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Through the Keyhole: Sex, Scandal and the Secret Life of the Country House
From around 1760 to the 1830s, stories about the sex lives of the rich and powerful were guaranteed to increase the readership of popular printed literature. Papers were so packed with salacious tales of secret sex that there seemed to be an epidemic of adultery among the aristocracy. This study explores the personal stories of men and women involved in adulterous affairs and compares their accounts of infidelity and its sometimes tragic consequences with the stereotypes of dissolute aristocrats in the popular press.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published April 15, 2015
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153 people want to read
About the author
Susan C. Law
2 books1 followerSusan C. Law is a journalist and historian. Her work has been published in a wide range of newspapers and magazines, including the London Evening Standard, The Times Higher Education Supplement and BBC History Magazine.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 11, 2015
It seems part of the psychological make-up of the English people to bestow power upon the wealthy and privileged; whilst at the same time depriving them of the right to privacy. Today's obsession with the private lives of celebrities finds its parallel in Georgian and Regency England, where the public was hungry for moral lapses among the aristocracy. This fascinating and scrupulously researched book shines a spotlight onto a universal aspect of human behaviour - but the scholarly focus is upon how eighteenth century society reacted to it, thus enriching our knowledge of the social history of the time.
Aristocratic rakes are the stuff of novels set in Regency England. One of the most striking things about the book is how intensely the opinion-makers of the time wanted to hold on to the idea of "rank co-existing with honour", despite all evidence to the contrary. Another outstanding aspect of Susan Law's account is the hypocrisy of the society as the popular press indulged itself in moralising and judgementalism, along with minimal respect for confidentiality, slander and libel, thus feeding a voracious appetite by the public. But I was also surprised by the disregard that the adulterous aristocrats themselves paid to covering up their tracks, and their failure to have due regard to the ominipresence of their servants. Tumbled bedclothes, two dents in the bed, and hair powder on the pillowcases seem obvious tracks to cover up!
Susan Law examines the craze of the 1790's for printed court reports of adultery trials, which continued through to the late 1830's with the popularity of the "Crim Con Gazette". She examines the changes that took place up until the 1832 Great Reform Act which altered the way the nation saw itself in terms of social hierarchies - opening up "previously unthinkable possibilities for the middle class". Certainly in the early part of the period it is very noticeable that often "cuckolded" husbands (themselves equally guilty of adultery) might be awarded huge damages and then go on to an honourable career in high office, while adulterous women were far more likely to be "sent away" in shame and have their lives ruined.
Chief among the adulterers later on of course was the Prince Regent, and I was amused to read the opinion of Theresa, sister of the Earl of Morley, who wrote in a letter "'tis dreadful to think of the open profligacy of that Monster.... we must all go to the dogs should he ever unfortunately come to the throne."
To the non-academic reader, the most interesting parts of this book are when the author gives accounts of specific cases, such as that of Lord Ellenborough and his young wife Jane. There are among these stories accounts that will draw a variety of different responses from the reader; for as the blurb points out, the different stories are passionate, scandalous, poignant and tragic.
A fascinating insight into eighteenth century social history, with plenty of material which will give us cause to reflect upon the preoccupations of today's Britain as well.
Aristocratic rakes are the stuff of novels set in Regency England. One of the most striking things about the book is how intensely the opinion-makers of the time wanted to hold on to the idea of "rank co-existing with honour", despite all evidence to the contrary. Another outstanding aspect of Susan Law's account is the hypocrisy of the society as the popular press indulged itself in moralising and judgementalism, along with minimal respect for confidentiality, slander and libel, thus feeding a voracious appetite by the public. But I was also surprised by the disregard that the adulterous aristocrats themselves paid to covering up their tracks, and their failure to have due regard to the ominipresence of their servants. Tumbled bedclothes, two dents in the bed, and hair powder on the pillowcases seem obvious tracks to cover up!
Susan Law examines the craze of the 1790's for printed court reports of adultery trials, which continued through to the late 1830's with the popularity of the "Crim Con Gazette". She examines the changes that took place up until the 1832 Great Reform Act which altered the way the nation saw itself in terms of social hierarchies - opening up "previously unthinkable possibilities for the middle class". Certainly in the early part of the period it is very noticeable that often "cuckolded" husbands (themselves equally guilty of adultery) might be awarded huge damages and then go on to an honourable career in high office, while adulterous women were far more likely to be "sent away" in shame and have their lives ruined.
