Speaker 1: Boo doo doo doo. That was nice. Dude, do dude, wait,
Speaker 1: what is that? It's something right? I don't know what
Speaker 1: it is. We belong together. I have no idea. I
Speaker 1: just feel like I'm in an elevator now. I felt
Speaker 1: like I was in nurse some R and B playing.
Speaker 1: You're feeling it, Yeah, you're feeling it. Let me go
Speaker 1: out to the club. Uh. I don't know if that
Speaker 1: was my It was more like, let me go to
Speaker 1: my friend's house and play video games. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a club. Yeah, club Nintendo sixty four, Club Golden, I
Speaker 1: Club Golden. That'd be a cool club. Actually, no, it'd
Speaker 1: be terrible club. People be shooting at you. The world
Speaker 1: is about to explode. Sean Bean is here stressful? Everything's
Speaker 1: down to you for some reason. Oh my god, I
Speaker 1: gotta kill all y'all by myself. How many times James
Speaker 1: Bond is like, how did I end up being entirely
Speaker 1: on my shoulders? I literally work for the biggest organization
Speaker 1: of spies in the world. I'm here on my own.
Speaker 1: Can you walk around me and like, I ain't your dad?
Speaker 1: I'm going to be one thing to like, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: a spy. You gotta go get into hel be y'all
Speaker 1: quiet and discreet on your own. But here I am
Speaker 1: like assaulting the base of operations with three hundred armed guards,
Speaker 1: so many on my own. If I was James Bond,
Speaker 1: I would be very upset about my coworkers. Yeah, I'm like, m,
Speaker 1: where's the backup? Right? Are they all assaulting evil bases somewhere?
Speaker 1: Because if that's the case, y'all got to get better
Speaker 1: at stopping these things before they start an evil base.
Speaker 1: It's clearly simple, love, supply and man. Seriously, well, you know,
Speaker 1: surprisingly this is a great intro because we are in England. Hey,
Speaker 1: we are in Yeah, Hi everybody, I'm Eli, I'm Diana.
Speaker 1: That's welcome to the show Ridiculous Romance. We're here once
Speaker 1: again talking about some crazy couple of people, crazy couple
Speaker 1: or yea more trio this time. Sometimes we don't stop
Speaker 1: it too and we're here to cover them all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So thanks for tuning in and welcome to London. Jolly good.
Speaker 1: Smell the air, maybe don't. Well, it's pre industrial Revolution,
Speaker 1: so it probably smells great right well through their ship
Speaker 1: in the streets, all right, I don't think it smells
Speaker 1: history that's a hard question, yeah, because I mean Egyptians
Speaker 1: used a lot of perfect um, but that just means
Speaker 1: you covered up your own stench like a weird The
Speaker 1: worst is the smell of perfume over a bad smell
Speaker 1: that mix and then again lots of animals and livestock
Speaker 1: and sooty chimneys and I don't know, I feel like
Speaker 1: it probably maybe now my Okay, I'm sorry I got
Speaker 1: us way off subject here. But the important thing is
Speaker 1: this is a great story. Uh, y'all. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: apologize this time. It's a two parter. I know, we
Speaker 1: just did one. We try not to do it, but
Speaker 1: there's a big story. And what's cool about this one, though,
Speaker 1: is that these are like they're really two separate stories.
Speaker 1: They're just about kind of the same people. I think
Speaker 1: that's the sort of gist I get. You're not gonna
Speaker 1: get left on a cliffhanger here. We just have two
Speaker 1: really cool stories about some really wacky people. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's get going on this story. It is so great.
Speaker 1: We're in London at that time among the nobility, it
Speaker 1: wasn't unusual well to get married just for monetary reasons, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, We've seen that many times in history, right. Um,
Speaker 1: the foundation of the monarchy in a lot of ways, basically,
Speaker 1: who's best for me and all the rest of us
Speaker 1: to maintain our wealth and power. But that's also why
Speaker 1: it was not very unusual for married lords and ladies
Speaker 1: to carry on a delterous affairs. Um. They were often
Speaker 1: tolerated by their spouses, but if an affair wasn't discreet,
Speaker 1: a humiliating scandal could ensue, and nobody wanted that. So
Speaker 1: often men would even raise their wives illegitimate sons as
Speaker 1: a cover, basically so no one would know what was
Speaker 1: really going on. Okay, yes, this is my little Jeffrey.
Speaker 1: He doesn't look anything like me. He looks a lot
Speaker 1: like my neighbor. Hey, but don't worry about that. We
Speaker 1: don't need to talk about that. But if things went
Speaker 1: too far, no amount of scandal could keep a man
Speaker 1: from the courtroom. And Sir Richard Worsley thought that he
Speaker 1: had an ironclad case of adultery against his wife, Lady
Speaker 1: Seymour Worsley, and her lover, George Bassett, but he seriously
Speaker 1: underestimated the links that she was willing to go to
Speaker 1: get rid of. Sir Richard, and it would result in
Speaker 1: one of the most scandalous adultery trials in the eighteenth century.
Speaker 1: So let's hear about criminal conversation trials and what about
Speaker 1: to the most expensive peep show in serious Let's go,
Speaker 1: hey their French, come listen. Well, Elia and Diana got
Speaker 1: some stories to tell. There's no matchmaking a romantic tips.
Speaker 1: It's just about ridiculous relationships. A lover might be any
Speaker 1: type of person at all, and abstract cons at a
Speaker 1: concrete wall. But if there's a story with a second glance,
Speaker 1: ridiculous rolevance. A production of iHeart Radio. Sir Richard Worsley
Speaker 1: was only twenty one years old in seventeen seventy two
Speaker 1: when he announced to a family friends, the historian Edward Gibbon,
Speaker 1: he was going to get married within five months time determined. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he had a deadline and everything. Not like I met
Speaker 1: someone and will be married soon, but just like, you
Speaker 1: know what, five months. It's about times. I don't want
Speaker 1: to turn twenty two and still be single, embarrassing. It's
Speaker 1: important to set goals for yourself abtainable now. He had
Speaker 1: just returned to England from his Grand Tour, which was
Speaker 1: like this trip that very rich aristocratic men would take
Speaker 1: as part of their education. So they go to like
Speaker 1: college and get their book learning, and then they would
Speaker 1: go to these actual countries and get immersion in the
Speaker 1: languages and the art and the architecture and the history
Speaker 1: of the continent. And they would also learn like gentlemanly
Speaker 1: arts like fencing and dancing and all those becoming charming,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, all those gentlemanly things. So
Speaker 1: they would go through Italy and France, and then they
Speaker 1: would usually take a trip over the pines on a
Speaker 1: donkey or something as like a test of nerve, so
Speaker 1: you could see they could keep a stiff up a
Speaker 1: lip in bad circumstances. And then they would go home
Speaker 1: to dazzle England with their charm and competence. So literally
Speaker 1: these guys went out and then came back and spent
Speaker 1: the next twenty years saying, well, on my study abroad,
Speaker 1: Oh yes, I actually rode a donkey once, terrifying, but
Speaker 1: I was stiff up a lip. You know, it was
Speaker 1: nothing for me. You know, in my study abroad in Italy,
Speaker 1: I learned that it's pronounced Yeah, you have a lot
Speaker 1: in common. I can relate to the English aristocracy in
Speaker 1: at least one way, one single way study abroad. Alert. Now,
Speaker 1: Richard really liked art in architecture. He loved like Greek
Speaker 1: antiquities and statues and that kind of thing. Um, but
Speaker 1: he actually hadn't distinguished himself much in school. According to
Speaker 1: Halle reuben Hold's biography The Lady in Red, he was
Speaker 1: called dick Tardy, dick tardy, sod dick tardy because he
Speaker 1: quote lagged so far behind. Yeah, yeah, a couple of
Speaker 1: shots of tequila, and I'm a little dick tardy too.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you know what happens to everyone, just a little
Speaker 1: late to the game, normal circumstances. Too much tequila, it
Speaker 1: shows up. Okay, yeah, just a little everyone's over by,
Speaker 1: everyone that's already left, parties over amazing. Now you're here, Oh,
Speaker 1: Dick Tardy, every time with you every time? Alright. So anyway,
Speaker 1: Dick Tardy loved his Grand Tour because he loved art
Speaker 1: and architecture and all that. But for him, the main
Speaker 1: thing about the Grand Tour was that he was able
Speaker 1: to reinvent himself because his father was a guy who
Speaker 1: also had like a passion for education. In that way,
Speaker 1: they had a lot in common. But he was also
Speaker 1: an alcoholic and he really indulged himself all the time,
Speaker 1: very dissipated kind of dude, and so Richards him is
Speaker 1: a bit of a buffoon. He was like, I don't
Speaker 1: want anyone to think of me like my dad. He
Speaker 1: really wanted to distinguish himself as a completely different kind
Speaker 1: of guy. So when he got home from his grand tour,
Speaker 1: he's like, I am a respectable, reliable, grown ass man.
