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Variety
The crowd that gathered on that July evening had eagerly pushed their way through the doors of the Haymarket Theatre and spilled into the pit. The wine merchant had escorted his wife to her seat, beside the ironmonger and his children. Servants in livery elbowed each other at the back; the cabinetmaker exchanged coy glances with the milliner’s apprentice, one of many women fanning themselves vigorously against the stifling heat. Linen wilted and rivulets of sweat washed away carefully applied powder. People smoothed the backs of their skirts and lifted the tails of their coats before settling on to the hard benches and seats. With the stage before them and the boxes hanging at either side, they were ideally situated to watch as the drama of the playhouse commenced.
Georgian London came to the theatre not only to watch the performances advertised on the evening’s playbills, but to partake in the unscripted dramas around them. High within the candlelit semicircle of the house was a network of smaller stages. Nightly, the players treading the boards found themselves in competition with the actors of fashionable society who drew the attention of the audience with their own unpredictable plots. The draped and fringed interiors of the boxes hosted a full slate of entertainments–scuffles between peers, melodrama as the gaze of a wife met that of a mistress, political posturing between Whig and Tory supporters and even the occasional pyrotechnical display as a lady’s stacked coiffure dipped into an open flame. On the night Lady Worsley and George Bisset cast Seymour’s white cloak over the rim of their box, the audience was midway through a long-running serial of which this performance formed only one scene.
As the spectators called out to the lovers in their roost, Lady Worsley failed to show the slightest hint of embarrassment or remorse. Seymour wore her fallen status with delight, knowing that her carefree attitude would encourage Grub Street to produce further ammunition in her war against Worsley. Weekly, her character was pelted with printed insults. There was no crime against decency which she was not accused of committing. She was called ‘an utter enemy to all amorous monopoly’, a woman who ‘laid her wares open to every fair trader’ and who had become ‘a horrid Picture of Infamy’. They marvelled at her unfeminine shamelessness in ‘fully declaring her innermost sentiments without the least reserve’ and ‘openly plunging … into the Gulph of Carnal Variety without pour-traying even an inclination of Reluctance’. Over the course of several months, Seymour’s baiting of the press had produced the desired outcome. In addition to the mocking caricatures gummed into the engraving shop windows, the printers of Grub Street had unleashed a tide of pamphlets, poems and purported memoirs on to the booksellers’ shelves. Lady Worsley’s ‘notorious frailty’, wrote the Monthly Review, had been ‘a lucky thing for the catchpenny authors, versemen and prosemen’ who feathered their nests with her misfortune.
While her husband bore the brunt of the caricaturists’ ridicule, Seymour was the satirists’ favourite target. Aside from the frequently reprinted trial transcripts and almost daily reports of her activities in the newspapers, by July there were at least seven works which claimed to detail her exploits. The first of these, The Whim!!! a mildly erotic poem which turned the events of the Maidstone bath into rhyming couplets, appeared in early March. Two weeks later, Variety, or Which is the Man? stole its thunder. Borrowing its title from the two popular plays being staged at the time of the criminal conversation trial, this inflammatory poem enraged moral sentiment with its speculation on Lady Worsley’s lewd inner thoughts. The need to find ‘that rich jewel, Content’ led her to ‘taste carnal infamy’, the work claimed, before listing a series of experiences with an assortment of ‘swains’ who had failed to please her. She sighs,
All diff’rent these poor garbage were,
Some fat, some lean, some brown, some fair;
In short thro’ every change I went,
But ne’er cou’d find to keep Content.
At last, after running through ‘a variegated train’ of lovers, Bisset had captured her ‘incessant wand’ring eyes’. The filthy poem’s unapologetic tone scandalised its readers, and as the author had hinted that these were the actual thoughts of Lady Worsley, the pages were destined to fly off the booksellers’ shelves.
