By the 29th of May, the day he boarded the Russian sloop Danube bound for the Crimea, an alteration in the baronet’s character had become noticeable. The more sinister shades of his personality, ‘the passions’, that he had claimed to keep in check as a young man had been given much freer rein while he roamed the Mediterranean. Answerable to no one within English polite society, he had grown accustomed to inventing his own morality, one which was more suited to his notions of hierarchy, power and privilege. A sense of entitlement demanded that Worsley not depart the Ottoman Empire without a few spoils. After much perseverance and some bribery he had managed to obtain a handful of items for his collection, including ‘a bas-relief from the floor of a cottage at Ephesus’, which he purchased through a dealer in Constantinople. He had also made a few additions to his growing collection of intaglios and engraved gems. Among the most valued of these was ‘an engraved sardonyx’ on which appeared an epigraph written in Greek, People say what they please, what then? I don’t care’. These objects, along with another of even greater significance, were secured below deck for a voyage to the Black Sea.
Sir Richard had come aboard the Danube following an afternoon lounging at the table of the Russian envoy. Full of dinner and conviviality, his spirits only began to dip ‘on passing the first castles’ along the Bosporus at which point ‘the Turkish custom house officers came on board to visit the ship’. Worsley was not so concerned that they would confiscate the few antiquities in his possession for which he had been granted a firman, but he feared for his other property. As he explains in his journal, the customs officials were in search of smuggled slaves. Should any be found, Turkish law stipulated that the Sultan had the right to seize both the cargo and the ship transporting it. Sir Richard was anxious and later confessed in his diary that in spite of its unlawfulness, ‘I had purchased [a slave] at Constantinople of a Turkish Aga who had been taken in Abyssinia, brought to Cairo, there sold and sent to Constantinople’. As the authorities paced the boards of the vessel, Worsley hoped they would not notice that ‘the boy was concealed under the hatch way’. However, to his great relief, ‘they did not pretend to make a regular search so he was not seen’.
While Worsley had been denied the pleasures (sexual and otherwise) of exercising his absolute authority over a beautiful female captive he found it impossible to give up his desire to experience total ownership of an individual. The Abyssinian boy whom he had taken into his service had been a second choice but a prudent one. Black footboys, attired in turbans and caftans, Moroccan slippers and satin sashes had been seen at the side of wealthy European masters and mistresses for the majority of the eighteenth century. As depicted in many of the period’s portraits as well as in William Hogarth’s engravings, Marriage A-la-Mode and The Harlot’s Progress, a black page was a fashionable accessory. For this reason, Worsley’s young addition to his entourage was unlikely to rouse comment. He could be easily trailed around the palaces of Russia and Eastern Europe and might even be shipped home to England unquestioned.
The dark, frightened face that peered from Worsley’s carriage as he rode up the drive to the Ukrainian home of Samuel and Jeremy Bentham was that of the baronet’s slave. En route through the newly annexed Russian territory of the Crimea to Moscow, Sir Richard had decided to visit Kritchev where Lieutenant-Colonel Samuel Bentham, under the command of Prince Potemkin was heading an extensive project to develop technology, trade and industry in the region. The baronet, who had met Jeremy Bentham only briefly while in Turkey, had invited himself to stay at the brothers’ cavernous but ramshackle house. On the 7th of August he had appeared at the Benthams’ door with little prior warning and two vehicles of servants and equipment. Once settled in, he stayed for a month. During that period, Jeremy Bentham, who had taken a dislike to the baronet on first acquaintance, became increasingly suspicious about the circumstances of the little child in Sir Richard’s party.
As he had been when living with John Hesse, Worsley was an atrocious house guest. When not teasing the brothers with fabricated stories about the severity of Russian laws and the state of the British economy, the baronet occupied himself with the discipline of his footboy. Their home regularly shook with ‘the lad’s shrieks and agonies’, a sound which ‘often tormented’ the philosopher. ‘He treated the poor boy with barbarous cruelty,’ Bentham recorded in his notebooks, ‘nobody could be more wretched than he was in his master’s presence’. The philosopher was especially unnerved by Worsley’s vacillations; one minute distributing beatings and the next ‘calling him his pet’. The worst display of this abuse occurred during an outing with Samuel Bentham to the site where a group of the Lieutenant-Colonel’s soldiers ‘were building some barges upon a new construction’. The party, which included the two brothers and an army general as well as Sir Richard and his page, set off for the banks of the Sozh River in a droshky, or open-topped carriage. Worsley was insistent that his servant should ride inside with them and ‘made the boy sit at a little distance’. But much to Jeremy Bentham’s horror, ‘at any stage where they stopped’ the baronet would drag the child into a place screened from view and thrash him. Those within earshot shrank as ‘as they used to hear the boy crying out piteously, Signor Aga! Signor Aga!’
