The Earl of Orford | |
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| Member of Parliament forKing's Lynn | |
| In office 25 February 1757 – 16 March 1769 Serving with Sir John Turner, 3rd Baronet | |
| Preceded by | Horatio Walpole the Elder |
| Succeeded by | Thomas Walpole |
| Member of Parliament forCastle Rising | |
| In office 21 May 1754 – 25 February 1757 Serving with Thomas Howard | |
| Preceded by | Robert Knight |
| Succeeded by | Charles Boone |
| Member of Parliament forCallington | |
| In office 12 June 1741 – 18 April 1754 Serving with Thomas Coplestone (1741–1748),Edward Bacon (1748–1754) | |
| Preceded by | Isaac le Heup |
| Succeeded by | John Sharpe |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Horatio Walpole (1717-09-24)24 September 1717 London, England,Great Britain |
| Died | 2 March 1797(1797-03-02) (aged 79) Berkeley Square, London, Great Britain |
| Resting place |
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| Political party | Whigs |
| Parents | |
| Relatives | Hugh Walpole (great-great-grandnephew) |
| Residence(s) | Strawberry Hill, London |
| Education | King's College, Cambridge |
| Occupation |
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| Signature |  |
Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford (/ˈwɔːlpoʊl/; 24 September 1717 – 2 March 1797), better known asHorace Walpole, was an EnglishWhig politician, writer, historian and antiquarian.[1]
He hadStrawberry Hill House built inTwickenham, southwest London, reviving theGothic style some decades before hisVictorian successors. His literary reputation rests on the firstGothic novel,The Castle of Otranto (1764), and hisLetters, which are of significant social and political interest.[2] They have been published byYale University Press in 48 volumes.[3] In 2017, a volume of Walpole's selected letters was published.[4]
The youngest son of the first British Prime Minister, SirRobert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, he became the 4th and last Earl of Orford of the second creation on his nephew's death in 1791.
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Walpole was born in London, the youngest son ofBritish Prime Minister SirRobert Walpole and his wife, Catherine. Like his father, he received early education inBexley;[5] in part underEdward Weston. He was also educated atEton College andKing's College, Cambridge.[6]
Walpole's first friends were probably his cousins Francis andHenry Conway, to whom he became strongly attached, especially Henry.[7] At Eton he formed a schoolboy confederacy, the "Triumvirate", withCharles Lyttelton (later an antiquary and bishop) andGeorge Montagu (later a member of parliament and Private Secretary to Lord North). More important were another group of friends dubbed the "Quadruple Alliance": Walpole,Thomas Gray,Richard West, andThomas Ashton.[8]
At Cambridge, Walpole came under the influence ofConyers Middleton, an unorthodox theologian. Walpole came to accept the sceptical nature of Middleton's attitude to some essential Christian doctrines for the rest of his life, including a hatred of superstition and bigotry even though he was a nominal Anglican. Ceasing to reside at Cambridge at the end of 1738, Walpole left without taking a degree.[9]
In 1737, Walpole's mother died. According to one biographer, his love for his mother "was the most powerful emotion of his entire life ... the whole of his psychological history was dominated by it".[10] Walpole did not have any serious relationships with women; he has been called "a natural celibate".[11]
Hissexual 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 asAnne Seymour Damer andMary Berry named by a number of sources as lesbian.[12]
Many contemporaries described him as effeminate (one political opponent called him "ahermaphrodite horse").[1] Biographers, such asW. S. Lewis, Brian Fothergill, andRobert Wyndham Ketton-Cremer, interpreted Walpole asasexual.[13]
Walpole's father secured for him threesinecures which afforded him an income: in 1737 he was appointed Inspector of the Imports and Exports in the Custom House, which he resigned to become Usher of the Exchequer, which gave him at first £3900 per annum but this increased over the years. Upon coming of age he became Comptroller of the Pipe and Clerk of theEstreats which gave him an income of £300 per annum. Walpole decided to go travelling with Thomas Gray and wrote a will in which he left Gray all his belongings.[14]
In 1744, he wrote in a letter to Conway that these offices gave him nearly £2,000 per annum; after 1745 when he was appointed Collectorship of Customs, his total income from these offices was around £3,400 per annum.[15]
Walpole went on theGrand Tour with Gray, but as Walpole recalled in later life: "We had not got toCalais before Gray was dissatisfied, for I was a boy, and he, though infinitely more a man, was not enough to make allowances".[16]
They leftDover on 29 March and arrived at Calais later that day. They then travelled throughBoulogne,Amiens andSaint-Denis, arriving at Paris on 4 April. Here they met many aristocratic Englishmen.[17] In early June they left Paris forReims, then in September going toDijon,Lyon,Dauphiné, Savoy,Aix-les-Bains, Geneva, and then back to Lyon.[citation needed]
