The Lady In Red: An Eighteenth-Century Tale Of Sex, Scandal, And Divorce by Hallie Rubenhold Page A
Authors: Hallie Rubenhold
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she thought ‘the Duchess of Devonshire, Lady Worsley, and I cut good figures in it’. Her remark offers a good deal of illumination of the lifestyle Seymour was leading at this period. Lady Teazle is one of Sheridan’s more sympathetic creations, a wife whose wholesome and principled upbringing is challenged by the dissolute habits of fashionable society. Her relations with her husband are strained; she flouts his authority and they frequently argue. Since marrying she has acquired a taste for profligate spending and amuses herself and her friends by proffering gossip. But at heart she as not as corrupt as those who surround her; she is simply bewildered by inexperience.
Unfortunately, unlike her character in School for Scandal , Lady Worsley’s relationship with her husband did not improve. In fact it conformed more to the description of Lord and Lady Besford’s marriage, two of the Duchess of Devonshire’s inventions in her novel The Sylph . ‘We do not disagree because we seldom meet,’ comments the cynical Lady Besford. ‘He pursues his pleasure one way, I seek mine another, and our dispositions being opposite, they are sure never to interfere with each other …’ Although it was expected in fashionable society that husbands and wives would each cultivate their own friendships, Lady Worsley may not have anticipated so much indifference from Sir Richard. It was not an arrangement which suited her, and later she would complain of feeling ‘slighted’.
During the Christmas and New Year period of 1778–79, Seymour found herself alone once more. There is nothing to indicate that her husband accompanied her to Harewood to spend the season with her family and to attend a New Year’s masquerade ball. This was to be an extravagant event to which Lady Fleming and Edwin Lascelles had invited a selection of local gentry and aristocracy. For several days, Harewood radiated with chandelier light and its marble fireplaces rolled with snapping flames. As was often the practice, the owners had arranged for every room in the house to be ‘thrown open and made common’ so that guests could stroll down the enfilades admiring the handsome décor of dressing rooms, bedchambers and closets. Throughout the night, revellers disguised behind papier mâché faces, were permitted to poke their long noses into the family’s intimate quarters, losing themselves in the corridors and upstairs rooms. Masquerades were known to encourage mischief and granting party-goers access to all areas was certain to invite trouble. However, it was not the guests who initiated the misbehaviour at Harewood but the owner’s stepdaughter, Lady Worsley. As ‘all the rooms of both ladies and gentlemen’ were available for free passage, Seymour and ‘the two Miss Cramers’, the daughters of Sir John and Lady Coghill, seized the opportunity to rummage through the visitors’ belongings. Choosing to make the men the object of their antics, they ‘threw the gentlemen’s cloaths out of the windows particularly their breeches thinking them … unnecessary’. In retaliation, one guest, a Mr Wrightson, ‘went into Lady Worsley’s room, took her caps and band boxes and hung them in a tree in the park where they remained all night’.
While some may have laughed at the impishness of these stunts, they mortified the party’s host and hostess, who had also suffered damage to their ‘glasses
and furniture to the value of £500’. ‘I fancy there will be an end of all Xmas meeting at Harewood,’ wrote Lascelles’s friend St Andrew Warde. The dangerous gossip that such behaviour generated coursed swiftly through the homes of northern polite society. It had the potential not only to damage the reputations of the two unmarried Miss Cramers but to jeopardise Jane’s engagement to Charles Stanhope, the future Earl of Harrington whose father had already voiced opposition to a match with the lower-ranking Miss Fleming. Unfortunately, in the coming weeks
Unfortunately, unlike her character in School for Scandal , Lady Worsley’s relationship with her husband did not improve. In fact it conformed more to the description of Lord and Lady Besford’s marriage, two of the Duchess of Devonshire’s inventions in her novel The Sylph . ‘We do not disagree because we seldom meet,’ comments the cynical Lady Besford. ‘He pursues his pleasure one way, I seek mine another, and our dispositions being opposite, they are sure never to interfere with each other …’ Although it was expected in fashionable society that husbands and wives would each cultivate their own friendships, Lady Worsley may not have anticipated so much indifference from Sir Richard. It was not an arrangement which suited her, and later she would complain of feeling ‘slighted’.
During the Christmas and New Year period of 1778–79, Seymour found herself alone once more. There is nothing to indicate that her husband accompanied her to Harewood to spend the season with her family and to attend a New Year’s masquerade ball. This was to be an extravagant event to which Lady Fleming and Edwin Lascelles had invited a selection of local gentry and aristocracy. For several days, Harewood radiated with chandelier light and its marble fireplaces rolled with snapping flames. As was often the practice, the owners had arranged for every room in the house to be ‘thrown open and made common’ so that guests could stroll down the enfilades admiring the handsome décor of dressing rooms, bedchambers and closets. Throughout the night, revellers disguised behind papier mâché faces, were permitted to poke their long noses into the family’s intimate quarters, losing themselves in the corridors and upstairs rooms. Masquerades were known to encourage mischief and granting party-goers access to all areas was certain to invite trouble. However, it was not the guests who initiated the misbehaviour at Harewood but the owner’s stepdaughter, Lady Worsley. As ‘all the rooms of both ladies and gentlemen’ were available for free passage, Seymour and ‘the two Miss Cramers’, the daughters of Sir John and Lady Coghill, seized the opportunity to rummage through the visitors’ belongings. Choosing to make the men the object of their antics, they ‘threw the gentlemen’s cloaths out of the windows particularly their breeches thinking them … unnecessary’. In retaliation, one guest, a Mr Wrightson, ‘went into Lady Worsley’s room, took her caps and band boxes and hung them in a tree in the park where they remained all night’.
While some may have laughed at the impishness of these stunts, they mortified the party’s host and hostess, who had also suffered damage to their ‘glasses
and furniture to the value of £500’. ‘I fancy there will be an end of all Xmas meeting at Harewood,’ wrote Lascelles’s friend St Andrew Warde. The dangerous gossip that such behaviour generated coursed swiftly through the homes of northern polite society. It had the potential not only to damage the reputations of the two unmarried Miss Cramers but to jeopardise Jane’s engagement to Charles Stanhope, the future Earl of Harrington whose father had already voiced opposition to a match with the lower-ranking Miss Fleming. Unfortunately, in the coming weeks
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