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Authors: Hallie Rubenhold
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The Lady In Red: An Eighteenth-Century Tale Of Sex, Scandal, And Divorce (24 page)
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This band of morally reprehensible but influential gentlemen, who included Lords Deerhurst, Graham and Peterborough, as well as Lords Maldon, Cavendish and Jersey, were among the lovers’ loyal friends. In a show of gratitude for their support, Sir Richard Worsley’s wife organised ‘a ball to all her beaus’ which, the
Morning Herald
announced, was given ‘Immediately after the determination of a late well known crim. con. trial in Westminster Hall’. With ‘the eyes of the whole world, as well as the
ton
fixed on their movements’, Seymour was determined to cause a stir. Her victor’s ball would be the first of a series of public exhibitions designed to court attention and exact further revenge on her husband. While Worsley haggled over the possession of her clothing, jewels and the details of their separation, Seymour returned fire with a continued campaign intended to grind salt into his wounded pride.
Morning Herald
announced, was given ‘Immediately after the determination of a late well known crim. con. trial in Westminster Hall’. With ‘the eyes of the whole world, as well as the
ton
fixed on their movements’, Seymour was determined to cause a stir. Her victor’s ball would be the first of a series of public exhibitions designed to court attention and exact further revenge on her husband. While Worsley haggled over the possession of her clothing, jewels and the details of their separation, Seymour returned fire with a continued campaign intended to grind salt into his wounded pride.
George Bisset’s defence lawyers had taught Seymour a useful lesson: her most powerful tactic when doing battle with her husband was to blacken her own name. The court case had revealed Worsley’s conceited sense of honour to be his Achilles’ heel. By continuing to shame herself she would, by virtue of sharing his surname, humiliate him as well.
The newspapers and Grub Street were all too pleased to assist her. In the second week following the trial, the
Morning Herald
was shocking its readership once more with allegations that ‘A certain Lady lately convicted of having sacrificed too freely at the altar of Venus, is said for the sake of dear variety now to contrast her devotions, and to this pious purpose offers plentiful libations at the shrine of the jolly god Bacchus!’ Few sights were considered more disgraceful than that of an intoxicated highborn lady. Even among the women of the
demi-monde
, certain basic codes prevailed. As a rule, drunkenness was for gin-swilling streetwalkers, not the elegant mistresses of noblemen. In a fit of heady abandon, Seymour had stepped into deeper realms of disgrace. On the 21st of April came another, equally aggressive stunt designed to embarrass Sir Richard. Londoners opened their newspapers the next morning to read that ‘a grand subscription masquerade ball
was given at the Pantheon’ which ‘surpassed anything of that kind we remember to have seen’. Moving through the opulent rooms adorned with ‘superb looking glasses … festoons of flowers and nine medallions painted by Biaggio Rebecca’ was the Prince of Wales, his associates and approximately 1,500 other individuals. While the guests hid behind their veils and disguises, Lady Worsley entered the scene unmasked. Her bare face invited spectators to note that she gloatingly conducted her champion, ‘Lord Deerhurst round the rooms almost the whole evening’.
Morning Herald
was shocking its readership once more with allegations that ‘A certain Lady lately convicted of having sacrificed too freely at the altar of Venus, is said for the sake of dear variety now to contrast her devotions, and to this pious purpose offers plentiful libations at the shrine of the jolly god Bacchus!’ Few sights were considered more disgraceful than that of an intoxicated highborn lady. Even among the women of the
demi-monde
, certain basic codes prevailed. As a rule, drunkenness was for gin-swilling streetwalkers, not the elegant mistresses of noblemen. In a fit of heady abandon, Seymour had stepped into deeper realms of disgrace. On the 21st of April came another, equally aggressive stunt designed to embarrass Sir Richard. Londoners opened their newspapers the next morning to read that ‘a grand subscription masquerade ball
was given at the Pantheon’ which ‘surpassed anything of that kind we remember to have seen’. Moving through the opulent rooms adorned with ‘superb looking glasses … festoons of flowers and nine medallions painted by Biaggio Rebecca’ was the Prince of Wales, his associates and approximately 1,500 other individuals. While the guests hid behind their veils and disguises, Lady Worsley entered the scene unmasked. Her bare face invited spectators to note that she gloatingly conducted her champion, ‘Lord Deerhurst round the rooms almost the whole evening’.
