Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford
Encyclopedia
Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford (24 September 1717 – 2 March 1797) was an English
art historian, man of letters, antiquarian
and Whig 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 the 1st Viscount Nelson
.
, the youngest son of British Prime Minister
Sir Robert Walpole
and his wife Catherine. Like his father, he was educated at Eton College
and King's College, Cambridge
.
Walpole's first friends were probably his cousins Francis and Henry Conway
, to whom Walpole became strongly attached, especially Henry. At Eton he formed with Charles Lyttelton
and George Montagu
the "Triumvirate", a schoolboy confederacy. More important were another group of friends dubbed the "Quadruple Alliance": Walpole, Thomas Gray
, Richard West
and Thomas Ashton
.
At Cambridge Walpole came under the influence of Conyers 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. Walpole ceased to reside at Cambridge at the end of 1738 and left without taking a degree.
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". Walpole did not have any serious relationships with women; he has been called "a natural celibate". 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
. Many contemporaries described him as effeminate (one political opponent called him "a hermaphrodite
horse"). Some previous biographers such as Lewis, Fothergill, and Robert Wyndham Ketton-Cremer, however, have interpreted Walpole as asexual
.
Walpole's father secured for him three sinecures 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 the Estreats which gave him an income of £300 per annum. Walpole decided to go travelling with Thomas Gray and wrote a will whereby he left Gray all his belongings. In 1744 Walpole 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.
with Gray, but as Walpole recalled in later life: "We had not got to Calais
before Gray was dissatisfied, for I was a boy, and he, though infinitely more a man, was not enough to make allowances". They left Dover
on 29 March and arrived at Calais later that day. They then travelled through Boulogne, Amiens
and Saint-Denis
, arriving at Paris
on 4 April. Here they met many aristocratic Englishmen. In early June they left Paris for Rheims, then in September going to Dijon
, Lyon
s, Dauphiné
, Savoy
, Aix, Geneva
, and then back to Lyons.
In October they left for Italy
, arriving in Turin
in November, then going to Genoa
, Piacenza
, Parma
, Reggio
, Modena
, Bologna
, and in December arriving at Florence
. Here he struck up a friendship with Horace Mann
, an assistant to the British Minister at the Court of Tuscany. Here he penned the Epistle from Florence to Thomas Ashton, Esq., Tutor to the Earl of Plymouth, a mixture of Whig history and Middleton's teachings. In February 1740 Walpole and Gray left for Rome with the intention of witnessing the papal conclave upon the death of Pope Clement XII
(which they never did see). At social occasions in Rome he saw the Old Pretender James Francis Edward Stuart
and his two sons, Charles Edward Stuart
and Henry Stuart
, although there is no record of them conversing.
Walpole and Gray returned to Florence in July. However Gray disliked the idleness of Florence as compared to the educational pursuits in Rome, and an animosity grew between them, eventually leading to an end to their friendship. 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. 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 superior then in parts, though I have since felt my infinite inferiority to him".
Walpole then went to Venice, Genoa, Antibes
, Toulon
, Marseilles, Aix, Montpellier
, Toulouse
, Orleans
, Paris. He finally landed at Dover on 12 September 1741, reaching London on the 14th.
for Callington, Cornwall. He held this seat for thirteen years, although he never visited Callington. 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 Walpole and other family members had successfully urged the Prime Minister to resign after a parliamentary defeat.
Walpole delivered his maiden 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 house Houghton Hall
in Norfolk. 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.
In late 1745 Walpole and Gray resumed their friendship. Also that year the Jacobite Rising
began. The position of Walpole was the fruit of his father's support for the Hanoverian dynasty and he knew he was in danger: "Now comes the Pretender's boy, and promises all my comfortable apartments in the Exchequer and Custom House to some forlorn Irish peer, who chooses to remove his pride and poverty out of some large old unfurnished gallery at St. Germain's. Why really, Mr. Montagu, this is not pleasant! I shall wonderfully dislike being a loyal sufferer in a threadbare coat, and shivering in an antechamber at Hanover, or reduced to teach Latin and English to the young princes at Copenhagen".
