled to retain these possessions. He also recognised the collection’s practical value to the person who held it. Jewellery and expensive clothing could be exchanged for ready cash. If he were to relinquish these items Lady Worsley would have a source of funds at her disposal. She could wriggle free from hardship or purchase ammunition to deploy against him. Money could buy attorneys and bribes, it could silence those eager to spill secrets and encourage timid critics to speak out. It could grease the cogs of the printing presses and construct lawsuits. The baronet knew it would be foolish to part with this armoury and guarded it jealously.

  Lady Worsley felt far more anxiety over the welfare of her daughter. Since the 19th of November, the child and her nursemaid had been left entirely under the direction of Sir Richard, a man with no biological connection to the girl in his care. Until Seymour’s elopement, the baronet had acted according to the codes of fashionable society, choosing to quietly spare his dignity by accepting Jane into the Worsley nursery. By pretending ignorance he had upheld his part of an agreement, but now he was likely to view past promises as null and void. The little cuckoo in his nest, the progeny of a spouse who had betrayed him and a former friend whom he despised would remain a wailing and gurgling remembrance of their deception. However, like Lady Worsley’s apparel, her baby could be used in his strategic game. The longer he could keep mother apart from daughter, the more inconsolable and frantic his wife would grow.

  By law, as an adulteress, Seymour had forfeited all access to her children, but in spite of this Worsley believed she would stage an attempt to see, if not to seize, her infant. In early December, shortly before she and Bisset left London, Lord Deerhurst alerted the couple that Sir Richard had moved Jane to Stratford Place. Driven by hope, Lady Worsley reacted quickly to this news and went immediately to the town house. Finding the door of her former home locked, she rapped incessantly at it. Eventually Godfrey appeared. ‘I have come to the house in order to see my child,’ she announced to him, but the butler shook his head and barred the door, claiming that ‘he was obliged to refuse her admittance’. Seymour then began to plead with him but the servant remained impassive, stating tersely that he ‘had received strict orders from Sir Richard … and from Mr
Farrer, his lawyer, to forbid it absolutely’. The door was shut against her. She made no further attempts to see the child.

  By the late eighteenth century, attitudes to the guardianship of illegitimate offspring had begun to change. A ‘growing moral reluctance by wives to pass off illegitimate children as heirs to their husbands estates’ may have encouraged Lady Worsley’s belief that Sir Richard would be amenable to handing Jane into her care. Unfortunately, the baronet had made it clear that any infant who bore his surname was not legally hers and he did not scruple to use Jane as a bargaining chip in negotiations to secure Seymour’s return. In her determination to turn her back on Sir Richard, Lady Worsley was forced to sacrifice her daughter, though she had not anticipated that the outcome of her decision would result in tragedy.

  In the week that discussions between Sir Richard and Lady Worsley were abandoned and a battle in open court loomed, the lovers received word that their previously healthy infant was dead. Seymour and Bisset believed the worst, that their refusal to agree to the baronet’s terms had prompted the murder of their child. But, grief stricken as they were, their position prior to the criminal conversation trial made their situation difficult. As Jane’s true parentage had been masked since birth, unveiling this secret at such a critical juncture would have threatened Bisset’s case. Should it become public knowledge that the child had been his daughter, and that he ‘had bastardised the plaintiff ’s issue’ the jury would almost certainly push for the maximum penalty. Worsley too would suffer. Not only would he be shamed by these revelations but, given the circumstances of Jane’s death, he would be widely suspected of engineering it. For these reasons, there would be no investigation by a coroner or report made to the magistrate. Locked into a position of stalemate, Bisset refused to let the matter lie and instead initiated his own campaign of enquiry.