As the months of 1782 passed, the brazenness of Lady Worsley’s attacks on her husband increased. The moral support of her
demi-monde
circle, together with Sir Richard’s defeat in court, seemed to bolster Seymour and Bisset’s conviction that they had been unfairly persecuted for following their hearts’ desires. Their belief that their elopement was justifiable, regardless of its illegitimacy in the eyes of the law, the church and society, continued to intensify. Lady Worsley became adept at playing to her public gallery by dangling promises in newspapers and pamphlets, pledging ‘to acquaint … the inquisitive world’ with ‘her reasons’ for instigating the separation, without ever fulfilling them. Long into the summer months, the lovers were still seizing opportunities to display themselves and rouse comment. The
Morning Post
reported on the 23rd of July that while sitting in the ‘green boxes of the Haymarket Theatre … Her ladyship hung her white cloak over the boxes as an emblem of her innocence’. The writer continued that, ‘the two turtles seemed not only happy in their own dear society but in sporting their figures to the infinite sport of the audience’. Whether the audience’s sport came in the form of cheers or jeers, is undisclosed.
demi-monde
circle, together with Sir Richard’s defeat in court, seemed to bolster Seymour and Bisset’s conviction that they had been unfairly persecuted for following their hearts’ desires. Their belief that their elopement was justifiable, regardless of its illegitimacy in the eyes of the law, the church and society, continued to intensify. Lady Worsley became adept at playing to her public gallery by dangling promises in newspapers and pamphlets, pledging ‘to acquaint … the inquisitive world’ with ‘her reasons’ for instigating the separation, without ever fulfilling them. Long into the summer months, the lovers were still seizing opportunities to display themselves and rouse comment. The
Morning Post
reported on the 23rd of July that while sitting in the ‘green boxes of the Haymarket Theatre … Her ladyship hung her white cloak over the boxes as an emblem of her innocence’. The writer continued that, ‘the two turtles seemed not only happy in their own dear society but in sporting their figures to the infinite sport of the audience’. Whether the audience’s sport came in the form of cheers or jeers, is undisclosed.
Variety
The crowd that gathered on that July evening had eagerly pushed their way through the doors of the Haymarket Theatre and spilled into the pit. The wine merchant had escorted his wife to her seat, beside the ironmonger and his children. Servants in livery elbowed each other at the back; the cabinetmaker exchanged coy glances with the milliner’s apprentice, one of many women fanning themselves vigorously against the stifling heat. Linen wilted and rivulets of sweat washed away carefully applied powder. People smoothed the backs of their skirts and lifted the tails of their coats before settling on to the hard benches and seats. With the stage before them and the boxes hanging at either side, they were ideally situated to watch as the drama of the playhouse commenced.
Georgian London came to the theatre not only to watch the performances advertised on the evening’s playbills, but to partake in the unscripted dramas around them. High within the candlelit semicircle of the house was a network of smaller stages. Nightly, the players treading the boards found themselves in competition with the actors of fashionable society who drew the attention of the audience with their own unpredictable plots. The draped and fringed interiors of the boxes hosted a full slate of entertainments–scuffles between peers, melodrama as the gaze of a wife met that of a mistress, political posturing between Whig and Tory supporters and even the occasional pyrotechnical display as a lady’s stacked coiffure dipped into an open flame. On the night Lady Worsley and George Bisset cast Seymour’s white
cloak over the rim of their box, the audience was midway through a long-running serial of which this performance formed only one scene.
cloak over the rim of their box, the audience was midway through a long-running serial of which this performance formed only one scene.