In October they left for Italy, arriving inTurin in November, then going toGenoa,Piacenza,Parma,Reggio,Modena,Bologna, and in December arriving atFlorence. Here he struck up a friendship withHorace Mann, an assistant to the British Minister at the Court of Tuscany.[18] In Florence he also wroteEpistle from Florence to Thomas Ashton, Esq., Tutor to the Earl of Plymouth, a mixture ofWhig history and Middleton's teachings.[19] In February 1740, Walpole and Gray left for Rome with the intention of witnessing the papal conclave upon the death ofPope Clement XII but never saw it.[20] Walpole wanted to attend fashionable parties and Gray wanted to visit antiquities. At social occasions in Rome, he saw the Old Pretender,James Francis Edward Stuart, and his two sons,Charles Edward Stuart andHenry Stuart, although there is no record of them conversing.[21]
Walpole and Gray returned to Florence in July. However, Gray disliked the idleness of Florence as compared to the educational pursuits in Rome, and animosity grew between them, eventually leading to an end to their friendship.[22] On their way back to England they had a furious argument, although it is unknown what it was about. Gray went to Venice, leaving Walpole at Reggio.[23] In later life Walpole admitted that the fault lay primarily with himself:
I was too young, too fond of my own diversions, nay, I do not doubt, too much intoxicated by indulgence, vanity, and the insolence of my situation, as a Prime Minister's son, not to have been inattentive and insensible to the feelings of one I thought below me; of one, I blush to say it, that I knew was obliged to me; of one whom presumption and folly perhaps made me deem not my superiorthen in parts, though I have since felt my infinite inferiority to him.
— Ketton-Cremer 1964, p. 71
Walpole then visitedVenice,Genoa,Antibes,Toulon,Marseille, Aix,Montpellier,Toulouse,Orléans and Paris. He returned to England on 12 September 1741, reaching London on the 14th.[24]
By 1735, Walpole was a student atKing's College, Cambridge. He had long periods of absence from the college, often returning to Norwich to live atHoughton Hall, inNorfolk. Interested in local politics, he and the "wealthy"Mayor of Norwich, Philip Meadows, encouraged local merchant Thomas Vere to run for a seat in Parliament "in theWhig interest" with Vere becoming theMP for Norwich in 1735.[25][26][27][28][29]
At the1741 general election Walpole was elected as a Member of Parliament for therotten borough ofCallington, Cornwall. He held this seat for thirteen years although he never visited Callington.[30] Walpole entered Parliament shortly before his father's fall from power. In December 1741 the Opposition won its first majority vote in the Commons for twenty years. In January 1742 Walpole's government was still struggling in Parliament although by the end of the month Horace and other family members had successfully urged the Prime Minister to resign after a parliamentary defeat.[31] Walpole's philosophy mirrored that ofEdmund Burke, who was his contemporary. He was a classical liberal on issues such asslavery and theAmerican Revolution.[32]
Walpole delivered hismaiden speech on 19 March against the successful motion that a Secret Committee be set up to enquire into Sir Robert Walpole's last ten years as prime minister. For the next three years, Walpole spent most of his time with his father at his country houseHoughton Hall in Norfolk.[33] His father died in 1745 and left Walpole the remainder of the lease of his house in Arlington Street, London; £5,000 in cash; and the office of Collector of the Customs (worth £1,000 per annum). However, he had died in debt, the total of which was in between £40,000 and £50,000.[34]
In late 1745 Walpole and Gray resumed their friendship.[35] Also that year theJacobite Rising began. The position of Walpole was the fruit of his father's support for the Hanoverian dynasty and he knew that he was in danger:
Walpole's lasting architectural creation isStrawberry Hill, the home he built from 1749 onward inTwickenham, southwest of London, which at the time overlooked theThames. Here he revived the Gothic style many decades before his Victorian successors. Derided thereafter by his friends as "The Abbot of Strawberry", this fancifulneo-Gothic concoction began a new architectural trend.[37][38] Long-connected with theBlue Stockings Society, Walpole played host to its members and associates at Strawberry Hill, includingAnna Laetitia Barbauld in 1774.[39][40]
In the House of Commons, Walpole represented one of the manyrotten boroughs,Castle Rising, which consisted of underlying freeholds in four villages nearKings Lynn, Norfolk, from 1754 until 1757. At his home, he hung a copy of the warrant for the execution of KingCharles I with the inscription "Major Charta" and wrote of "the least bad of all murders, that of a King".[41] In 1756 he wrote:
I am sensible that from the prostitution of patriotism, from the art of ministers who have had the address to exalt the semblance while they depressed the reality of royalty, and from the bent of the education of the young nobility, which verges to French maxims and to a military spirit, nay, from the ascendant which the nobility itself acquires each day in this country, from all these reflections, I am sensible, that prerogative and power have been exceedingly fortified of late within the circle of the palace; and though fluctuating ministers by turns exercise the deposit, yet there it is; and whenever a prince of design and spirit shall sit in the regal chair, he will find a bank, a hoard of power, which he may lay off most fatally against this constitution. [I am] a quiet republican, who does not dislike to see the shadow of monarchy, likeBanquo's ghost, fill the empty chair of state, that the ambitious, the murderer, the tyrant, may not aspire to it; in short, who approves the name of a King, when it excludes the essence.
