The Lady In Red: An Eighteenth-Century Tale Of Sex, Scandal, And Divorce (2 page)

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Authors: Hallie Rubenhold

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Between Lady Betty’s graciousness and Sir Thomas’s boorish temperament, it appeared to some observers that the heir of Appuldurcombe had taken on more of the roughness of his father’s character than the smooth gentility of his mother’s. Like the baronet, Richard had a hungry intellect which thrived on classical history, philosophy and mathematical conundrums, but while his mind had been honed, his manners had been left untended. Lady Holland, who encountered the boy in Naples, thought him to be ‘rather pert’; the product of parents whom she dismissed as ‘mighty good but deadly dull’. Described as ‘an honest, wild English buck’ Sir Thomas’s son had the smell of the country about him. Fresh faced and unaffected, Richard had enjoyed a rural boyhood, removed from the unhealthy air and corrupting morality of London. But although this upbringing represented the era’s ideal childhood, it had left the young man unfinished, gauche and lacking in gentlemanly manners. This was a situation which his mother, his godfather, Sir William Oglander and his father’s cousin, James Worsley, thought required an urgent remedy.
Since the 23rd of September 1768 responsibility for Richard Worsley’s education had been placed in their hands. After a year of declining health, Sir Thomas’s exhausted liver and kidneys finally failed him. It became common knowledge that the baronet had made himself ‘a sacrifice at the shrine of Bacchus’ at the relatively young age of forty. The door of the family tomb had hardly swung shut when preparations for his son’s grand tour of Europe began. At the time of his father’s death, the 7th baronet, who now proudly bore the title of Sir Richard Worsley, had been wearing the velvet cap and silk gown of a privileged ‘gentleman commoner’ at Corpus Christi
College in Oxford. His guardians would not have him waste his time or his mind in the collegiate environment for long. Like most gentlemen they recognised that Oxford and Cambridge offered little in the way of a useful education. In the eighteenth century few who began their studies at a university did so to obtain a degree. The colleges were home to an assortment of wealthy young men, idling their time away before inheriting their fathers’ estates or marrying. It was widely acknowledged that drunkenness and gossip preoccupied the tutors while their students were left to engage ‘in every disgraceful frolic of juvenile debauchery’. The guileless 7th baronet would never receive the refinement his character required in such an environment. For this it was necessary that he go abroad.
The traditional grand tour was designed to plug the deficiencies in a young man’s education. A period which might span several months or several years was spent under the direction of a specially appointed tutor, or ‘bear leader’, who escorted his charge around the major sights and cities of Europe in pursuit of intellectual and personal improvement. The standard curriculum generally included immersion in the languages, art, architecture, geography and history of the countries visited, but also might involve instruction in additional subjects such as music, fencing and dance. As the study of classical and Renaissance art and architecture was the focal point of most tours, Italy was given precedence on the itinerary. A stay in Paris where a gawky young man might better his deportment and dress sense was also considered
de rigueur
, while a test of nerve in the form of an Alpine crossing by mule or sedan chair rounded the experience. At a time when the cost of travel was beyond the reach of those without a considerable fortune, the grand tour was a luxury reserved primarily for the elite male. Multiple visits to Europe for the purpose of study were a rarity and so the decision Sir Richard’s guardians made to send him abroad for a second time in less than five years would not have been undertaken lightly. In return for this extravagant investment, the results would need to be demonstrable. Richard Worsley was to return to Pylewell with his rustic edges smoothed and his character shaped into that of a fully formed gentleman.
The man whom Sir William Oglander and James Worsley employed to implement the young baronet’s metamorphosis was an individual well known to the Hampshire gentry. Since 1766, Edward Gibbon had been hosting the Swiss writer and scholar Jacques Georges Deyverdun under his roof at
Buriton. Gibbon’s ‘dear friend’ had been hoping to find an income as ‘the travelling governor of some wealthy pupil’ when the historian recommended him to Sir Richard Worsley. As his student had already acquired a substantial knowledge of Italy, both modern and ancient, Deyverdun devised a course for Sir Richard which departed from the usual grand tour programme. On the 22nd of April 1769, the pair embarked on a fourteen-month exploration of the less traversed regions of Switzerland, France and northern Italy. They were also to spend several months in Paris and at least a full year in the scenic surrounds of Lausanne, the town of Deyverdun’s birth. This bracing location beside Lake Geneva was an ideal spot for the improvement of the mind, body and soul. As Gibbon, who had lived in Lausanne several years earlier had found, Switzerland was devoutly Calvinist. Laws prohibiting gambling, and in some towns attendance at the theatre, made evenings in this region quieter than in other European countries, while Voltaire’s decision to reside near Geneva brought serious scholars of philosophy to its shores.