As the spectators called out to the lovers in their roost, Lady Worsley failed to show the slightest hint of embarrassment or remorse. Seymour wore her fallen status with delight, knowing that her carefree attitude would encourage Grub Street to produce further ammunition in her war against Worsley. Weekly, her character was pelted with printed insults. There was no crime against decency which she was not accused of committing. She was called ‘an utter enemy to all
amorous monopoly
’, a woman who ‘laid her wares open to every fair trader’ and who had become ‘a horrid Picture of Infamy’. They marvelled at her unfeminine shamelessness in ‘fully declaring her innermost sentiments without the least reserve’ and ‘openly plunging … into the Gulph of Carnal Variety without pour-traying even an inclination of Reluctance’. Over the course of several months, Seymour’s baiting of the press had produced the desired outcome. In addition to the mocking caricatures gummed into the engraving shop windows, the printers of Grub Street had unleashed a tide of pamphlets, poems and purported memoirs on to the booksellers’ shelves. Lady Worsley’s ‘notorious frailty’, wrote the
Monthly Review
, had been ‘a lucky thing for the catchpenny authors, versemen and prosemen’ who feathered their nests with her misfortune.
amorous monopoly
’, a woman who ‘laid her wares open to every fair trader’ and who had become ‘a horrid Picture of Infamy’. They marvelled at her unfeminine shamelessness in ‘fully declaring her innermost sentiments without the least reserve’ and ‘openly plunging … into the Gulph of Carnal Variety without pour-traying even an inclination of Reluctance’. Over the course of several months, Seymour’s baiting of the press had produced the desired outcome. In addition to the mocking caricatures gummed into the engraving shop windows, the printers of Grub Street had unleashed a tide of pamphlets, poems and purported memoirs on to the booksellers’ shelves. Lady Worsley’s ‘notorious frailty’, wrote the
Monthly Review
, had been ‘a lucky thing for the catchpenny authors, versemen and prosemen’ who feathered their nests with her misfortune.
While her husband bore the brunt of the caricaturists’ ridicule, Seymour was the satirists’ favourite target. Aside from the frequently reprinted trial transcripts and almost daily reports of her activities in the newspapers, by July there were at least seven works which claimed to detail her exploits. The first of these,
The Whim!!!
a mildly erotic poem which turned the events of the Maidstone bath into rhyming couplets, appeared in early March. Two weeks later,
Variety, or Which is the Man?
stole its thunder. Borrowing its title from the two popular plays being staged at the time of the criminal conversation trial, this inflammatory poem enraged moral sentiment with its speculation on Lady Worsley’s lewd inner thoughts. The need to find ‘that rich jewel, Content’ led her to ‘taste
carnal infamy
’, the work claimed, before listing a series of experiences with an assortment of ‘swains’ who had failed to please her. She sighs,
The Whim!!!
a mildly erotic poem which turned the events of the Maidstone bath into rhyming couplets, appeared in early March. Two weeks later,
Variety, or Which is the Man?
stole its thunder. Borrowing its title from the two popular plays being staged at the time of the criminal conversation trial, this inflammatory poem enraged moral sentiment with its speculation on Lady Worsley’s lewd inner thoughts. The need to find ‘that rich jewel, Content’ led her to ‘taste
carnal infamy
’, the work claimed, before listing a series of experiences with an assortment of ‘swains’ who had failed to please her. She sighs,
All diff’rent these poor garbage were,
Some fat, some lean, some brown, some fair;
In short thro’ every change I went,
But ne’er cou’d find to keep
Content
.
Some fat, some lean, some brown, some fair;
In short thro’ every change I went,
But ne’er cou’d find to keep
Content
.
At last, after running through ‘a variegated train’ of lovers, Bisset had captured her ‘incessant wand’ring eyes’. The filthy poem’s unapologetic tone scandalised its readers, and as the author had hinted that these were the actual thoughts of Lady Worsley, the pages were destined to fly off the booksellers’ shelves.
