The Lady In Red: An Eighteenth-Century Tale Of Sex, Scandal, And Divorce (3 page)

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Authors: Hallie Rubenhold

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Among the many hopefuls who paid their respects to the Miss Flemings was Sir Richard Worsley. When he announced to Gibbon in 1772 that he intended ‘to marry in five months’ it was Jane on whom he had set his designs. In spite of the criticisms levelled at him for arrogance and aloofness, Sir Richard had grown into a temptingly handsome man. At twenty-one he was
described as being tall, with an ‘athletic figure and manly exterior’ which ‘might prejudice a woman in his behalf’. His boyish features had strengthened into ‘an agreeable countenance’ and his large grey eyes, full mouth and a firm jaw line were complemented by a head of dark hair. At the time, the rent on Worsley’s estates was believed to bring him an annual income of between £2,000 and £3,000, the equivalent of roughly £2.5–£3 million today. In an era when a middle-class man and his family might live in comfort for £400 per year, Sir Richard’s assets rendered him soundly rich. With a baronetcy to crown his fortune and a provision of good looks ample enough to sway young ladies and their hesitant mamas, Worsley would have ranked highly on any list of marriage candidates.
The baronet’s introduction to Edwin Lascelles and his wife probably occurred in London, as a result of their shared political interests. In the spring or summer of 1772, Sir Richard received an invitation to visit the family at Harewood, where the spacious rooms still smelt of freshly cut oak and clean fabric. At the time, the baronet was contemplating a grand scheme for the renovation of Appuldurcombe and doubtlessly was eager to inspect the recent achievements of Lascelles’s architects. The possibility of wooing the eldest of the two Fleming sisters was another motive for undertaking an inconvenient and expensive excursion to Yorkshire. Determined to make an impression on his potential in-laws Worsley equipped himself with ‘a new carriage, new liveries, and every external requisite’. Accompanying him was his steward, Richard Clarke, a man on whose friendship and advice he would lean for most of his life. Accounts of his early relations with the Fleming sisters suggest that in spite of his tailored appearance, his impressive brigade of shiny-buckled servants and his shellacked carriage, the object of his attentions failed to warm to him. After several days in his company Jane ‘soon discovered the emptiness of her admirer’. However, before his departure Worsley was determined to make a bid for her hand. Unable to read or comprehend her apparent lack of interest, his persistence forced her to ‘reject him with disdain,’ and ‘give him a positive refusal on his outset’.
As this romantic spectacle unfolded, the fourteen-year-old Seymour had been studying its male protagonist with fascination. As Jane’s junior by nearly three years, she was still considered too young to enter into the game of courtship, but this did not deter Seymour from youthful attempts at flirtation nor did it prevent Sir Richard reciprocating with playful overtures of his own. By the time the gates of Harewood were opened to Worsley’s
London-bound carriage, the seeds for a successful later encounter had already been sown.
It was 1775 when the younger Miss Fleming, aged seventeen, next dropped a curtsy to Sir Richard. They ‘renewed their former acquaintance’ amid the feathers and fans of the assembly rooms at York Races. Not wishing to hurry either of her daughters into a hasty union, Lady Fleming adopted the strategy of dangling her lavishly endowed girls under the noses of as wide a range of potential husbands as the passing years would permit. A suggested engagement between Jane and Lord Algernon Percy had recently amounted to nothing while Seymour had yet to encourage the advances of any suitor. This was her second spring on the marriage market and having shed the last of her childish figure she appeared before Sir Richard with the confidence of one accustomed to moving in elite society. In recounting the tale of their courtship, an anonymous Grub Street gazetteer records that the two took magnetically to one another, ‘he danced with her the whole evening; the next day they were inseparable, and the day after that they were constant companions upon the [race] course and at the assembly’. ‘Before the end of the week’, he continues, Worsley ‘had obtained a promise of her hand’. It is likely that their affections were sealed nearly as quickly as the author intimates. The racing season at York opened in May and by the 17th of June Gibbon writes about a dinner he gave at which Sir Richard announced to the assembled guests that ‘He is going to marry the youngest Miss Fleming’. He surmised that his friend was not compelled by passion alone, but rather by ‘love and £80,000’.