— Ketton-Cremer 1964, p. 127
Walpole worried that while his fellow Whigs fought amongst themselves, theTories were gaining power, the result of which would be England delivered to an unlimited, absolute monarchy, "that authority, that torrent which I should in vain extend a feeble arm to stem".[42]
In 1757, he wrote the anonymous pamphletA Letter from Xo Ho, a Chinese Philosopher at London, to his Friend Lien Chi at Peking, the first of his works to be widely reviewed.[43]
In early 1757, old Horace Walpole of Wolterton died and was succeeded in the peerage by his son, who was then an MP forKing's Lynn, thereby creating a vacancy. The electors of King's Lynn did not wish to be represented by a stranger and instead wanted someone with a connection to the Walpole family. The new Lord Walpole, therefore, wrote to his cousin requesting that he stand for the seat, saying his friends "were all unanimously of opinion that you were the only person who from your near affinity to my grandfather, whose name is still in the greatest veneration, and your own known personal abilities and qualifications, could stand in the gap on this occasion and prevent opposition and expense and perhaps disgrace to the family".[44]
In early 1757, Walpole was out of Parliament after vacating Castle Rising until his election that year to King's Lynn, a seat he would hold until his retirement from the Commons in 1768.[45]
Walpole became a prominent opponent of the 1757 decision to execute AdmiralJohn Byng.[45]
Without a seat in Parliament, Walpole recognised his limitations as to political influence.
He wrote to Mann critical of the activities of theEast India Company on 13 July 1773:
What is England now? – A sink of Indian wealth, filled by nabobs and emptied by Maccaronis! A senate sold and despised! A country overrun by horse-races! A gaming, robbing, wrangling, railing nation without principles, genius, character or allies.
— Walpole 1844, p. 339,Carson 2012, pp. 18–33
He opposed the recentCatholic accommodative measures, writing to Mann in 1784: "You know I have ever been averse to toleration of an intolerant religion".[1] He wrote to the same correspondent in 1785 that "as there are continually allusions to parliamentary speeches and events, they are often obscure to me till I get them explained; and besides, I do not know several of the satirized heroes even by sight".[1] His political sympathies were with theFoxite Whigs, the successors of theRockingham Whigs, who were themselves the successors of the Whig Party as revived by Walpole's father. He wrote toWilliam Mason, expounding his political philosophy:
I have for five and forty years acted upon the principles of the constitution as it was settled at theRevolution, the best form of government that I know of in the world, and which made us a free people, a rich people, and a victorious people, by diffusing liberty, protecting property and encouraging commerce; and by the combination of all, empowering us to resist the ambition of theHouse of Bourbon, and to place ourselves on a level with that formidable neighbour. The narrow plan of royalty, which had so often preferred the aggrandizement of the Crown to the dignity of presiding over a great and puissant free kingdom, threw away one predominant source of our potency by aspiring to enslave America—and would now compensate forthat blunder and its consequence by assuming a despotic tone at home. It has found a tool in the light and juvenile son of the great minister who carried our glory to its highest pitch—but it shall never have the insignificant approbation of an old and worn out son of another minister, who though less brilliant, maintained this country in the enjoyment of the twenty happiest years that England ever enjoyed.