For the remaining weeks of March and most of April letters were handed into the offices of the Morning Post speculating on the work’s authorship. ‘It is astonishing to what number of authors the new poem Variety … is attributed,’ wrote the Morning Post. ‘Some declare it to be the production of Lord———; others say, who pretend to be in the secret, that it is written either by Mr Sheridan or Mr Tickell … but we can assure the public that this popular poem is not the production of either of these gentlemen.’ On the 17th of April, the newspaper announced, ‘After all the various conjectures concerning the real author of the poem Variety we can assure the public from indisputable authority that this popular poetic trifle is the production of a creature of Sir Richard Worsley’s in order to expose his Lady in as ignominious a manner as possible’, but this proved to be untrue. The baronet wrote to the editor himself to deny the claim and asked for a note of correction to be printed the following day, stating that ‘the paragraph inserted in this paper yesterday asserting the above poem to be written by a creature of Sir Richard Worsley’s is an impudent falsehood, and without the least foundation whatsoever’. This came only a week after another declaration had appeared, that ‘The author of Variety … intends to shortly avow himself in the public papers in order to prevent all future controversies upon that subject.’ He never did come forward.
Amid this confusion, Seymour chose to remain silent. The public were growing increasingly anxious to hear Lady Worsley’s own voice, to have a justification for her debauched and unrepentant behaviour. They wanted to know her side of events, they desired an explanation for her elopement, a description of the horrors or all-consuming lust which drove her to abandon her husband. Instead, Seymour kept them waiting. In the last week of March, her decision to send ‘one of her servants on Saturday morning to Mr Swift, on Charles St, St James with orders to purchase fifty copies of the new poem published by him entitled, Variety or Which is the Man?’ baffled the public. Was this an attempt to quash the work by removing an entire print run of fifty pamphlets from Mr Swift’s shop? The Morning Post concluded to the contrary, commenting, ‘the only reason which our correspondent can give for her singling out this poem from among many hasty productions that have made their appearance on the same subject is to distribute copies of it amongst her gallants that they may no longer be deceived with the flattering idea of their superiority over her affections but shew them the real man on whom she has fixed her attachment!’ With neither a confirmation nor a denial that Variety represented Lady Worsley’s true feelings, the curious continued to exchange their shillings for a peek between the covers. Like the Pye Donkin trial transcripts which were still spinning off the presses, Variety, ‘due to uncommon demand’, went through at least seven reprints in roughly six weeks. Two of London’s more prominent booksellers, William Swift and Son and George Kearsley, could not replenish their stocks quickly enough and were prepared literally to fight in order to corner this lucrative trade in Worsley dross. At the height of the furore, as the printing presses were grinding out stanzas of Variety past midnight, the Morning Post reported that ‘A challenge was lately sent by Mr Kearsley the bookseller to Mr Swift … to fight him near the Powder Mills, Hounslow Heath’. Gratefully, ‘the dispute was amicably adjusted’ without the need for bloodshed.
By April, Variety’s sensational subject matter had inspired not only a duel but an artist’s imagination. Until now, Lady Worsley had avoided being the focus for caricaturists’ ridicule, but James Gillray, the artist responsible for savaging her husband, was about to turn on her. Although lampoonists had taken every opportunity to fill their tablets with representations of her exposed breasts, naked hips and hiked-up skirts, no printmaker had dared to depict the rapacious whore of Variety’s verses
with her conquests. Gillray’s cartoon, A Peep into Lady W!!!!y’s Seraglio, sprang from the The Whim’s introductory address, where the author reminds Seymour of ‘a conversation with some officers’ when she had ‘expressed a wish … to form a Male Seraglio’. It was further whetted by the imagery from Variety’s couplets, in which she boasts of taking a ‘strange motley crew’ to her bed. From these points of inspiration the caricaturist created his licentious picture of Lady Worsley.