Under Deyverdun’s guidance, Sir Richard applied his intellect to a critical investigation of the ‘French and Latin classics’. Where previously the baronet’s education had focused on achieving a grasp of the Italian language, he had come to Lausanne to improve his French and possibly to learn German. His tutor was fluent in both languages but as Deyverdun ‘never acquired the just pronunciation and familiar use of the English tongue’ it is likely that they conversed almost exclusively in French and Latin.
Months were spent scrutinising and discussing the works of great historians, orators and poets. Yet, remarkably, Sir Richard’s travel journal demonstrates very little intellectual growth. Its rambling pages read like a roll call of inanimate objects and sights between Paris and Turin. Void of objectivity or analysis and with barely a note to document human interaction on any level, Sir Richard’s method of regarding the world around him was perfectly scientific, stoic and absolutist. Only the factual was recorded; the distance they rode between villages, the length and width of fortress walls, the age and height of a cathedral. On the rare occasion that he gives an opinion it comes in the form of a pronouncement. He provides no elaboration and no explanation of his conclusions. Towns, roads, inns and churches are rated as either ‘miserable’ or ‘of the greatest merit’, ‘execrable’ or ‘the finest example’, and whether he referred to a work of art as being ‘fine’ or ‘excellent’, what made it so was never discussed or even questioned. Sir Richard’s
universe was one of blacks and whites and by engaging in the ordering and ranking of it he demonstrated his eagerness to assess his own place within its grand scheme. At the same time his adherence to accepted perceptions limited what he was able to see. In spite of his learnedness his diaries reveal a persistent fear of independent thought.
Attaining an understanding of one’s role in society formed the very essence of the grand tour’s purpose. Its broad syllabus was designed to introduce an elite young gentleman to his inherent privileges and responsibilities. Intellectual polishing played a large role in this, but learning was not confined exclusively to an investigation of antiquity. The tourists were also expected to gain an insight into the workings of contemporary Europe, from its politics to its agriculture. A knowledge of its people and cultural habits, its topography and technology could only add to a gentleman’s effectiveness as a law maker when he returned to his own country. Likewise, it was held that an inspection of the practices of Catholic Europe might serve to bolster his natural Protestant biases and patriotism. The acquisition of the precepts of taste, where it applied to art, was also considered instrumental to well-rounded education. Wealthy men were society’s patrons; their inclinations dictated the tone of paintings and architecture and it was their duty to impart their exalted wisdom to the plebeians. The grand tour provided a baptism in the waters of eighteenth-century manhood. From this formative experience the tourist was to emerge with good deportment, confidence, and a command of etiquette useful in a variety of scenarios, from how to address a monarch to how one might undress a lady of pleasure. As it was considered preferable for a boy to learn nature’s lessons from the degenerate women of France and Italy than from his father’s household servants, sex also featured on the grand tour’s agenda. Upon his return home, the sly smiles of a young man’s guardians would belie a shared acknowledgement of that which had come to pass in a foreign bedchamber.
Although he possessed a familiarity with the sights and customs of Europe, until his second continental excursion Sir Richard had not yet experienced all that a grand tour had to offer. The gap in his knowledge was only filled upon his arrival in Paris, a capital believed to be ‘a theatre of more vice than any city in the world’, where it was impossible to escape the noise, filth, prostitutes and beggars, even in the more fashionable quarters.
The lodgings which had been arranged for the baronet lay on the rue Saint-Honoré, in one of Paris’s better areas. From his windows on the first
floor at the hôtel des Quatre Nations he enjoyed a clear view into the glowing rooms of the opposite building. After observing for some time its female occupants open and close the shutters or carelessly leave the drapery askew, he was able to conclude that the residence ‘was a
bordel deternie
, or a
positive
brothel’. Naturally curious, the young man became compulsively drawn to his window. His stares were soon discovered by his powdered and rouged neighbours, who began ‘paying him not only their respects by ogles and signals, but verbal communication’. Over the course of several days the baronet’s will was sufficiently eroded for ‘their charms … to conquer his virtue’. One evening he determined that he would cross the road and pay them a visit. However, before he departed, the hotel’s proprietress asked to speak with him. She had heard of the baronet’s plans from his manservant and had grown anxious. Where brothels were concerned, the establishment across the road did not bear a good reputation, she warned, and ‘gave him such cautions as induced him to forgo the expected pleasures he had promised himself’. It was a fortunate escape, ‘for that night a man was murdered in the house’. The following morning his body ‘was found after the ladies and their bravoes had decamped’. Sir Richard had observed it from his window. It was a sight which bled deeply into his consciousness. The prostrate customer lay stretched out on a drenched bed, ‘naked and … stript of all he had been possessed of’. The baronet could not shake the belief that the corpse might have been his own. The experience made him ‘very cautious how … he viewed females’ and persuaded him in part that the sexual act was best enjoyed when observed from afar. Beyond everything he had learned on his grand tour, it was this lesson which would shape the events of his life.
