A terrible quarrel between a husband and wife at a party - the subject: infidelity! The wife flees the shocked gathering, losing a slipper on her way to a neighboring house. This happened over 200 years ago to Lady Anne Skipwith at the Governor's Palace. Eyebrows were later raised across the colony when, following her death in childbirth, her widower, Sir Peyton Skipwith, married her younger sister, Jean. To this day it's said that Lady Anne's uneven steps still resound on the haunted Wythe House staircase in the dead of night, a chilling testament to her distress.
Lady Jean Skipwith was remarkable in her own right, amassing a personal library that rivalled any in Jeffersonian America. Her eclectic tastes included works of grammar, history, cookery, and child rearing, as well as popular fiction, the titillating, and the risqué. Swem Library's Special Collections Research Center holds over 100 titles from this collection which can be enjoyed on their own merits, or with a dab of scandalous relish. For example:
Proofs of a Conspiracy against All the Religions and Governments of Europe, Carried on in the Secret Meetings of Free Masons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies. (HS481 .R65)
A Philosophical, Historical, and Moral Essay on Old Maids. (HQ1201 .H42 1793)
The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy : Which Far Exceeds Any Thing of the Kind Yet Published ... To which are Added, One Hundred and Fifty New and Useful Receipts... and also, Fifty Receipts for Different Articles of Perfumery, with a Copious Index. (TX705 .G543 1796)
Jokeby, a burlesque on Rokeby, a poem ... in six cantos. ( PR5233 .R43 J6 1813)
Perhaps most revealing of all:
Temper, or, Domestic Scenes : A Tale, by Mrs. Opie. (PR5115.O3|bT4 1812)
Jealousy, or The Dreadful Mistake : A Novel in Two Volumes, by a clergyman's Daughter. (PR3991 .A6 C44 1802)