For the remaining weeks of March and most of April letters were handed into the offices of the
Morning Post
speculating on the work’s authorship. ‘It is astonishing to what number of authors the new poem
Variety
… is attributed,’ wrote the
Morning Post
. ‘Some declare it to be the production of Lord———; others say, who pretend to be in the secret, that it is written either by Mr Sheridan or Mr Tickell … but we can assure the public that this popular poem is not the production of either of these gentlemen.’ On the 17th of April, the newspaper announced, ‘After all the various conjectures concerning the real author of the poem
Variety
we can assure the public from indisputable authority that this popular poetic trifle is the production of a creature of Sir Richard Worsley’s in order to expose his Lady in as ignominious a manner as possible’, but this proved to be untrue. The baronet wrote to the editor himself to deny the claim and asked for a note of correction to be printed the following day, stating that ‘the paragraph inserted in this paper yesterday asserting the above poem to be written by a creature of Sir Richard Worsley’s is an impudent falsehood, and without the least foundation whatsoever’. This came only a week after another declaration had appeared, that ‘The author of Variety … intends to shortly avow himself in the public papers in order to prevent all future controversies upon that subject.’ He never did come forward.
Morning Post
speculating on the work’s authorship. ‘It is astonishing to what number of authors the new poem
Variety
… is attributed,’ wrote the
Morning Post
. ‘Some declare it to be the production of Lord———; others say, who pretend to be in the secret, that it is written either by Mr Sheridan or Mr Tickell … but we can assure the public that this popular poem is not the production of either of these gentlemen.’ On the 17th of April, the newspaper announced, ‘After all the various conjectures concerning the real author of the poem
Variety
we can assure the public from indisputable authority that this popular poetic trifle is the production of a creature of Sir Richard Worsley’s in order to expose his Lady in as ignominious a manner as possible’, but this proved to be untrue. The baronet wrote to the editor himself to deny the claim and asked for a note of correction to be printed the following day, stating that ‘the paragraph inserted in this paper yesterday asserting the above poem to be written by a creature of Sir Richard Worsley’s is an impudent falsehood, and without the least foundation whatsoever’. This came only a week after another declaration had appeared, that ‘The author of Variety … intends to shortly avow himself in the public papers in order to prevent all future controversies upon that subject.’ He never did come forward.
Amid this confusion, Seymour chose to remain silent. The public were growing increasingly anxious to hear Lady Worsley’s own voice, to have a justification for her debauched and unrepentant behaviour. They wanted to know her side of events, they desired an explanation for her elopement, a description of the horrors or all-consuming lust which drove her to abandon her husband. Instead, Seymour kept them waiting. In the last week of March, her decision to send ‘one of her servants on Saturday morning to Mr Swift, on Charles St, St James with orders to purchase fifty copies of the new poem published by him entitled,
Variety or Which is the Man?
’ baffled the public.
Was this an attempt to quash the work by removing an entire print run of fifty pamphlets from Mr Swift’s shop? The
Morning Post
concluded to the contrary, commenting, ‘the only reason which our correspondent can give for her singling out this poem from among many hasty productions that have made their appearance on the same subject is to distribute copies of it amongst her gallants that they may no longer be deceived with the flattering idea of their superiority over her affections but shew them the real man on whom she has fixed her attachment!’ With neither a confirmation nor a denial that
Variety
represented Lady Worsley’s true feelings, the curious continued to exchange their shillings for a peek between the covers. Like the Pye Donkin trial transcripts which were still spinning off the presses,
Variety
, ‘due to uncommon demand’, went through at least seven reprints in roughly six weeks. Two of London’s more prominent booksellers, William Swift and Son and George Kearsley, could not replenish their stocks quickly enough and were prepared literally to fight in order to corner this lucrative trade in Worsley dross. At the height of the furore, as the printing presses were grinding out stanzas of
Variety
past midnight, the
Morning Post
reported that ‘A challenge was lately sent by Mr Kearsley the bookseller to Mr Swift … to fight him near the Powder Mills, Hounslow Heath’. Gratefully, ‘the dispute was amicably adjusted’ without the need for bloodshed.
Variety or Which is the Man?
’ baffled the public.
