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The Age of Scandal
"Between the Classical & the Romantic movements...there existed this other age, which was one of peculiar flavor," writes T.H. White, author of The Sword in the Stone & other tales of Arthurian bravery. The Age of Scandal focuses on the period in late 18th-century England following the Age of Reason--a period characterized by dilettantism, material comfort & eccentricity. The literary sway of Swift, Pope & Johnson had by then given way to a more aristocratic set of literati, of whom Horace Walpole, writing from the house he'd christened Strawberry Hill, was the most splendidly eloquent example. Walpole etc. "were among the 1st people in England to be apprehended as personalities...Eccentric, individual, sentimental, dramatic, tearful," they were lovers of gossip, fashion & exhibitionistic behavior. Among the most colorful were Selwyn, a famed execution-goer; Beckford, building an astonishing tower at Fronthill; & Joanna Southcott, remembered for her shocking announcement that she'd give birth to the new Messiah.
Based on writings by Horace Walpole & other literate recorders, White has constructed a "little scrapbook of a nostalgic Tory." Here's the fascinating record of another period of literary history by one of the best-loved writers of our own. He describes the eccentricities of the 18th-century Royal Family, the fashions of the nobility--the powdering of wigs, eating, drinking, medicine, birthday parties, theater & pronunciation; attitudes toward religion & sport; &, above all, the outgageous gossip circulating in literary circles. A witty, idiosyncratic, audacious portrait of a waning aristocracy, The Age of Scandal is an entertaining, authoritative description of late 18th-century English literati.
Based on writings by Horace Walpole & other literate recorders, White has constructed a "little scrapbook of a nostalgic Tory." Here's the fascinating record of another period of literary history by one of the best-loved writers of our own. He describes the eccentricities of the 18th-century Royal Family, the fashions of the nobility--the powdering of wigs, eating, drinking, medicine, birthday parties, theater & pronunciation; attitudes toward religion & sport; &, above all, the outgageous gossip circulating in literary circles. A witty, idiosyncratic, audacious portrait of a waning aristocracy, The Age of Scandal is an entertaining, authoritative description of late 18th-century English literati.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1950
About the author
T.H. White
104 books1,541 followersBorn in Bombay to English parents, Terence Hanbury White was educated at Cambridge and taught for some time at Stowe before deciding to write full-time. White moved to Ireland in 1939 as a conscientious objector to WWII, and lived out his years there. White is best known for his sequence of Arthurian novels, The Once and Future King, first published together in 1958.
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June 10, 2015I am annoyed because I wrote this review yesterday and GR ate it.
Anyway, courtesy of Reading Project 2015.
This isn't so much a history book as series of highly entertaining and wildly partial essays.
I mean it opens with the line "Well, we have lived to see the end of civilization in England."
As far as I can discern (and you see a bit of this in the politics of The Once and Future King, as well), White felt that England had reached its cultural peak when about six people owned all the land and all the money and lived in enormous country houses, while everyone else ate mud and died of cholera.
Typical Tory in other words.
It's all very eccentric and not to be taken seriously. And there's lots of idle bitching about the French.
Because, frankly, there's nothing quite so quintessentially English than idly bitching about the French.
What I do find legitimately engaging about this is the fact it is history by ephemera: most of the sources quoted are letters, diaries, and other similarly personal sources of anecdotes, which gives the book this slightly gigglesome intimacy.
Basically reading it feels like this:
Anyway, courtesy of Reading Project 2015.
This isn't so much a history book as series of highly entertaining and wildly partial essays.
I mean it opens with the line "Well, we have lived to see the end of civilization in England."
As far as I can discern (and you see a bit of this in the politics of The Once and Future King, as well), White felt that England had reached its cultural peak when about six people owned all the land and all the money and lived in enormous country houses, while everyone else ate mud and died of cholera.
Typical Tory in other words.
It's all very eccentric and not to be taken seriously. And there's lots of idle bitching about the French.
Because, frankly, there's nothing quite so quintessentially English than idly bitching about the French.
What I do find legitimately engaging about this is the fact it is history by ephemera: most of the sources quoted are letters, diaries, and other similarly personal sources of anecdotes, which gives the book this slightly gigglesome intimacy.
Basically reading it feels like this:
February 12, 2016
T.H. White gives us a brief tour of more-or-less Regency society that seems to have no point except to humorously repeat the most scandalous/bitchy/salacious gossip of the era and poke fun at major figures of the time, largely through extended quotations from contemporaries. In doing so he reveals perhaps more about himself than the history he's talking about in the most partial and judgemental fashion imaginable. It's not a flattering self-portrait, depicting a very conventional middle-class man of his times not really recognisable as the author of The Once and Future King. It lacks any kind of thesis but it's equal parts amusing and appalling. I just don't think White expected himself to be one of the characters we are both amused and appalled by...
November 2, 2014
This is a delightfully clever and amusingly annotated assemblage of records of (mostly English) upper class life in the second half of the eighteenth century.
There are copious extracts from, among other primary sources, the very readable memoirs of Horace Walpole and Fanny Burney and the author naturally mines the rich lodes of verbatim reportage in Boswell's "Life of Johnson".
In support of his title (and thesis) White has chosen to direct the reader's attention to some of the more outrageous events of the age - many of which are still scandalous or gruesome enough to shock.
There are copious extracts from, among other primary sources, the very readable memoirs of Horace Walpole and Fanny Burney and the author naturally mines the rich lodes of verbatim reportage in Boswell's "Life of Johnson".
In support of his title (and thesis) White has chosen to direct the reader's attention to some of the more outrageous events of the age - many of which are still scandalous or gruesome enough to shock.
