The portrait of Sir Hugh Walpole working at his desk
School period
Gallery of Hugh Walpole
Trennick Ln, Truro TR1 1TH, United Kingdom
Walpole studied at Truro School.
Gallery of Hugh Walpole
25 The Precincts, Canterbury CT1 2ES, United Kingdom
Walpole studied at King's School, Canterbury.
Gallery of Hugh Walpole
Quarryheads Ln, Durham DH1 4SZ, United Kingdom
In 1898, Walpole's family moved to Durham from the United States, and he became a day student at Durham School, a place he heartily disliked.
College/University
Gallery of Hugh Walpole
St Andrew's St, Cambridge CB2 3AP, United Kingdom
In October 1903, Hugh Walpole went to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, as a subsizar, receiving a yearly stipend because his parents could not pay the full fee.
Career
Gallery of Hugh Walpole
1939
Leicester Galleries, London, United Kingdom
Sir Hugh Walpole stands on a stool at the Leicester Galleries, London, to get a better view of Sir Jacob Epstein's alabaster sculpture "Adam".
Gallery of Hugh Walpole
Sir Hugh Walpole
Gallery of Hugh Walpole
Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole leaning against his fireplace where a fine model of a horse is displayed.
Gallery of Hugh Walpole
Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole at work
Gallery of Hugh Walpole
Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole
Gallery of Hugh Walpole
Lake District, England, United Kingdom
Sir Hugh Walpole, pictured with fellow novelist J. B. Priestley in the Lake District.
Gallery of Hugh Walpole
The portrait of Sir Hugh Walpole with his dog, Bingo
Gallery of Hugh Walpole
The portrait of Sir Hugh Walpole outdoors
Achievements
Membership
Awards
Order of the British Empire (Knight Bachelor)
Hugh Walpole was made the Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire in the 1937 King's Honours List for his services to Literature.
In October 1903, Hugh Walpole went to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, as a subsizar, receiving a yearly stipend because his parents could not pay the full fee.
(Jeremy and Hamlet is the second book in the Jeremy Trilog...)
Jeremy and Hamlet is the second book in the Jeremy Trilogy published by Sir Hugh Walpole. Published to critical acclaim across the world, it quickly became a bestseller. Hamlet in the second novel is Jeremy's trusty best friend and sidekick, his dog. The portrayal of young Jeremy is authentic, engaging, and incredibly realistic glimpse of an English boyhood.
(In an old rickety building on the rock above an old grass...)
In an old rickety building on the rock above an old grass-grown square in the city of Polchester live three old ladies. The house was a windy, creaky, rain-bitten place where the ladies lived as tenants. One of the tenants, Miss Beringer, has a rather nervous personality but is befriended by a kindly neighbour named Mrs. Amorest. Soon, however, she meets the third tenant, a strange woman who takes an interest in her one treasured possession, an amber figurine. Although it is the morning of Christmas Eve, the mood in the house soon turns ominous, despite Mrs Amorest's best efforts to foster a festive spirit.
(Hugh Walpole's Wintersmoon turns the romance novel on its...)
Hugh Walpole's Wintersmoon turns the romance novel on its head. Janet Grandison and Wildherne Poole marry for companionship and convenience. Love isn't part of the arrangement. Janet wants to give her sister Rosalind a home; Wildherne wants an heir to his title and estate that the married woman he loves can't give him. Nothing goes according to plan. Rosalind and Wildherne can't stand each other. She marries a man she doesn't love to get out of living at Wintersmoon. Janet gets on the wrong side of Wildherne's mother and her entourage. Then she finds herself in love with her husband and pregnant with his child. Wildherne has grown to love Janet as well, but neither says anything because they agreed to a loveless marriage. Their son's death brings their marriage to a crisis that has far-reaching repercussions.
(Hans Frost is a great figure for his fans. The protagonis...)
Hans Frost is a great figure for his fans. The protagonist is the greatest writer. Hans Frost received his guests and graciously accepted the wonderful gift that his fans combined to buy for him. His books do not bring such a large income, and the wealth of his wife provides the luxury that he possessed from the time of their marriage. Natalie's entry into his world is the catalyst that Hans needs to wake him from recession.
(The tale of Francis Herries, the "rogue" of the title. A ...)
The tale of Francis Herries, the "rogue" of the title. A violent and impetuous man, a faithless husband and a capricious father, the Borrowdale valley (his home for 40 years) and his unrequited love for gypsy Mirabell Starr are the two forces which drive him.
(Huge Walpole's thrilling adventure novel of the 1920s rev...)