Walpole was horrified by theFrench Revolution and commendedEdmund Burke'sReflections on the Revolution in France: "Every page shows how sincerely he is in earnest — a wondrous merit in a political pamphlet—All other party writersact zeal for the public, but it never seems to flow from the heart".[1] He admired the purple passage in the book onMarie Antoinette: "I know the tirade on the Queen of France is condemned and yet I must avow I admire it much. It paints her exactly as she appeared to me the first time I saw her when Dauphiness. She...shot through the room like an aerial being, all brightness and grace and without seeming to touch earth".[46]
After he heard of theexecution of KingLouis XVI he wrote toLady Ossory on 29 January 1793:
Indeed, Madam, I write unwillingly; there is not a word left in my Dictionary that can express what I feel.Savages, barbarians, &c., were terms for poor ignorant Indians and Blacks and Hyaenas, or, with some superlative epithets, for Spaniards in Peru and Mexico, for Inquisitors, or for Enthusiasts of every breed in religious wars. It remained for the enlightened eighteenth century to baffle language and invent horrors that can be found in no vocabulary. What tongue could be prepared to paint a Nation that should avow Atheism, profess Assassination, and practice Massacres on Massacres for four years together: and who, as if they had destroyed God as well as their King, and established Incredulity by law, give no symptoms of repentance! These Monsters talk of settling a Constitution—it may be a brief one, and couched in one Law, "Thou shalt reverse every Precept of Morality and Justice, and do all the Wrong thou canst to all Mankind".
— Ketton-Cremer 1964, pp. 305–306
He was not impressed withThomas Paine's reply to Burke,Rights of Man, writing that it was "so coarse, that you would think he means to degrade the language as much as the government".[47]
His father was createdEarl of Orford in 1742. Horace's elder brother,Robert Walpole, 2nd Earl of Orford (c. 1701–1751), passed the title on to his son,George Walpole, 3rd Earl of Orford (1730–1791). When the 3rd Earl died unmarried, Horace Walpole became, at the age of 74, the 4th Earl of Orford, and the title died with him in 1797. The massive amount of correspondence he left behind has been published in many volumes, starting in 1798. Likewise, a large collection of his works, including historical writings, was published immediately after his death.[48]
Horace Walpole was buried in the same location as his father Sir Robert Walpole, at theChurch of St Martin at Tours on theHoughton Hall estate.[49]
After Walpole's death,Lady Louisa Stuart, in the introduction to the letters of her grandmother,Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1837), wrote of rumours that Horace's biological father was not Sir Robert Walpole but Carr, Lord Hervey (1691–1723), elder half-brother of the more famousJohn Hervey.T. H. White writes: "Catherine Shorter, Sir Robert Walpole's first wife, had five children. Four of them were born in a sequence after the marriage; the fifth, Horace, was born eleven years later, at a time when she was known to be on bad terms with Sir Robert, and known to be on romantic terms with Carr, Lord Hervey."[50] The lack of physical resemblance between Horace and Sir Robert,[51] and his close resemblance to members of the Hervey family, encouraged these rumours.Peter Cunningham, in his introduction to the letters of Horace Walpole (1857), vol. 1, p. x, wrote:
"[Lady Louisa Stuart] has related it in print in the Introductory Anecdotes to Lady Mary's Works; and there is too much reason to believe that what she tells is true. Horace was born eleven years after the birth of any other child that Sir Robert had by his wife; in every respect he was unlike a Walpole, and in every respect, figure and formation of mind, very like a Hervey. Lady Mary Wortley divided mankind into men, women, and Herveys, and the division has been generally accepted. Walpole was certainly of the Hervey class. Lord Hervey's Memoirs and Horace Walpole's Memoires are most remarkably alike, yet Walpole never saw them. [Yet] we have no evidence whatever that a suspicion of spurious parentage ever crossed the mind of Horace Walpole. His writings, from youth to age, breathe the most affectionate love for his mother, and the most unbounded filial regard for Sir Robert Walpole."