Along a staircase leading down to Seymour’s bedchamber are nine assorted admirers, anxiously awaiting their turn. The ‘Messalina of the Modern Age’ can be seen in a cut-away, eagerly straddling her partially smothered partner. ‘Give all thou canst and let me dream the rest!’ she exclaims between kisses. Her victim’s troubled gaze suggests that the request has taxed him to his physical limits. Lady Worsley’s insatiability had already laid waste to his predecessor, who is seen weakly pulling up his britches while limping out the back door. ‘O dear,’ he moans, ‘I believe it’s all over with me.’ Where Seymour’s libido is concerned, however, there is little cause for worry; the next of her stallions stands at the ready. With his ear against the door awaiting his cue, a fashionably dressed young man looks to his companion and comments, ‘Hark! My turn’s very near!’ Smiling with anticipation his friend urges him, ‘Then do pray be quick.’ Behind this pair is an irritated figure in military dress, bearing an uncanny resemblance to Gillary’s image of Sir Richard Worsley in his other lampoon, Sir Richard Worse-than-Sly. With hands on hips, he snarls over his shoulder at a bearded Jew with whom he argues. ‘Tish!’ exclaims the Yiddish speaker. ‘My turn’s to be served before you.’ The Worsley character regards him impassively while grumbling, ‘You lie, Sir. Damme.’ Behind this feuding duo is an impatient man in country dress; with his walking stick tucked under his arm, he jostles the throng. ‘Yoiks,’ he calls out. ‘Hark forward below there.’ The next in the queue is more relaxed. A fat clergyman, half asleep on his feet is yawning broadly, resigned to a long wait. The thin fop who breathes down his neck is more agitated. Squinting into a pair of pince-nez spectacles, he surveys the long line and sighs, ‘Bless me, when will my turn come?’ He will not have to endure a wait as lengthy as the two rakish friends at the back end of the queue. ‘Zounds my time will never come,’ complains the last, grasping his head in frustration. His cheerful associate looks at him and laughs, ‘Ha, ha, ha, the Devil take the hindmost, say I.’ As the viewer pulls back from the drama, Gillray’s commentary can be read on the architecture. Borrowing from the seventeenth-century playwright, Nicholas Rowe, he has framed the scene along the staircase with a quote from The Fair Penitent: ‘One lover to another still succeeded. Another and another after that –And the last Fool is welcome as the former: Till having lov’d his hour out he gives place, And mingles with the herd that went before him.’ Over Lady Worsley’s bedchamber is placed a subtle, but stinging jest: a portrait of the chaste Lucretia, a Roman heroine so determined to preserve her virtue that she killed herself after a rape robbed her of it.
As shrewd men and women of business, London’s booksellers and printmakers knew how to capture the public’s waning attention. Affixing A Peep into Lady W!!!!y’s Seraglio, described as ‘an elegant frontispiece, designed and etched by an eminent artist’, to the fifth and sixth editions of Variety was a foregone conclusion. Attaching a salacious picture to the lurid poem breathed further life into it. The publication’s runaway success seemed unstoppable, until the 20th of April. On that morning the Morning Post ran a simple advertisement: ‘Published today, An Epistle from Lady Worsley to Sir Richard Worsley printed by P. Wright’. The pamphlet was the one for which everyone had been waiting. Lady Worsley had spoken.
An Epistle from Lady Worsley to Sir Richard Worsley met the same frantic demand as its predecessors. By the end of the day, those who had sent their servants down to ‘The Booksellers of Paternoster Row, Piccadilly, the Strand, the Fleet and the Royal Exchange’ in the hope of buying a bound edition were ‘to meet with disappointment’. The excited readers waiting for Lady Worsley’s purported confessions were entirely unaware that this latest piece of Grub Street drivel had not been designed to answer their questions or even to titillate them. Rather, this production, composed by an anonymous hack, was the latest and biggest cannonball in Seymour’s arsenal and she intended to fire it at her husband. Its strategic arrival on the booksellers’ shelves was evidence of a continuing siege. Behind the public façade, pasted with engravings of Maidstone baths and cuckolds and decorated with slanderous verse, the legal battle of Worsley v. Worsley continued to rage.
For a variety of reasons, some of which are not entirely documented, Worsley’s suit for Separation from Bed and Board faced a number of obstacles. Disagreements between the parties about the conditions of the separation continued long after the proceedings at Doctors’ Commons had concluded in late February. In the early spring of 1782 Lady Worsley’s most immediate concern had been her missing clothing. On the day after the trial, brimming with a victor’s confidence, Seymour had ‘appeared personally’ alongside her solicitor Robert Dodwell at the Consistorial Episcopal Court in London to register her complaints in the form of a lawsuit. It was claimed that ‘at the time of her separation’ Lady Worsley ‘took no other wearing apparel with her than what she wore at the time’, and that in the intervening months she had ‘received but very few cloaths and wearing apparel’ from her husband. In spite of ‘applications … repeatedly made to his agents to deliver the [clothing]’ Worsley had ‘consistently made a refusal’ to give the items to her. No refutation of these accusations was forthcoming. As the baronet had gone into hiding following the trial’s calamitous verdict, his solicitor, James Heseltine could only request time ‘to verify … the truth of some matters’. Sir Richard was ordered to give an answer by the last day of the legal quarter. Worsley’s response to his wife’s action was contemptuous. He made no effort to abide by the judge’s request, choosing instead to ignore the edict and to address the issues at his leisure.