Was this an attempt to quash the work by removing an entire print run of fifty pamphlets from Mr Swift’s shop? The
Morning Post
concluded to the contrary, commenting, ‘the only reason which our correspondent can give for her singling out this poem from among many hasty productions that have made their appearance on the same subject is to distribute copies of it amongst her gallants that they may no longer be deceived with the flattering idea of their superiority over her affections but shew them the real man on whom she has fixed her attachment!’ With neither a confirmation nor a denial that
Variety
represented Lady Worsley’s true feelings, the curious continued to exchange their shillings for a peek between the covers. Like the Pye Donkin trial transcripts which were still spinning off the presses,
Variety
, ‘due to uncommon demand’, went through at least seven reprints in roughly six weeks. Two of London’s more prominent booksellers, William Swift and Son and George Kearsley, could not replenish their stocks quickly enough and were prepared literally to fight in order to corner this lucrative trade in Worsley dross. At the height of the furore, as the printing presses were grinding out stanzas of
Variety
past midnight, the
Morning Post
reported that ‘A challenge was lately sent by Mr Kearsley the bookseller to Mr Swift … to fight him near the Powder Mills, Hounslow Heath’. Gratefully, ‘the dispute was amicably adjusted’ without the need for bloodshed.
By April,
Variety
’s sensational subject matter had inspired not only a duel but an artist’s imagination. Until now, Lady Worsley had avoided being the focus for caricaturists’ ridicule, but James Gillray, the artist responsible for savaging her husband, was about to turn on her. Although lampoonists had taken every opportunity to fill their tablets with representations of her exposed breasts, naked hips and hiked-up skirts, no printmaker had dared to depict the rapacious whore of
Variety
’s verses with her conquests. Gillray’s cartoon,
A Peep into Lady W!!!!y’s Seraglio
, sprang from the
The Whim
’s introductory address, where the author reminds Seymour of ‘a conversation with some officers’ when she had ‘expressed a wish … to form a
Male Seraglio
’. It was further whetted by the imagery from
Variety
’s couplets, in which she boasts of taking a ‘strange motley crew’ to her bed. From these points of inspiration the caricaturist created his licentious picture of Lady Worsley.
Variety
’s sensational subject matter had inspired not only a duel but an artist’s imagination. Until now, Lady Worsley had avoided being the focus for caricaturists’ ridicule, but James Gillray, the artist responsible for savaging her husband, was about to turn on her. Although lampoonists had taken every opportunity to fill their tablets with representations of her exposed breasts, naked hips and hiked-up skirts, no printmaker had dared to depict the rapacious whore of
Variety
’s verses with her conquests. Gillray’s cartoon,
A Peep into Lady W!!!!y’s Seraglio
, sprang from the
The Whim
’s introductory address, where the author reminds Seymour of ‘a conversation with some officers’ when she had ‘expressed a wish … to form a
Male Seraglio
’. It was further whetted by the imagery from
Variety
’s couplets, in which she boasts of taking a ‘strange motley crew’ to her bed. From these points of inspiration the caricaturist created his licentious picture of Lady Worsley.
Along a staircase leading down to Seymour’s bedchamber are nine assorted admirers, anxiously awaiting their turn. The ‘Messalina of the Modern Age’ can be seen in a cut-away, eagerly straddling her partially smothered partner. ‘Give all thou canst and let me dream the rest!’ she exclaims between kisses.