January 3, 2012
T. H. White has got hold of some excellent gossip and now he wants to dish.
All of these fantastic anecdotes were more than a century old when he wrote this book and closer by now to two, but that in no way diminishes the desire to pass them on. If anything, it lends an urgency to the enterprise: White wants everyone to know that the glitterati of the late 18th century were anything but dull, especially compared to the Romantics, whose unjust reputation for being more interesting than their predecessors comes from straitening their laces considerably and then loosening them a bit while making a big fuss about how daring they were, to hear White tell it.
Before he can get down to the serious business of gossip, he puts forward a bit of a thesis, namely, that important people should not be bothered with the washing-up, and that "the peak of British culture was reached in the latter years of George III: that the rot began to set in with the 'Romantics': that the apparent prosperity of Victoria's reign was autumnal, not vernal: and that now we are done for." If he is not at least half-jocular in his reactionary grumpery, at least he sandwiches it between two jokes and then swiftly moves on to the good stuff.
The British peerage at this time numbered slightly less than the population of my high school, except that these people had fantastic quantities of wealth, leisure, and actual power to wield (when some of them could be bothered to get out of bed). It should be unsurprising that their cliques, pranks, rivalries, etc., played out on a fabulous scale. Furthermore, they wrote and were written about extensively, leaving White the pleasing task of stringing together juicy anecdotes with scene-setting period detail and his own observations, by turns wry, indulgent, scathing and amused. It is a funny and readable book (although it is more readable if you read French, which it sometimes seems like every other person is speaking, all of it quite untranslated; and to think they told me in high school that Spanish would be more practical!).
I picked up this book with an eye towards T. H. White himself, with the subject matter a pleasing bonus, so I noted with interest what he had to say on the subjects of homosexuality and sado-masochism [his term]. The former is nearly always mentioned in the form of a syllogism: incest is to the Age of Scandal as homosexuality is to the twentieth century (once he additionally specifies the interwar period), these being the vices that disproportionately occupied their respective eras. Here he perhaps has a point, but it still seems to me a bit like a counter-accusation of wolf-crying.
With regards to the latter, he engages the subject a bit more directly: and after all, who could try to depict this era without mentioning floggings (illustrated with a period engraving, naturally) or the Marquis de Sade (who gets his own chapter, tucked at the very end, right after the one devoted to the peculiar fad for ears, the violent removal thereof, and the sad story of Princess Caroline Matilda, who was married off to the syphilitic flagellant masturbation-addict King of Denmark, had him put away in tandem with their mutual physician and her lover, and was outmaneuvered in turn by her mother-in-law and barely made it back to England intact). His take on de Sade is entertaining–he calls him "a timid and inefficient sadist" and complains that his books are not only "ridiculous nonsense" but "unnatural" for jumbling together all sorts of "perversions" that White claims are "indisputabl[y]" incompatible. Although he goes too far in the other direction (sadists are never Lesbians? Really?), I enjoy his bland refusal to be shocked as de Sade clearly wants so badly to be shocking, and his epitaph: "[De Sade]'s name, far from being forgotten, gave a substantive, adjective and adverb to every civilised language."
All of these fantastic anecdotes were more than a century old when he wrote this book and closer by now to two, but that in no way diminishes the desire to pass them on. If anything, it lends an urgency to the enterprise: White wants everyone to know that the glitterati of the late 18th century were anything but dull, especially compared to the Romantics, whose unjust reputation for being more interesting than their predecessors comes from straitening their laces considerably and then loosening them a bit while making a big fuss about how daring they were, to hear White tell it.
Before he can get down to the serious business of gossip, he puts forward a bit of a thesis, namely, that important people should not be bothered with the washing-up, and that "the peak of British culture was reached in the latter years of George III: that the rot began to set in with the 'Romantics': that the apparent prosperity of Victoria's reign was autumnal, not vernal: and that now we are done for." If he is not at least half-jocular in his reactionary grumpery, at least he sandwiches it between two jokes and then swiftly moves on to the good stuff.
The British peerage at this time numbered slightly less than the population of my high school, except that these people had fantastic quantities of wealth, leisure, and actual power to wield (when some of them could be bothered to get out of bed). It should be unsurprising that their cliques, pranks, rivalries, etc., played out on a fabulous scale. Furthermore, they wrote and were written about extensively, leaving White the pleasing task of stringing together juicy anecdotes with scene-setting period detail and his own observations, by turns wry, indulgent, scathing and amused. It is a funny and readable book (although it is more readable if you read French, which it sometimes seems like every other person is speaking, all of it quite untranslated; and to think they told me in high school that Spanish would be more practical!).
I picked up this book with an eye towards T. H. White himself, with the subject matter a pleasing bonus, so I noted with interest what he had to say on the subjects of homosexuality and sado-masochism [his term]. The former is nearly always mentioned in the form of a syllogism: incest is to the Age of Scandal as homosexuality is to the twentieth century (once he additionally specifies the interwar period), these being the vices that disproportionately occupied their respective eras. Here he perhaps has a point, but it still seems to me a bit like a counter-accusation of wolf-crying.
With regards to the latter, he engages the subject a bit more directly: and after all, who could try to depict this era without mentioning floggings (illustrated with a period engraving, naturally) or the Marquis de Sade (who gets his own chapter, tucked at the very end, right after the one devoted to the peculiar fad for ears, the violent removal thereof, and the sad story of Princess Caroline Matilda, who was married off to the syphilitic flagellant masturbation-addict King of Denmark, had him put away in tandem with their mutual physician and her lover, and was outmaneuvered in turn by her mother-in-law and barely made it back to England intact). His take on de Sade is entertaining–he calls him "a timid and inefficient sadist" and complains that his books are not only "ridiculous nonsense" but "unnatural" for jumbling together all sorts of "perversions" that White claims are "indisputabl[y]" incompatible. Although he goes too far in the other direction (sadists are never Lesbians? Really?), I enjoy his bland refusal to be shocked as de Sade clearly wants so badly to be shocking, and his epitaph: "[De Sade]'s name, far from being forgotten, gave a substantive, adjective and adverb to every civilised language."