Sir Richard’s homecoming in the early spring of 1772 had been greatly anticipated by his relations and friends, who were eager to see how his experiences had changed him. Indeed there were alterations, as Gibbon remarked, but surprisingly ‘little improvement’. The young man knew that his guardians had expectations and was determined not to disappoint. The new master of Pylewell hid his youthful lack of confidence behind a grandiose façade. He believed that his studies had made him a sage at the considerable age of twenty-one. ‘Sir Richard Worsley … has grown a philosopher,’ Gibbon proclaimed archly. While ‘Lord Petersfield displeases everybody by the affectation of consequence; the young baronet disgusts no less by the affectation of wisdom’. This attitude was not what either Sir William or
James Worsley had had in mind for their ward and they were quick to chasten him, pointing out ‘that such behaviour, even were it reasonable, does not suit this country’. But behind the puffed-up projection of himself was a son, wrought with insecurities and desperate to demonstrate that he was not the inebriated, bumbling image of his father. Instead, the 7th baronet embraced an entirely different persona. Gibbon was astonished. ‘He speaks in short sentences, quotes Montaigne, seldom smiles, never laughs, drinks only water’ and, most importantly, ‘professes to command his passions’. To this list was added one further detail. Ready to assume all the responsibilities of adulthood, Sir Richard made it known that ‘he intends to marry in five months’ time’.
A Girl Called Seymour
In an era that valued attractiveness above all other feminine attributes, no one ever raved about Seymour Dorothy Fleming’s beauty. No poet ever sang the praises of her prettiness, no gossipy matron ever remarked on her fine figure and in the many printed paragraphs which appeared during her life, at no point did any writer mention her comely features. Although she was not plain, her blue, almond-shaped eyes and mousy hair were considered distinctly ordinary. She had inherited her small stature and later her predisposition to plumpness from her mother, Jane Colman. From her father, Sir John Fleming, she had inherited an enormous fortune.
She had arrived in the Fleming nursery on the 5th of October 1757, the fourth child to be born in as many years. Her father, a career soldier who had served as a lieutenant in the Royal Regiment of English Fusiliers, had at the considerable age of fifty-one only recently married her mother. The son of a minor Irish landowner in County Sligo, Fleming had followed his uncle Colonel James Fleming into the army. By his late forties, a lifelong devotion to his family regiment had still failed to provide him with the means necessary for attracting a socially acceptable wife: his loyalty to his uncle had only yielded him a single bequest of £350. Had it not been for the unusual benevolence of his commanding officer and ‘best of friends’, Lieutenant-General William Hargrave, John Fleming might have ended his days as a bachelor. Circumventing the wishes of his family, Hargrave, His Majesty’s Governor of Gibraltar, willed his entire estate to Lieutenant Fleming. In
1751, this comprised 95 acres of land and a dilapidated manor house in Brompton on the outskirts of London, as well as smaller holdings throughout Middlesex, including a new, spacious town house on Grosvenor Street. Fleming’s windfall prompted an immediate quest for a spouse and in 1753 he married Jane Colman, granddaughter of the Duke of Somerset.
The war-weathered Lieutenant Fleming and his twenty-one-year-old bride soon settled down into a routine of domesticity and urgent breeding at their Grosvenor Street home. As men in the mid-eighteenth century could not expect to live much beyond their fifth decade, John Fleming applied himself vigilantly to the production of an heir. His young, fertile wife remained in an almost constant state of pregnancy. Her childbearing began with the delivery of Jane Margaret in 1755 and ended with the birth of the last of five children she carried to full term, Margaret Mary in 1762. The much wished for male heir, Hargrave William, arrived in 1756, followed closely by Catherine Elizabeth and then Seymour Dorothy in 1757. Seymour, the surname of the Dukes of Somerset, was an odd choice of Christian name for a girl, although the practice of bestowing a mother’s maiden name or a family name of importance on a boy was common enough. There was something prophetic in this decision, as an unorthodox name came to shape an even more unusual girl.
