The Lady In Red: An Eighteenth-Century Tale Of Sex, Scandal, And Divorce Read Free Page B

ideal childhood, it had left the young man unfinished, gauche and lacking in gentlemanly manners. This was a situation which his mother, his godfather, Sir William Oglander and his father’s cousin, James Worsley, thought required an urgent remedy.
    Since the 23rd of September 1768 responsibility for Richard Worsley’s education had been placed in their hands. After a year of declining health, Sir Thomas’s exhausted liver and kidneys finally failed him. It became common knowledge that the baronet had made himself ‘a sacrifice at the shrine of Bacchus’ at the relatively young age of forty. The door of the family tomb had hardly swung shut when preparations for his son’s grand tour of Europe began. At the time of his father’s death, the 7th baronet, who now proudly bore the title of Sir Richard Worsley, had been wearing the velvet cap and silk gown of a privileged ‘gentleman commoner’ at Corpus Christi
College in Oxford. His guardians would not have him waste his time or his mind in the collegiate environment for long. Like most gentlemen they recognised that Oxford and Cambridge offered little in the way of a useful education. In the eighteenth century few who began their studies at a university did so to obtain a degree. The colleges were home to an assortment of wealthy young men, idling their time away before inheriting their fathers’ estates or marrying. It was widely acknowledged that drunkenness and gossip preoccupied the tutors while their students were left to engage ‘in every disgraceful frolic of juvenile debauchery’. The guileless 7th baronet would never receive the refinement his character required in such an environment. For this it was necessary that he go abroad.
    The traditional grand tour was designed to plug the deficiencies in a young man’s education. A period which might span several months or several years was spent under the direction of a specially appointed tutor, or ‘bear leader’, who escorted his charge around the major sights and cities of Europe in pursuit of intellectual and personal improvement. The standard curriculum generally included immersion in the languages, art, architecture, geography and history of the countries visited, but also might involve instruction in additional subjects such as music, fencing and dance. As the study of classical and Renaissance art and architecture was the focal point of most tours, Italy was given precedence on the itinerary. A stay in Paris where a gawky young man might better his deportment and dress sense was also considered de rigueur , while a test of nerve in the form of an Alpine crossing by mule or sedan chair rounded the experience. At a time when the cost of travel was beyond the reach of those without a considerable fortune, the grand tour was a luxury reserved primarily for the elite male. Multiple visits to Europe for the purpose of study were a rarity and so the decision Sir Richard’s guardians made to send him abroad for a second time in less than five years would not have been undertaken lightly. In return for this extravagant investment, the results would need to be demonstrable. Richard Worsley was to return to Pylewell with his rustic edges smoothed and his character shaped into that of a fully formed gentleman.
    The man whom Sir William Oglander and James Worsley employed to implement the young baronet’s metamorphosis was an individual well known to the Hampshire gentry. Since 1766, Edward Gibbon had been hosting the Swiss writer and scholar Jacques Georges Deyverdun under his roof at
Buriton. Gibbon’s ‘dear friend’ had been hoping to find an income as ‘the travelling governor of some wealthy pupil’ when the historian recommended him to Sir Richard Worsley. As his student had already acquired a substantial knowledge of Italy, both modern and ancient, Deyverdun devised a course for Sir Richard which departed from the usual grand tour programme. On the 22nd of April 1769, the pair embarked on a