April 23, 2025
For those looking for something just that little bit different, this book may be just the thing. Taking for his subject the period of British history between 1750 – 1800, the age of scandal, White follows the example, he says, of Rev William Mason in his Life of Gray, using excerpts from the contemporaries of the age to tell his tale, principally Horace Walpole and Dr. Johnson. He then, in 16 chapters, takes us through the principle concerns and characters of the period or, at least, those concerns and characters which interest him.
White's ability to condense a story and yet retain all the essential details is astonishing and seen in his accounts of the injustice suffered by Admiral Byng and the life of Queen Caroline of Denmark. From the concept of ‘bottom’ or courage and backbone and the open sentimentality expected of men to the era’s fascination with ears, from the society figure of George Selwyn to the writer and sex maniac the Marquis de Sade.
It can’t be said that this approach works all the time, but it’s new and engaging, particularly in the hands of an unapologetic elitist such as White. A good companion to this book is the 2 volume biography of Lord Melbourne by David Cecil who takes a similar, if more sober, view of the age as the apogee of English civilisation, though with Cecil, interestingly, Walpole hardly gets a look in.
Finally, the book had some lovely new words. New to yours truly anyway: lachrymose, valetudinarian, addlepated (look it up!).
White's ability to condense a story and yet retain all the essential details is astonishing and seen in his accounts of the injustice suffered by Admiral Byng and the life of Queen Caroline of Denmark. From the concept of ‘bottom’ or courage and backbone and the open sentimentality expected of men to the era’s fascination with ears, from the society figure of George Selwyn to the writer and sex maniac the Marquis de Sade.
It can’t be said that this approach works all the time, but it’s new and engaging, particularly in the hands of an unapologetic elitist such as White. A good companion to this book is the 2 volume biography of Lord Melbourne by David Cecil who takes a similar, if more sober, view of the age as the apogee of English civilisation, though with Cecil, interestingly, Walpole hardly gets a look in.
Finally, the book had some lovely new words. New to yours truly anyway: lachrymose, valetudinarian, addlepated (look it up!).
October 27, 2009
A shocking but highly enjoyable read about a period that provoked and shaped the culture of modern England, during which period there were more scandals than decorum in the English elite. Or rather, all that and more. A book I would recommend every one to read
March 31, 2026
T. H. White (1906-1964) was a fascinating guy. He is best known for his "Sword in the Stone" trilogy of Arthurian novels. They were the source for the Broadway hit "Camelot" and the Disney movie. He wrote several science fiction novels at the beginning of his career. He wrote a successful children's book, "Mistress Masham's Repose" and several Irish novels. He also wrote "The Goshawk" about his attempt to train a northern goshawk.
This 1950 book is unlike any of his others. This is a social portrait of England from the death of the poet Alexander Pope in 1744 to the publication of "Lyrical Ballads", a collection of poems by Williams Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in 1798.
White says that the period after the Age of Reason and before the Romantic Revival should be known as the Age of Scandal. He has great fun guiding us through the gossip filled, scandal-soaked period. He argues that Horace Walpole, the Fifth Earl of Orford is the heart of the age. He was a politician, writer and historian. He loved gossip and filled his letters with it. His letters have been published in 48 volumes.
White show how the three King Georges were followed by scandal and criticism. The Church of England was basically a method of giving out well-paying jobs as a churchman. Politics was driven by bribery and limited by the riots that periodically broke out.
Samual Johnson was the great literary man of the age. He was from a humble background and spent much of his life talking in pubs. He is famous only because of his luck in having Boswell as a biographer.
White loves the little details. He says that English was pronounced differently then. In those days "everyone knows that "tea" was pronounced to rhyme with "tay" and "spoil" rhymed with "mile". He explores the mystery of what Samuel Johnson did with the orange peels which he pocketed every time he ate an orange.
One of the great characters of the period is Lord Hervey. He was a court courtier who was a brilliant letter writer. His letters give a picture of the intrigue and silliness around the King's court. He could also be thoughtful. In his last letter, as he was dying at age 47 from multiple illnesses, he said " the last stages of an infirm life are filthy roads and like all other roads, I find that the farther one goes from the capital, the more tedious the miles grow and the more rough and disagreeable the way." He said that the Doctors were "like the commissioners for most other turnpikes. they seldom execute what they undertake, they only put the toll of the poor cheated passenger in their pocket and leave every jolt at least as bad as they found it, if not worse."
This is not a systematic history of the era. It is White's collection of people and events from these years that he finds interesting. There is detailed chapter on the 1757 Court Martial of Admiral Byng for losing a naval battle against the French. White includes diagrams of the ship's maneuvers in the battle. White agrees with the words on Byng's' gravestone;
TO THE PERPETUAL DISGRACE OF PUBLIC JUSTICE
THE HONORABLE JOHN BYNG, ESQUIRE
ADMIRAL OF THE FLEET
FELL A MARTYR TO POLITICAL PERSECUTION
MARCH 14, 1757, WHEN
BRAVERY AND LOYALTY
WERE INSUFFICIENT SECURITIES FOR THE
LIFE AND HONOR
OF A NAVY OFFICER
This book is a grab bag of interesting stories, comments and descriptions from a pivotal time in English history. This period is the beginning of Modern England, and it is filled with quirky, odd and clever people.