In his account of Worsley’s stay with them, Bentham avoids describing ‘the black Abyssinian boy’ with whom ‘Sir Richard travelled’ as his servant. What he had observed of the baronet in Turkey–his attempt to purchase Circassian slaves and the vicious treatment of his household–probably led Bentham to conclude that the child who accompanied him was not a salaried member of his domestic staff.
On the 5th of September, Worsley and ‘his pet’ departed Kritchev for Moscow. Due to the state of Russia’s deplorable roads, he had hoped to be in St Petersburg before the first snowfall. When the rivers had frozen solid and the thoroughfares iced into slick runways, the wheels of his calesses were removed once more and this time replaced with sled runners. After three years of travel and in spite of numerous frustrations, Sir Richard had managed to amass a sizeable collection of Greek antiquities, which included several busts and heads, funeral masks, bas-reliefs of ‘the Games of the Circus’, and of ‘Hercules reposing’, fragments of masonry depicting ‘Pluto leaning on a couch’, and ‘a hero covered with the skin of a lion’. Among his haul were also several pieces ‘found in the Acropolis’: ‘an interesting monument’ representing ‘a Syren in affliction for having been excelled by the Muses in singing’ and a relief illustrating ‘Jupiter and Minerva receiving the vows and supplications of an Athenian family’ which Worsley judged ‘to have formed part of the frieze of the cell of the Parthenon’. These ‘with many other curious marbles’ had been, throughout the period of three years, packed into straw-filled crates and ‘transported to England’. His portable cabinet of engraved gems and intaglios would continue to travel with him wherever he ventured. Like a calling card, it guaranteed immediate recognition of his expertise. What became of the human item in Worsley’s collection is unknown. Whether he fled or was abandoned in some foreign city by the baronet, who might have given his slave to a friend like one of his intaglios, may never be discovered.
In the first month of the new year, 1787, Sir Richard Worsley decided it was time to emerge from the obscurity into which he had thrown himself. Leaving behind the deep snow of Eastern Europe he journeyed south, back to Italy and into the renewing warmth of spring. His travels had cleansed him and he was determined to illustrate that he had shed all trace of his former foolishness. Not unlike the boy who had left on grand tour in 1769 and returned three years later as a gentleman, Sir Richard wished to demonstrate that he ‘was greatly altered’. However, this time he would do more than ‘profess to command his passions’. He would prove to the world that he had mastered them completely.
20
The Dupe of Duns
The Oxford Road at its junction with the Tottenham Court Road was a boisterous and bustling place. A continuum of horses and vehicles passed in
and out of the mouth of the newly paved road. Strolling pedestrians and street vendors navigated their way between a treacherous river of hoofs and wheels and a bank of bowed shop windows. On hanging days, carts of the condemned followed by a baying, beer-soaked mob travelled down the long avenue to the foot of the gallows at Tyburn. Often ‘frequented by persons of the lowest order’, it was not the most salubrious corner of London.
On the north side of the Oxford Road, near to this busy convergence, was Newman Street and its modest assortment of houses and cottages. In the early 1780s it was a neighbourhood of the quietly comfortable middle class, the sort who regularly enjoyed large plates of roast beef and rarely worried about the expenses of heating their rooms. These were not grand people, but artisans and shopkeepers who had risen in their professions by balancing their ledgers carefully over the years. Newman Street, with the Middlesex Hospital at its far end and the construction of a parish workhouse in its early stages, was likely to be a location where a man of moderate means might install his mistress in lodgings. It was also home to a number of better-paid prostitutes who charged a guinea or two for a night’s amusement, and at least one vaguely respectable brothel. It was here, among the perfumed whores of ‘eminent cabinet makers’ and the families of haberdashers and porcelain merchants, that Lady Worsley was living in January 1783.