, the home he built in Twickenham
, south west of London, in which he revived the Gothic style many decades before his Victorian successors. This fanciful neo-Gothic concoction began a new architectural trend.
from 1754 until 1757. At his home he hung a copy of the warrant for the execution of Charles I
with the inscription "Major Charta" and wrote of "the least bad of all murders, that of a King". In 1756 he wrote:
Walpole was worried that while the Whigs fought amongst themselves the Tories were gaining power, the end result of this would be England delivered to an unlimited, absolute monarchy, "that authority, that torrent which I should in vain extend a feeble arm to stem".
Early in 1757 old Horace Walpole of Wolterton died and was succeeded in the peerage by his son, who was an MP for King'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 Orford therefore wrote to Walpole 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 expence and perhaps disgrace to the family". 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.
He was a prominent opponent of the decision to execute Admiral Byng
.
Whigs, the successors of the Rockingham Whigs, who were themselves the successors of the Walpolian Whigs. He wrote to William Mason, expounding his political philosophy:
and commended Edmund Burke
's Reflections on the Revolution in France
: "Every page shows how sincerely he is in earnest—a wondrous merit in a political pamphlet—All other party writers act zeal for the public, but it never seems to flow from the heart". He admired the purple passage in the book on Marie 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".
After he heard of the execution of King Louis XVI
he wrote to Lady Ossory on 29 January 1793:
He was not impressed with Thomas 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".
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. The massive amount of correspondence he left behind had been published in many volumes, starting in 1798. Likewise, a large collection of his works, including historical writings, was published immediately after his death.
which supported Horace Walpole's intensive literary activity.
In 1764, not using his own press, he anonymously published his Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto
, claiming on its title page that it was a translation "from the Original Italian of Onuphirio 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". 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.
From 1762 on, Walpole 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.
Walpole's numerous letters are similarly useful as a historical resource. In one, dating 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 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 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".
Major Works
|-
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
art historian, man of letters, antiquarian
Antiquarian
An antiquarian or antiquary is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient objects of art or science, archaeological and historic sites, or historic archives and manuscripts...
and Whig politician. He is now largely remembered for Strawberry Hill
Strawberry Hill House
Strawberry Hill is the Gothic Revival villa of Horace Walpole which he built in the second half of the 18th century in what is now an affluent area of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames in Twickenham, London...
, the home he built in Twickenham
Twickenham
Twickenham is a large suburban town southwest of central London. It is the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and one of the locally important district centres identified in the London Plan...
, south-west London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
where he revived the Gothic
Gothic architecture
Gothic architecture is a style of architecture that flourished during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture....
style some decades before his Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
successors, and for his Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto
The Castle of Otranto
The Castle of Otranto is a 1764 novel by Horace Walpole. It is generally regarded as the first gothic novel, initiating a literary genre which would become extremely popular in the later 18th century and early 19th century...
. 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 the 1st Viscount Nelson
Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson
Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, 1st Duke of Bronté, KB was a flag officer famous for his service in the Royal Navy, particularly during the Napoleonic Wars. He was noted for his inspirational leadership and superb grasp of strategy and unconventional tactics, which resulted in a number of...
.
Early life: 1717–1739
Walpole was born in LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, the youngest son of British Prime Minister
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...
Sir Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, KG, KB, PC , known before 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman who is generally regarded as having been the first Prime Minister of Great Britain....
and his wife Catherine. Like his father, he was educated at Eton College
Eton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....
and King's College, Cambridge
King's College, Cambridge
King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college's full name is "The King's College of our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge", but it is usually referred to simply as "King's" within the University....
.
Walpole's first friends were probably his cousins Francis and Henry Conway
Henry Seymour Conway
Field Marshal Henry Seymour Conway was a British general and statesman. A brother of the 1st Marquess of Hertford, and cousin of Horace Walpole, he began his military career in the War of the Austrian Succession and eventually rose to the rank of Field Marshal .-Family and education:Conway was...
