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The Scandal of the Season

by Sophie Gee

Chatto and Windus, HK$214

Alexander Pope  is stuck in a  slump and unrequited in love. He's also  a love affair away from  writing the most famous work of his life.

Sophie Gee's debut,  The Scandal of the Season, tells the story behind Pope's  The Rape of the Lock. The affair at the heart of the scandal isn't Pope's, but rather the high-society seduction of  Arabella Fermor by  Lord Robert Petre.

She's a famous beauty: lodestars for eyes, perfectly heaving bosom and a haughty demeanour that smooths over her not being rich enough to marry nobility.

Petre  has just become the seventh baron of Ingatestone. A noted romancer, he's a perfect match for one-time childhood playmate  Fermor,  not only because of his money. He's tall, dark and handsome, and rebellious enough not to wear his hair under a heavily starched wig.

Shortly after  meeting again on the streets of London, then flirting at costume parties, Arabella  and  Petre begin an affair. They sneak away from parties to romp in haystacks or behind damask curtains at society gatherings. Petre's man-servant arranges secret encounters.

Throughout  their liaisons, Arabella  must protect her honour from the gossipy harpies of her social set.

But Petre has another secret.  He's funding a Jacobite plot to restore the Stuarts to the throne. It's a dangerous conspiracy,  involving such dubious characters as his  louche partner Douglass and unsavoury slave dealer Dupont.  If  discovered, Petre risks being hanged for treason. Powerful  friends of his Catholic family have already suffered persecution for Jacobite activities.

As Arabella  and Petre's relationship intensifies (and friends whisper of an engagement), so do his machinations against  Queen Anne. When his benefactor, who  has witnessed  friends and family imprisoned in the Tower of London for  similar crimes, discovers the plan, the young baron must choose whether to risk his life and honour, or his love.

Although this affair is advertised as the core of the book, the real meat is in the Popish parts. Fleshed out by Pope's city ambitions and neuroses, Scandal is more than an articulate romance novel.  Time and again he's rebuffed by Teresa Blount, the long-time object of his affections; and  as he navigates the literary world  inhabited by lions such as Richard Steele and  Jonathan Swift.

The novel also packs in several nuanced characters.  Teresa, for example is not simply a superficial girl indifferent to her sickly suitor. She's   a sympathetic character - a country cousin struggling to keep  up with  Arabella  in London. Gee gradually reveals her younger sister, Martha Blount, to the reader (and  to Pope) as smarter than she's given credit for.

And the dialogue, despite some posh posturing, rings true. Witty banter among lords and ladies of  the time emphasised wordplay. Although some of the puns and platitudes become tiresome after  the second or third frou-frou party, there are  compensations.

Before Petre begins to pursue Arabella,  he visits his mistress, Charlotte Castlecomber, a saucy cougar Gee describes as an equine beauty. In between lovemaking,  the old friends advise each other on their love lives:  Castlecomber hates her husband, while Petre fears he's falling in love. It's the most frank, confessional passage of the book.

Some of the lines given to   Castlecomber are deliciously shocking, unexpected as they are from a corseted  noblewoman.

But more revealing is when  she tells  Petre the truth about marriage: 'Marry the person they want  you to, and seek your pleasures elsewhere. It is an excellent system, in successful operation for hundreds of years.'

Whereas the focus on Pope brings a necessary weight to  Scandal - which flails in places  when Arabella's  snobbishness takes over -  giving The Rape of the Lock  a woman's perspective adds another layer. Pope's poem satirises the follies of high society, but Gee reminds the reader that the superficial characters are based  on real people.

Arabella  sees  Petre's theft of a lock of her hair in front of a crowd  of friends as   acknowledgement that they have been intimate. It is public humiliation, especially in light of  the news of his engagement to a 15- year-old heiress newly announced. Petre does it as a dare to 'flirt with Miss Fermor', and takes advantage of the chance to forever remember the woman he truly loves.

Pope - and Gee - are only able to capture the heartbreak behind the heroic-comic poem, having heard the stories of others.

The Scandal of the Season  shows the power of gossip. Although set 300 years ago, its messages  are remarkably modern.  Times, fashion and manners change. Human nature doesn't.



The Scandal of the Season