Speaker 1: And he figured a great way to prove that would
Speaker 1: be to get married. Settled down to the married state, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: So in five months, five months time, five months after
Speaker 1: my study abroad, I'll be getting married, unlike my idiot father. Okay,
Speaker 1: who drinks too much now. Seymour Fleming was born in seventeen.
Speaker 1: Seymour lost two sisters and her father by the time
Speaker 1: she was five years old, so she and her older
Speaker 1: sister Jane were brought up by their mother. Both girls
Speaker 1: totally comfortable heiresses. They had a lot of money coming
Speaker 1: their way already, what was their the money their dad
Speaker 1: had left them. But then their mother remarried to an
Speaker 1: extremely wealthy man in his seventies, very old guys, So
Speaker 1: there was more money on the way. This guy side note, however,
Speaker 1: got his money from his sugar plantations in Barbados. So slavery, yes,
Speaker 1: boo children, you're right. It's so funny to me just
Speaker 1: being American slavery so much in our backyards, like literally
Speaker 1: lived alongside it. And for a lot of British lords
Speaker 1: it was very far away. I mean, I think they
Speaker 1: still had some like black pages were like a fad
Speaker 1: apparently to have a little kid in your house like
Speaker 1: run errands for you or something. But like a lot
Speaker 1: of slavery was just so far away from them. But
Speaker 1: maybe I wonder if it was even more theoretical in
Speaker 1: a way or something. It was like outsourced more or less, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, as opposed to the plantations in America, where
Speaker 1: it was like the rich guy who was making all
Speaker 1: the money owned the property and lived on the property
Speaker 1: where it was happening. As opposed to like the Brits
Speaker 1: who were making money off slavery. It was like, like
Speaker 1: you said, so distant, somebody else is handling all the
Speaker 1: actual you know, horrible stuff they're doing with these I
Speaker 1: don't even have to see it. I don't even have
Speaker 1: to look at it. Interesting so I always think about it.
Speaker 1: I think that's such an interesting distinction. And how you
Speaker 1: saw the institution point being the Flemings were hella stacked
Speaker 1: with money. The newspapers of the time were like super
Speaker 1: curious about the exact amount that each heiress could bring
Speaker 1: to a marriage, and they guessed that it was upwards
Speaker 1: of around seventy thousand pounds, which, adjusting for time, means
Speaker 1: twelve point six million pounds today, which is like over
Speaker 1: fifteen million U S. Dollars. Yeah, that's a lot of
Speaker 1: ye And I'll say to their mom did nothing to
Speaker 1: put paid to any of these rumors, Like she was like,
Speaker 1: I won't tell you the real amount because it only
Speaker 1: helps their marriage. The speculation. Yeah, they were like, She's like, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: keep ad into it. I'm getting more and more calls
Speaker 1: every day. Yeah right, right, fifteen million dollars would be nice.
Speaker 1: I mean that seems like chump changed to me, because tomorrow,
Speaker 1: of course, we will have won the billion dollars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: by the time you all listen to this will be billionaires.
Speaker 1: Just just the heads up now. Jane, the older sister,
Speaker 1: was known for being an epitome of virtue, impeccably behaved
Speaker 1: perfect lady, beautiful and graceful. But Seymour was more headstrong
Speaker 1: and wilful. She was less pretty, but still good looking.
Speaker 1: She was great on a horse, and she loved playing cards.
Speaker 1: Really now. She was only four een years old when
Speaker 1: the handsome young baronet so Richard Worsley came to stay
Speaker 1: with the express purpose of dating the older sister, Jane.
Speaker 1: Richard was plenty rich on his own and it didn't
Speaker 1: really have to worry about this, but a rich, fashionable
Speaker 1: wife would help launch him into a higher society, and
Speaker 1: that is exactly what he was looking for. I think
Speaker 1: he felt like like on succession, the poorest rich man
Speaker 1: in the room, like he was rich, but like he's like,
Speaker 1: I gotta be Richard another. Richard had decided on a
Speaker 1: political career, and the higher social circles that he moved in,
Speaker 1: the more influence he would have in that career. That
Speaker 1: made sense, but unfortunately Jane was not interested. She could
Speaker 1: tell he was really only attracted to her money and
Speaker 1: not herself, so she turned him down. That's good for you, Jane.
Speaker 1: But apparently he persisted so much that, according to Reuben Hold,
Speaker 1: she kind of had to get a little. It meant him.
Speaker 1: Oh wow. So he's like, I got your letter, you know, saying, no,
Speaker 1: how about we talk about it over dinner tonight, Sir Richard.
Speaker 1: You flatter me with your proposal, you do, you really do.
Speaker 1: That's what I do. But I could never, ever, ever,
Speaker 1: in any conceivable universe, ever marry you. Right, okay, please
Speaker 1: do turn your attentions away from me to someone else. Sure,
Speaker 1: I know you said something, but shall I pick you
Speaker 1: up at seven and we'll talk about it. But Seymour
Speaker 1: did flirt a little bit with him, and he'd flirted
Speaker 1: him back. Of course, she's only fourteen, so it's like
Speaker 1: a real playful like okay kid, yeah, sure, wink wink.
Speaker 1: But a few years later, when Seymour was a lovely
Speaker 1: seventeen years old and confident, and she'd been she you know,
Speaker 1: she had, she was a debutante, she'd already her bowels
Speaker 1: and everything, nearly middle age at point basically old, she
Speaker 1: met him at again at the York Races and they
Speaker 1: danced together all night. They were inseparable the races the
Speaker 1: next day, and by the end of the week they
Speaker 1: were engaged to be married. A big whirlwind courtship and
Speaker 1: Gibbon wrote that he felt like his friend was compelled
Speaker 1: quote by love and eight pounds. In reality, Seymour brought
Speaker 1: more like fifty two thousand pounds to her marriage. Um
Speaker 1: it's about nine point three million pounds today. Okay, so
Speaker 1: ten million bucks pittance, nothing, basically nothing. Um. Now, some
Speaker 1: of this money was set aside for her to reinherit
Speaker 1: upon Sir Richard's death. It's called a widow's jointure. So
Speaker 1: that would ensure that she had something to support herself
Speaker 1: if he died. Wait, if he dies, we'll give you
Speaker 1: a little bit of your own money back. Okay, don't
Speaker 1: get me started on it. She gets a little bit back. Um.
Speaker 1: She was also legally entitled to a certain amount of
Speaker 1: her own spending money year, which was called pin honey,
Speaker 1: how progressive. Oh yeah, and I love it's called pin money.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, let's go buy you little things
Speaker 1: if you need. But it was never enough to like
Speaker 1: support a house, you know, or something like that. And yeah, so,
Speaker 1: as you say, most of her wealth, the bulk of it,
Speaker 1: including quite a lot of property in the Isle of Wight,
Speaker 1: was under Sir Richard's control the minute they got married
Speaker 1: in September seventy and thanks to all that rampant speculation
Speaker 1: about the size of her wealth, the couple became the
Speaker 1: toast of London. They were invited everywhere, they were moving
Speaker 1: in the highest circles of society. It was just like
Speaker 1: Sir Richard had hope. And in the next couple of
Speaker 1: years he joined various intellectual groups. He became a patron
Speaker 1: of the painter Joshua Reynolds. He even became the Privy
Speaker 1: Counselor for the King, which is basically the king's main accountant,
Speaker 1: and apparently it was extremely good at this. He earned
Speaker 1: a new nickname, Sir Finical Whimsy. I guess to step
Speaker 1: up from you, you know what, you know what the
Speaker 1: King's saying, Oh, bring Dictordio. And he got paid a
Speaker 1: really good amount to do that job as well, um,
Speaker 1: besides becoming friends with the Prince of Wales and other
Speaker 1: extremely highly connected and powerful nobles. So it's like everything's
Speaker 1: coming up, Sir Richard. It's looking real good for him
Speaker 1: to stand for election as a Member of Parliament for
Speaker 1: the Isle of Wight, where he owned all this land.
Speaker 1: But all was not well between him and Smore And
Speaker 1: we will find out more about that. Right after these
Speaker 1: messages welcome back to the shore day now Richard and
Speaker 1: Seymour's initial flame that burned out fast. Uh. Seymour complained
Speaker 1: in a letter that Sir Richard kept her a virgin
Speaker 1: for three months after their wedding, and things didn't really
Speaker 1: heat up much in that arena at all. She got
Speaker 1: pregnant and she gave birth to a son in seventeen
Speaker 1: seventy six, but that meant that Sir Richard had done
Speaker 1: his deote, and it seems that he basically ignored her
Speaker 1: after that. He traveled for his work and she partied
Speaker 1: at home, and for a couple of years they seemed
Speaker 1: to lead completely separate lives. She's pretty insulted by that too,
Speaker 1: that he would touch her. She was like to find.