, to whom Walpole became strongly attached, especially Henry. At Eton he formed with Charles Lyttelton
Charles Lyttelton (bishop)
Charles Lyttelton was an English churchman and antiquary, bishop of Carlisle from 1762.-Life:He was third son of Sir Thomas Lyttelton, 4th Baronet, by his wife Christian, daughter of Sir Richard Temple, 3rd Baronet of Stowe, Buckinghamshire...
and George Montagu
George Montagu-Dunk, 2nd Earl of Halifax
George Montagu-Dunk, 2nd Earl of Halifax, KG, PC was a British statesman of the Georgian era.-Early life:...
the "Triumvirate", a schoolboy confederacy. More important were another group of friends dubbed the "Quadruple Alliance": Walpole, Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray was a poet, letter-writer, classical scholar and professor at Cambridge University.-Early life and education:...
, Richard West
Richard West
Richard West may refer to:*Richard West, 7th Baron De La Warr and 4th Baron West *Richard West , 18th century Irish politician and lawyer*Richard West , member of British rock band Threshold*Mr...
and Thomas Ashton
Thomas Ashton (divine)
Thomas Ashton, D.D. , was a divine.Ashton was the son of Dr. Ashton, usher of the Lancaster grammar school, was born in 1716. After being educated at Eton College, he proceeded in 1733 to King's College, Cambridge, where he made the acquaintance of Horace Walpole...
.
At Cambridge Walpole came under the influence of Conyers Middleton
Conyers Middleton
Conyers Middleton was an English clergyman.Middleton was born at Richmond in Yorkshire, and was educated at school in York and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He graduated from the University of Cambridge, took holy orders, and in 1706 obtained a fellowship, which he resigned upon entering into an...
, 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. Walpole ceased to reside at Cambridge at the end of 1738 and left without taking a degree.
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". Walpole did not have any serious relationships with women; he has been called "a natural celibate". Walpole's sexual orientation
Sexual orientation
Sexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...
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
Anne Seymour Damer
Anne Seymour Damer, née Conway, was an English sculptor.-Life:Anne Conway was born into an aristocratic Whig family, the only daughter of Field-Marshal Henry Seymour Conway and his wife Caroline Bruce, born Campbell, Lady Ailesbury , and was brought up at the family home at Park Place, Remenham,...
and Mary Berry
Mary Berry (writer)
Mary Berry was an English author, born at Kirkbridge, North Yorkshire.-Walpole:She and her sister Agnes had a remarkable association with Horace Walpole...
named by a number of sources as lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
. Many contemporaries described him as effeminate (one political opponent called him "a hermaphrodite
Hermaphrodite
In biology, a hermaphrodite is an organism that has reproductive organs normally associated with both male and female sexes.Many taxonomic groups of animals do not have separate sexes. In these groups, hermaphroditism is a normal condition, enabling a form of sexual reproduction in which both...
horse"). Some previous biographers such as Lewis, Fothergill, and Robert Wyndham Ketton-Cremer, however, have interpreted Walpole as asexual
Asexuality
Asexuality , in its broadest sense, is the lack of sexual attraction and, in some cases, the lack of interest in sex. Sometimes, it is considered a lack of a sexual orientation...
.
Walpole's father secured for him three sinecures 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 the Estreats which gave him an income of £300 per annum. Walpole decided to go travelling with Thomas Gray and wrote a will whereby he left Gray all his belongings. In 1744 Walpole 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.
Grand Tour: 1739–1741
Walpole went on the Grand TourGrand Tour
The Grand Tour was the traditional trip of Europe undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means. The custom flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transit in the 1840s, and was associated with a standard itinerary. It served as an educational rite of passage...
with Gray, but as Walpole recalled in later life: "We had not got to Calais
Calais
Calais is a town in Northern France in the department of Pas-de-Calais, of which it is a sub-prefecture. Although Calais is by far the largest city in Pas-de-Calais, the department's capital is its third-largest city of Arras....
before Gray was dissatisfied, for I was a boy, and he, though infinitely more a man, was not enough to make allowances". They left Dover
Dover
Dover is a town and major ferry port in the home county of Kent, in South East England. It faces France across the narrowest part of the English Channel, and lies south-east of Canterbury; east of Kent's administrative capital Maidstone; and north-east along the coastline from Dungeness and Hastings...
on 29 March and arrived at Calais later that day. They then travelled through Boulogne, Amiens
Amiens
Amiens is a city and commune in northern France, north of Paris and south-west of Lille. It is the capital of the Somme department in Picardy...
and Saint-Denis
Saint-Denis
Saint-Denis is a commune in the northern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris. Saint-Denis is a sous-préfecture of the Seine-Saint-Denis département, being the seat of the Arrondissement of Saint-Denis....