This 1950 book is unlike any of his others. This is a social portrait of England from the death of the poet Alexander Pope in 1744 to the publication of "Lyrical Ballads", a collection of poems by Williams Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in 1798.
White says that the period after the Age of Reason and before the Romantic Revival should be known as the Age of Scandal. He has great fun guiding us through the gossip filled, scandal-soaked period. He argues that Horace Walpole, the Fifth Earl of Orford is the heart of the age. He was a politician, writer and historian. He loved gossip and filled his letters with it. His letters have been published in 48 volumes.
White show how the three King Georges were followed by scandal and criticism. The Church of England was basically a method of giving out well-paying jobs as a churchman. Politics was driven by bribery and limited by the riots that periodically broke out.
Samual Johnson was the great literary man of the age. He was from a humble background and spent much of his life talking in pubs. He is famous only because of his luck in having Boswell as a biographer.
White loves the little details. He says that English was pronounced differently then. In those days "everyone knows that "tea" was pronounced to rhyme with "tay" and "spoil" rhymed with "mile". He explores the mystery of what Samuel Johnson did with the orange peels which he pocketed every time he ate an orange.
One of the great characters of the period is Lord Hervey. He was a court courtier who was a brilliant letter writer. His letters give a picture of the intrigue and silliness around the King's court. He could also be thoughtful. In his last letter, as he was dying at age 47 from multiple illnesses, he said " the last stages of an infirm life are filthy roads and like all other roads, I find that the farther one goes from the capital, the more tedious the miles grow and the more rough and disagreeable the way." He said that the Doctors were "like the commissioners for most other turnpikes. they seldom execute what they undertake, they only put the toll of the poor cheated passenger in their pocket and leave every jolt at least as bad as they found it, if not worse."
This is not a systematic history of the era. It is White's collection of people and events from these years that he finds interesting. There is detailed chapter on the 1757 Court Martial of Admiral Byng for losing a naval battle against the French. White includes diagrams of the ship's maneuvers in the battle. White agrees with the words on Byng's' gravestone;
TO THE PERPETUAL DISGRACE OF PUBLIC JUSTICE
THE HONORABLE JOHN BYNG, ESQUIRE
ADMIRAL OF THE FLEET
FELL A MARTYR TO POLITICAL PERSECUTION
MARCH 14, 1757, WHEN
BRAVERY AND LOYALTY
WERE INSUFFICIENT SECURITIES FOR THE
LIFE AND HONOR
OF A NAVY OFFICER
This book is a grab bag of interesting stories, comments and descriptions from a pivotal time in English history. This period is the beginning of Modern England, and it is filled with quirky, odd and clever people.
July 25, 2021
I picked this up because I saw the name "T.H. White" and I got my Double-Initials-Whites crossed, thinking this was by E.B. White. It almost made no difference--I like both authors--but I was mildly confused for a little while before I realised my mistake, since I didn't have any thought that the quintessentially American E.B. had anything to do with Cambridge.
Similarly, on the theme of getting things mixed up, I saw that the book was copyrighted "The Estate of T.H. White" without realising it was a reprint in 1986 of a 1950 original. This mistake lasted quite a bit longer, if only because The Age of Scandal does feel a little bit unfinished.
It's a series of sketches (a word I choose deliberately, in light of the "unfinished" sense it gave), giving a very personal view (indeed, White calls it gossip) of "The Age of Scandal"--the roughly the latter half of the Eighteenth Century in Britain, often lumped in with the Augustan Age, though White's thesis, insofar as he has one, is that this is quite unfair to these later years, which react, as later years always do, to their immediate predecessors.
It's an engaging read: White has a good eye for what to pull out verbatim from the firsthand sources and what to retell himself, often for time. It alternates, more or less, between portraits of some of the era's interesting characters and some of the themes particular to the time. It isn't an argument proceeding by stages, or a single narrative: almost any chapter could have been slotted elsewhere in the book with minimal change, but it doesn't feel unfinished.
Similarly, on the theme of getting things mixed up, I saw that the book was copyrighted "The Estate of T.H. White" without realising it was a reprint in 1986 of a 1950 original. This mistake lasted quite a bit longer, if only because The Age of Scandal does feel a little bit unfinished.
It's a series of sketches (a word I choose deliberately, in light of the "unfinished" sense it gave), giving a very personal view (indeed, White calls it gossip) of "The Age of Scandal"--the roughly the latter half of the Eighteenth Century in Britain, often lumped in with the Augustan Age, though White's thesis, insofar as he has one, is that this is quite unfair to these later years, which react, as later years always do, to their immediate predecessors.
It's an engaging read: White has a good eye for what to pull out verbatim from the firsthand sources and what to retell himself, often for time. It alternates, more or less, between portraits of some of the era's interesting characters and some of the themes particular to the time. It isn't an argument proceeding by stages, or a single narrative: almost any chapter could have been slotted elsewhere in the book with minimal change, but it doesn't feel unfinished.
November 9, 2020
This book is worth a read as its illustrations and quoted passages give a flavour of late 18th century life in England. Some of T.H. White's commentary is interesting, albeit contentious, but the book's strength is in its gossip - the French bits are not always translated, so you might need a French dictionary to hand, if your French is a bit rusty.
The chapter that I found most fascinating (aside from the blow by blow account of a naval battle) was 'A Perfect Tragedy' in which T.H. White describes how Admiral John Byng was tried by court martial and shot dead by a firing squad in 1857 (scapegoated after the Battle of Minorca). This is an episode of British history that my school history lessons never mentioned.... In 2007 (according to wiki) some of Byng's descendants petitioned the UK government for a posthumous pardon and were refused by the Ministry of Defence on the grounds that there is no one alive who knew him - we might have to pardon Joan of Arc and Anne Boleyn (sounds good to me!) etc, if we set that precedent....
