The Lady In Red: An Eighteenth-Century Tale Of Sex, Scandal, And Divorce (17 page)

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Authors: Hallie Rubenhold

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Unfortunately the man whom Walpole thought ‘to have the largest pretensions to her remembrance’ was abroad in early 1782, chasing the celebrated courtesan, Elizabeth Armistead around the streets and parks of Paris. He had no interest in abandoning the pursuit in order to reveal his assorted misdemeanours.
It is likely that by the autumn of 1779, when Seymour met Deerhurst, her interlude with Cholmondeley had wound down. Her introduction to the Viscount began a spirited new chapter in her adventures. From the end of that year and well into 1780, matters of government held Sir Richard’s attention to the exclusion of his private affairs. He was absent for days or weeks at a time, carousing with parliamentarians late into the night. It was at this period that Lady Worsley was drawn into Lord Deerhurst’s circle of reprobates. While the baronet scratched out letters on behalf of the government and drank bumpers to the King’s armies in America, Seymour lost painful sums at cards and hung on the arms of London’s most dissolute gentlemen.
Bisset’s attorneys were keen to underline Sir Richard’s negligence. His indifference to his wife’s reputation implicated him as much as Seymour in the resulting débâcle. As a strategy for Bisset’s defence was being assembled, it was probably Deerhurst who suggested that Charles Henry Mordaunt, the 5th Earl of Peterborough and his right-hand man, Joseph Bouchier Smith be brought in as ‘anti-character witnesses’ who could testify to Lady Worsley’s wayward behaviour and to her husband’s apathy.
Like his friend Deerhurst, Lord Peterborough had a reputation smudged with scandal. His name had been linked with several actress-courtesans, including the much coveted Sophia Baddeley and the ubiquitously popular
Mrs Elliott. He became involved in the affairs of the Duchess of Kingston, an infamous bigamist, and later in an adulterous relationship with Deerhurst’s other sister, Lady Anne Foley. In spite of Peterborough’s notoriety for boudoir frolics there is nothing to substantiate rumours that he was among Lady Worsley’s lovers. However, the hacks and gossips who scavenged for names to add to her list of paramours were quick to interpret his appearance at Bisset’s trial as an admission of guilt. In truth, when the Earl entered the Court of the King’s Bench, the crimes to which he was about to attest were not his own.
‘Pray my Lord,’ Samuel Pechell began, ‘what time did your acquaintance with Lady Worsley begin?’
The Earl plumbed his memory for recollections of the season. ‘I don’t exactly remember. It was at the time Ranelagh opened, in the year 1780, some time in the spring.’
‘What was the occasion of your Lordship’s first acquaintance with her,’ the lawyer enquired.
‘I was first introduced to her at Sadler’s Wells.’
‘By who?’
‘By my Lord Deerhurst,’ Peterborough replied.
‘At that time, had you any acquaintance with Sir Richard?’
‘None, either then or after.’
‘Then, during the time of your acquaintance with Lady Worsley, you never spoke to him?’
‘No,’ said the Earl, frankly.
Pechell now desired more colourful details ‘What was your Lordship’s opinion of her general behaviour? Did it bear the appearance of an affectionate, constant wife to Sir Richard?’
‘I made no observations,’ Peterborough answered with honesty, ‘ … I never saw them together.’
Bisset’s counsel allowed the damning evidence of Worsley’s detachedness to linger before presenting his next, uncomfortably direct question. ‘Do you think,’ he asked, ‘that she conducted herself as a decent, modest wife?’
‘I should rather think not,’ he concluded with an almost audible snort.
The Earl was not required to disclose anything further. He quit the witness box having confessed to and been implicated in nothing.