This was a game of wills and the baronet was stalling. His possession of Lady Worsley’s clothing and jewels was one of his last levers of influence. The law had robbed him of justice, leaving him with little alternative but to mete out punishment in the way he saw fit. As his wife waited anxiously for her urgently required wardrobe, Worsley stubbornly sat on his hands. What he hadn’t expected was his wife’s outrage. In each of his attempts to trample Seymour’s schemes and to contain her behaviour, he had failed, underestimating at every turn the ferocity he inspired in her. Lady Worsley’s reaction to her husband’s prevarication was swift. Prior to the trial, she had threatened to publicly denounce Sir Richard. Without an opportunity to defend her actions in court, she had no choice but to turn to the print media if she wanted to make her side of events known. Now, frustrated and furious, she was ready to fulfil that promise and ‘fully declare her innermost sentiments without the least reserve’.
Like The Maidstone Whim and Variety, Lady Worsley’s proclamation was written in verse by a hired scribe. A skilfully crafted work of insults and libertine philosophy, the Epistle is deeply vitriolic. ‘Detested Man!’ she barks at Worsley in the first line of her address, ‘To Thee I write, no follies to confess’; instead, in this pronouncement it was her ‘chief delight to own’ that the baronet never satisfied her. Then, for the next sixteen pages, she elaborates on her complaints.
Foremost among these was what the lampoonists had already guessed: Sir Richard was impotent. That which ‘from thine arms I never could receive’ had driven her to seek comfort in the beds of his associates. After all, she claims, ‘man was a creature made our wants to bless’, and if ‘husbands can’t perform their dues’ then ‘surely they should excuse … The working passions of the tender Dame’. Then she twisted the knife; his good friend Bisset was quite capable of satisfying her,
From him no teizing titillations came;
He rais’d those passions which he well could tame
… had you seen me on his breast reclin’d
Lips glu’d to lips, and limbs with limbs entwin’d
With oft repeated acts of dalliance spent,
My lust quite sated, and my heart content.
According to Seymour, Worsley was too effete, too foppish to please her, or any woman for that matter. She grouped him among the ‘impotent Italian Beaux’, a euphemistic reference to homosexual men. Failing to provide ‘a more substantial food’, such macaronis ‘only serve to tantalize the Fair’. These are not real men, those ‘Whose joy it is to flutter at a play’ or who pass their time repeating ‘the news or scandal of the day’. Lady Worsley’s desire is for a man of physical and emotional substance, someone of ‘intrinsic worth, not tinsel clothes’. Her husband, the antiquarian, the artistic patron, the enlightenment thinker, driven by rational thought rather than passionate feelings, bored her. ‘Let other senses have an equal share,’ she exclaimed with the enthusiasm of a Romantic, ‘Nor think all pleasure center’d in the ear!’
Lady Worsley suggested that love played no role in the baronet’s decision to wed her. Rather, it was the ‘base chinking of Ten Thousand Pound’ that had enticed him. As affection had always been absent from their marriage, their relationship was soon eroded. Referring to herself as ‘the Wife whom Fortune made you wed’, she eventually came to ‘detest’ his bed and ‘loath’ his name. On her part, she admits, it was her youthful capriciousness and ‘inconstant charms’ that brought her ‘once a Virgin to thine arms’. However, marriage to Sir Richard held only disappointment. She felt like ‘Some hapless Fatima … in some seraglio’s dismal gloom’, a ‘solitary wretch’ who, completely alone, ‘tells to heav’n … her inward pains’. Removed ‘from her country and her friends’, but
The Lady In Red: An Eighteenth-Century Tale Of Sex, Scandal, And Divorce Page 24