Her victim’s troubled gaze suggests that the request has taxed him to his physical limits. Lady Worsley’s insatiability had already laid waste to his predecessor, who is seen weakly pulling up his britches while limping out the back door. ‘O dear,’ he moans, ‘I believe it’s all over with me.’ Where Seymour’s libido is concerned, however, there is little cause for worry; the next of her stallions stands at the ready. With his ear against the door awaiting his cue, a fashionably dressed young man looks to his companion and comments, ‘Hark! My turn’s very near!’ Smiling with anticipation his friend urges him, ‘Then do pray be quick.’ Behind this pair is an irritated figure in military dress, bearing an uncanny resemblance to Gillary’s image of Sir Richard Worsley in his other lampoon,
Sir Richard Worse-than-Sly
. With hands on hips, he snarls over his shoulder at a bearded Jew with whom he argues. ‘Tish!’ exclaims the Yiddish speaker. ‘My turn’s to be served before you.’ The Worsley character regards him impassively while grumbling, ‘You lie, Sir. Damme.’ Behind this feuding duo is an impatient man in country dress; with his walking stick tucked under his arm, he jostles the throng. ‘Yoiks,’ he calls out. ‘Hark forward below there.’ The next in the queue is more relaxed. A fat clergyman, half asleep on his feet is yawning broadly, resigned to a long wait. The thin fop who breathes down his neck is more agitated. Squinting into a pair of pince-nez spectacles, he surveys the long line and sighs, ‘Bless me, when will my turn come?’ He will not have to endure a wait as lengthy as the two rakish friends at the back end of the queue. ‘Zounds my time will never come,’ complains the last, grasping his head in frustration. His cheerful associate looks at him and laughs, ‘Ha, ha, ha, the Devil take the hindmost, say I.’ As the viewer pulls back from the drama, Gillray’s commentary can be read on the architecture. Borrowing from the seventeenth-century playwright, Nicholas Rowe, he has framed the scene along the staircase with a quote from
The Fair Penitent:
‘One lover to another still succeeded. Another and another after that –And the last Fool is welcome as the former: Till having lov’d his hour out he gives place, And mingles with the herd that went before him.’ Over Lady Worsley’s bedchamber is placed a subtle, but stinging jest: a portrait of the chaste Lucretia, a Roman heroine so determined to preserve her virtue that she killed herself after a rape robbed her of it.
Her victim’s troubled gaze suggests that the request has taxed him to his physical limits. Lady Worsley’s insatiability had already laid waste to his predecessor, who is seen weakly pulling up his britches while limping out the back door. ‘O dear,’ he moans, ‘I believe it’s all over with me.’ Where Seymour’s libido is concerned, however, there is little cause for worry; the next of her stallions stands at the ready. With his ear against the door awaiting his cue, a fashionably dressed young man looks to his companion and comments, ‘Hark! My turn’s very near!’ Smiling with anticipation his friend urges him, ‘Then do pray be quick.’ Behind this pair is an irritated figure in military dress, bearing an uncanny resemblance to Gillary’s image of Sir Richard Worsley in his other lampoon,
Sir Richard Worse-than-Sly
. With hands on hips, he snarls over his shoulder at a bearded Jew with whom he argues. ‘Tish!’ exclaims the Yiddish speaker. ‘My turn’s to be served before you.’ The Worsley character regards him impassively while grumbling, ‘You lie, Sir. Damme.’ Behind this feuding duo is an impatient man in country dress; with his walking stick tucked under his arm, he jostles the throng. ‘Yoiks,’ he calls out. ‘Hark forward below there.’ The next in the queue is more relaxed. A fat clergyman, half asleep on his feet is yawning broadly, resigned to a long wait. The thin fop who breathes down his neck is more agitated. Squinting into a pair of pince-nez spectacles, he surveys the long line and sighs, ‘Bless me, when will my turn come?’ He will not have to endure a wait as lengthy as the two rakish friends at the back end of the queue. ‘Zounds my time will never come,’ complains the last, grasping his head in frustration. His cheerful associate looks at him and laughs, ‘Ha, ha, ha, the Devil take the hindmost, say I.’ As the viewer pulls back from the drama, Gillray’s commentary can be read on the architecture. Borrowing from the seventeenth-century playwright, Nicholas Rowe, he has framed the scene along the staircase with a quote from
The Fair Penitent:
‘One lover to another still succeeded. Another and another after that –And the last Fool is welcome as the former: Till having lov’d his hour out he gives place, And mingles with the herd that went before him.’ Over Lady Worsley’s bedchamber is placed a subtle, but stinging jest: a portrait of the chaste Lucretia, a Roman heroine so determined to preserve her virtue that she killed herself after a rape robbed her of it.
As shrewd men and women of business, London’s booksellers and printmakers knew how to capture the public’s waning attention. Affixing
A Peep into Lady W!!!!y’s Seraglio
, described as ‘an elegant frontispiece, designed and etched by an eminent artist’, to the fifth and sixth editions of
Variety
was a
foregone conclusion. Attaching a salacious picture to the lurid poem breathed further life into it. The publication’s runaway success seemed unstoppable, until the 20th of April. On that morning the
Morning Post
ran a simple advertisement: ‘Published today,
An Epistle from Lady Worsley to Sir Richard Worsley
printed by P. Wright’. The pamphlet was the one for which everyone had been waiting. Lady Worsley had spoken.
