The Lady In Red: An Eighteenth-Century Tale Of Sex, Scandal, And Divorce (18 page)
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Authors: Hallie Rubenhold
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BOOK: The Lady In Red: An Eighteenth-Century Tale Of Sex, Scandal, And Divorce
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It was in August 1780, towards the end of her affair with Lord Graham
that Dr Osborn was summoned. He had received a request to visit Sir Richard Worsley’s wife at their town house on Stratford Place, but had not been given further details of his patient’s complaint. As a reputable surgeon and ‘man-midwife’ who conducted a sideline business in the treatment of genteel ‘lady’s disorders’, Osborn was familiar with the protocol of his profession and what he was likely to encounter on his arrival. The doctor was asked by Edward Bearcroft the year and month in which he first saw Lady Worsley. He then requested that Osborn ‘Give an account of the condition you found her in.’
that Dr Osborn was summoned. He had received a request to visit Sir Richard Worsley’s wife at their town house on Stratford Place, but had not been given further details of his patient’s complaint. As a reputable surgeon and ‘man-midwife’ who conducted a sideline business in the treatment of genteel ‘lady’s disorders’, Osborn was familiar with the protocol of his profession and what he was likely to encounter on his arrival. The doctor was asked by Edward Bearcroft the year and month in which he first saw Lady Worsley. He then requested that Osborn ‘Give an account of the condition you found her in.’
The doctor was not comfortable betraying confidences, and before continuing with his testimony made a point of salvaging his professional reputation by clearly stating that ‘Between a patient and a physician there is an implied secrecy; the nature of the case requires it: and that being the state of the case, I should hardly conceive myself at liberty to declare it …’ Osborn then took a breath: ‘But, I have the Lady’s permission to give evidence of the truth.’
Bearcroft intended to make this revelation as distasteful and shocking as possible. ‘You was not employed by Sir Richard?’ he asked.
‘No,’ answered the doctor, confirming that his call to the Worsley home was not as a result of a husband’s promiscuous behaviour passed on to his wife. Rather, it was a case of the wife having damaged her own health.
‘In what condition did you find her?’
‘Lady Worsley had some complaints on her, which I fancy were the consequence of a Venereal Disorder,’ he announced.
‘In what state did you find her?’ Bearcroft questioned, in an attempt to gain further particulars. But this was difficult as Osborn, in keeping with accepted practice, had not actually performed an examination of his female patient’s infected parts. The practitioner explained:
‘I believe it was never known; at least I was never asked my idea of the disorder; nor did I think it necessary to mention it. My business was to cure her …’ Lady Worsley, or perhaps even her servant would have presented the doctor with a description of her symptoms. The word
gonorrhoea
probably never passed either’s lips. At a time when many individuals, as Randolph Trumbach writes, would quite literally ‘rather have died than have it known’ that they bore such an illness, delicacy was of the utmost. Whatever cure Osborn had prescribed, whether this was a daily application of a mercury-based ointment on the affected area or an ingestion of mercury either neat
or diluted in a substance, the process was certain to have caused Seymour a good deal of discomfort.
gonorrhoea
probably never passed either’s lips. At a time when many individuals, as Randolph Trumbach writes, would quite literally ‘rather have died than have it known’ that they bore such an illness, delicacy was of the utmost. Whatever cure Osborn had prescribed, whether this was a daily application of a mercury-based ointment on the affected area or an ingestion of mercury either neat
or diluted in a substance, the process was certain to have caused Seymour a good deal of discomfort.
Although the doctor’s testimony had come at the insistence of his patient, Osborn remained extremely uneasy about the task he was being asked to perform. Not only was Lady Worsley’s reputation at stake, but his own good name. After his last pronouncement, Osborn abruptly informed Mansfield that he chose no longer ‘to talk upon the subject, one way or [the] other’, whereupon the judge excused him.