Indeed, pecuniary issues more than emotional desires played the largest role in dictating when a couple might marry. While fashion now demanded that love or at least an abiding mutual affection should form the foundation of a marital union, a marriage contract which committed to writing the financial expectations and arrangements of both parties always lay at the core. Negotiations between the solicitors and trustees representing Sir Richard and Seymour’s respective interests began shortly after the confirmation of their engagement and took several months to complete. As a woman and a minor, Seymour’s concerns were represented by her uncles, Francis and Edward Colman who held legal responsibility for her share of her father’s estate and for the decisions made on her behalf. By August it had been agreed that Seymour would deliver to her husband on their wedding day ‘for his sole use and benefit’ a parcel of property and ready cash. From a total of £52,000,
£19,645 11s. 6d. was to be invested in the purchase of lands adjacent to the existing Appuldurcombe estate, a gesture which would expand Sir Richard’s holdings and therefore his political influence. At Worsley’s insistence, a further £4,789 15s. would be put towards the purchase of an appropriate London town house for the couple. The bitterness of his father’s disgrace still lingered in his thoughts. He had learned from Sir Thomas’s mistake that an impressive house in town was essential to a gentleman’s self-respect. Accordingly, before their wedding the deeds of sale were signed for a recently built property on Stratford Place, a short street off the western end of Oxford Road, near enough to Mayfair to be considered within the pale of fashion.
As the legalities of the impending nuptials were being addressed by the men, Lady Fleming was preparing Seymour for her passage into matrimony and motherhood; that state which was regarded as a woman’s
raison d’être
. From her ample marriage portion, £3,000 was deducted for her trousseau, the collection of clothing, linens and ornaments necessary for equipping a young woman for married life. For ‘ladies of quality’ this not only included night clothing and ‘child bed linen’ but outfits suitable for public events, ball gowns, sporting attire for riding, and country wear made of sturdy textiles. In the months prior to the wedding, Mr Lascelles’s Portman Street house in the capital would have been a scene of scurrying activity as dressmakers and milliners, tradesmen and servants came and went from below stairs ferrying wrapped parcels and bolts of muslin and satin. Lady Fleming would have led her daughter proudly to the shops along Pall Mall and in Piccadilly to purchase gloves, lace, caps and ribbons. In the course of their errands, her mother would not have neglected to trail her before the windows of jewellers and goldsmiths.
Part of Seymour’s trousseau was an assortment of twinkling necklaces, earrings and brooches, hair slides, petite watches and dainty bracelets which in her new identity as a married woman would hang from her as a silent proclamation of her wealth. The filling of her jewellery box was a task for her family and her husband. In order to facilitate this and as a token of faith in their union, Seymour was presented with the money remaining from the purchase of her trousseau ‘to dispense with at her discretion’. On the eve of her wedding she lovingly awarded this sum to Sir Richard ‘for the purchase of jewels on her behalf’. Worsley, who would eventually earn a reputation for spendthrift indulgence, increased the gift substantially with
a contribution of his own. It is estimated that £7,000 in total was poured into the hands of gem dealers and goldsmiths, who strung and fastened and moulded the portable fortune that would adorn Seymour’s earlobes and
décolletage.
In the midst of this pre-nuptial excitement there was also cause for serious reflection. Seymour’s education, like that of most of her contemporaries would have included moral instruction. Best-selling works such as James Fordyce’s
Sermons to Young Women
and Wetenhall Wilkes’s
Letter of Genteel and Moral Advice to a Young Lady
, both of which remained in print throughout the second half of the eighteenth century, were given to girls to prepare them for married life. They preached that marriage required level-headed sobriety. Brides were reminded that ‘providence designed women for a state of dependence, and consequently of submission’. The duties of a wife were to include ‘love, fidelity and obedience to all [her husband’s] lawful desires’ through the practice of ‘meekness, tenderness, patience, and constancy’. Temptation would always beckon, especially within the higher circles. As the moralising Hester Chapone wrote in 1777, a young wife was bound ‘to meet with people who will ever endeavour to laugh [her] out of all regards’, and although a certain ‘dissipated’ element of fashionable society might ‘find something very ludicrous in the idea of authority in a husband’, breaking the hallowed vows of marriage had dire consequences.
But on the 15th of September 1775 under the lightly dappled leaves of early autumn, such foreboding thoughts were far from the mind of either bride or groom. They were married at the ancient church of All Saints on the Harewood estate, a short stroll from the portico of Seymour’s stepfather’s home. As was the tradition in the eighteenth century, their wedding was a modest, private affair to which only their nearest relations were invited. Edwin Lascelles and his brother Daniel acted as witnesses and later hosted a celebratory feast for the assembled.