Huge Walpole's thrilling adventure novel of the 1920s revolves around Piccadily Circus. Richard Gunn is an ex-soldier in trouble after the end of the Great War. Jobless and starving in Piccadilly Circus, he encounters his nemesis, Leroy Pengelly. From this encounter the secrets of their shared past start to unravel. A novel which combines elements of the horror and supernatural - at which Walpole was so skilled - with the puzzle element of the whodunnit - all wrapped up in one unsettling and uncanny whole.
(The fourth and final volume of the Herries Chronicles, de...)
The fourth and final volume of the Herries Chronicles, described as "incomparably the best" in The Daily Telegraph, is a love story of "effortless brilliance" (Observer) which starts with the triumph of Judith Paris's hundredth birthday in the 1870's and then moves to the tragic disillusionment of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
(A novel of Spring and Fall, of old love and young, of Lon...)
A novel of Spring and Fall, of old love and young, of London and an ancient house about to die. When Fred Delaney wished his lodger, Patrick Munden, revolutionary poet, a Happy New Year, it was with a fervor that echoed the wish for himself because the year held little promise.
(The Bright Pavilions is the fifth book of a series of six...)
The Bright Pavilions is the fifth book of a series of six volumes of The Chronicles of Harris. The story tells how one family shared fidelity and frustrated love.
(As boys, Jimmie Tunstall was John Talbot's implacable foe...)
As boys, Jimmie Tunstall was John Talbot's implacable foe, never ceasing to taunt, torment, and bully him. Years later, John is married and living in a small coastal town when he learns, much to his chagrin, that his old adversary has just moved to the same town. Before long the harassment begins anew until finally, driven to desperation, John murders his tormentor. Soon he starts to suffer from frightening hallucinations and his personality and physical appearance begin to alter, causing him increasingly to resemble the man he killed. Is it merely the psychological effect of his guilt, or is it the manifestation of something supernatural - and evil?
Hugh Walpole was among England's most popular novelists writing just before World War II. His skill at painting the settings of his works, his gift for interesting plots, and his accessibility as a lecturer and public figure contributed to his wide readership in the United Kingdom and North America.
Background
Hugh Walpole was born on March 13, 1884, the first of three children of George Henry Somerset and Mildred Barham Walpole, in New Zealand, where his father was vicar of St. Mary's Church in Parnell, a suburb of Auckland. His family soon moved to New York, where his father taught at the General Theological Seminary.
Education
In 1893, Walpole was sent to England to begin an English public school education; first, in Truro, then in Marlow and at King's School, Canterbury. In 1898, his family moved to Durham from the United States, and Walpole became a day student at Durham School, a place he heartily disliked.
Walpole attempted to write historical romances in his teens and seems to have been a born storyteller, although later in life he resented this designation and thought that he was stronger as a creator of intriguing characters than as a spinner of tales. In October 1903, he went to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, as a subsizar, receiving a yearly stipend because his parents could not pay the full fee.
In September 1906, after graduation, Hugh Walpole went reluctantly to Liverpool as a lay missioner on the staff of the Mersey Mission to Seamen. It soon became apparent that he was not cut out to be a lay missioner and certainly not a cleric as his father was. He seems to have had little doubt that he wanted a career in letters, and he began supporting himself by teaching in Germany and England until the publication of his first novel, The Wooden Horse, in 1909. When the novel was published, Walpole was on the threshold of the London literary world - reviewing books for the London Standard, seeing Henry James, and communicating with other literary figures. He came to know many of the most prominent members of that world: James, Joseph Conrad, John Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, Virginia Woolf, John Buchan, Maurice Hewlett, J. B. Priestley, Dorothy Richardson (who called him "eminently a humanist, a collector of people"), and many others.
Just after the start of World War I, Walpole went to Russia to write newspaper articles for the London Daily Mail. Soon he was put in charge of the British propaganda bureau in Petrograd (present-day Saint Petersburg), then capital of Russia, but the enterprise degenerated into a rather farcical operation in which all secrecy was lost, and the office of propaganda became almost useless. He witnessed the first revolution of 1917 in Petrograd and left Russia just as the Bolsheviks were taking over in November 1917. This series of events marked the transfer of governing power from the Tzarist autocracy to the Soviet Union and the end of the Russian Empire. The material for two novels came out of Walpole's Russian experiences - The Dark Forest (1916) and The Secret City (1919), the latter the winner of the first James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the best work of fiction in 1919.
Back in London, Walpole worked for a short time in the Foreign Office of the Department of Information under novelist John Buchan and was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) after the war. The Green Mirror was published in England in 1918, again to generally good reviews and only one or two dissenting voices. In 1919 Jeremy, the first of a series of books, was published, and Walpole left on the first of several lecture tours of America. On these tours, over the years, he met many American writers. In 1921, A Hugh Walpole Anthology was published with a short prefatory note by Joseph Conrad, one of Walpole's close friends.