Chief among the adulterers later on of course was the Prince Regent, and I was amused to read the opinion of Theresa, sister of the Earl of Morley, who wrote in a letter "'tis dreadful to think of the open profligacy of that Monster.... we must all go to the dogs should he ever unfortunately come to the throne."
To the non-academic reader, the most interesting parts of this book are when the author gives accounts of specific cases, such as that of Lord Ellenborough and his young wife Jane. There are among these stories accounts that will draw a variety of different responses from the reader; for as the blurb points out, the different stories are passionate, scandalous, poignant and tragic.
A fascinating insight into eighteenth century social history, with plenty of material which will give us cause to reflect upon the preoccupations of today's Britain as well.
October 1, 2023
If there is one thing that people can count on, it is that people who are in positions of power or wealth are going to be involved in some type of scandalous shenanagins. Another thing that you can pretty much take to the bank is that people enjoy gossip and intrigue. In the Georgian Era, servants were always privy to the secret doings of their employers and their guests. Servants would discuss the goings on below stairs in their private world amongst themselves. Of course, over the years, this has evolved into paparazzi stalking celebrities and the nobility, plastering stories all over their papers. The stories, then and now, didn't have to necessarily be bathed in truth as long as they were interesting and fed people's desire to speculate.
People today act very shocked when those in positions of power or with notoriety cheat on their partners, pick up sex workers, or get involved in other questionable activity. There is also another issue that I have personally noticed in reviews of the last few historical biographies I have read- people seem to think that if a person does one questionable or inappropriate thing, that negates anything else they have done in their career or life. It is interesting to see the evolution of gossip and beliefs about inappropriate activities. I thought this book was really interesting, as well as thought provoking.
People today act very shocked when those in positions of power or with notoriety cheat on their partners, pick up sex workers, or get involved in other questionable activity. There is also another issue that I have personally noticed in reviews of the last few historical biographies I have read- people seem to think that if a person does one questionable or inappropriate thing, that negates anything else they have done in their career or life. It is interesting to see the evolution of gossip and beliefs about inappropriate activities. I thought this book was really interesting, as well as thought provoking.
January 22, 2022
A misleading title and a fairly dry read.
Aside from mentioning that most peers had country houses, and that sometimes things went on in them, this is more of an analysis of adultery amongst the upper class in the public consciousness over the period of a century and a half. It examines newspaper coverage, periodicals, titillating badly disguised memoirs as well as changes in legal options available over time.
I'm sure it's a great interest to those who wish to study media culture or perceptions of performance of virtue, but that's not what I thought I was getting when I picked it up.
Aside from mentioning that most peers had country houses, and that sometimes things went on in them, this is more of an analysis of adultery amongst the upper class in the public consciousness over the period of a century and a half. It examines newspaper coverage, periodicals, titillating badly disguised memoirs as well as changes in legal options available over time.
I'm sure it's a great interest to those who wish to study media culture or perceptions of performance of virtue, but that's not what I thought I was getting when I picked it up.
May 21, 2018
Georgian aristocratic history
The book deals with wider issues than the title indicates. It is the fruit of assiduous research in archives and periodicals of the period. But I found much of the material repetitious, and that became tedious. My four star assessment is probably overly generous!
The book deals with wider issues than the title indicates. It is the fruit of assiduous research in archives and periodicals of the period. But I found much of the material repetitious, and that became tedious. My four star assessment is probably overly generous!
May 7, 2016
In 1830, the first Earl Ellenborough was granted a divorce from his wife, the former Lady Jane Digby, in a private Parliamentary action. Ellenborough, who was many years older than his wife, sued for divorce on grounds that Lady Jane had indulged in quite a few affairs and indiscretions with other men. The fact that Ellenborough had, himself, carried on many affairs was not really brought up, and the trial was chock-full of testimony by the family's servants. One of the men accused of having enjoyed Lady Jane's bed was the Austrian diplomat Prince Felix Schwartzenberg. After the divorce, Jane and Schwartzenberg eloped to Paris, where she bore him two illegitimate children. They never married - Schwartzenberg couldn't marry a divorced woman - and Jane continued her life of searching for love, eventually marrying a Bedouin chief 20 years her junior and living out her long life in Syria.
All this background is important because British author Susan Law has written a fascinating book, "Through the Keyhole: Sex, Scandal and the Secret Life of the Country House" about the aristocratic infidelity in the Georgian and Regency periods, when lords and ladies, barons and baronesses, and, indeed, many members of the British peerage, were acting with sexual abandon.
