Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford

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Horace Walpole, detail of an oil painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1757; in the City of Birmingham … (credit: Courtesy of Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery)

(born Sept. 24, 1717, London, Eng. — died March 2, 1797, London) English writer, connoisseur, and collector. The son of prime minister Robert Walpole, he had an undistinguished career in Parliament. In 1747 he acquired a small villa at Twickenham that he transformed into a pseudo-Gothic showplace called Strawberry Hill; it was the stimulus for the Gothic Revival in English domestic architecture. His literary output was extremely varied. He became famous for his medieval horror tale The Castle of Otranto (1765), the first Gothic novel in English. He is especially remembered for his private correspondence of more than 3,000 letters, most addressed to Horace Mann, a British diplomat. Intended for posthumous publication, they constitute a survey of the history, manners, and taste of his age.

For more information on Horace Walpole, 4th earl of Orford, visit Britannica.com.

Walpole, Horace, 4th earl of Orford (1717-97). The youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole, Horace Walpole became the most gifted letter-writer in English history. When he entered Parliament in 1741 his father's long administration was tottering to its fall. Though he remained in the Commons until 1768 he made no mark and his preferred role was that of observer. The places and pensions provided by his father afforded him a comfortable bachelor existence and he lavished great attention on the Gothic villa at Strawberry Hill (Twickenham) which he purchased in 1748. Much of his time was devoted to correspondence with his many friends and acquaintances. But he also wrote substantial works. The Castle of Otranto (1764) was an early example of the Gothic horror novel and Historic Doubts on Richard III (1768) fathered a minor academic industry.

English virtuoso and wit. His importance in the realm of architecture lies in his creation of Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, Mddx. (from 1750), one of the earliest key buildings of the Gothic Revival, publicized in his A Description of the Villa of Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill (1774 and 1778). This asymmetrical house set precedents for Picturesque composition. He also helped to make Gothic fashionable when he published his The Castle of Otranto, a ‘Gothic Romance’ (1764), an early work of Romanticism. He included notes on the works of architects in his Anecdotes of Painting in England (1762–71), and he furthered the study of medieval architecture by encouraging James Essex in his researches.

Bibliography

• M. Aldrich (1994)
• Germann (1972)
• W. S. Lewis (1960, 1973)
• M. McCarthy (1987)
• Mowl (1996)
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004)
• Jane Turner (1996)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

Walpole, Horace (1717–1797), English statesman and man of letters. Although Horace Walpole sat in the House of Commons from 1741 to 1768, he did not pursue an orthodox career as a statesman. An intense and acutely sensitive man, Walpole was temperamentally unsuited to the cut and thrust of political battle, and preferred to work behind the scenes as a pamphleteer, a gossip, a networker and, ultimately, a historian.

Walpole was fiercely loyal to his family and friends, and herein lies the key to all his politics. He never failed to support his friend and cousin, Henry Seymour-Conway, while disliking all critics and enemies of his father (Sir Robert Walpole). All but one account of Horace Walpole's political career have been marred by a failure to recognize his homosexuality, without which it is impossible to understand the depth of his hatred for Henry Pelham and the duke of Newcastle, the brothers of Catherine Pelham, whose arranged marriage to Walpole's onetime lover Henry Fiennes-Clinton, earl of Lincoln, took place in 1744.

Horace Walpole's hostility to the Pelhams has usually been explained in terms of his belief in their disloyalty to Robert Walpole, whom they "deserted" when his ministry began to crumble. Although the Pelhams succeeded Robert as leaders of the Court Whigs, Horace did not join them after his father's death, aligning himself instead with Richard Rigby and Henry Fox. When Fox joined a ministry in partnership with Newcastle in 1756, Walpole operated behind the scenes to annoy and frustrate both while remaining on ostensibly friendly terms with Fox. Walpole's unsuccessful attempt to prevent the execution of Admiral John Byng for failing to prevent the loss of Minorca may have been partly motivated by the desire to embarrass Fox and Newcastle, suspected by many of having found a scapegoat for a more serious error of military judgment. At any rate, Walpole's Letter from Xo Ho, a Chinese Philosopher at London, to his Friend Lien Chi at Peking (1757), which pithily summarized the hypocrisies of Byng's impeachment, established Walpole as a witty and dangerous pamphleteer.