Speaker 1: She's like, I gotta give you all my land, I
Speaker 1: gotta give you all my money. If you straight up
Speaker 1: croak and die, I might get a little bit back.
Speaker 1: I got this tiny little allowance to go buy pins,
Speaker 1: whatever the funk that means, and I'm not even getting
Speaker 1: laid out of it. Come on, yeah, come on. At
Speaker 1: least you could do is is bring Dick Tardy over
Speaker 1: here and try and show me a good time. Didn't
Speaker 1: show right, dick absent, Dick, she should have called of
Speaker 1: that dick absent. But all this seems understandably to have
Speaker 1: brought out kind of a rebellious side in Seymour, like
Speaker 1: maybe she just wanted to grab her husband's attention. She
Speaker 1: started playing all these outrageous pranks. One holiday at her
Speaker 1: family home, Hairwood Hall, the Flemings held a New Year's
Speaker 1: Eve masquerade ball, and they threw open every door of
Speaker 1: their house for people to go in and out as
Speaker 1: they wished, including the private bedrooms. Sounds like a very
Speaker 1: exciting party. Alright, masquerades already pretty well welcomed some dissolute behavior.
Speaker 1: Everyone's in a mask. You can do whatever you want.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they would, you know, they would like fondle
Speaker 1: each other, and you know they'd get into it. They'd
Speaker 1: get into it in a different way. So then all
Speaker 1: to add like go into my bedroom and look through
Speaker 1: my ship. It's such a weird addition and already wild party.
Speaker 1: It was like the Purge for them, like the Lunge.
Speaker 1: We're so stodgy and stuck up most of the year.
Speaker 1: We have a one masquerade night, or we can just
Speaker 1: fondle each other and enter each other's bedrooms. So they're
Speaker 1: at this masquerade ball and Seymour and a couple of
Speaker 1: friends of hers took advantage of this open door policy
Speaker 1: and they went into the gentleman's bedrooms. They went through
Speaker 1: all their stuff and, according to the papers of the time,
Speaker 1: get this, they quote through the gentleman's clothes out of
Speaker 1: the windows, particularly their breeches, thinking them unnecessary. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: wanted all these dudes to Donald Duckett. She's like, you
Speaker 1: won't be meeting these anymore, Richard, and threw his pants
Speaker 1: out the window. So in retaliation, one of the men
Speaker 1: went to Seymour's room and quote took all her caps
Speaker 1: and band boxes and hung them in a tree in
Speaker 1: the park, where they remained all night. This is what
Speaker 1: wild stuff Delta Sigma Kappa would never Apparently, this crazy
Speaker 1: story spread like wildfire, and it was considered very sordid
Speaker 1: behavior and even endangered Jane's engagement to the Earl of Harrington.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine going over to the Earl of Harrington's
Speaker 1: house and his mom being like, I don't know, your
Speaker 1: sister threw some clothes out a window, so I just
Speaker 1: don't know, if I'm gonna work out like I got
Speaker 1: to do. Remember, I'm the perfect one. But no matter
Speaker 1: what prank's Seymour played, no matter what debts she ran up,
Speaker 1: Sir Richard just laughed it off and paid them because
Speaker 1: he thought he was untouchable, just above any scandal. He
Speaker 1: was doing so well, he was the talk of the town.
Speaker 1: No one was going to talk about Richard. True. So yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe she was trying to get his attention, or maybe
Speaker 1: she's kind of trying to punish him by being like,
Speaker 1: I'll embarrass you or cost your money or something. You'll
Speaker 1: have to think of me sometimes. Just come have sex
Speaker 1: with me and this I'll be real quiet. He's like,
Speaker 1: I'd rather pay out for all your scandals. So in
Speaker 1: seventeen eighties, Sir Richard finally stood for election as MP.
Speaker 1: You know, his the pinnacle of his dreams. And ruin
Speaker 1: Hold goes into some detail about how corrupt politics were
Speaker 1: at this time. All right, so it's not like he's
Speaker 1: winning the hearts of the people. Most MPs just spread
Speaker 1: their money around to buy votes, or they would strong
Speaker 1: arm people into voting for them. Um. A lot of
Speaker 1: landowners too, could basically force their tenants to vote however
Speaker 1: they wanted them to. So if you had property, if
Speaker 1: you had tenants, people running for MP were like, tell them,
Speaker 1: you know, tell them to vote for me, whatever, and
Speaker 1: Richard was no different. He bribed election officials to deprive
Speaker 1: his opponent of poll books, he bought votes, plenty of votes,
Speaker 1: and he threw lavish parties for his supporters. But he
Speaker 1: also made friends with his twenty three year old neighbor,
Speaker 1: a landowner named Maurice George Bassett. George, as he preferred
Speaker 1: to be called, could influence his tenants in Sir Richard's favor,
Speaker 1: so he was an important friend to have, but no
Speaker 1: one liked him more than Seymour. By September of that year,
Speaker 1: she and George were having a passionate affair. Sir Richard
Speaker 1: won his election and he gave George a captain's commission
Speaker 1: in his South Hampshire Militia as a thank you for
Speaker 1: his help. Good job, George, you moving up in the world.
Speaker 1: But Sir Richard also had another motive for that, because
Speaker 1: all the militias were actually being called into action. France
Speaker 1: had just joined the Americans in their war for independence.
Speaker 1: Those columnists so Britain was really concerned that their neighbors
Speaker 1: might strike on home soil, and so all the militias
Speaker 1: were put on high alert. And Richard really wanted to
Speaker 1: have a friend with him during all these boring drills
Speaker 1: and troop movements that he was about to be going through.
Speaker 1: And George, for his part, was very glad to go
Speaker 1: with Sir Richard because Seymour, of course, would go with
Speaker 1: her husband, and she happened to be expecting her and
Speaker 1: George's child. Now, Sir Richard didn't seem to care about this,
Speaker 1: not at all. He rented a house nearby the militia
Speaker 1: encampment for them to live in, and he insisted that
Speaker 1: George take a set of rooms in it for himself.
Speaker 1: Little in law suite for George exactly. He also decided
Speaker 1: to hire an entire new team of domestic servants to
Speaker 1: wait on them, instead of bringing a handful of you know,
Speaker 1: like trusted servants from their main home that they were
Speaker 1: used to, as most aristocrats did. So I imagine Carson
Speaker 1: was furious, my lord, new staff. It's not for me
Speaker 1: to tell you how to set up your household, my lord,
Speaker 1: but I will say I'd rather be shot in the
Speaker 1: head than he is something like this now. When they
Speaker 1: moved camp again a few months later, all those new
Speaker 1: servants he hired were dismissed, and then a whole new
Speaker 1: staff was hired again. So it's a lot of cleaning house,
Speaker 1: getting fresh eyes in there. We don't want anybody here
Speaker 1: long enough to figure out what's going on. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: he was really taking a lot of pains to keep
Speaker 1: this little threesome a secret. When Bissette and Seymour's daughter, Jane,
Speaker 1: named after her older sister I'm assuming was born in
Speaker 1: Sir Richard even claimed this girl as his own to
Speaker 1: cover up, of course, the true nature of their relationship.
Speaker 1: Again not uncommon at this time, totally normal, lots of
Speaker 1: men except their wives, lovers children as legitimate so that
Speaker 1: there wouldn't be a big scandal. Again. Yes, I know
Speaker 1: he looks a lot like George, but that's just because
Speaker 1: George is such an admirable fellow, looking up to him,
Speaker 1: copying him in every way, including his hair, nose, lips. Yes.