That week, the newspapers made public ‘the marriage of Sir Richard Worsley of Pylewell in Hampshire, Bart … to Miss Seymour Fleming of the late Sir John Fleming, Bart’. Sir Richard’s local journal, the
Hampshire Chronicle
extended its congratulations by way of verse in which it boldly exclaimed;
Tuneful hail the virtuous fair
Happy, happy be the pair!
 
See with graceful mien the bride
By the happy bridegroom’s side
To the Temple’s altar move,
Call’d by Hymen–led by love!
The anonymous poet echoed the sentiments of those who had bid the pair farewell from Harewood as the newly-wedded Sir Richard and Lady Worsley;
May their years in pleasure run
End in love as they’ve begun!
May their lives in joy increase,
And their ends be crown’d with peace!
In their sprung carriage, the rich heiress and her handsome husband bounced down the road toward their contented future together. Were their lives destined to be ordinary, their story would conclude here, in the embrace of a happy ending. But a quiet existence was not intended for the Worsleys and the first act of the drama that was to consume them had hardly begun.
Sir Finical Whimsy and His Lady
In September 1775, a previously unknown girl of unexceptional appearance and the son of a backward country squire arrived in London. Following at their wheels came stories of the fortune that had recently exchanged hands. It was enough to arouse excitement and to make those not already acquainted with Sir Richard and Lady Worsley crane their necks in the couple’s direction, hoping to inspect them in their theatre box or during a promenade through St James’s Park. The newly-weds were the toast of balls, dinners and gatherings, and were trailed about from drawing room to levee, handed between the town houses of Lady Betty Worsley and the Earl of Cork, the man who had placed his signature on his grandson’s marriage contract. It was written that during the first few weeks of their union Sir Richard ushered his young bride through the capital ‘with the pageantry and pomp of an eastern sultana’, and that recently formed acquaintances and intimate friends alike ‘were continually striving to outvie each other in attention and politeness’ to his rich wife. The ambitious baronet had finally arrived in the situation he had envisioned for himself. The rumoured acquisition of £70,000 had permitted him to step on to society’s centre stage.
On the occasion of his marriage Sir Richard had commissioned a portrait of himself to commemorate the momentous event. Painted against a backdrop of Appuldurcombe’s rolling landscape, the full-length canvas was to serve as a metaphorical calling card, or a public proclamation of his identity and ambitions. He posed as he wished the world to view him, in
the uniform of the South Hampshire Militia; as a gentleman, a landowner, a man of feeling, a soldier. When he entered the studio of his friend, the artist Joshua Reynolds, he was twenty-four and exuded the excessive confidence of youth. In painted form, he stands composed, yet comfortable with his gloves and hat removed, his hands folded in front of him and his feet positioned ballet-like in a practised exhibition of genteel poise. His erect stance speaks of his impeccable breeding, the lengthy sword at his hip a reminder of his masculinity. With his slightly turned head, he regards his viewers with restraint, if not a hint of imperiousness. His emotions, unreadable in his expression, are tucked stoically into the recesses of his mind.
Seymour’s image had also been committed to canvas. The commission had probably been proposed by Lady Fleming and Mr Lascelles around the period of her engagement. Earlier that year, Reynolds had painted a full-length portrait of her sister, gliding across an Arcadian scene dressed as the classical goddess, Aurora. The picture of Jane, which hung at the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition, had been intended to advertise her charms to the titled bachelors of Britain, but the companion piece featuring Seymour would have been devised to celebrate her wedding. The work, which is now lost, is believed to have depicted the younger of the two Miss Flemings swathed in the coloured robes of antiquity, ‘in a repetition of the Diana motif.’ The two images with their Roman allusions would have suited the neo-classical interiors of Harewood perfectly, had the portrait of Seymour not been presented as a gift to her husband and sent to hang in his collection on the Isle of Wight.
The creation of these likenesses–of the confident, commanding Sir Richard and his serenely elegant wife–represented their first step in what they hoped would be a steady social climb. Much like Lady Fleming and Edwin Lascelles, the couple were determined to turn the attention they had won through their marriage to their advantage. Together they launched themselves headlong into a frenzy of improvements and activities. For the baronet, the most significant of these was the renovation and extension of Appuldurcombe.