For good measure, Joseph Bouchier Smith was called upon to perform the same service. Like Lady Worsley, Bouchier Smith counted himself among
Lord Deerhurst’s broad network of associates, though his connection to the Viscount was more enduring: he was married to Deerhurst’s illegitimate half-sister, Emelie. It is unknown how the son of an Oxford don and minor landowner fell in with the likes of Lords Deerhurst and Peterborough, but by 1780 Bouchier Smith had become a permanent fixture in his brother-in-law’s life and had managed to make himself indispensable to Peterborough as well, so much so that in five years’ time he found himself back at the Court of the King’s Bench giving evidence in the Earl’s trial for crim. con. with Lady Anne Foley. Bouchier Smith seems to have been the perennial observer, a hanger-on who watched his wealthier friends dispose of their fortunes and reputations while narrowly managing to maintain his own. At court on that day there was no suggestion to contradict this. Joseph Bouchier Smith was regarded by both the prosecution and defence as a man with no amorous connection to Lady Worsley, although guilt by association inscribed his name beside those of her confirmed beaux.
He took his place in the witness box, directly on the heels of the Earl of Peterborough. Edward Bearcroft requested that he recount his observation of events. He was asked to confirm that 1779 was the year when he first met Seymour Worsley. Bearcroft then continued:
‘During the time of your acquaintance with her, what was your general opinion of her character and behaviour?’
‘I thought she did not conduct herself as a woman regarding her own fame,’ Bouchier Smith replied.
‘Was that her general character?’
‘That is the character I have heard of her.’
‘At that time?’ the attorney clarified.
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Do you remember, at any time, meeting Sir Richard, when you and his Lady were together?’
Bearcroft wanted his witness to recall a day excursion to Blackheath that autumn. Shooters Hill, which rises 432 feet above London, provided a breathtaking view for those in search of the picturesque. The ‘vast prospect’ afforded a panorama of ‘several little towns all by the river, Erith, Leigh, Woolwich etc., quite up to London, Greenwich, Deptford, Black Wall’. By the second half of the eighteenth century, when outlooks and spots of natural beauty were becoming tourist attractions, an entrepreneur had opened ‘a hotel on the summit to entertain wealthy travellers’ and provide them with refreshment.
A party set out with this destination in mind. It was by no means a private assignation, as Bouchier Smith was anxious to imply. He and Lady Worsley were accompanied by a number of their friends, including Henry Harvey Aston (a noted libertine and cohort of Charles Wyndham) and Caroline Vernon, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Charlotte who had a rather unfortunate habit of featuring in crim. con. trials, having been implicated in her sister, Lady Grosvenor’s affair with the Duke of Cumberland.
‘ … Do you remember any particular circumstance, on the occasion of the Shooters Hill party?’ the lawyer pressed Bouchier Smith.
‘We met Sir Richard, in a phaeton; and Lady Worsley desired him several times to go with her; but he refused and drove off towards town.’
‘Did he inquire where they were going?’ Bearcroft asked with a hint of disbelief.
‘Yes,’ responded Bouchier Smith.
‘And she asked him to go?’
‘Yes.’ But Sir Richard, too preoccupied with other matters, had no enthusiasm for an outing.
Although Bouchier Smith later claimed that Seymour’s behaviour was irreproachable on that day, his testimony succeeded in exposing her husband’s lax approach to chaperoning and offered the jury food for thought.
The defence would soon demonstrate that Sir Richard’s indifference to Lady Worsley and the company she kept opened the door for his wife to intrigue with whomever she chose. The next paramour to walk through it in the summer of 1780 was James Graham, the Marquess of Graham (later the 3rd Duke of Montrose). Graham had first been introduced to Lady Worsley in 1779, at a time when he ‘was more prominent in society than in politics’, but their affair did not begin in earnest until the following year. Like her relationships with Wyndham and Cholmondeley, her romance with Graham was rumoured to be among her most memorable and heartfelt.
Unlike that of her other aristocratic devotees, Graham’s life was not centred exclusively on the pursuit of pleasure. Shortly after returning from his grand tour, he appeared in London, intellectually fired by the events in America. Energetic and hungry for a parliamentary seat, he was described by the
English Chronicle
as ‘a young nobleman of very promising abilities and admirable address’. For Graham, eager to inflate his influence and make a splash in political circles, this was a thrilling period of party-going and socialising. At some point his trajectory through the drawing rooms and theatre boxes sent
him colliding with Seymour, but curiously not with her husband. Again, as in the testimony presented by Peterborough and Bouchier Smith, this was a detail that weakened the plaintiff’s case.