, arriving at Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
on 4 April. Here they met many aristocratic Englishmen. In early June they left Paris for Rheims, then in September going to Dijon
Dijon
Dijon is a city in eastern France, the capital of the Côte-d'Or département and of the Burgundy region.Dijon is the historical capital of the region of Burgundy. Population : 151,576 within the city limits; 250,516 for the greater Dijon area....
, Lyon
Lyon
Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....
s, Dauphiné
Dauphiné
The Dauphiné or Dauphiné Viennois is a former province in southeastern France, whose area roughly corresponded to that of the present departments of :Isère, :Drôme, and :Hautes-Alpes....
, Savoy
Savoy
Savoy is a region of France. It comprises roughly the territory of the Western Alps situated between Lake Geneva in the north and Monaco and the Mediterranean coast in the south....
, Aix, Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
, and then back to Lyons.
In October they left for Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, arriving in Turin
Turin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...
in November, then going to Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
, Piacenza
Piacenza
Piacenza is a city and comune in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Piacenza...
, Parma
Parma
Parma is a city in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna famous for its ham, its cheese, its architecture and the fine countryside around it. This is the home of the University of Parma, one of the oldest universities in the world....
, Reggio
Reggio
Reggio is the name of two Italian towns:* Reggio Calabria, in the South, also called Reggio di Calabria or, in ancient times, Pallantion, Rhegion, Febea, Regium, Rhegium Julium, Risa, Rivah...
, Modena
Modena
Modena is a city and comune on the south side of the Po Valley, in the Province of Modena in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy....
, Bologna
Bologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
, and in December arriving at Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
. Here he struck up a friendship with Horace Mann
Sir Horace Mann, 1st Baronet
Sir Horace Mann, 1st Baronet KB , diplomat, was a long standing British resident in Florence.-Biography:...
, an assistant to the British Minister at the Court of Tuscany. Here he penned the Epistle from Florence to Thomas Ashton, Esq., Tutor to the Earl of Plymouth, a mixture of Whig history and Middleton's teachings. In February 1740 Walpole and Gray left for Rome with the intention of witnessing the papal conclave upon the death of Pope Clement XII
Pope Clement XII
Pope Clement XII , born Lorenzo Corsini, was Pope from 12 July 1730 to 6 February 1740.Born in Florence, the son of Bartolomeo Corsini, Marquis of Casigliano and his wife Isabella Strozzi, sister of the Duke of Bagnuolo, Corsini had been an aristocratic lawyer and financial manager under preceding...
(which they never did see). At social occasions in Rome he saw the Old Pretender James Francis Edward Stuart
James Francis Edward Stuart
James Francis Edward, Prince of Wales was the son of the deposed James II of England...
and his two sons, Charles Edward Stuart
Charles Edward Stuart
Prince Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Severino Maria Stuart commonly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie or The Young Pretender was the second Jacobite pretender to the thrones of Great Britain , and Ireland...
and Henry Stuart
Henry Benedict Stuart
Henry Benedict Stuart was a Roman Catholic Cardinal, as well as the fourth and final Jacobite heir to publicly claim the thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Unlike his father, James Francis Edward Stuart, and brother, Charles Edward Stuart, Henry made no effort to seize the throne...
, although there is no record of them conversing.
Walpole and Gray returned to Florence in July. However Gray disliked the idleness of Florence as compared to the educational pursuits in Rome, and an animosity grew between them, eventually leading to an end to their friendship. 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. 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 superior then in parts, though I have since felt my infinite inferiority to him".