So, thank you, T.H. White, if I hadn't read this book I wouldn't have been aware of the unfortunate Admiral John Byng and this unwholesome chapter in our history!
The chapter that I found most fascinating (aside from the blow by blow account of a naval battle) was 'A Perfect Tragedy' in which T.H. White describes how Admiral John Byng was tried by court martial and shot dead by a firing squad in 1857 (scapegoated after the Battle of Minorca). This is an episode of British history that my school history lessons never mentioned.... In 2007 (according to wiki) some of Byng's descendants petitioned the UK government for a posthumous pardon and were refused by the Ministry of Defence on the grounds that there is no one alive who knew him - we might have to pardon Joan of Arc and Anne Boleyn (sounds good to me!) etc, if we set that precedent....
So, thank you, T.H. White, if I hadn't read this book I wouldn't have been aware of the unfortunate Admiral John Byng and this unwholesome chapter in our history!
June 13, 2025
History is made by the public actions and pronouncements of those on power. As such, those who study history have a good idea of the sequence of events that leads to historical and important events that affect us today. During historical research, personal details are also found that do not get the attention or publicity of mainstream history. However, leaders do have personal quirks that may affect their actions though in many cases, this is not apparent or relevant. The Hanoverian kings mistreated their children for the sake of discipline. One British king bled himself to look pale and so generate sympathy for him. British aristocrats were very tolerant of the abuse heaped upon them by the mob, unlike France where disrespect was severely punished.
These are only a few items described in this book about the 18th century in Great Britain. This was a time of great change in the world, and this may have been a cause of the “abnormalities” described. The scandals are the stories of the personal lives of rulers, aristocrats, and writers that do not reach the general public even in historical circles. Much of it seems petty and gossipy, but such were the topics of those who wrote letters to each other and were in the know and close to the higher levels of governmental power. Horace Walpole, the son a prime minister, is the main correspondent in this book since he probably wrote the most. His own scandal might have been being an adopted son. It appears White wrote this book in response to the liberals taking over the British government after World War II in a pique of disrespect. As such, it would be best understood by those born in Great Britain. The reader should also know French and some Latin since some quotations are fully in those languages. The book is an interesting little nugget of inside stories of the age in question. However, it ends rather abruptly with the life of de Sade with no conclusion or interpretation of what was described.
These are only a few items described in this book about the 18th century in Great Britain. This was a time of great change in the world, and this may have been a cause of the “abnormalities” described. The scandals are the stories of the personal lives of rulers, aristocrats, and writers that do not reach the general public even in historical circles. Much of it seems petty and gossipy, but such were the topics of those who wrote letters to each other and were in the know and close to the higher levels of governmental power. Horace Walpole, the son a prime minister, is the main correspondent in this book since he probably wrote the most. His own scandal might have been being an adopted son. It appears White wrote this book in response to the liberals taking over the British government after World War II in a pique of disrespect. As such, it would be best understood by those born in Great Britain. The reader should also know French and some Latin since some quotations are fully in those languages. The book is an interesting little nugget of inside stories of the age in question. However, it ends rather abruptly with the life of de Sade with no conclusion or interpretation of what was described.
October 23, 2022
I've said before that I prefer histories where the personality and opinions of the author are clear in the text. I don't trust history books that claim to be objective, and pretend their author has somehow managed to research a topic in great detail without forming any opinion of their own. This book has the opposite problem. The authors personality is everywhere, and I don't like that personality very much at all. Things were off to a bad start when it became clear that the author has a nauseating level of rosy nostalgia for the days when the English aristocracy got away with everything, and the rest of the world were so much dirt beneath their feet. My opinion fell further (I hadn't thought it possible) when it became clear that the whole text was going to be peppered with unexplained French and Latin phrases, with a few snatches of other languages thrown in (at least one sentence per paragraph, it seemed). You need a basic understanding of pretty much all the romantic languages and their ancestor if you want to understand everything in the book. The book felt like listening to one of Boris Johnson's speeches; and as with Johnson's speeches, while I'm sure there are people in the world that this will appeal to, I am not one of them.
January 1, 2021
Lighthearted survey of British aristocratic life from the second half of the 18th century through the Regency period. The opening paragraphs - - a wryly comic lament about the decline of patrician civilization - - set the tone for the book, alerting us that this is not going to be a serious historical or sociological examination but a jokey review, much in keeping with the style of White's novels like "Mistress Masham's Repose." White's writing has become seriously dated in the 70 years since this book was published (among other things, he assumes that an educated audience will perforce be fluent in French and Latin), so the book is an acquired taste. While I personally find that the author still has considerable charm, I wished for more substance and sharper wit than is found the unvarying coy drollery. It is rather like hearing an initially entertaining conversationalist who goes much longer than his light touch can sustain. In addition, the book does not really come to any conclusion - - it just stops without achieving any sort of climax or overview.
December 29, 2022
"Sandwiched between the Age of Reason and the Age of Romance lies the Age of Scandal. T.H. White's gay, shocking study amounts to a scrap-book portrait of a patch of time that was the stamping-ground of genius-eccentrics and aristocratic perverts. It was a time of dissolute monarchs and rioting mobs, of pistolling, flogging, gaming and hard drinking, and equally of wit, formality, tenderness and literary taste.
"Horace Walpole, the most typical figure of the age, is the source of many of the incidents and anecdotes included in this entertaining book. Close on his heels come such burlesque characters as George Selwyn, the witty necrophilist; Lord Hervey, notoriously immortalized by Pope as "Spartus'. Admiral Byng, executed (as Voltaire said) 'pour encourager les autres'; and the Marquid de Sade, crazed practitioner in sexual 0perversions of every kind."