Speaker 1: The other thing is that it had been five years
Speaker 1: since the birth of Richard and Seymour's own son, so
Speaker 1: having another child come along would quiet any whispers about
Speaker 1: you know the state of their marriage, and how how
Speaker 1: dick tardy he had been to her. So Reuben Holt
Speaker 1: writes that quote, the arrival of George Bissett in both
Speaker 1: of their lives heralded a sudden reinvigoration of Worsley's interest
Speaker 1: in his wife. Far from being ignorant of Seymour's affair,
Speaker 1: her husband openly encouraged it. The possibility that Sir Richard
Speaker 1: Harbord homosexual longings for Bissett cannot be discounted. The eagerness
Speaker 1: with which the baronet pulled his neighbor into his life,
Speaker 1: the intensity and regularity of their opanionship is behavior unmatched
Speaker 1: in any of words these other friendships. So possibly they
Speaker 1: were roommates, or it might have been unrequited, like interested,
Speaker 1: but Richard was and it's not likely he would have
Speaker 1: admitted to this because sodomy and homosexuality were illegal at
Speaker 1: the time and punishable with the death penalty. Right, can
Speaker 1: I get a boot? Thank you? Pretty unlikely that a
Speaker 1: lord would get the death penalty for it. He probably
Speaker 1: just go to prison or some but still like it
Speaker 1: was like the worst thing that could happen to you,
Speaker 1: So nobody wanted to talk about it. But there's another
Speaker 1: aspect to this that we must consider, and that's the
Speaker 1: fact that Sir Richard was something of a voyeur. Back
Speaker 1: when he was on his Grand tour in the early
Speaker 1: seventeen seventies, Sir Richard had stayed in a house in
Speaker 1: Paris right across the street from a brothel. And he's
Speaker 1: around eighteen or nineteen. Hard to not do in Paris
Speaker 1: in early seventeen seventies especially, and they were just regular houses,
Speaker 1: how you know, I thought it just a lot of
Speaker 1: ladies lived there together through me. There's lots of roommates
Speaker 1: coming and going, and every house and coming and oh goodness.
Speaker 1: Now he's like eighteen or nineteen at the time. He
Speaker 1: could see right through their windows, so he's totally spying
Speaker 1: on them. Um, and they notice and of course start
Speaker 1: beckoning him to come join them, like flashing their titty.
Speaker 1: If someone's peeping in through your window while you're having sex,
Speaker 1: the logical thing to do is to beckon them to
Speaker 1: join you. Well, or if they're just prostitutes, are like yeah, right, hey, buddy,
Speaker 1: that will be ten shillings. Okay, you don't look for freeze.
Speaker 1: They say no, peep show. He's like, damn, that's what
Speaker 1: I like. Well, finally one night he's like, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm doing it. I'm I'm grown. I'm gonna go get
Speaker 1: late tonight, boy, big boy, and I'm gonna get late.
Speaker 1: But the landlady of this boarding house that he's saying
Speaker 1: at had gotten wind of his plan, so she stopped
Speaker 1: him on the staircase and she was like, I heard
Speaker 1: you're trying to go across the street. Let me tell
Speaker 1: you that brothel has a very bad reputation and you
Speaker 1: should not go over there. And I'm assuming since she's friends,
Speaker 1: she was like, I have a list of some respectable
Speaker 1: organizations that you can go check out, but this one no, no, no,
Speaker 1: one star, like one of those Airbnb binders, Like check
Speaker 1: out some local brothels in the area. Totally, She's like,
Speaker 1: I've got really good recommendations for you, but this one
Speaker 1: I cannot say you should go to. So Richard's like, fine,
Speaker 1: I won't go. And as he recorded in his journal
Speaker 1: the next day, that was a lucky escape because a
Speaker 1: guy was murdered that night in the brothel, and Richard
Speaker 1: saw the victim from his window. The next morning, As
Speaker 1: he wrote, quote naked and stripped of all he had
Speaker 1: been possessed of. So this experience really made him very
Speaker 1: cautious of women and of like he really couldn't shake
Speaker 1: the fact that he could have been murdered if he
Speaker 1: had just you know, the timing was crazy. He felt insane.
Speaker 1: So it was like really took hold in his mind.
Speaker 1: And Reuben Hold writes that quote the experience persuaded him
Speaker 1: in part that the sexual act was best enjoyed when
Speaker 1: observed from afar. Okay, no one can stab you in
Speaker 1: the back if you're in the other room. That's a
Speaker 1: healthy attitude about sex. So good. So Richard became partial
Speaker 1: to peeping, and that was considered fairly normal sexual kink
Speaker 1: to have in his time. It was called kicking King,
Speaker 1: kicking k k kicking you kicking Tom. I don't know
Speaker 1: why I was called king. It's like peeking, but it's
Speaker 1: kinky there, that's probably. But he also got into a
Speaker 1: kink called candleism. Now, this was named after the ancient
Speaker 1: king Kendles, who exposed his naked wife to his servant guiges.
Speaker 1: And after the wife found the servants buying on her,
Speaker 1: she told him, look, you can either kill yourself, or
Speaker 1: you can kill my husband to restore my honor. And
Speaker 1: so guy just was like, let me think real quick,
Speaker 1: and he killed the king and he became the king instead.
Speaker 1: Um So, Candleism is a kink where you get sexual
Speaker 1: pleasure out of exposing your partner to or images of
Speaker 1: your partner to other people. And that can include undressing
Speaker 1: them in front of other people. That can include putting
Speaker 1: their personal photos their nudes up on the Internet or
Speaker 1: distributing them around to people. It can even include encouraging
Speaker 1: your partner to wear revealing clothing when you go out,
Speaker 1: like a really short skirt or like something that shows
Speaker 1: her titties or something even that want them to be
Speaker 1: jealous of my thing that I own. It's kind of
Speaker 1: that kind of vibe. And with all, as with all kinks,
Speaker 1: if there's consent here, you know, it's that's one thing.
Speaker 1: That's one thing. Yeah, that's what you're putting pictures up
Speaker 1: of someone on the internet without them knowing about it.
Speaker 1: That's another thing exactly up up. One psychoanalyst is the
Speaker 1: door Sager. Theorized that a candlest completely identifies with their
Speaker 1: partner's body, so that deep in their mind they feel
Speaker 1: like they're exposing themselves, which I'm like, Okay, that's very
Speaker 1: convenient because you don't actually have to expose yourself at all. Well,
Speaker 1: it sounds like something a psychiatrist would say to me,
Speaker 1: but um, that's probably true of some Yeah, i'd argue
Speaker 1: it's And I do wonder if part of the kink
Speaker 1: is the person not knowing or or I imagine it
Speaker 1: could be for some content is or is not there.
Speaker 1: If that adds or takes away too from it. I
Speaker 1: don't know that it's not part of the breakdown. I
Speaker 1: read like, if I go out with you and you're
Speaker 1: looking hot and I see somebody check you out, that's
Speaker 1: that's kind of cool to me. I'm like, I don't
Speaker 1: feel jealous. I'm like, hell, yeah, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: I thought so too. Guess what, I'm married her, I'm
Speaker 1: going on with her. Um, yeah, you know, so that's cool.
Speaker 1: And whether or not you see, you won't see that
Speaker 1: because you're oblivious to anyone being interested in you ever. Always, Um,
Speaker 1: that's very I'm like, that guy was so nice and
Speaker 1: you're always like he was hitting it. We were just
Speaker 1: having a really fun conversation that ended as soon as
Speaker 1: he found out I was married. I don't think I
Speaker 1: had anything to do with anything. Oh yeah, that guy
Speaker 1: suddenly got very interested in nonprofit theater. Sometimes they are
Speaker 1: totally are not not often. You're probably right, Daddy. I
Speaker 1: don't know where how we got on that. I don't either,
Speaker 1: But anyway, the term candleism didn't exist until the eighties,
Speaker 1: so it's not like they had an understanding of that
Speaker 1: kink at the time. For Sir Richard, they just were
Speaker 1: like keeking, you like to peek on people or whatever.
Speaker 1: If you exposed your wife to other people, you were
Speaker 1: like the weirdest, most perverted. Like that was beyond anything,
Speaker 1: because you you know, you're supposed to respect your wife,
Speaker 1: cherish her and all that, so you're not supposed to
Speaker 1: show her off, Like that's the weird. Now we know
Speaker 1: that Sir Richard was into this because after Seymour had
Speaker 1: recovered from her childbirth, the three of them, Richard, Seymour,
Speaker 1: and George decided to visit the cold baths at Maidstone
Speaker 1: on a hot day. Now, public bath houses were separated
Speaker 1: by gender, so Richard and George Bissett took a dip
Speaker 1: in the men's side. Of course, while Seymour refreshed herself
Speaker 1: on the women's side, but as she got out of
Speaker 1: the pool, she heard Richard calling through from the other
Speaker 1: side of the door to tell her quote, h seb
Speaker 1: Bissett is going to get up and look at you,
Speaker 1: m m. And then she saw George's face through the
Speaker 1: window above the door. Richard was holding George up on
Speaker 1: his shoulders to help him look in at his naked wife,
Speaker 1: and he held him there for five minutes while Seymour,
Speaker 1: totally into this, openly displayed herself. And she did this
Speaker 1: like sexy reverse stripped tease. And she as she put
Speaker 1: all her clothes back on, so she ruled her stockings
Speaker 1: up real slow and that type of thing. She's doing
Speaker 1: this little dance, and she's like, and now I clasped
Speaker 1: the brae yes, can't wait to unclasp it later. It's
Speaker 1: like I liked what I saw, and now I like
Speaker 1: it less. I guess I'm not sure exactly how it works.