A year of gambling, dining, drinking and dancing in the train of the Prince of Wales had ravaged Seymour and Bisset’s finances. After a prolonged period of victory celebrations and public gloating, reality and the creditors had caught up with them. On the 23rd of January, the Morning Herald declared that Captain Bisset had ‘seceded from her ladyship’s invincible charms and retired to the continent for the better arrangement of his health and his finances’. Beyond this titbit of gossip, little else is known about the circumstances which drove apart the once passionately devoted couple. It is possible that pressure to renounce the embarrassing alliance had come from Bisset’s religious family, in particular from George’s brother William, who was at the time seeking a living in the church. In debt and with his reputation dishonoured, Bisset’s decision to leave Lady Worsley signalled a definitive end to his flirtation with ‘the fast set’ and a life of excess. His intention was also to turn his back on the Isle of Wight, where his shame was likely to be remembered. That year, he let out Knighton to Captain Leversuch, a neighbour to whom Sir Richard was not likely to object. There is no evidence that he returned to his estate until 1789, two years after his marriage to Harriot Mordaunt, the half-sister of the Earl of Peterborough. According to John Wilkes, a fellow island inhabitant, Sir Richard and George Bisset skilfully avoided one another thereafter. Eventually, Mr and Mrs Bisset and their two daughters abandoned Knighton, which was pulled down in the 1820s.
After his short spell of infamy, Maurice George Bisset seemed content to withdraw into the quiet rural life from which he had come. He sat as a Justice of the Peace in Hampshire and is remarked upon as being a generous neighbour. John Wilkes was the frequent recipient of his hospitality as well as baskets of fruit from his orchards at Knighton. In 1816, towards the end of his life, he became the unexpected heir of his distant cousin’s estate of Lessendrum in Aberdeenshire, and it was there that he chose to pass his final days. By the time of his death in 1822, Bisset had reformed himself to such an extent that his friends and family were more likely to remember him for ‘the many virtues that adorned his endearing character’ than the many vices that had coloured a brief period of his past.
The sad truth of Seymour and Bisset’s love affair was that its inevitable end had been inscribed on the legal documents handed to Lady Worsley at the Royal Hotel. The writ served to her had not been the liberating parliamentary divorce for which she had hoped. Regardless of the outcome of the criminal conversation trial, Seymour would remain shackled to Sir Richard and unable to remarry until his death, if she was fortunate enough to outlive him. Despite affirmations of undying love, her relationship with Bisset was destined to become untenable. Knighton demanded a legitimate heir and Bisset would require a wife of unquestionable character to provide one. Unable to free herself or to gain access to the fortune entailed on her, Lady Worsley could offer nothing more substantial than the fleeting pleasures of the bedroom.
Perhaps it was in part this realisation that had led Seymour to attempt a miscarriage earlier in September. However, the baby inside her had been determined to grow. By the time Bisset had left her, Lady Worsley was at least four months pregnant with his second child. When Seymour had chosen to elope with her lover she had taken an enormous gamble that her drastic actions would increase rather than diminish her happiness. Fourteen months later, it was questionable whether she had made any gains at all. Deeply in debt, estranged from her family, having suffered the bereavement of losing her daughter and prohibited from seeing her son, she was now alone as well. More than anything, Bisset’s departure would have impressed upon her the dismal actuality of her circumstances. While Lady Worsley had chosen with defiant pride to wear the epithet of ‘whore’ as she had hung from her lover’s arm, the true meaning of the term only revealed itself to her in his absence. Without him, Seymour faced a future where her financial need, not her heart, determined whom she would be embracing.
