The Scandalmonger (1952)
by T. H. White, is the sequel to his book, The Age of Scandal (1950). As
he presents it, the Age of Scandal was that little stretch between the Age of
Reason and the Age of Romance, with some overlap in time either way with
precursors and relics. He draws the end line with Queen Victoria, who he sees
as the last epitome of the eccentrics, individualists, and extreme
personalities of the Age.
“From his further
explorations of the Age of Scandal, T. H. White has returned with some
remarkable specimens. The eccentrics among them are hardly more conspicuous
than the men and women who, at this distance, seem representative of the
eighteenth century. They had no, or few, inhibitions. At work or play, in debt
or in love, they expended a vitality which we should find it hard to match. Mr.
White exhibits them at their best and their worst. His subjects include Duels,
Dogs, Public Executions, Blue Stockings, Bribery and Corruption; his personages
Horace Walpole, George Selwyn, Beau Brummel, the Chevalier d’Eon, Fanny Burney,
Mary Shelley, Mrs. Thrale . . .” – GoodReads.
I have had a copy of The Age
of Scandal for some time and was glad to find an inexpensive copy of this
sequel. Its condition explains its price; this 70-year-old volume lacks a book
jacket, is a little loose in the binding, and has rings on the cover that
suggest it was used as a coaster for a cup and a plate. But it is still very
readable (both in subject and condition) and these marks merely make it plain
to me that it was used and enjoyed.
The previous owner (Richard
C. Baily, according to his cat-standing-on-books bookplate) at one time
(probably when it started to fall apart) cut the book-cover into parts (the
front cover, spine, and descriptive book-flap) and taped them inside. The volume
includes black-and-white illustrations, many of them caricatures from the period
that reveal the grotesqueries of the age. The hardback cover is a dimmed,
rather royal red with tarnished gold lettering.
White marshals the anecdotes
and gossip of the time into a compulsively readable, chatty narrative, now and
then comparing and contrasting the Age to the Fifties in which he lived, and
trying to mediate an understanding between the two. It is not so much a history
as making a plate of the good bits off a banquet table to give you an idea and
a taste of what you can find.
It reminds me inevitably of
his book Mistress Masham’s Repose (1946), a story that takes place in a
vast Georgian house reminiscent of his description of Stowe in Chapter IX. Masham
impressed C. S. Lewis so favorably (White’s more famous book, The Sword in
the Stone, had simply annoyed him, apparently) that he invited him to a meeting
of the Inklings in 1947. Whether White
ever attended is not known, but there is no positive evidence that he did. But
what a What If!
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