Speaker 1: I can't laugh. But anyway, afterwards they all got together
Speaker 1: and they laughed about it, like we are now it's funny.
Speaker 1: Oh that was so interesting, Thank you, Richard, are your
Speaker 1: shoulders okay? He's like, I don't care. Dick's not toddy
Speaker 1: right now, so having a good time. It was just
Speaker 1: like a fun bonding moment for this little triangle. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: Ruin Holt wrote about it, quote, it was a collection
Speaker 1: of minutes which Sir Richard would view in his mind repeatedly.
Speaker 1: The color of the details would fail to degrade with
Speaker 1: the years. He would recall it vividly, the words that
Speaker 1: were spoken, the weight of George Bissett on his shoulders,
Speaker 1: the heady recklessness of it. Over the next few months,
Speaker 1: he would remember the afternoon with fondness. After that, he
Speaker 1: would rue it as the most regrettable day of his life.
Speaker 1: And we will find out why that is right after
Speaker 1: this commercial break, Welcome back to the show, My little Kicksters.
Speaker 1: You're nasty all right now. It seems like this little
Speaker 1: manage ati was getting a long fame. I mean they're
Speaker 1: doing little peep shows and having a good old time together.
Speaker 1: But then the militia had to move again for the winter,
Speaker 1: and Seymour and Richard had to get a smaller house
Speaker 1: so George couldn't live with them anymore. Oh no, no
Speaker 1: in law suite, No in law suite. That was in
Speaker 1: my that was in my must have on my dream
Speaker 1: house list, with a separate entrance very important, and a
Speaker 1: window between the two bedrooms. So George and Seymour could
Speaker 1: not bear to be apart and they were really super
Speaker 1: in love, so they started talking about maybe eloping together
Speaker 1: so they could maybe force Richard to give Seymour a
Speaker 1: divorce and they could finally get married and be happy forever. Okay,
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like, I mean, we're in the
Speaker 1: middle of season one right now of the Great and
Speaker 1: it feels like, um, what's the couple who's sleeping with
Speaker 1: the Emperor, you know, and the husband is just like, well,
Speaker 1: we just have to do this so we can have
Speaker 1: our thing, you know. It just reminds me of that.
Speaker 1: And they're like, we're hanging out with Richard. Yes, he's
Speaker 1: he's he's there. He likes this little threesome thing we
Speaker 1: have going on. But if we could have it our way,
Speaker 1: it would be ok. Yeah. Now, wives could not apply
Speaker 1: for a divorce. They were not allowed. Only a husband
Speaker 1: could do it. But a little bin was super risky
Speaker 1: because a husband could also sue for separation instead of
Speaker 1: a divorce, and that was basically purgatory for a woman
Speaker 1: because she was no longer respectably married. She was cut
Speaker 1: off from her financial support of you know, her husband,
Speaker 1: but she was also not free to remarry. Changed woman,
Speaker 1: a changed woman exactly. Okay. One woman that Seymour knew about.
Speaker 1: She had thrown over her husband for a lover. They
Speaker 1: ran off together, hoping for a divorce, but the husband
Speaker 1: got vindictive. He's like, I'm only giving you a separation
Speaker 1: and she ended up having to flee to the continent,
Speaker 1: and everyone talked about her like she was nothing more
Speaker 1: than a street prostitute, like that she she had everything
Speaker 1: and then she had nothing. So anymore would know that
Speaker 1: that is a possible consequence. Meanwhile, on George's part, he's
Speaker 1: not only a social inferior to Richard, but also a
Speaker 1: military inferior, and on top of all that a very
Speaker 1: close friends. Everyone knew they were really good friends. So
Speaker 1: like running away with your friend's wife was the lowest
Speaker 1: of the low for a gentleman. I think people still
Speaker 1: feel that way. Really. Oh yeah, bros, before ladies, that's right,
Speaker 1: watch your mouth fries before guys. What it's not as
Speaker 1: good fries before guys. But it's not as good because
Speaker 1: it's not about like, lady friendship. What about French fries.
Speaker 1: It's just it literally fries. Yeah, fries, eat fries before
Speaker 1: going out on like two girls get together and eat
Speaker 1: French fries before they worried about hanging out with some
Speaker 1: hanging out with some dude. I mean, yeah, French fries
Speaker 1: are objectively better, never disappointed the challenge. It's very easy
Speaker 1: for a French fry to disappoint you, I know, but
Speaker 1: they rarely do. It cannot be hot enough, it cannot
Speaker 1: be salty, could be too thick, it could be too thin.
Speaker 1: They could be too crunchy. They could be too soft.
Speaker 1: They could just be crinkle cut. You know, actually I
Speaker 1: like crinkle Cooke. Now, don't talk about and men are
Speaker 1: equal in terms of their potential disappointment. And it's high
Speaker 1: fair enough, fair enough, fair enough. But you can throw
Speaker 1: the fries in the trash, okay, and they don't follow
Speaker 1: you home. Yeah. No, So anyway, this was just considered
Speaker 1: like a gross betrayal of male friendship and the only
Speaker 1: way to go lower was to be the guy's brother
Speaker 1: instead of his friends, you know what I mean, and
Speaker 1: step with his wife. They were like, that's basically the
Speaker 1: most heinous thing you could do airmano. I don't know how.
Speaker 1: I know that it took four years of Spanish. We
Speaker 1: love arrest of development in this house, we do love
Speaker 1: arrest of development. Well, you know, and of course Will
Speaker 1: and Jason friends of the show. Oh yeah, you're right, right, absolutely,
Speaker 1: we gotta get them on. I mean, I love that.
Speaker 1: We gotta get the SmartLess guys on this show. If
Speaker 1: you if anybody's got their contact info, yeah, we should
Speaker 1: know because there are friends they are I know, but
Speaker 1: you know, we never get the phone. It's awkward to
Speaker 1: reach out about work, dear friends and stuff. I don't
Speaker 1: like to. So, yeah, George would be risking his reputation,
Speaker 1: his social status, his good name, as much as Seymour would.
Speaker 1: And he also had a financial scare in the wings
Speaker 1: just as much as she did too, because Richard could
Speaker 1: bring a lawsuit against George for adultery. This was known
Speaker 1: as a criminal conversation or a crim con suit. And
Speaker 1: if you're like me and you read a lot of
Speaker 1: those regency romance novels, you've seen crim con and have
Speaker 1: no fucking idea what they're talking about. And so I thought,
Speaker 1: this is a real revelation for me. I got excited. Um,
Speaker 1: and now, conversation at the time was a euphemism for sex.
Speaker 1: So it's basically criminal sex, sex crimes crim criminal conversation
Speaker 1: crim CON. That is way different than what I thought
Speaker 1: crim con was, which sounded like, you know, uh, comic
Speaker 1: con for criminals. Or maybe it's just the ridiculous crime
Speaker 1: podcasts like just there showing up at CRIMN. I love it.
Speaker 1: I feel like we should do a crossover with a
Speaker 1: criminal conversation with them. We definitely should. And if you
Speaker 1: had crim con and it was just ridiculous crime episode convention,
Speaker 1: it would be a crim con, which means we could
Speaker 1: do a ridiculous romance episode about it, which would be
Speaker 1: so insane that ridiculous news would have to come and
Speaker 1: afterwards ridiculous it's ridiculous history. Yeah, as long as it happens,
Speaker 1: we'll come back in time. But all I'm saying is
Speaker 1: ridiculation is in the works. Ridiculous. There might be some
Speaker 1: crim con at ridicul cotion. You never know when there's
Speaker 1: a hotel involved, Alright, So anyway, they each had a
Speaker 1: lot of factors to consider and huge consequences that could
Speaker 1: come down from this decision. But even so, George and
Speaker 1: Seymour decided they would take their chances and Elope. Maybe
Speaker 1: since Richard had just been so tolerant of their affair
Speaker 1: all so far, they were kind of like Shirley Hill's fine,
Speaker 1: he's the divorce, he's a friend, he's not sucking you anyway.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what are you trying to preserve here, Richard.
Speaker 1: Come on. They figured that, you know, maybe he'd be
Speaker 1: generous enough to just give her, give her the divorce
Speaker 1: without a fight. Yeah, their friends, it's fine. Well, they
Speaker 1: would be wrong. Oh. Seymour and George eloped one night
Speaker 1: when Richard decided not to go to a party that
Speaker 1: they were both at. Now, George had done a little
Speaker 1: planning and he packed a bag, but Seymour basically had
Speaker 1: leave with the clothes on her back and nothing else,
Speaker 1: because it would have looked weird if she was packing
Speaker 1: a bag. Before. They shacked up at a hotel and
Speaker 1: they passed as man and wife, although the maids were suspicious.