Walpole then went to Venice, Genoa, Antibes
Antibes
Antibes is a resort town in the Alpes-Maritimes department in southeastern France.It lies on the Mediterranean in the Côte d'Azur, located between Cannes and Nice. The town of Juan-les-Pins is within the commune of Antibes...
, Toulon
Toulon
Toulon is a town in southern France and a large military harbor on the Mediterranean coast, with a major French naval base. Located in the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur region, Toulon is the capital of the Var department in the former province of Provence....
, Marseilles, Aix, Montpellier
Montpellier
-Neighbourhoods:Since 2001, Montpellier has been divided into seven official neighbourhoods, themselves divided into sub-neighbourhoods. Each of them possesses a neighbourhood council....
, Toulouse
Toulouse
Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...
, Orleans
Orléans
-Prehistory and Roman:Cenabum was a Gallic stronghold, one of the principal towns of the Carnutes tribe where the Druids held their annual assembly. It was conquered and destroyed by Julius Caesar in 52 BC, then rebuilt under the Roman Empire...
, Paris. He finally landed at Dover on 12 September 1741, reaching London on the 14th.
Early parliamentary career: 1741–1754
At the 1741 general election Walpole was elected Whig Member of ParliamentMember of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
for Callington, Cornwall. He held this seat for thirteen years, although he never visited Callington. 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 Walpole and other family members had successfully urged the Prime Minister to resign after a parliamentary defeat.
Walpole delivered his maiden speech
Maiden speech
A maiden speech is the first speech given by a newly elected or appointed member of a legislature or parliament.Traditions surrounding maiden speeches vary from country to country...
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 house Houghton Hall
Houghton Hall
Houghton Hall is a country house in Norfolk, England. It was built for the de facto first British Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, and it is a key building in the history of Palladian architecture in England...
in Norfolk. 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.
In late 1745 Walpole and Gray resumed their friendship. Also that year the Jacobite Rising
Jacobite Rising of 1745
The Jacobite rising of 1745, often referred to as "The 'Forty-Five," was the attempt by Charles Edward Stuart to regain the British throne for the exiled House of Stuart. The rising occurred during the War of the Austrian Succession when most of the British Army was on the European continent...
began. The position of Walpole was the fruit of his father's support for the Hanoverian dynasty and he knew he was in danger: "Now comes the Pretender's boy, and promises all my comfortable apartments in the Exchequer and Custom House to some forlorn Irish peer, who chooses to remove his pride and poverty out of some large old unfurnished gallery at St. Germain's. Why really, Mr. Montagu, this is not pleasant! I shall wonderfully dislike being a loyal sufferer in a threadbare coat, and shivering in an antechamber at Hanover, or reduced to teach Latin and English to the young princes at Copenhagen".
Strawberry Hill
Walpole's lasting architectural creation is Strawberry HillStrawberry Hill House
Strawberry Hill is the Gothic Revival villa of Horace Walpole which he built in the second half of the 18th century in what is now an affluent area of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames in Twickenham, London...
, the home he built in Twickenham
Twickenham
Twickenham is a large suburban town southwest of central London. It is the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and one of the locally important district centres identified in the London Plan...
, south west of London, in which he revived the Gothic style many decades before his Victorian successors. This fanciful neo-Gothic concoction began a new architectural trend.
Later parliamentary career: 1754–1768
Walpole was a Member for Castle RisingCastle Rising (UK Parliament constituency)
Castle Rising was a parliamentary borough in Norfolk, which elected two Members of Parliament to the House of Commons from 1558 until 1832, when it was abolished by the Great Reform Act...
from 1754 until 1757. At his home he hung a copy of the warrant for the execution of Charles I
Charles I of England
Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...
with the inscription "Major Charta" and wrote of "the least bad of all murders, that of a King". 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, like BanquoBanquoBanquo is a character in William Shakespeare's 1606 play Macbeth. In the play, he is at first an ally to Macbeth and they are together when they meet the Three Witches. After prophesying that Macbeth will become king, the witches tell Banquo that he will not be king himself, but that his...
'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.