Walpole was most active from 1763 to 1767, when he acted as a political mentor to Conway. Both men had voted against George Grenville's ministry to defend the freedom of the press, then threatened by government action against the opposition M.P. John Wilkes, an outspoken critic of the crown, and the North Briton, a newspaper that printed his articles. George III, angered by what he perceived as insubordination, ordered Conway's dismissal from his regiment and court position, whereupon Walpole joined the opposition and began intriguing to bring down the Grenville ministry. When the Rockingham Whigs took office in 1765, Conway became secretary of state for the Southern Department and leader of the House of Commons. Walpole, however, was offered nothing, and a brief estrangement took place between the two. In April 1766, he resumed his place as Conway's adviser, notwithstanding the latter's cooling enthusiasm for politics, and became an inside observer of the Rockingham and Chatham ministries. When Conway decided to resign the lead in the Commons at the end of 1767, Walpole also decided to leave political life, and returned to his other occupations as author, publisher, art critic, and antiquarian.

Although Walpole is one of England's greatest letter writers, whose correspondence is an invaluable source for the political, social, and cultural history of mid-Hanoverian England, his Memoirs of the Reign of George II and Memoirs of the Reign of George III, written for posterity and published after his demise, provide a lively narrative of political events and personalities from 1751 to 1772. Both were much maligned—unjustifiably so—by nineteenth-century critics. Of the two works, the Memoirs of the Reign of George III, written between 1766 and 1772, are the more valuable, for they describe events in which Walpole was a central participant. Although the Memoirs of the Reign of George II are less reliable, they still constitute the most important source in existence for the parliamentary debates of 1754–1761.

The memoirs are not without bias. Walpole's loathing of the Pelhams manifests itself in the representation of the Duke of Newcastle as a time-serving incompetent. Henry Fox was traduced as a greedy and unscrupulous careerist. Walpole was also responsible for creating the myth of a sinister plot hatched by the princess dowager and Lord Bute, George III's first prime minister, to revive the royal prerogative and employ it against opponents of the crown. The memoirs, in effect, encapsulated the Whig perspective on crown and Parliament usually attributed to English historians of the nineteenth century.

Bibliography

Hunting, Warren Smith, ed. Horace Walpole: Writer, Politician and Connoisseur: Essays on the 250th Anniversary of Walpole's Birth. New Haven and London, 1967.

Ketton-Cremer, Robert Wyndham. Horace Walpole: A Biography. London, 1946.

Mowl, Timothy. Horace Walpole: The Great Outsider. London, 1996.

—JENNIFER MORI

Quotes:

"Old friends are the great blessings of one's later years. Half a word conveys one's meaning. They have a memory of the same events, have the same mode of thinking. I have young relations that may grow upon me, for my nature is affectionate, but can they grow [To Be] old friends?"

"I avoid talking before the youth of the age as I would dancing before them: for if one's tongue don't move in the steps of the day, and thinks to please by its old graces, it is only an object of ridicule."

"Oh that I were seated as high as my ambition, I'd place my naked foot on the necks of monarchs."

"Life is a comedy for those who think... and a tragedy for those who feel."

"It was said of old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, that she never puts dots over her I s, to save ink."

"The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveler from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra."

See more famous quotes by Horace Walpole

Horace Walpole
Horace Walpole by Joshua Reynolds 1756 National Portrait Gallery, collection London .
Born	24 September 1717(1717-09-24) London, England, UK
Died	2 March 1797 (aged 79) Berkeley Square, London, England, UK
Occupation	Author, Politician
Parents	Robert Walpole and Catherine Shorter

Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford (24 September 1717 – 2 March 1797), more commonly known as Horace Walpole, was an English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and politician. He is now largely remembered for Strawberry Hill, the home he built in Twickenham, south-west London where he revived the Gothic style some decades before his Victorian successors, and for his Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto. Along with the book, his literary reputation rests on his Letters, which are of significant social and political interest. He was the son of Sir Robert Walpole, and cousin of Lord Nelson.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 2.1 Politics 2.2 Writings 2.2.1 Major Works 3 Personal life 4 Formal styles from birth to death 5 Notes 6 References 7 See also 8 External links

Early life

Walpole was born in London, the youngest son of British Prime Minister Robert Walpole. Like his father, he was educated at Eton College and King's College, Cambridge.^[1] After university, Walpole went on the Grand Tour with the poet Thomas Gray, but they did not get on well. During his time in France, he bonded with Madame du Deffand, but there is no evidence that there was a sexual relationship between the two.