A Peep into Lady W!!!!y’s Seraglio
, described as ‘an elegant frontispiece, designed and etched by an eminent artist’, to the fifth and sixth editions of
Variety
was a
foregone conclusion. Attaching a salacious picture to the lurid poem breathed further life into it. The publication’s runaway success seemed unstoppable, until the 20th of April. On that morning the
Morning Post
ran a simple advertisement: ‘Published today,
An Epistle from Lady Worsley to Sir Richard Worsley
printed by P. Wright’. The pamphlet was the one for which everyone had been waiting. Lady Worsley had spoken.
An Epistle from Lady Worsley to Sir Richard Worsley
met the same frantic demand as its predecessors. By the end of the day, those who had sent their servants down to ‘The Booksellers of Paternoster Row, Piccadilly, the Strand, the Fleet and the Royal Exchange’ in the hope of buying a bound edition were ‘to meet with disappointment’. The excited readers waiting for Lady Worsley’s purported confessions were entirely unaware that this latest piece of Grub Street drivel had not been designed to answer their questions or even to titillate them. Rather, this production, composed by an anonymous hack, was the latest and biggest cannonball in Seymour’s arsenal and she intended to fire it at her husband. Its strategic arrival on the booksellers’ shelves was evidence of a continuing siege. Behind the public façade, pasted with engravings of Maidstone baths and cuckolds and decorated with slanderous verse, the legal battle of
Worsley
v.
Worsley
continued to rage.
met the same frantic demand as its predecessors. By the end of the day, those who had sent their servants down to ‘The Booksellers of Paternoster Row, Piccadilly, the Strand, the Fleet and the Royal Exchange’ in the hope of buying a bound edition were ‘to meet with disappointment’. The excited readers waiting for Lady Worsley’s purported confessions were entirely unaware that this latest piece of Grub Street drivel had not been designed to answer their questions or even to titillate them. Rather, this production, composed by an anonymous hack, was the latest and biggest cannonball in Seymour’s arsenal and she intended to fire it at her husband. Its strategic arrival on the booksellers’ shelves was evidence of a continuing siege. Behind the public façade, pasted with engravings of Maidstone baths and cuckolds and decorated with slanderous verse, the legal battle of
Worsley
v.
Worsley
continued to rage.
For a variety of reasons, some of which are not entirely documented, Worsley’s suit for Separation from Bed and Board faced a number of obstacles. Disagreements between the parties about the conditions of the separation continued long after the proceedings at Doctors’ Commons had concluded in late February. In the early spring of 1782 Lady Worsley’s most immediate concern had been her missing clothing. On the day after the trial, brimming with a victor’s confidence, Seymour had ‘appeared personally’ alongside her solicitor Robert Dodwell at the Consistorial Episcopal Court in London to register her complaints in the form of a lawsuit. It was claimed that ‘at the time of her separation’ Lady Worsley ‘took no other wearing apparel with her than what she wore at the time’, and that in the intervening months she had ‘received but very few cloaths and wearing apparel’ from her husband. In spite of ‘applications … repeatedly made to his agents to deliver the [clothing]’ Worsley had ‘consistently made a refusal’ to give the items to her. No refutation of these accusations was forthcoming. As the baronet had gone into hiding following the trial’s calamitous verdict, his solicitor, James Heseltine could only request time ‘to verify … the truth of some matters’. Sir Richard was ordered to give an answer by the last day of the legal quarter.
Worsley’s response to his wife’s action was contemptuous. He made no effort to abide by the judge’s request, choosing instead to ignore the edict and to address the issues at his leisure.
Worsley’s response to his wife’s action was contemptuous. He made no effort to abide by the judge’s request, choosing instead to ignore the edict and to address the issues at his leisure.
BOOK: The Lady In Red: An Eighteenth-Century Tale Of Sex, Scandal, And Divorce
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