The idea of marriage among the aristocracy was often a financial arrangement at this time. Love - or the idea of love - was hoped to evolve by the married couple, but often times it didn't and the marriages failed. However, divorce in the 1700's was definitely frowned upon and very few were granted. Basically, they were expensive and were generally sought by the wealthy. The middle class and poor had to grin and bear it when marital discord flared between spouses. For the wealthy, discreet infidelity was often engaged in by both partners. But here and there, husbands began to sue for divorce, using the devise of "crim-con", which as short for "criminal conversation", or adultery to make the "other man" pay up to the cuckolded husband. And newspaper articles and magazine pieces were appearing in the press of the time giving details that were often embarrassing in the extreme.
Okay, who among us doesn't read gossip columns, even "on the sly"? Don't we get a strange sense of satisfaction in reading about the bad behavior of those who supposedly are our "betters"? And since these "betters" were wealthy and had country houses and city houses and acted with impunity where ever they were, there was a lot of "looking through the keyhole", to gain evidence. There were also novelists writing "fiction" and political cartoonists drawing biting commentary about the hijinks of the upper classes.
Susan Law's book is full of cases of infidelity of the period and the price those indulging in a tickle in the bed often paid. For women, because the law at the time considered the couple's children as solely the possession of the husband, most lost custody of their children. For the wife's lover, because the basis of "crim-con" was compensation for the breach of fidelity with the other's wife, large sums were often paid to the cheated-on husbands. (Curiously, there was little going the other way; women suing their husband's lovers...)
Law has written a lively book about an interesting subject. She gives many examples of these members of the peerage acting very, very badly. Looking back two hundred or so years, we can see that people haven't changed.
(For readers interested in Lady Jane Digby and her fascinating life as she searched for love, there are two excellent biographies. One is "A Scandalous Life: The Story of Jane Digby", by Mary Lovell, is still in print. However, "Passion's Child: The Extraordinary Life of Jane Digby" by Margaret Fox Schmidt is no longer in print but is worth buying from a used book dealer. I think the Schmidt book is slightly better than the Lovell book, but both are well-worth reading.)
All this background is important because British author Susan Law has written a fascinating book, "Through the Keyhole: Sex, Scandal and the Secret Life of the Country House" about the aristocratic infidelity in the Georgian and Regency periods, when lords and ladies, barons and baronesses, and, indeed, many members of the British peerage, were acting with sexual abandon.
The idea of marriage among the aristocracy was often a financial arrangement at this time. Love - or the idea of love - was hoped to evolve by the married couple, but often times it didn't and the marriages failed. However, divorce in the 1700's was definitely frowned upon and very few were granted. Basically, they were expensive and were generally sought by the wealthy. The middle class and poor had to grin and bear it when marital discord flared between spouses. For the wealthy, discreet infidelity was often engaged in by both partners. But here and there, husbands began to sue for divorce, using the devise of "crim-con", which as short for "criminal conversation", or adultery to make the "other man" pay up to the cuckolded husband. And newspaper articles and magazine pieces were appearing in the press of the time giving details that were often embarrassing in the extreme.
Okay, who among us doesn't read gossip columns, even "on the sly"? Don't we get a strange sense of satisfaction in reading about the bad behavior of those who supposedly are our "betters"? And since these "betters" were wealthy and had country houses and city houses and acted with impunity where ever they were, there was a lot of "looking through the keyhole", to gain evidence. There were also novelists writing "fiction" and political cartoonists drawing biting commentary about the hijinks of the upper classes.
Susan Law's book is full of cases of infidelity of the period and the price those indulging in a tickle in the bed often paid. For women, because the law at the time considered the couple's children as solely the possession of the husband, most lost custody of their children. For the wife's lover, because the basis of "crim-con" was compensation for the breach of fidelity with the other's wife, large sums were often paid to the cheated-on husbands. (Curiously, there was little going the other way; women suing their husband's lovers...)
Law has written a lively book about an interesting subject. She gives many examples of these members of the peerage acting very, very badly. Looking back two hundred or so years, we can see that people haven't changed.
(For readers interested in Lady Jane Digby and her fascinating life as she searched for love, there are two excellent biographies. One is "A Scandalous Life: The Story of Jane Digby", by Mary Lovell, is still in print. However, "Passion's Child: The Extraordinary Life of Jane Digby" by Margaret Fox Schmidt is no longer in print but is worth buying from a used book dealer. I think the Schmidt book is slightly better than the Lovell book, but both are well-worth reading.)
