The Lady In Red: An Eighteenth-Century Tale Of Sex, Scandal, And Divorce by Hallie Rubenhold

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.
    While Sir Richard was absorbed in his own concerns, Seymour learned to entertain herself and was soon ‘seen coquetting in all the gay assemblies in the polite circles …’ Here her associates were not those of her husband’s acquaintance but the voluble and often controversial Whig leaders of fashion known as the ton , presided over by Lady Georgiana Cavendish, the Duchess of Devonshire. It is unknown how closely Lady Worsley was affiliated with the Devonshire House set which, in its broadest definition ‘numbered more than a hundred people’ drawn from the ranks of the aristocracy and gentry and bulked out with notable artists, writers, actors and career politicians. The ton enjoyed an exchange of wit and intelligent conversation as much as they did public gatherings, parties, gambling to excess, drinking, flirting, spinning gossip and parading in outlandish fashions. The excitement and energy generated by the company of strong-minded women like the Duchess of Devonshire and her companions, Frances Crewe, Lady Melbourne, Lady Clermont and Lady Derby and her following of louche, droll men like the playwright and MP Richard Brinsley Sheridan and her husband’s political opponent, Charles James Fox were difficult to resist.
    Seymour had obviously spent enough time among the set to serve (in part) as the inspiration for Sheridan’s character Lady Teazle in his comedy The School for Scandal. She was certainly among the members of high society who turned out en masse to watch themselves satirised at the play’s opening night in May 1777. Mrs Crewe was impressed by how shrewdly the playwright had captured the morals and malaise of their elite little world, commenting with a touch of pride that