Shortly before her sixth birthday in 1763, Seymour lost both her brother and her father within a month of one another. Whether the two deaths were related is unknown. The family monument which the newly entitled Sir John Fleming, baronet had erected in Westminster Abbey to himself and Lieutenant-General Hargrave records the dates of their demise, but not its causes. Tragically, within six years, two further names would be engraved into the marble: those of her ten-year-old sister Catherine and of her youngest sibling Margaret. Although such an extreme loss was a misfortune, it was by no means exceptional while diphtheria, scarlet fever, whooping cough and tuberculosis ran unchecked through the urban population. It is estimated that between 50 and 60 per cent of the capital’s boys and girls died before their tenth birthday. Those who survived, such as Seymour and her eldest sister Jane, frequently reaped more than the benefits of a strong immune system.
As the Brompton estate had lost its male heir in October 1763, Sir John Fleming amended his will in the final weeks of his life so that the majority of his holdings, valued at approximately £52,000, might be divided evenly
between his daughters. In theory, the four girls would have each enjoyed a substantial £13,000, an amount large enough to calm the anxieties of their widowed mother. At a time when a quantifiable worth could be placed on the head of every woman of genteel birth, the Fleming girls had been blessed with exceptionally bright prospects. Their futures, like that of any eighteenth-century woman, resided upon their ability to marry within or above their class, a feat which would have been impossible without the prospect of a sufficient marriage portion. By mid-century the daughter of a landowner might feel unease if her family could not entail more than £1,000 on her. The amount of £5,000 was the smallest sum considered worthy of mention in the
Gentleman’s Magazine
, whereas £20,000 was regarded as an extremely generous settlement for Anne Pitt, the daughter of Baron Camelford, a minor aristocrat. As the sole beneficiaries of Sir John Fleming’s wealth, the baronet’s two little girls might one day be able to enter the most powerful and wealthy circles in Britain.
Unencumbered by concerns for her daughters’ welfare, Lady Fleming now in her early thirties entered the enviable state of wealthy widowhood. Described as ‘wonderfully agreeable’, ‘animated’, and possessing ‘charming, easy’ and ‘polite’ manners, she knew how best to represent herself among society’s eligible gentlemen. Where financial considerations and family obligations had played a role in the selection of her first husband, personal preference alone would dictate her choice of a second. This was to be Edwin Lascelles, a widower who was only slightly younger than the man whom she had lost. Lascelles, the long-reigning MP for Yorkshire was a man of bold political and personal ambitions who, according to George Selwyn, could ‘divert’ his friends ‘beyond imagination’ with his hearty conversation. He was also staggeringly rich.
Born in Barbados to a family who had accumulated their wealth through the trade of sugar, slaves and the provision of rations to the navy, his combined fortune was believed to have been worth £166,666, £53,000 of which was invested in his land. His secluded estate, Harewood, lay spread across 4,000 acres of rugged Yorkshire hills, pasture and woodland, eight miles north of the growing industrial centre of Leeds. When he met and married Lady Fleming in 1770, his mind was full of building plans. The construction of his country seat, Harewood House, had begun eleven years earlier and after much disputing and fist-pounding, the schemes of his architects, John Carr and Robert Adam had nearly been brought to completion. It would be another
twelve months before the house would make a dignified residence for his wife and two stepdaughters who in the interim passed their time between London and Knaresborough, near to the developing hot-spring resort of Harrogate.
Edwin Lascelles’s commanding residence had been constructed on the crest of a hill where its creamy-white stone shone beacon-like in the sunshine. It had been built to attract attention, in the hope of pulling political influence into its gleaming rooms. At fifty-eight, what Lascelles coveted most was a peerage. But the cold magnificence of Harewood alone could not achieve this. Its neo-classical rooms festooned in reds and blues required the expert touch of a sophisticated chatelaine to make both his home and his ambitions come to life. With her ‘active temperament, fashionable appearance and wide interests’, as well as her occasionally ‘saucy’ disposition, Lady Fleming brought the vibrancy that Lascelles needed. As a couple who both harboured aspirations they were well matched.
The new mistress of Harewood arrived in the summer of 1771 determined to place herself and her husband at the centre of Yorkshire high society. In an unusual move, she sought to assert her status by retaining her title rather than to take a demotion by becoming simply Mrs Lascelles. She would remain Lady Fleming until her husband was awarded a barony in 1790. In addition to hosting the local gentry in the salons of Harewood, Lady Fleming drew her husband from his estate into the public arena. At the theatre in Leeds her name was attached to numerous benefit performances and at York the couple regularly attended the races, a fashionable haunt even for the grandees of London’s
haut ton
. When not enjoying northern society, Lady Fleming was preoccupied with the fine tuning of Harewood’s décor. Just as the architects and builders had found her husband difficult to please, they found his wife equally fussy about fabrics and upholstering. As the rooms filled with carpets, lamps, girandoles, mirrors and furniture shipped from the London workshops of Messrs Chippendale and Haig, Lady Fleming was often on hand to inspect the arrangement. Under her direction, cages of chirping birds enlivened the rooms and examples of her own needlepoint were laid over the seats of chairs. When adjustments to the interior were concluded she busied herself with the design of the ornamental garden and the layout of the estate’s pleasure grounds. Her role as mistress of a country house carried with it a variety of novel distractions and duties. Now, as Edwin Lascelles’s spouse, her obligations were no longer those of a widowed mother of two
girls but those of the prominent wife of a powerful landowner whose priorities and agenda transcended the requirements of all else.