Shortly after his return from his grand tour, Sir Richard had directed his attention to completing the Isle of Wight house. Work began immediately, bringing to fruition the seventy-year-old plans his cousin had drawn up for its edifice. The house, which consisted of a central block flanked by projecting wings, contained a marble-floored great hall with a low ceiling that cried
out for lifting. In this period of ‘enlightenment’ the prevailing fashion was to draw in illumination through the windows and to create open, airy spaces. Accordingly, the great hall was transformed into a bright area for the reception of visitors. To the north and west ends of the house Worsley also added a series of rooms, a spacious kitchen and a broad dining parlour. Beyond these additions, Sir Richard’s alterations were mostly cosmetic, but no less particular. While he allowed his cousin’s early eighteenth-century designs to dictate the exterior, he had no intention of permitting the heavy, baroque forms of his grandfather’s generation to displace the current fashion for light, neo-classical embellishment. In order to make the décor reflect his understanding of high taste, elegant plasterwork in scrolls and swags was added to the ceilings and architraves.
In August 1772, although the interior was not entirely complete, Appuldurcombe with its ‘twenty to thirty bedrooms’ was deemed comfortably habitable and Worsley, Lady Betty and his sister Henrietta took up residence there. Decorating, mainly in the service wing, would continue until 1782. At various intervals, the existing furniture was replaced with finely crafted objects from the workshops of Chippendale and Haig, the esteemed purveyors who had supplied the halls of his in-laws with their ‘split backed japanned chairs’ and satinwood tables. By the time he installed his young wife here, Sir Richard was able to survey his schemes and conclude that he had ‘much improved upon the original design’. From the house’s recently polished interior they could now peer through the windows and note with interest that developments had moved outside into the grounds. These were being dug and reshaped under the direction of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, the landscape architect who had only recently churned over the grassy meadows of Harewood. For Seymour, who herself had been transplanted from one incomplete country estate to the next, the movement of trees into decorative ‘clumps’ and clusters, the clearing of vistas and the creation of a sweeping serpentine drive would have been familiar scenes.
This protracted period of renovation did not come without a significant cost. Between 1775 and 1778, Sir Richard’s bank account with Hoare’s was perpetually in the red. The expenses accrued at Appuldurcombe were matched by the need to outfit his London house. Bills from Chippendale and Haig in excess of £2,000, and payments for china and ceramic ware to both Wedgwood and Spode drained his finances. In 1780, Worsley decided to sell his childhood home, Pylewell to underwrite the cost. The now outdated,
compact rooms of Pylewell reeked too much of the manners of awkward country gentry to make for a comfortable home. The modest but valuable collection of books, art and antiquities gathered by his father and his Worsley predecessors were moved to Appuldurcombe, as were the seventeenth-century faces captured by the brushes of Van Dyck, Peter Lely and Godfrey Kneller which lined the walls of the echoing great hall.
Over the years Sir Richard’s interest in the small assortment of objects that had fallen into his care had matured into a passion. It was one that had been nurtured under his father’s direction and encouraged by Deyverdun. Since his return he had taken his first tentative steps as a patron of the arts by extending his commissions and friendship to Joshua Reynolds. By 1777, he wished to affirm his interest in antiquarianism publicly by becoming a member of London’s learned societies. On the 18th of December his acceptance into the Society of Antiquaries was personally signed by its president, who declared him ‘a Gentleman in every way qualified to be a Fellow, by his extensive acquaintance with most Branches of Literature’ (by which he was referring to the baronet’s impressive knowledge of classical texts). The following year he was admitted to the Society of Dilettanti, a type of show-and-tell organisation specifically for gentlemen who had been on the grand tour and who enjoyed a drink as much as they did an opportunity to admire each other’s images of Venus, marble priapi and ancient cameos. In March 1778, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, a body with a slightly more serious reputation for scholarship.
Even as a member of these associations, Worsley moved in a very select circle. The antiquarians and art patrons he rubbed shoulders with were in some cases the same personalities with whom he shared his political life. In the year before his marriage the baronet had been elected to Parliament as the honourable member for Newport. Both Sir Richard and his father had been staunchly Tory, a favourable camp in the reign of George III. The Tory party were generally adherents to tradition, they supported the King’s authority and the right of the Hanoverians (as opposed to the ousted Stuart pretenders) to sit on the English throne.
It was fortuitous that the baronet’s personal convictions, his need for order and hierarchy aligned so neatly with the political philosophy favoured by the reigning monarch. Sir Richard clearly understood his place and duties. He held no radical passion for liberty, no Whiggish interests in serving the
public good. His aspirations were to maintain the status quo, always to vote as the sovereign would have him (which the division lists demonstrate he did) and to use political position to increase his own wealth, as was the accepted practice.