~~back cover
I think I thought this books was going to be a humorous, rollicking fictionalized history of the Age of Reason, but instead it's more of a history, and a boring one at that.
"Horace Walpole, the most typical figure of the age, is the source of many of the incidents and anecdotes included in this entertaining book. Close on his heels come such burlesque characters as George Selwyn, the witty necrophilist; Lord Hervey, notoriously immortalized by Pope as "Spartus'. Admiral Byng, executed (as Voltaire said) 'pour encourager les autres'; and the Marquid de Sade, crazed practitioner in sexual 0perversions of every kind."
~~back cover
I think I thought this books was going to be a humorous, rollicking fictionalized history of the Age of Reason, but instead it's more of a history, and a boring one at that.
May 26, 2021
The author laments that aristocrats in the post war period of Britain's long decline will be forced to do their own dishes and will not be able to live the lives of passion like they used to in the 18th century. He then proceeds to describe every crime imaginable, every shameful desire and every brutality that can horrify from that period. This was the glory days he laments. It made for pretty nasty reading and I've researched Stalin's Purges, Hitler's death camps and American racism. And yet, this shocked me. This sink pit of evil known as the Hanoverian period of English history is so fraught with everything to make one feel disgusted that this book does serve a purpose. It shows you precisely how bad it was.
Enlightenment England was a miracle not because of what it did, but because it came from the likes that T. H. White so admires. How they rose above the filth is impossible to say, but T. H. White gives you some idea of how difficult that rise must have been.
Enlightenment England was a miracle not because of what it did, but because it came from the likes that T. H. White so admires. How they rose above the filth is impossible to say, but T. H. White gives you some idea of how difficult that rise must have been.
June 30, 2020
Very disappointing for me since I adore T.H, White’s “Once and Future King”. In the end I didn’t bother finishing this book, because it all felt just like more of the same - salacious gossip of the late Georgian period (roughly 1744-1798) based on diaries, letters of people like Horace Walpole, Boswell’s writing about Dr Johnson, Fanny Barney etc. Having said that, this book did make me realize what a small incestuous social group dominated England at the time, people who all knew each other and for whom the majority of the non-aristocratic English people hardly existed. In the end it’s a damning portrait of petty minds. I’d have preferred a work that put them all in context, rather than seeming to delight in this ‘age of scandal.’
July 22, 2020
The majority of history books written in the mid-20th century can be a bit of a slug, but not this one!
Written in the classic 20th century way in which contemporary sources are given followed by the author interpreting them and adding extra detail here and there, T. H. White's The Age of Scandal is written as a series of essays on the late 18th century. In the book, White covers a wide range of scandalous topics and 18th-century gossip. The book not only educates the reader about the 18th century but also attitudes in the 20th century.
T. H. White is more commonly known for writing fiction, and he brings the same writing style to The Age of Scandal, meaning that the book has an easy and entertaining flow, not common for history books now! Let alone in the 1950s.
Written in the classic 20th century way in which contemporary sources are given followed by the author interpreting them and adding extra detail here and there, T. H. White's The Age of Scandal is written as a series of essays on the late 18th century. In the book, White covers a wide range of scandalous topics and 18th-century gossip. The book not only educates the reader about the 18th century but also attitudes in the 20th century.
T. H. White is more commonly known for writing fiction, and he brings the same writing style to The Age of Scandal, meaning that the book has an easy and entertaining flow, not common for history books now! Let alone in the 1950s.
January 14, 2018
I found this interesting - as warned in the foreword it is not history in the traditional sense, but entertaining and giving a very engaging, if partisan, view of a period of history which I am particularly interested in.
I was fascinated by the parallels with contemporary culture, but this was one of the ways in which the book showed its age - there were elements that invited far deeper examination and discussion which were dealt with too fleetingly, but at least I have ideas for the direction for future reading.
I was fascinated by the parallels with contemporary culture, but this was one of the ways in which the book showed its age - there were elements that invited far deeper examination and discussion which were dealt with too fleetingly, but at least I have ideas for the direction for future reading.
March 7, 2021
Some interesting historical, titillating tidbits regarding nobility and other upper class europeans in the late 1700's, but much of the book is just re-hashing gossip and other documented misdeeds in a bid to define this era as "The Age of Scandal". The book suffers from the author's assumption that readers know latin and French. Many quotations and some entire paragraphs are not written in English so require either skipping over or using something to translate. The author also throws names out assuming that the reader knows a particular historical figure so no introduction is necessary.
not-finishing
November 29, 2021I love letters and anecdotes and diaries and other forms of historical gossip, but alas, White's interests do not overlap with my own -- he seems to have mostly chosen stories about bathroom humour, corporal punishment, people getting drunk and playing cruel tricks on each other, etc. Those things are absolutely part of history but not, to me, the most interesting part, so I don't need an entire book of them. [Nov 2021]
Read
June 8, 2024This is a collection of anecdotes about 18th-centry characters such as Horace Walpole, Dr Johnson, de Sade, and others. It's interesting at times, but White can't hide his schoolmasterly stuffiness and Tory views in this book. There are also far too many untranslated French and Latin quotations. That might have been OK when White published it in 1950, and for his intended audience, but the Folio editors that re-published it in 1993 ought to have addressed this.
May 28, 2024
The only really new thing I learned from this book is that White was apparently a hopeless snob, who thought that a Whig in the Georgian era was "a political shade that might now correspond to socialism." (My guess is that White was laboring under the not-uncommon delusion among the right that everything they dislike in government is "socialism"; although I'd like to believe this was sarcasm, I doubt it).
November 13, 2020
A gossipy book based around Horace Walpole, his times and salacious stories around various royals and aristocrats. No what I was expecting.