September 6, 2016
This book, in spite of its rather promising subject matter, was merely ok. The main problems, in my opinion, were 1) poor structuring of the argument, 2) some ambivalence on the part of the author as to what kind of book she was writing, 3) a disconnect between the title and the content, and 4) a total lack of a conclusion!
The structure bothered me the most. As a historian myself, I know that choosing an effective structure for your argument is very difficult. Unfortunately, the wrong one seems to have been selected here, as many chapter themes seem repetitive, and anecdotes are dropped in sometimes seemingly at random. The anecdotes (by this I mean the actual juicy stories of aristocratic affairs) are also part of the problem--though I'll start by saying I was very impressed with Law's research and the detail she was able to obtain on a subject that probably was not always readily forthcoming. But it seems at times that Law wants to titillate, and sometimes to educate, and the result is an odd and uneven one. Personally, I think that this book might actually have been better as a more popular history, and really giving into the juiciness of the stories, but Law presumably had career goals attached to writing it, and I can't hate on that. :)
The title is an odd one. I mean, I know she was going for alliteration, but there's really very little about the "secret life of the country house." The main thing you learn about the country house is that non-aristocrats really wanted to learn how aristocrats lived, and that crim.con trials were one of the only ways they were able to do that. But that portion of the title promises much more than is delivered on the subject.
Finally, there is no conclusion! This might have bothered me most out of jealousy, because I hate writing conclusions, and often tried to end chapters of my writing with no conclusion, only to have my adviser tell me that I had to suck it up and conclude the darn thing. This book quite literally just stops! There's a half-hearted paragraph of quasi-concluding thoughts, and then it's just done! I couldn't believe how abrupt it was--I actually flipped to the back of the notes section, thinking perhaps there had been a printing error and the conclusion was in the wrong place. Nope--just no conclusion! It's so odd for a book that is so unapologetically academic in every other way.
The structure bothered me the most. As a historian myself, I know that choosing an effective structure for your argument is very difficult. Unfortunately, the wrong one seems to have been selected here, as many chapter themes seem repetitive, and anecdotes are dropped in sometimes seemingly at random. The anecdotes (by this I mean the actual juicy stories of aristocratic affairs) are also part of the problem--though I'll start by saying I was very impressed with Law's research and the detail she was able to obtain on a subject that probably was not always readily forthcoming. But it seems at times that Law wants to titillate, and sometimes to educate, and the result is an odd and uneven one. Personally, I think that this book might actually have been better as a more popular history, and really giving into the juiciness of the stories, but Law presumably had career goals attached to writing it, and I can't hate on that. :)
The title is an odd one. I mean, I know she was going for alliteration, but there's really very little about the "secret life of the country house." The main thing you learn about the country house is that non-aristocrats really wanted to learn how aristocrats lived, and that crim.con trials were one of the only ways they were able to do that. But that portion of the title promises much more than is delivered on the subject.
Finally, there is no conclusion! This might have bothered me most out of jealousy, because I hate writing conclusions, and often tried to end chapters of my writing with no conclusion, only to have my adviser tell me that I had to suck it up and conclude the darn thing. This book quite literally just stops! There's a half-hearted paragraph of quasi-concluding thoughts, and then it's just done! I couldn't believe how abrupt it was--I actually flipped to the back of the notes section, thinking perhaps there had been a printing error and the conclusion was in the wrong place. Nope--just no conclusion! It's so odd for a book that is so unapologetically academic in every other way.
October 30, 2016
The illustrations are beautifully set in the middle of the book to resemble portraits hung on the wall of the country house. The title is a bit of a misnomer as not all the crim. con. occurred in a country house, but no matter. The discussion, however, becomes somewhat repetitive. Basically, the aristocracy's rule was justified by their high moral leadership of society but as more and more divorces and crim. con. trials occurred from the 1740's on, and were publicized, lampooned, inveighed against by newspapers and scandal sheets, the aristocracy's claim of high morality and thus the right to leadership became weakened. Various reform bills changing the laws of divorce and election etc. ensued into the 1810s. Each chapter is "illustrated" by a/n in/famous crim. con. case, but Law also repeats in each chapter the connection between high morals and right to rule over and over. Hence my giving this 3 stars. The analysis does not, in my mind, change from chapter to chapter.
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