If there had been any doubt as to the veracity of the claims presented by Lady Worsley’s three lovers and if the character witnesses had not already convinced the jury of Seymour’s tattered reputation, then the appearance of Dr Osborn established with scientific authority that Sir Richard’s wife had undone herself long before Bisset ever enticed her to the Royal Hotel. Additionally, Osborn’s testimony raised some fairly bald questions about the state of the Worsleys’ marital relations. Although Osborn was not prepared to speculate on his patient’s condition or the possibility that she might have allowed the disease to fester without medical attention over the course of weeks or even months, its implications were obvious: Sir Richard had not been playing his conjugal role in the bedchamber for some time, or, as one wag commented, ‘It is somewhat remarkable, that the careless husband never once complained of any injury he had received from his
faithless
wife; a pretty certain proof that he had, by neglecting her charms, left family duty to be performed by substitutes …’
faithless
wife; a pretty certain proof that he had, by neglecting her charms, left family duty to be performed by substitutes …’
It is hardly surprising that shortly after receiving her infection, Graham, ‘the substitute’, fell out of Lady Worsley’s favour. His departure from the courtroom, as well as from Seymour’s calendar of intrigues, leaves a gap in the story of her affairs from around September 1780, at about the time of the general election, when she and Sir Richard were to become more intimately acquainted with their neighbour, Maurice George Bisset. However, the gossip-mongers and newspaper men were not content with such an incomplete catalogue of Lady Worsley’s conquests. With time, they began to pencil names into the blank spots of her history. This exercise in speculation began shortly before the trial and continued long after it had ended. Subsequently the lines between fantasy and fact began to grow less and less distinct.
By April of 1782, the list of individuals alleging to have passed an illicit evening in the embrace of this ‘Messalina of the Modern Age’ had swelled beyond any credible proportion. Idle gossip, fanciful boasting and rakish
innuendo added a full range of names to her roll of theoretical lovers. Grub Street satirists made use of the opportunity to attach the names of figures from other notorious débâcles to this most recent scandal. The quill behind the anonymous publication,
Sir Richard Easy
, created a tableau of farcical bed-hopping, which paired Seymour with Lord William Gordon (mistaken in the pamphlet for his brother, the instigator of the eponymous Gordon Riots), Sir Charles Bunbury (the husband of Lord Gordon’s mistress, Lady Sarah Bunbury) as well as the MP, Satanist and necrophile, George Selwyn and his regular sidekick, Charles ‘Chace’ Price. Whether these names, and others like them, were included in the official tally of Lady Worsley’s lovers can only be guessed.
innuendo added a full range of names to her roll of theoretical lovers. Grub Street satirists made use of the opportunity to attach the names of figures from other notorious débâcles to this most recent scandal. The quill behind the anonymous publication,
Sir Richard Easy
, created a tableau of farcical bed-hopping, which paired Seymour with Lord William Gordon (mistaken in the pamphlet for his brother, the instigator of the eponymous Gordon Riots), Sir Charles Bunbury (the husband of Lord Gordon’s mistress, Lady Sarah Bunbury) as well as the MP, Satanist and necrophile, George Selwyn and his regular sidekick, Charles ‘Chace’ Price. Whether these names, and others like them, were included in the official tally of Lady Worsley’s lovers can only be guessed.
While Grub Street enjoyed coupling her name with those of other personalities for comedic effect, in some instances men were prepared for reasons of vanity to boast of their (often invented) exploits with Sir Richard’s wife. Horace Walpole writes of one ungallant gentleman at the St James Coffee House who after clearing his throat, produced a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and proceeded to announce, ‘I have been very secret, but now I think I am at liberty to show this letter … I have loved Wyndham, I did love Graham, but now I love only you, by God.’ Given the usual displays of decorum surrounding clandestine romances it is doubtful that a bona fide paramour would have been as indiscreet, especially as he also ran the risk of being lumbered with a charge of criminal conversation.
Nevertheless, among the collection of self-proclaimed or gossip-nominated candidates were several plausible additions; gentlemen who had for the most part attempted to keep their secrets from the public domain, though not always with success. Among the publications that appeared filled with stories of Lady Worsley’s adventures,
The Memoirs of Sir Finical Whimsy and His Lady
seems quite convincingly to be built on insider knowledge. Its astute and anonymous author makes use of precise biographical and chronological detail that cross-references consistently with other sources. The work’s pages contain the names of numerous gentlemen, both notable and unknown, who were understood to have intrigued with Sir Richard’s wife. Ranking highly among those who ‘have been the subject of tea table animadversion among the ton’ was the Earl of Egremont. A prodigious philanderer and the brother of Charles Wyndham, the suggestion that the Earl might be included ‘among that number who have possessed an exclusive share of [Lady Worsley’s] partiality’ would not be entirely unlikely. The Worsleys moved in Egremont’s circle and are
known to have visited his estate at Petworth in the early summer of 1778, while the South Hampshire Militia were temporarily encamped on his grounds. Equally conceivable is the suggestion that Seymour was intimately acquainted with other officers in her husband’s corps beyond Edward Rushworth and Maurice George Bisset. The fabulously wealthy Captain John Fleming, a Member of Parliament for Southampton was cited, as was Captain Simeon Stuart, the son of the regiment’s former commander and a man regarded as ‘a distinguished favourite among the ladies’.