July 4, 2025
Interesting review of the social life Aristocrats of the 18th Centaury. A bit like a non expurgated version of Doyle's Rodney Stone.
March 5, 2013
Originally published on my blog here in August 2007.
T.H. White is obviously best known for his Arthur stories, starting with The Sword in the Stone, and after that, for his book on falconry, The Goshawk. So a guess as to which period he would choose as the subject for a series of essays on history would probably be medieval. Instead, The Age of Scandal is about England in the second half of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, roughly the reigns of George III and George IV. The book chronicles the scandals of the age (with a chapter on the Marquis de Sade taking it across the Channel), and is really a minimal narrative thread connecting excerpts from contemporary letters and diaries.
That White had views which now seem a little eccentric is evident from the very first sentence: "Well, we have lived to see the end of civilization in England." (Those who read the table of contents before this statement would have realised his eccentricity from the inclusion of an essay entitled Ears.) He believed that the essence of civilisation in England was the country house aristocratic culture that was effectively destroyed by changes in the property laws during the first half of the twentieth century - something which may have made this start seem less outrageous to a committed Tory at the end of Labour's first post-war government. It does seem that the rest of the book is devoted to prove something quite different: that there was nothing civilised about the late eighteenth century either.
On the other hand, he may well not have intended this to be taken seriously. Among his other suggestions that must surely be tongue in cheek is the suggestion that the reason that the French revolution failed to spread to England was that the English have a sense of humour. Later, White quotes an English description of King Christian VII of Denmark, which ends, "That is all that decency permits to be said, the rest must be imagined." Then, linking this to an account by a French writer who is much less discrete, he adds, "It need not be imagined, however, by people who understand French."
There are lots of interesting, amusing and enjoyable quoted documents in The Age of Scandal. It is not the place to look for in depth analysis, or indeed for anything (the lack of an index makes it almost useless for reference). White also expects a knowledge of the events of the period; people and events are referred to without explanation or further mention. But if you have a passing familiarity with the personalities, reading the highlights and raciest sections of contemporary accounts of them is fascinating. The bittiness which comes from being a collection of essays is something of a problem, with events referred to without being described elsewhere when in a more unified narrative they surely would be (scandals involving the sons of George III are a case in point; despite an essay on Royal Gossip, there are other scandals mentioned elsewhere that do not appear in that section at all). But otherwise this is a most entertaining read.
T.H. White is obviously best known for his Arthur stories, starting with The Sword in the Stone, and after that, for his book on falconry, The Goshawk. So a guess as to which period he would choose as the subject for a series of essays on history would probably be medieval. Instead, The Age of Scandal is about England in the second half of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, roughly the reigns of George III and George IV. The book chronicles the scandals of the age (with a chapter on the Marquis de Sade taking it across the Channel), and is really a minimal narrative thread connecting excerpts from contemporary letters and diaries.
That White had views which now seem a little eccentric is evident from the very first sentence: "Well, we have lived to see the end of civilization in England." (Those who read the table of contents before this statement would have realised his eccentricity from the inclusion of an essay entitled Ears.) He believed that the essence of civilisation in England was the country house aristocratic culture that was effectively destroyed by changes in the property laws during the first half of the twentieth century - something which may have made this start seem less outrageous to a committed Tory at the end of Labour's first post-war government. It does seem that the rest of the book is devoted to prove something quite different: that there was nothing civilised about the late eighteenth century either.
On the other hand, he may well not have intended this to be taken seriously. Among his other suggestions that must surely be tongue in cheek is the suggestion that the reason that the French revolution failed to spread to England was that the English have a sense of humour. Later, White quotes an English description of King Christian VII of Denmark, which ends, "That is all that decency permits to be said, the rest must be imagined." Then, linking this to an account by a French writer who is much less discrete, he adds, "It need not be imagined, however, by people who understand French."
There are lots of interesting, amusing and enjoyable quoted documents in The Age of Scandal. It is not the place to look for in depth analysis, or indeed for anything (the lack of an index makes it almost useless for reference). White also expects a knowledge of the events of the period; people and events are referred to without explanation or further mention. But if you have a passing familiarity with the personalities, reading the highlights and raciest sections of contemporary accounts of them is fascinating. The bittiness which comes from being a collection of essays is something of a problem, with events referred to without being described elsewhere when in a more unified narrative they surely would be (scandals involving the sons of George III are a case in point; despite an essay on Royal Gossip, there are other scandals mentioned elsewhere that do not appear in that section at all). But otherwise this is a most entertaining read.
February 4, 2015
Many of the personalities described here (in 1950) by T.H. White appear presciently 21st century. As White says; “Gossip must be about character … it is the foible which gives the story point. These people had characters, were among the first people in England who were sufficiently peculiar, in a modern way, to be apprehended by us as personalities.”
White choicely and succinctly lists ‘fashionable vices’ through history; using as his definition those which caught the public eye:
PERIOD
WW1 to WW2: Homosexuality
Victorian: Bankruptcy
Byron & Walpole: Incest
Caroline: Infidelity
Elizabeth I: Parricide, matricide, fratricide
Middle Ages: Apostasy
Rome: Poisonry
Greece: Pride against the Gods
Substitute the word “celebrity” for “personality” and we’re there. The prime underlying differences between how gossip travelled in the late 18th century and our present Age are exemplified by the C20th inventions of the visual moving record (film, TV, YouTube, etc).
White goes straight for the jugular. He pithily observes that at the beginning of the reign of King George III (r.1760-1820) there were only 174 peers, as opposed to over a thousand in 1950. The C18th aristocracy knew each other personally.