Worsley was also shrewd. He understood that the more closely he adjusted his values to that of his monarch, the more ardently he waved the government’s banner, the more obsequiously loyal he became, the more likely he was to achieve his ultimate design of obtaining a peerage. Movement upward from the lower end of the titled landed classes into the power-wielding realm of the aristocracy proper would have fulfilled centuries of hopefulness on the part of his ancestors. As George III appeared well disposed toward granting peerages, the current climate was an auspicious one. Sir Richard’s strategy was to increase his influence on the Isle of Wight until it spilled over into Hampshire. His recent acquisition of additional land on the island, facilitated by his marriage, was his first offensive move towards controlling a greater share of electoral power. The more of the region he cornered, the larger a political player he became. With such authority, such fortune and such devotion to the throne, Worsley would have believed that his route to royal favour was adequately paved.
Indications that the award of a peerage might be imminent appeared as early as 1777 with his appointment as one of the Clerks Comptroller of the Board of Green Cloth. Two years later he rose to become Comptroller of the King’s Household. In this latter role, where he acted as chief accountant to the royal family, Sir Richard excelled himself. A more suitable post could not have been invented for Worsley’s organised and mathematical mind. He dispatched his responsibilities with such precision and alacrity that the press dubbed him ‘Sir Finical Whimsy’. This dedication to his office paid off handsomely. By the age of twenty-nine in 1780 he had been made a Privy Counsellor (a leading government adviser), and Governor of the Isle of Wight, positions which were rumoured to have brought him £10,000 annually in salary and bribes.
When not balancing His Majesty’s books or attending the meetings of the many learned societies to which he belonged, Worsley was buried in another of his long-term projects, the compilation of his
History of the Isle of Wight
. Both his grandfather and his father had collected materials during their lifetimes and Sir Richard regarded it as ‘a discharge of a filial duty’ to see the book published. In June 1781 when the completed volume finally appeared
in the booksellers’ shops, he was engaged in fulfilling what he perceived to be yet another familial obligation: commanding the recently re-embodied South Hampshire Militia.
Sir Richard’s responsibilities had him in a state of perpetual motion, travelling between London and Appuldurcombe, from Appuldurcombe to Newport, from Stratford Place to Westminster, and then to any encampment in south-west England where his militia regiment might have pitched their tents. Unfailing in his commitment to the King’s government, Worsley was never absent for an important parliamentary vote, when his party (and sovereign) might require him. His head was clouded with politics, refurbishments, and the production of the
History of the Isle of Wight.
He was constantly busy, muddled and not always consistent in honouring his social obligations. When the annual ‘Club Ball’, an exclusive event for the Isle of Wight’s ‘quality’, was held in October 1775, complaints were aired that Sir Richard, the honorary master of ceremonies, acted with exceptional rudeness by ‘not making his appearance till 10 in the evening’. With so many distractions it is remarkable that the baronet and his wife were able to share the same room, let alone the same bed for long. However, Worsley’s dedication to his dynastic duties always prevailed. In August 1776, within twelve months of his wedding, a son and heir, Robert Edwin was born, but in spite of the rejoicing, all was not well between Sir Richard and his wife. By the end of that year, their relationship, ‘like the weather, had grown perfectly cool’.
What precisely had caused this alteration is unclear. In later years, it was reported that Lady Worsley had divulged the nature of the couple’s problems as springing from her husband’s inability to perform in the bedroom. Her complaint, it was claimed, was that Sir Richard had given her ‘the miserable pleasure of keeping [her] virginity three months after marriage’, and as a result she had been forced to lie ‘in a bed with a man who afforded … no other pleasure than that … derived from one of our own sex’. There may have been some truth in this accusation. Robert Edwin would have been conceived in November or December, two to three months after their September wedding. In spite of this awkward situation, ‘all external appearances were kept up and no one judged there was the least misunderstanding between the baronet and her ladyship’. Contrary to her hopes that the birth of a healthy male heir would have provided ‘a further cement to conjugal affection’ this was not to be the case. Sadly, ‘the fondness that had first reigned between them’ was ‘not restored’. With the delivery of his son, Lady
Worsley had honoured her obligations to her husband and with this duty dispatched Sir Richard turned his attention elsewhere, to the management of his political life and the pursuit of his many interests. Inevitably, the couple who had hardly known one another on their wedding day began to drift apart.

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