Graham was Howorth’s witness and the attorney was determined to serve his evidence up to the jury as a veritable feast of revelations.
‘When did your Lordship’s first acquaintance commence with Lady Worsley?’ he asked.
‘Three or four years ago.’
‘You was not at all acquainted with Sir Richard?’
‘Not at all.’
‘In your Lordship’s acquaintance with Lady Worsley, did you frequently visit at Sir Richard’s house?’
‘Not frequently,’ Graham demurred, recollecting the various instances when he had called on Seymour at Stratford Place. He paused and then amended his statement, ‘I believe … sometimes I did.’
‘What were your Lordship’s observations on Lady Worsley’s general deportment and conduct, during the time you knew her?’
The Marquess imagined Lady Worsley as he had known her two years earlier in London, unfettered by concerns and left unchecked by her husband. ‘She was gay, lively and free in her behaviour.’
‘Was her behaviour such that became a modest and married Woman?’ Howorth enquired.
Graham’s answer echoed that given by Lord Peterborough: ‘I think it was not.’
‘Was there any absolute impropriety in her conduct?’ Howorth would have liked the Marquess to have confessed to scenes of debauchery but Graham disappointed him.
‘There was no absolute impropriety in her conduct.’
‘Then your Lordship, during the time you knew her, had you no reason to observe that there was anything in her conduct improper or immodest?’
‘Not immodest.’ Graham was being cagey. He knew where Howorth was leading him and as a gentleman, he found himself reluctant to follow. Like those of Deerhurst his answers were tipped with a hint of contempt, a distaste at the disrespectful tone of the enquiries as well as a subtle desire to remind those assembled of his superior position over them.
‘You are speaking of her behaviour and manner?’
‘I am speaking of her
conduct
as it fell within conversation.’ In truth, what
the defence desired Graham to disclose–an anecdote of Lady Worsley’s lewd behaviour, a situation where she freely espoused a love of fornication, where she indulged in sexual congress openly, or wantonly exposed her naked flesh –had never happened; at least to his knowledge. Seymour did not behave like a Covent Garden prostitute, sodden with drink, throwing her arms around the neck of her swain. Her outward appearance was almost always circumspect. Her language was polished and guarded. Her sins were committed in private, or at least in the shadows and with a modicum of decorum. Such were the rules of intrigue among her class and she did not break them.
But Howorth required more elaboration. ‘What was your Lordship’s opinion, as to every circumstance which fell within your observations? Was it, that she was a modest, decent Married Woman?’
Graham sensed the lawyer’s invitation to incriminate himself and hastily recoiled from it. ‘That part which relates to myself I have no business to answer.’
‘Had your Lordship not the occasion to know of her ill state of health, from the care and attention you may have paid to Lady Worsley?’
At this juncture, Lord Mansfield thundered in. Howorth had overstepped the bounds of delicacy and strayed into a potential quagmire. He was, with subtle implication, asking the Marquess to betray a secret. He had offered Graham an opportunity to reveal that, in the words of Horace Walpole’s biographer W.S. Lewis, ‘his Lordship received favours from the Lady that made a lasting impression … the favours were a veneral disease and Graham had conferred them upon Lady Worsley’. Although the Marquess refused to answer, the testimony of a witness who followed him confirmed the suspicions of the jury absolutely.
In addition to several of her lovers, Lady Worsley had also subpoenaed her physician, and what Dr William Osborn revealed during a short stint in the witness box provided more substance to the claims of Seymour’s prior ruin than the words of five gentlemen. Normally, eighteenth-century practitioners of medicine were as bound by codes of confidentiality as they are today, but according to the
London Chronicle
Doctor Osborn had received a specific request from Seymour to ‘make a point of attending and declare everything you know of me’. The newspaper not incorrectly interpreted this as a desperate
cri de coeur
‘ … which plainly meant, criminate me, as by that means you shall save my lover from the effects of a heavy verdict’.

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