Career

Walpole returned to England in 1741, entering Parliament, becoming Member of Parliament for Callington, Cornwall. He remained an MP after the death of his father in 1745 and this would last until 1768. He was never politically ambitious, although he was involved in the John Byng case of 1757.^[2]

His lasting architectural creation is Strawberry Hill, the home he built in Twickenham, south-west London in which he revived the Gothic style many decades before his Victorian successors. This fanciful concoction of neo-Gothic began a new architectural trend.^[3] His father was created Earl of Orford in 1742. Horace's elder brother, the 2nd Earl of Orford (c.1701–1751), passed the title on to his son, the 3rd Earl of Orford (1730–1791). When the 3rd Earl died unmarried, Horace Walpole became the 4th Earl of Orford.

In 1769, the forger Thomas Chatterton sent Rowley's History of England, allegedly by Rowley, to Walpole, who was briefly taken in. When Chatterton killed himself in 1770, Walpole was unjustly accused of having provoked the suicide.^[4]

Politics

Following his father's politics, he was a devotee of King George II and Queen Caroline, siding with them against their son, Frederick, Prince of Wales, about whom Walpole wrote spitefully in his memoirs. Walpole was a frequent visitor to Boyle Farm, Thames Ditton, to meet both the Boyle-Walsinghams and Lord Hertford. His father was created Earl of Orford in 1742. Horace's elder brother, the 2nd Earl of Orford (c.1701–1751), passed the title on to his son, the 3rd Earl of Orford (1730–1791). When the 3rd Earl died unmarried, Horace Walpole became the 4th Earl of Orford, and the title died with him in 1797.

Writings

Strawberry Hill had its own printing press which supported Horace Walpole's intensive literary activity.^[5] In 1764, he anonymously published his Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto, and claimed that it was a translation "from the Original Italian of Onuphirio Muralto" on its title page. The second edition's preface, according to James Watt, "has often been regarded as a manifesto for the modern Gothic romance, stating that his work, now subtitled 'A Gothic Story', sought to restore the qualities of imagination and invention to contemporary fiction".^[6] However, there is a playfulness in the prefaces to both editions and in the narration within the text itself. The novel opens with the son of Manfred (the Prince of Otranto) being crushed under a massive helmet that appears via supernatural causes. However, that moment, along with the rest of the unfolding plot, includes a mixture of both ridiculous and sublime supernatural elements. The plot finally reveals how Manfred's family is tainted in a way that served as a model for successive Gothic plots.^[7] From 1762 on, he published his Anecdotes of Painting in England, based on George Vertue's manuscript notes. His memoirs of the Georgian social and political scene, though heavily biased, are a useful primary source for historians.

In one of the numerous letters, from 28 January 1754, he coined the word serendipity which he said was derived from a "silly fairy tale" he had read, The Three Princes of Serendip. The oft-quoted epigram, "This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel," is from a letter of Walpole's to Anne, Countess of Ossory, on 16 August 1776. The original, fuller version was in what he wrote to Sir Horace Mann on 31 December 1769: "I have often said, and oftener think, that this world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel – a solution of why Democritus laughed and Heraclitus wept."

In Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard III (1768), Walpole defended Richard III against the common belief that he murdered the Princes in the Tower. In this he has been followed by other writers, such as Josephine Tey and Valerie Anand. This work, according to Emile Legouis, shows that Walpole was "capable of critical initiative".^[2]

Major Works

• Some Anecdotes of Painting in England (1762)
• The Castle of Otranto (1764)
• The Mysterious Mother (1768)
• Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of Richard III (1768)
• On Modern Gardening (1780)
• A Description of the Villa of Mr. Horace Walpole (1784)
• Hieroglyphic Tales (1785)

Personal life

Walpole's sexual orientation has been the subject of speculation. He never married, engaging in a succession of unconsummated flirtations with unmarriageable women, and counted among his close friends a number of women such as Anne Seymour Damer and Mary Berry named by a number of sources as lesbian.^[8] Many contemporaries described him as effeminate (one political opponent called him "a hermaphrodite horse").^[9] Some previous biographers such as Lewis, Fothergill, and Robert Wyndham Ketton-Cremer, however, have interpreted Walpole as asexual.^[10]

Walpole died in 1797, after which his title became extinct. He left behind a massive amount of his correspondence, and these were published in many volumes starting in 1798. Likewise, a large collection of his works, including historical writings, was published immediately after his death.^[2]

Formal styles from birth to death

• Mr. Horace Walpole (1717-1741)
• Mr. Horace Walpole, MP (1741-1742)
• The Hon. Horace Walpole, MP (1742-1768)
• The Hon. Horace Walpole (1768-1791)
• The Rt. Hon. The Earl of Orford (1791-1797)

Notes

1. ^ Walpole, Horace in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
2. ^ ^{a b c} Legouis 1957 p. 906
3. ^ Verberckmoes 2007 p. 77
4. ^ Frank p. 39
5. ^ Verberckmoes, p.77
6. ^ Watt 2004 p. 120
7. ^ Watt 2004 p. 120–121
8. ^ Norton 2003
9. ^ Langford 2004
10. ^ Haggert 2006

References

• Frank, Frederick, "Introduction" in The Castle of Otranto.
• Haggerty, George. "Queering Horace Walpole". SEL 1500-1900 46.3 (2006): 543-562
• Hiller, Bevis. Who's Horry now?. The Spectator, September 14, 1996
• Langford, Paul. "Walpole, Horatio , fourth earl of Orford (1717–1797)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2005 accessed 19 Aug 2007
• Legouis, Emile. A History of English Literature. Trans. Louis Cazamian. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1957.
• Mowl, Timothy. Horace Walpole: The Great Outsider. London: Murray, 1998. ISBN 0719556198
• Norton, Rictor (Ed.), "A Sapphick Epistle, 1778", Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England: A Sourcebook. 1 December 1999, updated 23 February 2003 <http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/sapphick.htm> Retrieved on 2007-08-16
• Watt, James. "Gothic" in The Cambridge Companion to English Literature 1740–1830 ed. Thomas Keymer and Jon Mee, 119–138. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
• Verberckmoes, Johan (2007). Geschiedenis van de Britse eilanden. Leuven: Uitgeverij Acco Leuven. ISBN 978 90 334 6549 9. 

See also

• Romanticism

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Horace Walpole

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Horace Walpole

• The Literary Encyclopedia.
• Works by Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford at Project Gutenberg
  • The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1
  • The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2
  • The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 3
  • The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 4
  • Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume I
  • Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume II
  • The Castle of Otranto
• The Friends of Strawberry Hill
• The Twickenham Museum - Horace Walpole
• "The Walpole Cabinet". Furniture. Victoria and Albert Museum. http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/furniture/stories/walpole/index.html. Retrieved 2007-08-12. 

Parliament of Great Britain
Preceded by Thomas Copleston Isaac le Heup	Member for Callington 1741–1754 Served alongside: Thomas Copleston (1741–1748) Edward Bacon (1748–1754)	Succeeded by Sewallis Shirley John Sharpe
Preceded by The Lord Luxborough The Hon. Thomas Howard	Member for Castle Rising 1754–1757 Served alongside: The Hon. Thomas Howard	Succeeded by The Hon. Thomas Howard Charles Boone
Preceded by Sir John Turner, Bt Horatio Walpole	Member for Kings Lynn 1757–1768 Served alongside: Sir John Turner, Bt	Succeeded by Sir John Turner, Bt Thomas Walpole
Peerage of Great Britain
Preceded by George Walpole	Earl of Orford 1791–1797	Extinct
	Baron Walpole 1791–1797	Succeeded by Horatio Walpole

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