Walpole was worried that while the Whigs fought amongst themselves the Tories were gaining power, the end result of this would be England delivered to an unlimited, absolute monarchy, "that authority, that torrent which I should in vain extend a feeble arm to stem".
Early in 1757 old Horace Walpole of Wolterton died and was succeeded in the peerage by his son, who was an MP for King's Lynn
King's Lynn (UK Parliament constituency)
King's Lynn was a constituency in Norfolk, known as Lynn or Bishop's Lynn prior to 1537, which returned two Members of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom until 1885, and one member thereafter. Until 1918 it was a parliamentary borough, after which the name...
, 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 Orford therefore wrote to Walpole 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 expence and perhaps disgrace to the family". 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.
He was a prominent opponent of the decision to execute Admiral Byng
John Byng
Admiral John Byng was a Royal Navy officer. After joining the navy at the age of thirteen he participated at the Battle of Cape Passaro in 1718. Over the next thirty years he built up a reputation as a solid naval officer and received promotion to Vice-Admiral in 1747...
.
Later life: 1768–1788
Without a seat in Parliament, Walpole was increasingly out of touch with political developments. He opposed the recent trend towards Catholic emancipation, writing to Mann in 1784: "You know I have ever been averse to toleration of an intolerant religion". He wrote to Mann 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". His political sympathies were with the FoxiteFoxite
The term Foxite generally refers to an 18th or 19th century British Whig politician who adhered to the ideals and political beliefs of Charles James Fox, the 18th century member of parliament and leader of the Whig party....
Whigs, the successors of the Rockingham Whigs, who were themselves the successors of the Walpolian Whigs. He wrote to William Mason, expounding his political philosophy:
I have for five and forty years acted upon the principles of the constitution as it was settled at the Revolution, 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 the House 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 for that 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.
Last years: 1788–1797
Walpole was horrified by the French RevolutionFrench Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
and commended Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party....
's Reflections on the Revolution in France
Reflections on the Revolution in France
Reflections on the Revolution in France , by Edmund Burke, is one of the best-known intellectual attacks against the French Revolution...
: "Every page shows how sincerely he is in earnest—a wondrous merit in a political pamphlet—All other party writers act zeal for the public, but it never seems to flow from the heart". He admired the purple passage in the book on Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette ; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was an Archduchess of Austria and the Queen of France and of Navarre. She was the fifteenth and penultimate child of Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I....
: "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".
After he heard of the execution of King Louis XVI
Louis XVI of France
Louis XVI was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre until 1791, and then as King of the French from 1791 to 1792, before being executed in 1793....
he wrote to Lady 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”.
He was not impressed with Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
Thomas "Tom" Paine was an English author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States...
's reply to Burke, Rights of Man
Rights of Man
Rights of Man , a book by Thomas Paine, posits that popular political revolution is permissible when a government does not safeguard its people, their natural rights, and their national interests. Using these points as a base it defends the French Revolution against Edmund Burke's attack in...
, writing that it was "so coarse, that you would think he means to degrade the language as much as the government".
His father was created Earl of Orford
Earl of Orford
Earl of Orford is a title that has been created three times. The first creation came in the Peerage of England in 1697 in favour of the naval commander Edward Russell, who served three times as First Lord of the Admiralty. He was created Baron Shingay and Viscount Barfleur at the same time...
in 1742. Horace's elder brother, the 2nd Earl of Orford
Robert Walpole, 2nd Earl of Orford
Robert Walpole, 2nd Earl of Orford , was a British peer, styled as The Lord Walpole from 1723 to 1745.-Family:He was the eldest son of the King's First Minister, now regarded as the first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole , and his first wife Catherine...
(c.1701–1751), passed the title on to his son, the 3rd Earl of Orford
George Walpole, 3rd Earl of Orford
George Walpole, 3rd Earl of Orford was a British administrator and peer.-Life:Lord Orford was the only child of the 2nd Earl of Orford and his wife Margaret Rolle, Baroness Clinton in her own right. His parents separated shortly after his birth...