It is unlikely that love compelled her to accept the advances of the West Indian plantation owner, Isaac Byers when he approached her at the beginning of 1783. Like many wealthy ‘planters’, Byers had come to London in the hope of establishing himself among the elite and cutting a dash in society. As historian Eric Williams explains, the West Indians’ ‘fondest wish was to acquire an estate, blend in with the aristocracy and remove marks of their origin’. Noted for their ‘lavish expenditures’ and ‘vulgarity’, they dressed with extravagance, lived dissolutely and frequently ‘were made the butt of ridicule’. Isaac Byers may not have been among the most affluent of this class but he was equally committed to penetrating the circles of the fashionable. Lady Worsley, now bereft of a lover but with a collection of influential noblemen among her ‘friends’, was an attractive mistress for a man of social aspirations. Her pregnant state held advantages for him as well; a womb could only contain one man’s bastard at a time. Byers could enjoy several months of Lady Worsley’s renowned sexual appetite without suffering the burdensome financial consequences of fathering an illegitimate child. In need of a male protector to pay her expenses and to keep her in lodgings, Seymour eventually acquiesced. Unfortunately, Byers’s resources did not extend to leasing a town house in the stylish district of St James’s or Mayfair. Instead, he took a dwelling on Newman Street, where, as the Morning Herald reported, ‘he at present cohabits with her ladyship en famille, at a snug house taken for that purpose’.
At the end of a profligate year of spending and now confronted with legal bills, gambling debts and assorted expenses, Lady Worsley’s immediate priority became the securing of financial solvency. With Byers she could at least find some steadiness. A woman of Seymour’s social rank would have possessed no practical knowledge of economy. Understanding the worth of money in real terms, what it might buy and how far a farthing might be stretched, served no useful purpose to ‘ladies of quality’ who rarely even had occasion to handle coins. Transactions were usually dealt with through servants, bankers and solicitors and most goods were secured on shop credit. For the duration of her life as a wealthy gentlewoman, Lady Worsley was accustomed to being indulged, to having her material desires gratified with little consideration for expense. Removed entirely from the process of commerce and deprived of any real understanding of value, Seymour found it virtually impossible to regulate her expenditure.
Although it was traditional for lovers to cover the costs of their mistress’s lodgings and present her with gifts such as jewellery and fine clothing, Lady Worsley found it necessary to make purchases of her own as well. As she had fled from her husband’s care Seymour no longer had a home of her own. Dependent on the indulgent kindness of her lovers, she might suddenly f
ind herself without accommodation if they tired of her and refused to pay her rent. She faced an itinerant life spent between hired addresses with no guarantee of security or comfort. She also had no legal entitlement to any of the items she had left behind and therefore found herself in the unusual position of having to establish and equip a separate household. A list of debts compiled by her solicitors reveals that a significant amount of money was owed to linen drapers, coal merchants, grocers, upholsterers, wine merchants, purveyors of kitchen ware and china, as well as Longman and Broderip, a maker of pianos. But necessities were not the only items she bought. In an effort to maintain appearances she also invested over £242 15s. and 12d. on her own carriage, made purchases from jewellers, spent over £32 on stockings, £13 13s. and 6d. on Italian lessons, and made several gifts to gentleman friends from the Pall Mall haberdasher, Butler & Crook.
Despite Sir Richard’s attempt to publicly ‘cry down his wife’s credit with tradesmen’ in November 1781, shopkeepers who had been keeping abreast of developments via the newspapers were still willing to extend credit to Lady Worsley in her own name. Although she had absconded from her husband, women in Seymour’s circumstances were usually entitled to payment of their pin money, and as it was widely known that she was an heiress, this sum was likely to be a healthy one. Indeed it was. The yearly payments of £400 that she was guaranteed could easily have supported any of her neighbours on Newman Street in smug bourgeois luxury. It was enough to fill a home with necessary furnishings and to lay a dignified table of silver and china. But it is likely that after May 1782, on the notification that the Court of Doctors’ Commons would be forcing Sir Richard to pay her a further £600 per annum in alimony, shopkeepers were willing to extend her credit even further. The amount of £1,000 per annum would have maintained Lady Worsley in a grand style, to the extent that it could potentially grant her a degree of independence from male support if she was prepared to curtail her thoughtless expenditure. Had Worsley not made an attempt to appeal this ruling and settled the matter before embarking on his Mediterranean travels, Seymour might have been in a less troubled position. However, by the end of 1783, the appeal had still not been finalised and the additional sum of £600 had not arrived in the hands of Lady Worsley’s bankers. Sir Richard, somewhere among the olive groves of Iberia could not be compelled to put it there.
The Lady In Red: An Eighteenth-Century Tale Of Sex, Scandal, And Divorce Page 28