The Memoirs of Sir Finical Whimsy and His Lady
seems quite convincingly to be built on insider knowledge. Its astute and anonymous author makes use of precise biographical and chronological detail that cross-references consistently with other sources. The work’s pages contain the names of numerous gentlemen, both notable and unknown, who were understood to have intrigued with Sir Richard’s wife. Ranking highly among those who ‘have been the subject of tea table animadversion among the ton’ was the Earl of Egremont. A prodigious philanderer and the brother of Charles Wyndham, the suggestion that the Earl might be included ‘among that number who have possessed an exclusive share of [Lady Worsley’s] partiality’ would not be entirely unlikely. The Worsleys moved in Egremont’s circle and are
known to have visited his estate at Petworth in the early summer of 1778, while the South Hampshire Militia were temporarily encamped on his grounds. Equally conceivable is the suggestion that Seymour was intimately acquainted with other officers in her husband’s corps beyond Edward Rushworth and Maurice George Bisset. The fabulously wealthy Captain John Fleming, a Member of Parliament for Southampton was cited, as was Captain Simeon Stuart, the son of the regiment’s former commander and a man regarded as ‘a distinguished favourite among the ladies’.
The list continued. The author added to it the name of George Pitt, later the 2nd Baron Rivers. Pitt, who eventually was forced to sell his ancestral seat, Stratfield Saye to satisfy his gambling debts, was a neighbour of Worsley’s as well as a companion of Wyndham’s. By 1784 his behaviour had become so reprehensible that his father publicly admonished him in a pamphlet entitled
A Letter to a Young Noble Man on a Variety of Subjects
. Lord Rivers was still brushing the muck off the family crest left by the humiliating divorce of his daughter, Penelope Ligonier, when his son had begun to run wild. A misadventure with Lady Worsley was to become only one sin in a lifetime of errors.
A Letter to a Young Noble Man on a Variety of Subjects
. Lord Rivers was still brushing the muck off the family crest left by the humiliating divorce of his daughter, Penelope Ligonier, when his son had begun to run wild. A misadventure with Lady Worsley was to become only one sin in a lifetime of errors.
Alongside George Pitt appeared the name of Francis North, a military commander and son of the Prime Minister, Lord North. The author of
Sir Finical Whimsy
writes little about this affair, beyond a remark that it amounted to ‘nothing exceeding the common adventures of gallantry’, before adding glibly that Sir Richard Worsley had been foolish enough to ‘think himself highly honoured by the connection’.
Sir Finical Whimsy
writes little about this affair, beyond a remark that it amounted to ‘nothing exceeding the common adventures of gallantry’, before adding glibly that Sir Richard Worsley had been foolish enough to ‘think himself highly honoured by the connection’.
A handful of other, more elaborately disguised identities are fleetingly presented, such as that of Captain E——, with whom Worsley was rumoured to have arranged a wife-swap during an evening under the stars at Coxheath. Mention of an ‘Honourable Mr———, son of Lord———’is also introduced behind a veil of riddles. He was believed to have ‘commenced acquaintance with her ladyship in town’ and after running through his ‘fortune before succeeding to it’ then had ‘the singular good luck to be elected for a member of a constituency at the last general election’. The more unlikely the liaison, the greater the author’s pretences of discretion, leaving curious readers to scratch their heads at the remaining jumble of indecipherable individuals mentioned only by initials.
From this tangle of acknowledged lovers, whispered names, rumours, conjecture, satirical suggestions and dubious sexual boasts, a log purporting
to contain the sum total of Lady Worsley’s paramours was created. No one, however, could agree on the actual number. The author of
Sir Richard Easy
exaggerated the scandal by citing the existence of ‘a list of about three score gallants’. Walpole wrote with barely contained relish to Horace Mann on the 25th of February that ‘she summoned thirty-four young men of the first quality’ but later revised this to twenty-seven. He had probably got his information from the newspapers; the
Morning Herald
had been asserting that ‘no less than twenty-eight were subpoenaed at her own express command’. After the initial excitement of the February trial had flickered out, numbers were readjusted downward.