(1730–1791). When the 3rd Earl died unmarried, Horace Walpole became the 4th Earl of Orford, and the title died with him in 1797. The massive amount of correspondence he left behind had been published in many volumes, starting in 1798. Likewise, a large collection of his works, including historical writings, was published immediately after his death.
Writings
Strawberry Hill had its own printing pressPrinting press
A printing press is a device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium , thereby transferring the ink...
which supported Horace Walpole's intensive literary activity.
In 1764, not using his own press, he anonymously published his Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto
The Castle of Otranto
The Castle of Otranto is a 1764 novel by Horace Walpole. It is generally regarded as the first gothic novel, initiating a literary genre which would become extremely popular in the later 18th century and early 19th century...
, claiming on its title page that it was a translation "from the Original Italian of Onuphirio 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". 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.
From 1762 on, Walpole published his Anecdotes of Painting in England, based on George Vertue
George Vertue
George Vertue was an English engraver and antiquary, whose notebooks on British art of the first half of the 18th century are a valuable source for the period.-Life:...
's manuscript notes. His memoirs of the Georgian social and political scene, though heavily biased, are a useful primary source for historians.
Walpole's numerous letters are similarly useful as a historical resource. In one, dating from 28 January 1754, he coined the word serendipity
Serendipity
Serendipity means a "happy accident" or "pleasant surprise"; specifically, the accident of finding something good or useful without looking for it. The word has been voted as one of the ten English words hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company. However, due to its...
which he said was derived from a "silly fairy tale" he had read, The Three Princes of Serendip
The Three Princes of Serendip
The Three Princes of Serendip is the English version of the Peregrinaggio di tre giovani figliuoli del re di Serendippo published by Michele Tramezzino in Venice in 1557. Tramezzino claimed to have heard the story from one Christophero Armeno who had translated the Persian fairy tale into Italian...
. The oft-quoted epigram
Epigram
An epigram is a brief, interesting, usually memorable and sometimes surprising statement. Derived from the epigramma "inscription" from ἐπιγράφειν epigraphein "to write on inscribe", this literary device has been employed for over two millennia....
, "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 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 why Democritus
Democritus
Democritus was an Ancient Greek philosopher born in Abdera, Thrace, Greece. He was an influential pre-Socratic philosopher and pupil of Leucippus, who formulated an atomic theory for the cosmos....
laughed and Heraclitus
Heraclitus
Heraclitus of Ephesus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. He was of distinguished parentage. Little is known about his early life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom...
wept."
In Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard III (1768), Walpole defended Richard III
Richard III of England
Richard III was King of England for two years, from 1483 until his death in 1485 during the Battle of Bosworth Field. He was the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty...
against the common belief that he murdered the Princes in the Tower
Princes in the Tower
The Princes in the Tower is a term which refers to Edward V of England and Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York. The two brothers were the only sons of Edward IV of England and Elizabeth Woodville alive at the time of their father's death...
. In this he has been followed by other writers, such as Josephine Tey
The Daughter of Time
The Daughter of Time is a 1951 novel by Josephine Tey concerning King Richard III of England. It was the last book Tey published, shortly before her death.-Plot summary:...
and Valerie Anand
Valerie Anand
-Fiction:Under the pen name Fiona Buckley she writes the series of historical mysteries, set in the reign of Elizabeth I of England, featuring "Ursula Blanchard"...
. This work, according to Emile Legouis, shows that Walpole was "capable of critical initiative".
Major Works
- Some Anecdotes of Painting in England (1762)
- The Castle of OtrantoThe Castle of OtrantoThe Castle of Otranto is a 1764 novel by Horace Walpole. It is generally regarded as the first gothic novel, initiating a literary genre which would become extremely popular in the later 18th century and early 19th century...
(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)
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)
External links
- http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4587 The Literary Encyclopedia.
- http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/4609 The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1
- http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/4610 The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2
- http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/4773 The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 3
- http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/4919 The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 4
- http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/12073 Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume I
- http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/12074 Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume II
- http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/696 The Castle of Otranto
- http://www.friendsofstrawberryhill.org The Friends of Strawberry Hill
- museum.org.uk/detail.asp?ContentID=140 The Twickenham Museum - Horace Walpole
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