Lady Fleming’s remarriage was to alter the lives of everyone. Her daughters who had lived for seven years without a father would be expected to adapt not only to Mr Lascelles but to the unfamiliar routines of an alien house ordered by an army of suspicious staff. The move to Yorkshire was a startling change of scenery to Jane and Seymour, aged sixteen and thirteen, who had known only the swaggering manners of Mayfair and the stench of London’s streets. Harewood was a two-day ride from the capital through rocky, tufted landscapes and stony villages from which the odd expression of modern technology, a thumping mill or glowing furnace might be seen. The north was a desolate and wild place. From their top floor rooms at Harewood they could hear the nocturnal scream of foxes, while the harsh Yorkshire weather, the ripping winds and curtains of rain made the terrain seem both inhospitable and intriguing.
Lady Fleming’s daughters would not have been left entirely to their own devices in this new environment, but they could no longer rely on their mother’s supervision. This situation would not be as detrimental to Jane as it would be to her younger sister. As the elder of the two girls, Jane, described as ‘an ornament to her sex’ fulfilled the feminine ideal in every respect. Pretty and graceful, her delicate features and long, noble nose distinguished her as the more attractive of the Fleming sisters while her impeccable behaviour led Roger Lamb to describe her as ‘a pattern, not merely of engaging manners but of the most amiable and virtuous life’. Seymour could not compete with her sister’s perfection. She was judged more severely as headstrong and wilful, and was condemned for ‘possessing more forwardness than discretion’. In spite of the efforts of her tutors, Seymour’s education suffered. Her poorly written letters, riddled with basic spelling errors indicate a lack of regular instruction or of interest in learning. Intellectual pursuits did not appeal to her, instead Seymour preferred physical activities and sport. Access to her stepfather’s new stables and expansive estate enabled her to hone her skills as a horsewoman and eventually to make her name among society as ‘an equestrienne’. She also excelled at card games. As a teenage girl she not only gained a reputation for being ‘very assiduous in calculating the odds at whist and piquet’ but also ‘distinguished herself in the rooms at Bath with her dancing as well as her personal charms’.
In truth, a sparkling intellect would not have made either Seymour or Jane more desirable as a potential wife. Their knowledge of appropriate etiquette and deportment, their conversational skills and their mastery of the traditional female accomplishments such as music and dance, an understanding of French and elegant penmanship was what genteel society required. In the Fleming sisters’ circumstances, as one pundit wrote, had neither girl ‘possessed one personal attraction’ they ‘had at least seventy thousand charms which every fortune hunter contemplated with inexpressible admiration’.
As Jane and Seymour edged towards marriageable age, the inevitable rumours about the size of their respective inheritances had begun to bubble through society. No one was certain of the precise sum. The distended figure seemed to swell with every gasp of astonishment. The London newspapers mentioned that each sister was entitled to £70,000, while Edward Gibbon believed that it was £80,000. The
Leeds Mercury
exceeded all estimations with the claim that it was in fact £100,000. Lady Fleming remained complacently silent on the subject. It was in neither of her daughters’ interests to quiet the whispers. The true total, as reflected in family documents was closer to £52,000 each, a gargantuan amount roughly equivalent to £66.2 million today. The majority of this, like most wealth in the eighteenth century, was tied to land and the rents that might be demanded from it. Only a fraction was readily accessible as cash, but this hardly mattered when fortune of any description papered over all ills. Wealth was the century’s panacea and the acquisition of it, especially through marriage became one of the period’s obsessions. In an age of change and instability, money purchased security. It also unlocked the door to the halls of power. It promised access to comfort, respect, success, and a political voice. A large enough sum offered a life of opulence and the prospect of a peerage. A marriage portion the size of that entailed upon the Fleming girls might buoy up another family’s declining fortunes or catapult their husbands into influential realms of government. With such prizes at stake Seymour and Jane would not lack for suitors; their principal concern would be to find gentlemen who could offer them titles in exchange for their riches.

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