By contrast the C20th - C21st ‘celebtocracy’ has massively expanded through the advent of the moving image and electronic communications. They know of, and predominantly compete with, each other at arms’ length (“Hello” magazine comes to mind) more often than face to face. Why else do we watch the annual Oscars coverage? The C18th aristocrat believed that the lower classes beneath him were incapable of destructive intent; whereas C21st celebrities, many displaying the nervousness of a thoroughbred horse, know full-well to the contrary. Whether the cosmetic applied to the face is white lead or Botox, the motivation, the desire, the compulsion for self-affirmation is often the same.
White wields his sharpened razor under the towel. “The Age of Scandal was perhaps the last period of English history in which persons of the highest education could subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles [of the Church of England] without hypocrisy.” (pg.162). Truly there is nothing new under the sun. Goodness knows what White (d. 1964) would have made of the Britain that I live in today.
Why are we today so obsessive to define who we are, and where we’ve come from; yet we largely look back no further than the Empire of the Queen Empress? Perhaps the telling date is that of the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1836, (registrations began in 1837). We can trace our ancestors back to 1837 with relative ease; but not necessarily so (unless remarkable or criminal) before that. Those wayward Georgians of the “Age of Scandal” lie firmly buried in the past.
White choicely and succinctly lists ‘fashionable vices’ through history; using as his definition those which caught the public eye:
PERIOD
WW1 to WW2: Homosexuality
Victorian: Bankruptcy
Byron & Walpole: Incest
Caroline: Infidelity
Elizabeth I: Parricide, matricide, fratricide
Middle Ages: Apostasy
Rome: Poisonry
Greece: Pride against the Gods
Substitute the word “celebrity” for “personality” and we’re there. The prime underlying differences between how gossip travelled in the late 18th century and our present Age are exemplified by the C20th inventions of the visual moving record (film, TV, YouTube, etc).
White goes straight for the jugular. He pithily observes that at the beginning of the reign of King George III (r.1760-1820) there were only 174 peers, as opposed to over a thousand in 1950. The C18th aristocracy knew each other personally.
By contrast the C20th - C21st ‘celebtocracy’ has massively expanded through the advent of the moving image and electronic communications. They know of, and predominantly compete with, each other at arms’ length (“Hello” magazine comes to mind) more often than face to face. Why else do we watch the annual Oscars coverage? The C18th aristocrat believed that the lower classes beneath him were incapable of destructive intent; whereas C21st celebrities, many displaying the nervousness of a thoroughbred horse, know full-well to the contrary. Whether the cosmetic applied to the face is white lead or Botox, the motivation, the desire, the compulsion for self-affirmation is often the same.
White wields his sharpened razor under the towel. “The Age of Scandal was perhaps the last period of English history in which persons of the highest education could subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles [of the Church of England] without hypocrisy.” (pg.162). Truly there is nothing new under the sun. Goodness knows what White (d. 1964) would have made of the Britain that I live in today.
Why are we today so obsessive to define who we are, and where we’ve come from; yet we largely look back no further than the Empire of the Queen Empress? Perhaps the telling date is that of the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1836, (registrations began in 1837). We can trace our ancestors back to 1837 with relative ease; but not necessarily so (unless remarkable or criminal) before that. Those wayward Georgians of the “Age of Scandal” lie firmly buried in the past.
November 19, 2012
A catalog of dish on the who’s who of powdered and bewigged 18th-century society, with special attention paid to Horace Walpole, Dr Johnson and various royal Georges, plus Lord Hervey, George Selwyn, and (curiously) the Marquis de Sade. The book is mostly a collection of passages taken from the letters and journals of the persons involved. White, however, has a wonderful taste for absurd notions and ridiculous gestures and his own commentary is more fun than anything else in the book.
“The nature of the ‘bootikins’ worn by Horace Walpole for his gout, or the problem of what Dr. Johnson used to do with his dried orange-peel, were the core of the age.”
“The nature of the ‘bootikins’ worn by Horace Walpole for his gout, or the problem of what Dr. Johnson used to do with his dried orange-peel, were the core of the age.”
March 21, 2016
not a very good introduction to what people in the mid 18th century were like. Some interesting snippets of Information here and there, but otherwise a bit of a chore. It is not that it is badly written, so much as badly punctuated, so one cannot always tell whether it is the author speaking or someone from the 18th century. Has a definite Tory bias (at one stage White equates 18th c. Whigs with Socialists), while some of those people from the 18th century he disparages come out as much more humorous and fun than those he is fond of
January 4, 2026
I have found T.H. White’s fictional works great reading—less so with this work of non-fiction. The author certainly goes into some interesting details of the period, about which I had known very little before reading of them. However, I found his frequent lengthy quotations just a little too lengthy and often not adding as much to the book as their length might have suggested.
Read
December 2, 2016Really did not much like this. Apart from its having a lot of problems that could, perhaps, be put down to 'he was a man of his time', and being a very narrow view of its period (not that I ever got much grasp on the actual period, because the chapters kept bopping about in a-chronological order from C17th to C19th), it might have been a more rewarding read for someone to whom a lot of the material was previously entirely unknown. (The story of Caroline Matilda of Denmark, her mad Danish monarch husband, and the King's Physician Struensee was made into a movie within the last few years, but I knew the general outlines before that.) Might have been better entitled 'A few anecdotal essays on individuals and episodes of the Long Eighteenth Century' - and I'd consider most of these were about gossip within a fairly limited aristocratic circle, rather than scandals.
Rather disappointed, because White wrote several much better books.
Rather disappointed, because White wrote several much better books.
April 26, 2017
picked this up in a charity shop - it gives a glimpse into the second half of the 17th century, a sense of licentiousness and the dissolute of late Georgian England before the moral changes ushered in by the industrial revolution. It's an interesting read but patchy in places and relies very heavily on Horace Walpole.
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