Aristocratic Vice by Donna T. Andrew

Author:Donna T. Andrew
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2013-11-08T16:00:00+00:00

“Mild-Mays too often deceive.…”:129 The Roseberry Affair

Only a month after Lady Roseberry eloped with Sir Henry Mildmay, leaving her husband and four children for her widower brother-in-law with whom she had been conducting an affair, her husband had his suit of criminal conversation before the courts. Because Mildmay had “suffered judgment to go by default” the inquiry into damages came before the Sheriff’s court. Even more remarkable than the trial’s testimony was its coverage by the press. Every newspaper in London covered it, most at extraordinary length, often filling the bulk of an entire issue with the account.130 In interesting ways this trial offered the public many of the same features that the Grosvenor-Cumberland case had more than four decades before; the lover arranging meetings in disguise, saving love letters, and being discovered in the bedroom with the guilty wife. However, in addition, this trial also contained the frisson of incest; Lady Roseberry and Mildmay’s dead wife were sisters, and, it was hinted, the intimacy between the two arose when Lady Harriet acted as comforter and confidante to Mildmay following the death of his wife in childbirth. In other ways the tone of reports and comments about this trial was significantly different than that earlier case, blacker, less satirical, and more Byronic.

When Lady Mildmay, the sister of the countess of Roseberry, died in 1810, Sir Henry became a regular visitor to the home of his brother-in-law, the Earl of Roseberry. At this point the Roseberrys had been married for two years, and Lady Harriet was only twenty. However, it was not until 1814, four years later, that the affair started. Called to Scotland to the deathbed of his father in March 1814, the Earl on his return noticed “a difference in the conduct of Lady Roseberry to him.” Informed of the many morning visits that Mildmay had made to the Countess in his absence, he requested that Mildmay no longer visit, and did not “notice” Mildmay in the street. In addition, Lady Harriet’s father spoke to Sir Harry “on the impropriety of breaking in on the comforts of this domestic circle.” To no avail. When the Earl removed his family to Scotland, hoping perhaps that time and distance would restore his wife’s former affections, Sir Harry followed in disguise, traveling “under the assumed name of Col. DeGrey of the Guards.” Settling into a pub near Roseberry’s home, he let his beard and whiskers grow, dressed as a sailor, and attended to “some errand or other every evening.” When the ladies of the Roseberry family retired from the dining table, Lady Harriet, rather than joining them, began instead to retreat to her bed chamber. One evening, suspicious of this activity, Lord Roseberry’s brother caused the door of her room to be breached, and found her with Mildmay, “in disguise and with a pair of loaded pistols before him.” After a bit of heated discussion, Mildmay left and the next morning, Lady Roseberry, claiming to be retiring to her father’s house, eloped and joined her lover.

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