In 1922, the year of the publication of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land and James Joyce's Ulysses, Walpole produced The Cathedral. Walpole's biographer, Sir Rupert Hart-Davis, suggests that in this novel Walpole hits back at the cathedral clique and the snobbishness of which he and his family were the victims in their years in Durham. The fictional town of Polchester in this novel was also to be the setting for Jeremy, Harmer John (1926), and The Inquisitor (1935).
In 1924, Walpole purchased Brackenburn, a home in Cumberland. He also kept a flat in London and divided his time between the two locations for the rest of his life. Throughout his career, Walpole felt a simultaneous respect for and distrust of the modernists. In 1928 he produced Wintersmoon, in which he sets forth his ideas on the new "modern" temperament as opposed to the traditional English one and, by extension, his ideas on modernist writers as opposed to traditionalist writers. The coldness, detachment, and scorn for traditional values - personal, societal, literary - that Walpole believed characterized the moderns are manifested in Wintersmoon's characters Rosalind and Ravage. Their foils, or opposites, are Janet Grandison and the members of her husband's aristocratic family.
The Herries novels, beginning with Rogue Herries in 1930 and continuing with Judith Paris (1931), The Fortress (1932), and Vanessa (1933), reflect something of Walpole's interest in Sir Walter Scott and his own adopted Cumberland. Rogue Herries is about an outcast from society. The novel is set around Cumberland, and its action skirts the events of the 1745 rebellion. In 1934 Walpole went to Hollywood, where he wrote the scenario for the film version of David Copperfield (1935). He became friends with director George Cukor and producer David Selznick and had a small part in the film. He also worked on other screenplays, including one for Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936).
Walpole was the son of an Anglican clergyman. His father hoped that his eldest son would follow him into the ministry. Later, Hugh lost his faith. He was too concerned for his father's feelings to tell him he was no longer a believer. He took a post as a lay missioner at the Mersey Mission to Seamen in Liverpool and resigned after six months. He described that as one of the greatest failures of his life.
Views
Walpole was an avid reader and early on was influenced by Nathaniel Hawthorne and his ideas of evil. Walpole said later in life that there were "two strands - say Hawthorne and Trollope - from which I am derived." Walpole also acknowledged what he considered the superior genius of Virginia Woolf and contrasted it with his own mere talent. Sometimes he felt that he would have liked to have been a more modern writer but realized that he was hopelessly old-fashioned: "verbose, over-emphasized, unreal in many places, sometimes very dull" was his critical self-evaluation on one occasion. He felt that his connection with Virginia Woolf helped him "to get over a little of his sententiousness and sentimentality" - a change he welcomed while at the same time not wanting to surrender too much to her influence.
It is difficult to see any change in his writing because of his friendship with Virginia Woolf, but two years after Wintersmoon, Walpole did depart from traditional realistic fiction with an escape into historical romance. Having become something of an authority on nineteenth-century Scottish author Sir Walter Scott, Walpole's later works reflect the Romantic Scott and not the experimental Woolf. The Romantic movement in literature emphasized the transcendant power of nature and privileged the imagination over reason and emotion over intellect. These elements may have seemed ordinary for readers of Walpole's works.
Quotations:
"Tisn't life that matters! Tis the courage you bring to it."
"Don't play for safety. It's the most dangerous thing in the world."
"The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and a thousand other things well."
"I am asking you again to marry me as I did a fortnight ago."
"Over this country, when the giant Eagle flings the shadow of his wing, the land is darkened. So compact is it that the wing covers all its extent in one pause of the flight. The sea breaks on the pale line of the shore; to the Eagle's proud glance waves run in to the foot of the hills that are like rocks planted in green water."
"The most wonderful of all things in life, I believe, is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a glowing depth, beauty, and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing, it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of Divine accident."
Personality
Hugh Walpole was a spontaneous storyteller, writing quickly to get all his ideas on paper, seldom revising.
Walpole was gay and conducted a succession of intense but discreet relationships with other men. He was for much of his life in search of what he saw as "the perfect friend".
Hugh was a patron of the visual arts. He bequeathed a substantial legacy of paintings to the Tate Gallery and other British institutions.
Physical Characteristics:
Walpole had poor eyesight.
Quotes from others about the person
Joseph Conrad: "Of the general soundness of Mr. Walpole's work I am firmly convinced. He is distinctly a man of his time. We see him grappling with the truth of things spiritual and material with his usual earnestness, and we can discern the characteristics of this acute and sympathetic explorer of human nature."
Interests
music
Music & Bands
Lauritz Melchior
Connections
Walpole met a married policeman, with whom he later settled in the English Lake District. Walpole was also intimately attached to the stage designer Percy Anderson. He was never married.