Speaker 1: Is when they had to change the sheets three times
Speaker 1: in one day because they were doing it so much.
Speaker 1: One of them said, quote, they're appeared to be a
Speaker 1: greater funness between them, and it is generally sane between
Speaker 1: husband and wife. This Cabby from London changed in the seats.
Speaker 1: It's one of the maids. She's like, I know husbands
Speaker 1: and wives and they don't fuck that much. They do
Speaker 1: know now Also it doesn't matter, but her name was
Speaker 1: Hannah Commander, and I just think commander, dope name hand
Speaker 1: A Commander is my favorite name in our whole show.
Speaker 1: Commander is so good, incredible one names and a commander
Speaker 1: it is. And I've never seen a husband and wolf do.
Speaker 1: It's much and they only know husbands and wives. You
Speaker 1: want to know how much husband and wolf is having sex,
Speaker 1: you just come see Atlanta. Commander amazing well from this
Speaker 1: hotel see more sent her husband a letter and asked
Speaker 1: him for a divorce. Richard gets this letter and he
Speaker 1: is piste about this elopement, and he was determined to
Speaker 1: be as cruel as possible in exacting his revenge for George.
Speaker 1: That meant a crim con suit, and not just any
Speaker 1: crim con suit. Richard said, I'm bringing a crim con
Speaker 1: suit so large it's gonna make your head spin. You're
Speaker 1: gonna be drowning in my lawyers. You're gonna be uh
Speaker 1: just boop in your pants. How big this crim con
Speaker 1: suit is gonna be a would utterly ruin George. He
Speaker 1: set his damages at twenty thousand pounds, and that meant
Speaker 1: if he won, George would have to sell all of
Speaker 1: his land, any property, any assets that he had, and
Speaker 1: then he would probably still end up in debtor's prison
Speaker 1: because George had like eight hundred pounds a year or something.
Speaker 1: But it didn't matter. The guy got to set what
Speaker 1: he thought the damages of his property were and you
Speaker 1: had to pay that ship no matter what. If he
Speaker 1: won his case, and as an added perk, Richard could
Speaker 1: then buy George's land and that would make him the
Speaker 1: biggest landowner in the Isle of Wight. Now for Seymour,
Speaker 1: Richard was determined that this woman was never gonna be
Speaker 1: happy or comfortable again, so instead of granting her the divorce,
Speaker 1: he decided to sue for separation. He was hoping to
Speaker 1: drive her into prostitution to keep herself afloat. He also
Speaker 1: decided that he wasn't going to send her any of
Speaker 1: her clothes, or her jewelry or anything like that as
Speaker 1: further punishment. So Seymour hid at this hotel for several
Speaker 1: days without even a change of underwear. On top of
Speaker 1: all that, George and Seymour's daughter Jane, was still under
Speaker 1: Richard's control, and of course he refused to let Seymour
Speaker 1: see her, and Seymour was really anxious about what he
Speaker 1: might do to her. And in this she might have
Speaker 1: been justified because Jane did die sometime that year, and
Speaker 1: Seymour and George thought that Richard might have had something
Speaker 1: to do with it, but they couldn't really investigate because
Speaker 1: they would then have to admit to James's actual father
Speaker 1: and that would just help Richard win his adultery case
Speaker 1: against George. Now, Richard couldn't really give it away either,
Speaker 1: because that would make him look complacent. So to this day,
Speaker 1: no one knows where Jane is buried. Dark This guy
Speaker 1: went nuts, he did, and apparently burned a lot of
Speaker 1: her ship. It's not outside the realm of possibility that
Speaker 1: he killed that kid. And it's just that intense, like
Speaker 1: I mean, toxic masculinity. I guess it's this sense of ownership,
Speaker 1: how dare you try to take what belongs to me?
Speaker 1: Like he didn't even care about her, he didn't love her,
Speaker 1: he didn't like having sex with her, nothing about their
Speaker 1: marriage as as a as a unit was important to him,
Speaker 1: except I control you. You don't come to me and
Speaker 1: say what you want. I tell you what you get.
Speaker 1: I was letting you funk this guy. Y'all were having fun.
Speaker 1: We were all having a good time. How dare you
Speaker 1: try to cut me out of that? Well? And on
Speaker 1: top of that, you're just his social inferior. You don't
Speaker 1: get to run off with my wife. Like you know,
Speaker 1: it's also so much about appearances for him, in terms
Speaker 1: of not only masculinity, but class and aristocratic stuff and
Speaker 1: all of it, and military thing like. He just felt
Speaker 1: so slighted by this upstart, little nothing coming from out
Speaker 1: of nowhere and taking his wife away. So it was
Speaker 1: like his pride just took such a blow he could
Speaker 1: not handle it. But Seymour wasn't about to lay back
Speaker 1: and take all this crap from Richard, Okay, she was
Speaker 1: willing to fight for her lover and her freedom. Now,
Speaker 1: Richard did offer to take her back, and he would
Speaker 1: drop his suit and all this would go away, but
Speaker 1: she said she suffered so many quote slights and inattentions
Speaker 1: from him that she could never bring herself to return
Speaker 1: to him. There you stand up for yourself. That's right.
Speaker 1: And she also warned him that she had quote resolved
Speaker 1: to go to all lengths to circumvent his design. Damn.
Speaker 1: She threw down the gauntlet. She said, bring it. That's right.
Speaker 1: She said she would countersue him for her pin money
Speaker 1: that she was legally entitled to and he had not
Speaker 1: yet money. Gimme mushie. And furthermore, she was willing to
Speaker 1: see to it quote that he was exposed and made
Speaker 1: the object of universal condemnation. Yeah, she said, how dare
Speaker 1: you stepped to me? Oh you think it big ship?
Speaker 1: I'll show you big ship. I'm a ship on your face.
Speaker 1: She's going. But either Richard did not believe how far
Speaker 1: she was willing to go, or he was too mad
Speaker 1: to care. Because he did not back down, his lawyer
Speaker 1: Is enlisted several of the hotel servants, chiefly Hannah Commander,
Speaker 1: to help them prove that she and George were living there,
Speaker 1: pretend to be husband and wife, sleeping in the same bed.
Speaker 1: You just call command. You need a witness. But he
Speaker 1: was ready to do it too, and the suit was
Speaker 1: duly filed and in February two, Sir Richard and George
Speaker 1: Bissett arrived at the courtroom. It was packed crim con
Speaker 1: suits meant that a lot of fancy, rich people's dirty
Speaker 1: laundry was gonna get aired out, lots of drama. So
Speaker 1: all the judge duty fans in the area where they're
Speaker 1: ready to be entertained. But Seymour was not present because
Speaker 1: her she was considered superfluous to the conversation. She was
Speaker 1: just property in the eyes of the law. And as
Speaker 1: Reuben hold points out, quote no one asked a horse
Speaker 1: how it felt to be stolen? Isn't that crazy? So
Speaker 1: we don't need to hear from you girl now. Richard's wealth,
Speaker 1: of course, enabled him to hire the best lay years
Speaker 1: that money could buy, and after they made their case
Speaker 1: against George, he was feeling pretty good. Even George's lawyer
Speaker 1: said that he deserved a favorable verdict. The only real
Speaker 1: question was how much the damages should be. Richard probably
Speaker 1: had a big, smug, stupid smile on his face there
Speaker 1: for a minute, but guess what. Best smile got wiped
Speaker 1: clean off pretty fast once he realized just how far
Speaker 1: Seymour was willing to go for George. Because the lawyer
Speaker 1: started saying some uncomfortable stuff. Uh, why haven't. Richard's lawyers
Speaker 1: mentioned that George had been living in the wars Ley's
Speaker 1: house in made Stone at Richard's invitation. Clearly wasn't telling
Speaker 1: everyone the full story. And then George's lawyers started calling witnesses,
Speaker 1: and some of them talked about how they were friends
Speaker 1: with the couple and they never saw them together. Seymour
Speaker 1: had even asked Richard to join her on an outing
Speaker 1: several times and he had refused. Some talked about how
Speaker 1: they had told Richard to curb his wife's promiscuous behavior,
Speaker 1: but he always said he didn't mind it, and some
Speaker 1: of them talked about their own love affairs with Seymour.
Speaker 1: One of them, Viscount dear Hurst, was an explosive witness.
Speaker 1: He was known as the lothario of his age, and
Speaker 1: he was estranged from his family for eloping with a
Speaker 1: woman himself. So he knew this game, Yeah, he knew it.
