Lady in Red:
An Eighteenth-Century Tale of Sex, Scandal, and Divorce

by Hallie Rubenhold

Book Review by Rob Hardy

When four years ago Hallie Rubenhold wrote The Covent Garden Ladies, about a catalogue of prostitutes in eighteenth century London, she threw light on a lively and rollicking trade.  Now, in The Lady in Red: An Eighteenth-Century Tale of Sex, Scandal, and Divorce (St. Martin’s Press) she has told a story of the unraveling of one particular Georgian marriage, a tale full of gossip, media hype, legal shenanigans, and erotic naughtiness.  In other words, she has a story that shows how little times have changed in two centuries, but she has also illuminated the social rules and expectations of that distant time.  The public, from the aristocracy to the servants, were all fascinated with the break-up of the marriage of Sir Richard and Lady Seymour Worsley, and they laughed at its ridiculous elements, and they disparaged one partner or the other.  Readers of Rubenhold’s detailed and gripping book will be just as amazed and absorbed.

Sir Richard’s father was an alcoholic and a rustic who embarrassed his family, but he insisted on an education for his son, including getting him on the grand tour of Europe.  When the son returned in 1772, at age 21, he disgusted people with his affectation of wisdom, but he may well have been trying to make up for his bumbling father.  He was so ready to be accepted as an adult that he returned with the intention of marrying in five months time, and so he did.  His choice was the seventeen-year-old Seymour Fleming (that peculiar first name for a lady had descended on her from the last name of relatives, the Dukes of Somerset), and all knew the match had advantages for both.  It was a classic aristocratic matchmaking: she would get his title and he would get her fortune.  His friend the historian Edward Gibbon explained that Sir Richard was compelled by “love and ₤80,000”.

The happy couple, married in 1775, were, according to the scandal sheets of the day, enamored of each other when they were courting, but such affection did not last.  Although they conceived a son three months after the marriage, and might have counted on his birth to cement their union, there was no restoration of “the fondness that had first reigned between them.”  Having dutifully produced an heir, Sir Richard went on to other interests, chief of which was his political life.  He was strongly Tory, and always supported George III; he did this because it helped promote his own wealth and it might have gotten him a peerage.  He was apparently ardent in his duties as governmental advisor.  His experience on the grand tour had made him interested in antiquities, and he hobnobbed with others of the same interest.  Lady Seymour later divulged that he had an inability to perform in the bedroom, and she became interested in her own social set, including George Bisset, a neighbor and Sir Richard’s friend.  Bisset and Sir Richard remained friends even though Sir Richard knew of Bisset’s affair with his wife; he even encouraged it.  Rubenhold writes, “The situation provided him with the vicarious sexual thrill of observing another man adore his spouse; of watching a lustful interloper covet and enjoy his possession.”  Bisset became a lodger at their house.  There was a visit to the baths in Maidstone when Sir Richard invited Bisset to climb upon his shoulders so that Bisset might enjoy a peep through a high window at Lady Seymour at her bath.  This was a prank that all three enjoyed, and they left the bath together, laughing.

In our day, perhaps the trio might have tried polyamory.  In theirs, the growing disaffection between the married couple led Bisset and Lady Seymour to elope in 1781.  Sir Richard was furious, and determined that he would have the full justice due to him.  It may have been that Lady Seymour thought that she could regain some of her fortune by separation or divorce, but this was never the case; any property the wife had belonged not to her but to the husband.  Sir Richard expected, since his former friend Bisset had made off with his wife, that he would easily win in a trial against Bisset for “criminal conversation” or as it came to be known, “crim. con.”  This was just a matter of property; Bisset had damaged and taken the property of Sir Richard, and would have to pay.  Sir Richard took him to court, and while he might not have expected to get the full ₤20,000 which was the nominal penalty he sought, he surely expected to get a big chunk of it and to get full vengeance by ruining Bisset financially.  After all, it was a simple case of adultery.

To Sir Richard’s dismay, the simple case was not so simple.  Yes, Bisset had made off with his wife.  But Bisset’s lawyers had an unexpected defense: Sir Richard could not have lost very much because Lady Seymour was not very much of a wife.  It is not known how much Lady Seymour was in on the planning of this defense, but the worse she looked, the less revenge Sir Richard could take.  She did not herself take part in the trial; she was nothing but property, and as Rubenhold archly notes, “No one asked a horse how it felt to be stolen or enquired of a statue why it was broken.”  But there was testimony from others that Lady Seymour had taken plenty of lovers, and some (like Bisset) had been welcomed by Sir Richard.  What really sealed Bisset’s case was that there was a servant in the baths when Bisset was peeping at Lady Seymour.  Forgetting that such servant observers even existed was the privilege of the aristocrats, but Sir Richard was far from the only aristocrat who had his legal fate decided by servant testimony.

After that servant had taken the stand, Sir Richard was a ruined man.  The print-sellers delighted in the public clamor for cartoons showing the impotent and behorned (horns were the symbol of the cuckold) Sir Richard hoisting Bisset up for a view, and such cartoons might show also a view of Lady Seymour on display.  There was a “brachygrapher” taking notes at the trial, and 48 hours after the verdict, a transcript was available which sold like mad.  Even General George Washington included it in his list of supplies he needed from England.  To the further amusement of all high and low, the Worsleys squabbled in public, not face to face, but in the press.  An Epistle from Lady Worsley to Sir Richard Worsley was a sixteen page poem, in the voice of the lady but written by some anonymous scribe.  It detailed Sir Richard’s bedroom incompetence and his meanness.  The poem was praised by none other than Doctor Johnson.  Sir Richard thereupon himself wrote a poem The Answer of Sir Richard Worsley to the Epistle of Lady Worsley, with his own version of how she had wronged him.  There were, in addition, The Memoirs of Sir Finical Whimsy and His Lady, The Genuine Anecdotes and Amorous Adventures of Sir Richard Easy and Lady Wagtail, The Devil Divorced, and The Whore, all of which kept the couple’s bickering in the thoughts of an eager public.

Rob Hardy
November 2009

Lady in Red: An Eighteenth-Century Tale of Sex, Scandal, and Divorce
(St. Martin's Press, July 2009; ISBN-10: 0312359942)
Available at: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

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© 2009 Rob Hardy. All rights reserved. Content may not be copied or used in whole or part without written permission from the author.

About the Reviewer: 
Rob Hardy is a psychiatrist who lives in Columbus, Mississippi, with his wife, two terriers, five cats, and goldfish.

He reviews nonfiction for The Times of Acadiana, but has been reviewing books as a hobby for years before that.
WebBio: Rob Hardy

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