Finical Whimsy
suggested a more reasonable fifteen while the cartoonist James Gillray’s lampoon,
A Peep into Lady !!!!y’s Seraglio
depicted her with eleven supposedly identifiable admirers.
to contain the sum total of Lady Worsley’s paramours was created. No one, however, could agree on the actual number. The author of
Sir Richard Easy
exaggerated the scandal by citing the existence of ‘a list of about three score gallants’. Walpole wrote with barely contained relish to Horace Mann on the 25th of February that ‘she summoned thirty-four young men of the first quality’ but later revised this to twenty-seven. He had probably got his information from the newspapers; the
Morning Herald
had been asserting that ‘no less than twenty-eight were subpoenaed at her own express command’. After the initial excitement of the February trial had flickered out, numbers were readjusted downward.
Finical Whimsy
suggested a more reasonable fifteen while the cartoonist James Gillray’s lampoon,
A Peep into Lady !!!!y’s Seraglio
depicted her with eleven supposedly identifiable admirers.
There is nothing to suggest that any of these assertions are correct. Since the time of the couple’s elopement, a stream of gossip had leaked into the facts and diluted them beyond recognition. Perhaps one of the greatest errors made, not unintentionally by those twisting the truth, was to mistake the tally of those subpoenaed with the notches on Lady Worsley’s bedpost. In the formulation of Bisset’s defence this list of men included those like Peterborough and Bouchier Smith familiar with Seymour’s reputation, as well as others privy to personal information such as Dr Osborn, who had never seen the inside of her bedchamber. Undeniably, others who had, such as Cholmondeley, Rushworth and possibly the Earl of Egremont, Simeon Stuart, John Fleming, Francis North and George Pitt, would also have been called. But it is here that the true problem of assigning a precise figure to Lady Worsley’s catalogue of lovers encounters its stickiest corner. Seymour’s name was linked to numerous gentlemen, but how many among them committed categorical acts of adultery with her is unknown.
A married lady’s character was a fragile thing. As the historian A.D. Harvey comments, ‘among the most sophisticated classes a woman’s reputation for chastity generally depended on her ability to maintain an appearance of being entirely uninterested in sex’. As it was believed that a woman’s physical desire was ignited by the loss of her virginity, recently married women of the leisured classes were especially prone to suspicion. In the airtight observation tank of high society, the scrutiny of pretty young wives by scheming matrons became one of the period’s favourite pastimes. Who would be first or next to waver and who appeared disenchanted or suffocated by the ennui of marriage were the subjects of many ladies’ daily correspondence. It required little more than
a hint of coquetry, one too many turns on the dance floor with the same partner, or a stroll in the company of a man not one’s husband, to excite a twitchy eyebrow. Lady Sarah Bunbury found herself the subject of unrelenting gossip long before she had committed her indiscretion with William Gordon. On a visit to Paris with her husband, the couple were joined by Lord Carlisle. Only a handful of unchaperoned sightings of Lady Sarah with her ‘cicisbeo’ (or male admirer, as he was called) were required before news of a ‘flirtation’ had reached London. Back in England, her socialising and friendship with the womanising Duke de Lauzan sent the hacks leaping for their scandal-filled inkwells. More than a year before her elopement with Gordon, while Lady Sarah virtuously dodged the advances of de Lauzan and Carlisle, Grub Street intelligence was eagerly brewing tales about her lascivious adventures. A married woman need only display the slightest hint that, in the words of Madame du Deffand, ‘she seeks diversion’ to set the machinery of gossip spinning.
a hint of coquetry, one too many turns on the dance floor with the same partner, or a stroll in the company of a man not one’s husband, to excite a twitchy eyebrow. Lady Sarah Bunbury found herself the subject of unrelenting gossip long before she had committed her indiscretion with William Gordon. On a visit to Paris with her husband, the couple were joined by Lord Carlisle. Only a handful of unchaperoned sightings of Lady Sarah with her ‘cicisbeo’ (or male admirer, as he was called) were required before news of a ‘flirtation’ had reached London. Back in England, her socialising and friendship with the womanising Duke de Lauzan sent the hacks leaping for their scandal-filled inkwells. More than a year before her elopement with Gordon, while Lady Sarah virtuously dodged the advances of de Lauzan and Carlisle, Grub Street intelligence was eagerly brewing tales about her lascivious adventures. A married woman need only display the slightest hint that, in the words of Madame du Deffand, ‘she seeks diversion’ to set the machinery of gossip spinning.
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