Speaker 1: And he said that he stayed at the couple's house
Speaker 1: once and Richard actually encouraged him to go after Seymour.
Speaker 1: He told the court that Richard said, quote many young
Speaker 1: men had tried her to no effect, and that I
Speaker 1: had his permission to try my chance with her, you know,
Speaker 1: and the judge was like, and you know, at the
Speaker 1: time when he said it, dear Hurst kind of take
Speaker 1: it as a joke. But he did start sleeping with
Speaker 1: Seymour while he was staying with them. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you say so, I'll try my chance. Oh it was
Speaker 1: incredibly easy. This girl is sex starved. She was ready
Speaker 1: to say yeah. She kept talking about Dick Toddy. Is
Speaker 1: that you So? One night dear Hurst left Seymour's room
Speaker 1: at four in the morning and he basically tripped over
Speaker 1: Richard in Seymour's dressing room, and as he told the court,
Speaker 1: all Richards said was, quote, dear Hurst, how did you
Speaker 1: come to be here? As it wasn't totally obvious when
Speaker 1: he probably his shoes in his hands, you know, tipt
Speaker 1: in and Richard's like, oh, what a coincidence We're both
Speaker 1: in my lady's dressing room. Yeah, dear Hurst just like,
Speaker 1: but you told me you try my chest. You know what,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to go now. Reuben Holt also points
Speaker 1: out that this testimony suggests that our voyor Richard had
Speaker 1: been deliberately spying on the two of them together, maybe
Speaker 1: without their knowledge. She writes, quote the keyhole would have
Speaker 1: provided a luscious eye fell of the illicit activity. So
Speaker 1: that might be why he was in the dressing room
Speaker 1: in the first place. Yeah, he's a real George McFly.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, is I know right now? The next day
Speaker 1: he acted like the incident had never happened. Um. He
Speaker 1: allowed Seymour and Dearhurst to be alone together and go
Speaker 1: out together. He did not reprimand him, he did not
Speaker 1: ask him to leave, nothing that you would think a
Speaker 1: husband would do in that situation. And it kind of
Speaker 1: gave Dearhurst a real dislike of Sir Richard and a
Speaker 1: deep sympathy for Seymour. I think he's like, don't you
Speaker 1: care about her at all? Like, you don't care at all?
Speaker 1: And then also you're weirdly in her dressing room? What
Speaker 1: the fuss going on with this guy? After their love
Speaker 1: affair cooled down, he remained a really true friend to her.
Speaker 1: I mean, besides being willing to testify publicly to in
Speaker 1: front of Godden everybody about his own bad behavior that
Speaker 1: didn't make him look very good, he actually also helped
Speaker 1: her and George elope together. He was like their go between. UM.
Speaker 1: While they were in the hotel hiding from Sir Richard,
Speaker 1: but he was not her only lover, and she had
Speaker 1: several who she wrote to and asked to testify, although
Speaker 1: they did not show up. Like dear Hurst, tad one
Speaker 1: was a womanizer and a gambler named Charles Wyndham. She
Speaker 1: liked him so much that she gave him her wedding
Speaker 1: band as a token of her affection when he went
Speaker 1: off to war. A respectable lieutenant had a brief fling
Speaker 1: with her at some point, and then he fell in
Speaker 1: love and got married, so he didn't want to testify
Speaker 1: because he had like a whole life. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to that. She had another lover who was a notorious
Speaker 1: womanizer named Lord Chumley, and she like Tim so much
Speaker 1: that she get depressed when he was away, and Sir
Speaker 1: Richard would send for him to come cheer her up.
Speaker 1: My god, oh my wife, for you sad to get here.
Speaker 1: Lord Chumley, come here, cheer my wife. I can't stand her.
Speaker 1: Dear Lord Chumley, it's your friend, Sir Richard again, calling
Speaker 1: to see if you could bring that giant dick over
Speaker 1: to make my wife feel better. Yours very sincerely, now.
Speaker 1: Chumley was so notorious a philanderer that he actually had
Speaker 1: a four page poem dedicated to him in pamphlet. It
Speaker 1: was called the Torpedo, a Poem to the Electric Eel.
Speaker 1: So let's go down to poetry corner and hear a
Speaker 1: quick excerpt. What thou, Lord Chumley, may conceal a most
Speaker 1: enormous length of eel, admired for its size and bone,
Speaker 1: this mighty thing when lank depressed a mirror noun adjective
Speaker 1: at best, is useless when alone. Wow, can you imagine
Speaker 1: a four page poem being published that's just speculating on
Speaker 1: how big your dick must be to get all these ladies? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I know I can't. I can't. I'm not sure i'd
Speaker 1: be complimented. But I'm not a man. So I don't
Speaker 1: know what poems have been written about me, and I
Speaker 1: don't know their subject matter. I feel like there might
Speaker 1: have been one or two in my day. I write
Speaker 1: you a poem right now, I'll think of one. Okay,
Speaker 1: we'll do it at the end of the episode. Just
Speaker 1: coming up. So Seymour even wrote to her doctor and
Speaker 1: asked him to testify at the trial about everything he
Speaker 1: knew about her. So this doctor shows up and he
Speaker 1: told them that she had called him to treat a
Speaker 1: sexually transmitted infection that she'd picked up from another lover,
Speaker 1: the Marquess of Graham, and it was probably gone a
Speaker 1: rhea um. But this was pretty damning because Richard didn't
Speaker 1: have Gona rhea. He never caught it from her, which
Speaker 1: demonstrated to the judge, the jury, and the rest of
Speaker 1: the world that Richard was not fulfilling his conjugal duties.
Speaker 1: The star witness for the defense were sworn affidavits from
Speaker 1: some old servant lady. She worked at the public baths
Speaker 1: in Maidstone, and she had seen Richard hoist George up
Speaker 1: on his shoulders so he could have a little peep
Speaker 1: at Richard's naked wife. So she described the entire spectacle
Speaker 1: to Georgia's lawyers, and they walk in and they lay
Speaker 1: it down. They're like, boom, here's what's going on between
Speaker 1: the three of them. Why the hell is Richard so
Speaker 1: piste off when he'd been encouraging this behavior the whole
Speaker 1: time he was into it, ladies and gentlemen. Now the
Speaker 1: papers took their reporting two extremes on this whole thing.
Speaker 1: Of course, what the papers that whatever? A sex scandal,
Speaker 1: and they inflated it. No way so unusual. So because
Speaker 1: it's it's often said that Seymour is known for having
Speaker 1: twenty seven lovers. This is what the movie Dresses was about.
Speaker 1: That's right, one dress for each man. My friend I've
Speaker 1: actually I'm sorry, this is totally unrelated, but every time
Speaker 1: I hear the title Dresses, my favorite. The best joke
Speaker 1: I've ever heard is my friend Jeff had a birthday party.
Speaker 1: He was turning and the invitation went out and it
Speaker 1: said seven Jeff is my favorite. I laughed so hard
Speaker 1: when I got that. Larious Jeff. If you're listening, it's
Speaker 1: still one of my favorite jokes of all time. They
Speaker 1: seven Jeff is well, if you're six and named Jeff,
Speaker 1: do it. Keep that in mind, keep that one in
Speaker 1: your back pocket. Do it, but give credit, give credit
Speaker 1: credit due another Jeff up there somewhere, all right, So
Speaker 1: what happened was twenty seven men had been subpoenaed at
Speaker 1: Seymour's direct requests. So that's why they kind of were like, oh,
Speaker 1: she has seven lovers, we're going with Obviously that isn't
Speaker 1: great math, al right, because we already said one of
Speaker 1: them was her doctor, her lover um. Several were anti
Speaker 1: character witnesses. They were just there to prove that her
Speaker 1: husband was always not never around, was careless with her. Um.
Speaker 1: So some of these papers just added names however they wanted,
Speaker 1: you know, they didn't care about truth or whatever. They
Speaker 1: went as high as sixty lovers. Some were a little
Speaker 1: more conservative, they said only eleven. But they're just making up.
Speaker 1: They were like the Duke of Earl Richard the Third Yeah,
Speaker 1: William Shakespeare. Now Reuben Hold mentions about five confirmed names
Speaker 1: that we were talking about on this episode, So we
Speaker 1: don't really actually know her real body counts or anything like.
Speaker 1: But in the eyes of the world, Seymour was now
Speaker 1: an insatiable sex maniac, capable of any aberration, you know,
Speaker 1: because she had let all these lovers come around just
Speaker 1: tell her business everybody. But Richard didn't fare much better.