Walpole had formed a number of lifelong friendships with a number of men and women notable for their looks, wit or social standing. Principal amongst those in his inner circle was arguably Conway, who he had looked up to since his Eton days and corresponded with for the rest of his life. He entertained himself with others who were like himself, and who possessed notoriety and wit, such as such asEtheldreda Townshend, andGeorge Selwyn with whom he jousted and derided with streams of invective. The "Abbot of Strawberry" immortalised himself in his own words, and also inspired the characters ofSir Benjamin Backbite inRichard Brinsley Sheridan'sThe School for Scandal andMonsieur Le Sage in the satireRanelagh House: a Satire in prose after the manner of Monsieur Le Sage.[52]
The novelistLaetitia Matilda Hawkins, a younger contemporary of Walpole, wrote of him as follows:[53]
His entrance into a room was in that style of affected delicacy, which fashion had made almost natural,chapeau bras between his hands as if he wished to compress it, or under his arm; knees bent, and feet on tip-toe, as if afraid of a wet floor. His summer dress of ceremony was usually a lavender suit, the waistcoat embroidered with a little silver, or of white silk worked in thetambour, partridge silk stockings, gold buckles,ruffles and lace frill. In the winter he wore powder ... His appearance at the breakfast table was proclaimed, and attended, by a fat and favourite little dog, the legacy ofMadame du Deffand; the dog and favourite squirrel partook of his breakfast. He generally dined at four ... His dinner when at home was of chicken, pheasant, or any light food, of which he ate sparingly. Pastry he disliked, as difficult of digestion, though he would taste a morsel ofvenison pie. Iced water, then a London dislike, was his favourite drink. The scent of dinner was removed by a censer or pot offrankincense. The wine that was drunk during dinner. After his coffee he would take pinch of snuff, and nothing more that night.
In his old age, according to G. G. Cunningham, he "was afflicted with fits of an hereditary gout which a rigid temperance failed to remove".[54]
Strawberry Hill had its ownprinting press, theStrawberry Hill Press, which supported Horace Walpole's intensive literary activity.[38]
In 1764, not using his own press, he anonymously published hisGothic novel,The Castle of Otranto, claiming on its title page that it was a translation "from the Original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto". 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".[55] 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 as a result of 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.[56]
From 1762 on, Walpole published hisAnecdotes of Painting in England, based onGeorge Vertue's manuscript notes. His memoirs of the Georgian social and political scene, though heavily biased, are a useful primary source for historians.
Smith, noting that Walpole never did any work for his well-paid government sinecures, turns to the letters and argues that:
Walpole served his country, not by drudgery in the Exchequer and Customs, which paid him, but by transmitting to posterity an incomparable vision of England as it was in his day – London and Westminster with all their festivities and riots, the machinations of politicians and the turmoil of elections.[57]
Walpole's numerous letters are often used as a historical resource. In one, dating from 28 January 1754, he coined the wordserendipity which he said was derived from a "silly fairy tale" he had read,The Three Princes of Serendip.[58] The oft-quotedepigram, "This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel", is from a letter of Walpole's toAnne, Countess of Upper Ossory, on 16 August 1776. The original, fuller version appeared in a letter 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 whyDemocritus laughed andHeraclitus wept."
InHistoric Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard III (1768), Walpole defendedRichard III against the common belief that he murdered thePrinces in the Tower. In this he has been followed by other writers, such asJosephine Tey andValerie Anand. This work, according to Emile Legouis, shows that Walpole was "capable of critical initiative".[48] However, Walpole later changed his views followingThe Terror and declared that Richard could have committed the crimes of which he was accused.[59][60]
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TheWalpole Society was formed in 1911 to promote the study of the history of British art. Its headquarters is located in the Department of Prints and Drawings at TheBritish Museum and its director isSimon Swynfen Jervis.
In 1735, young Horace proceeded from Eton to King's College, Cambridge, where he resided, though with long intervals of absence, until after he came of age.
Walpole's son, the prolific letter writer Sir Horace Walpole (1717–97), lived at Houghton Hall but was not over enamoured with Norfolk.
To The Countess of Ossory – July 15, 1783...I have given one or two dinners to blue-stockings...
...of a new literary and personal identity for Anna Barbauld. Horace Walpole had been pleased, in 1774, to show Anna and [her husband] Rochemont around Strawberry Hill, and a few years later to praise her poetry in a letter to William Mason.
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
| Parliament of Great Britain | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forCallington 1741–1754 With:Thomas Coplestone (1741–1748) Edward Bacon (1748–1754) | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forCastle Rising 1754–1757 With:Thomas Howard | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forKings Lynn 1757–1768 With:Sir John Turner, Bt | Succeeded by |
| Peerage of Great Britain | ||
| Preceded by | Earl of Orford 2nd creation 1791–1797 | Extinct |
| Viscount Walpole 1791–1797 | ||
| Baron Walpole of Houghton 1791–1797 | ||
| Baron Walpole of Walpole 1791–1797 | Succeeded by | |
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