Speaker 1: He was now seen as an impotent cuckold, and worse
Speaker 1: than that, a depraved weirdo who would display his wife
Speaker 1: to other men. The judge saw him as no better
Speaker 1: than a pimp. He said, quote, this woman, for three
Speaker 1: or four years has been prostituted with a variety of people.
Speaker 1: That is extremely clear and extremely plain. Now, Richard had
Speaker 1: set his damages again at twenty thousand pounds that's around
Speaker 1: three point seven million pounds today, because he was like,
Speaker 1: I'm a big man and look how terrible they've treated me,
Speaker 1: and I don't deserve none of this. Well, I'm swinging
Speaker 1: around dick punctual. So so the only way to kind
Speaker 1: of drive home how badly he had behaved was to
Speaker 1: funk with his damages, because they were like, definitely adult,
Speaker 1: really clearly happened. You can't say it didn't. So you win, yes, adultery.
Speaker 1: But he was only awarded a single shilling. What that's
Speaker 1: worth around five or six pounds? Oh my god, Reuben
Speaker 1: Hold writes quote for the price of a pound of soap,
Speaker 1: a muslim neckcloth, or roast beef dinner. Worsley had sold
Speaker 1: his wife and his honor to George Bassett. Damn ouch.
Speaker 1: I just gotta say that from without ever stepping foot
Speaker 1: in the courtroom. Seymour torpedoed this man's whole case and
Speaker 1: he ended up getting eight bucks out of it. He
Speaker 1: got nothing here, go get yourself a half a sandwich,
Speaker 1: have fun. Unbelievable. His little pete show cost him three
Speaker 1: point seven million pounds and she knew how to play
Speaker 1: it against him to the lawyers, like they were like,
Speaker 1: I'm sure those lawyers were like tell us everything. She's like,
Speaker 1: I got some news for you, and they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: I mean. And you have to admire the bravery of
Speaker 1: her being like, I will just lay it all out
Speaker 1: for you, and you know, we'll get to it in
Speaker 1: part two. But she don't stop. She continues to funk
Speaker 1: with Richard for a time. So it's it's just really
Speaker 1: cool that she was just I think it must have
Speaker 1: been incredibly difficult to do that, especially with the fallout.
Speaker 1: She's going to have a long time of not being respectable,
Speaker 1: which is hard to be in you're, you know, gently
Speaker 1: born woman. And she's like, you know what funk all
Speaker 1: that noise? I don't like you, you don't like me.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I'm tied to you the rest
Speaker 1: of my life and you get all my money and everything.
Speaker 1: What do I get? Nothing? I get a son I
Speaker 1: don't get to see, and a bunch of lovers who
Speaker 1: I can't marry and be with all the time, to
Speaker 1: control all my movements and everything where I live. And
Speaker 1: she's just done with that. And yeah, absolutely, I mean,
Speaker 1: and you've got to look at the potential consequences she's
Speaker 1: looking at. She's like, I'm not coming out of this unscathed, right,
Speaker 1: everything is stacked against me, So how can I you know,
Speaker 1: bare minimum, I'm going to tear him down with me.
Speaker 1: Best I'll get is I'll totally buck up his life, right.
Speaker 1: You know, she went for it, went all in, and
Speaker 1: I think it worked out probably better her than she
Speaker 1: thought it could have. Probably, I think too there was
Speaker 1: a bit of um self preservation in it as well,
Speaker 1: because if you know, once he said he was suing
Speaker 1: for separation and not divorced. That was pretty much the
Speaker 1: end of the story for Seymour. She has nothing else
Speaker 1: to lose, so that's how he sucked up, really, and
Speaker 1: she has nothing to lose, so she's got to rely
Speaker 1: on George to financially support her. And so if George
Speaker 1: loses everything, it becomes ruined. Who's going to support her.
Speaker 1: There's no one she would have to find a new lover.
Speaker 1: So she's kind of like, at least you can keep
Speaker 1: your money if I if I help you, you'll have
Speaker 1: some money to pay for my life. Now that Sir
Speaker 1: Richard ain't gonna do it, and I don't want anyone
Speaker 1: else right now. I'm in love with you because at
Speaker 1: this point they're just separated, but there's no divorce, not
Speaker 1: not yet. They're not even separated legally yet, they're just
Speaker 1: living apart. But yeah, she thumbed her nose at every convention,
Speaker 1: and just like I'm a modern lady, I guess just
Speaker 1: this total torpedo for his plans. I love it. It's
Speaker 1: so cool without without even being allowed to show up.
Speaker 1: So I'll show you what a horse thinks about being stolen.
Speaker 1: A horse can make itself known, right well, I mean
Speaker 1: with the pens mightier than the sword. She's spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time writing a bunch of letters, and looks
Speaker 1: she brought his whole thing down. You know, fellas hell, ladies, everybody,
Speaker 1: if your person out there, you know you, and you
Speaker 1: think you've got all this power over your partner and
Speaker 1: you're gonna wheel it against him. Don't do that ship because,
Speaker 1: first of all, because don't do that ship. It's a
Speaker 1: bad thing to do. Durating people like ship. But wash
Speaker 1: him come back. Wash. It bites you in the as
Speaker 1: you know, you think you're so high in might do
Speaker 1: you think you do well? We talked about it. Richard
Speaker 1: thought he was so untouchable. He just laughed off all
Speaker 1: her non sense because it's like, oh, I'm I'm perfect.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've heard, but i'm sir Richard.
Speaker 1: You know, well, guess what, sir Richard? Now, who are you?
Speaker 1: Ain't ship? Now you got eight bucks? Now you got
Speaker 1: eight bucks? You gotta pay for all these lawyers stuff. Amazing.
Speaker 1: So there's all there's that's a that's it. That's a
Speaker 1: story right there. That's it. And there's more. There's so
Speaker 1: much more. There's the new female Cotoree coming up, which
Speaker 1: is all these ladies like Seymour who kind of put
Speaker 1: together their own club to hang out and move about society,
Speaker 1: and the Jilted Woman's Club. She's she's got some new
Speaker 1: friends on the way. They wives Club first, I mean
Speaker 1: kind of. You know, for the longest time I thought
Speaker 1: the first wives Club, I've never seen it. The longest
Speaker 1: time I thought it was about I just thought it
Speaker 1: was first ladies. I thought it was about ex president's
Speaker 1: fives when hung out together. And like when when you
Speaker 1: told me it wasn't that, I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not the First Ladies Club. First Wives is not
Speaker 1: what they called the First Lady. I don't know why
Speaker 1: I made that connection to a pretty good movie from
Speaker 1: my memory. I'm just saying a movie I would love
Speaker 1: to see is the First Ladies Club. What do they
Speaker 1: all get? You know? Who else could relate to you
Speaker 1: a but another First Lady? True? Well, I can't wait
Speaker 1: to hear about this First Wives Club. I am, but
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it. I think they're so cool.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, there's something to be said for
Speaker 1: the institution of marriage and holding up society or whatever.
Speaker 1: But I love these ladies for being, like, you know what,
Speaker 1: fuck that noise. I'm just going to live my life
Speaker 1: and you can call me a slide if you want.
Speaker 1: But I'm happy and I got my own typle of
Speaker 1: friends and I'm doing my own thing out here, so
Speaker 1: I kind of love them. I'm excited to tell their
Speaker 1: story as well. And then Richard has some kind of
Speaker 1: weird ship coming up to and I love I love
Speaker 1: you sitting here doing a podcast with your spouse saying yeah,
Speaker 1: it's something to be said for the institutional blah blah,
Speaker 1: all that bullshit. Well, maybe I'll have to find my
Speaker 1: own George. No, I don't want to get divorced. No,
Speaker 1: not divorced, just just someone, uh for you to peep
Speaker 1: on me. And that's what I'm really looking for. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know that's all You've ever really wanted, Just to
Speaker 1: watch me and socially inferior man get it on. What's
Speaker 1: that can't call? Oh yeah, it's very specific. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you for tuning in today for this, for this
Speaker 1: part one of this crazy story. I hope you loved it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so much more to come. Other things he did
Speaker 1: to her on their marriage and stuff is a lot.
Speaker 1: It's a lot, so tune in for the next part
Speaker 1: as well. Definitely tell us what you thought about this one.
Speaker 1: You can email us at dick Romance at gmail dot
Speaker 1: com or find us on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at
Speaker 1: Oh great, it's Eli. I'm at Dyanamite Booms and of
Speaker 1: course the show is at ridic Romance right and we
Speaker 1: always love to hear from you. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for spending time with us today and we will see
Speaker 1: you next time. So long, friends, it's time to go.
Speaker 1: Thanks so listening to our show, Tell your friends name's
Speaker 1: uncle's in this to listen to a show ridiculous roll
Speaker 1: nance