Horace Walpole: The Great Outsider

by Timothy Mowl

Horace Walpole, wilful and effete son of Britain's first and most down-to-earth of Prime Ministers, made an unexpectedly powerful impression on his times, and his influence has lasted. Strawberry Hill, his frail castle-villa, became the resort of princes and inspired a century of Gothic revivalism. His novel, The Castle of Otranto, never yet out of print, engendered whole libraries of Gothic fantasy. When he returned to politics he plotted the removal of a government and astutely manoeuvred his inept friend Conway almost to 10 Downing Street. Denied Cabinet office by his reputation as a pervert, he took revenge in the seductive, tendentious memoirs that have since blackened the leading Whig dynasty in all later histories.
Until now the image of Horace Walpole has been distorted. Earlier this century, Wilmarth Lewis, a rich American scholar, collected virtually all Walpole's surviving letters and papers and edited them in 48 impressive volumes. But Lewis was a conventional man of his times and could not bring himself to recognize Walpole's homosexuality and its implications. He missed, and encouraged visiting scholars to miss, the true motivation behind his hero's life.
This is the first study of Horace Walpole to give a complete and convincing picture of the whole man. It is the first to show that, despite his aristocratic connections, Walpole was a sexual and social outsider whose talents as an intriguer and publicist were used to serve his own agenda. Also revealed for the first time is Walpole's passionate affair with the 9th Earl of Lincoln. The ending of the relationship, and Walpole's subsequent resentment of Lincoln's relatives, affected his judgement, friendships and emotions for the rest of his life.
This book will initiate a radical revision of eighteenth-century politics, architecture and literature.

274 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Dorian · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really don't think much of this. Mowl is an architectural historian by trade, and it's not clear why he took to biography, unless he wanted to carry on Horry's feud with the Society of Antiquarians, of which he is a member (which seems unlikely). Anyway, he's managed to produce a biography that doesn't actually give a clear picture of its subject.

He starts off in his Introduction (entitled "A Warning to Readers") as follows:
Anyone who supposes that Horace Walpole was, in any normal sense, a pleasant and acceptable person should consider the following comical anecdote which he included in a letter of 15 May 1752 to his friend, the British minister in Tuscany, Horace Mann:
A young Mr Winstanley happened to go into a coffee-house in the City, where some grave elders were talking over a terrible affair, that had just happened in the country, where a man broke into a house, ravished the mistress and killed the master. Winstanley said very coolly, 'It was well it was no worse!' The citizens stared, were shocked! An old alderman could not bear it, but cried 'Zounds! Sir, what do you mean? What could be worse?' 'Why,' replied t'other as coolly as before, 'if he had murdered the wife, and buggered the husband' - what would one give to have seen the faces of the company? Adieu.
This may have been considered a somewhat off-colour anecdote in 1752, but I fail to see how it demonstrates to the modern reader that the teller is either unpleasant or unacceptable. This, however, is Mowl's contention.

He then goes on to state that Horry "was, in so far as openness was acceptable in his time, a homosexual who consorted with other homosexuals and bisexuals of his class", and that "Walpole's sexual nature will be included in this study, not in any sense of moral shock or horror nor with any bias of sexual approval".

So, having warned his readers that he is going to set out to prove that Horry was a nasty queer (but not nasty because he was a queer, because that would be homophobic and we're not homophobic, oh no), Mowl sets off into his book. He's structured it in a sort of loosely categorical manner, the categories roughly corresponding with time periods, so we get Horry's schooldays, trip to Europe, work on Strawberry Hill, politicking, and so on. The categories don't always work well chronologically, which gives a disjointed feel to the book, and Mowl seems rather to have lost interest in his subject somewhere around 1770, and skims rapidly over the last 27 years of his life in a couple of chapters, which I found rather annoying, as I wanted to know more about the Berry family. Also, why does Mowl dismiss Anne Damer as "that unpleasant woman"?

The one thing that did seem very clear to me in this book was not the character or personality of Horace Walpole, which barely broke the surface; it was the author's simultaneous liking for and disapproval of his subject. Horry was unpleasant, Mowl asserts, but when he gives examples, he seems to be enjoying the unpleasantness far too much. Nice people don't behave like that, he seems to be saying, but don't we wish we had the balls to! Horry was homosexual, he says - but he's long on assertions and short on evidence (quite a lot of "evidence exists" type statements without actually saying what the evidence is; most irritating).

And then there's the casual homophobia. That line in the Introduction, "a homosexual who consorted with other homosexuals and bisexuals" is loaded to begin with. And then, for example, in Chapter 5: Horace in Love:
Intelligence services are wise to mistrust homosexuals. Being rejected by society at one level, they tend to stand apart at others.
I mightn't mind that as a statement of historical attitudes, but it's cast in the present tense, as a fact. Further, similar examples abound.

So, overall, nasty homophobia plus failing to fulfil either of a biographer's briefs (no insight into subject's character, no thorough description of subject's life) equals Fail.

I wish I was independently wealthy. Then I could go do my own research and find out the things that I want to know about Horry's life, time and friends. Relying on other biographers to tell me what I want to know is beginning to bring to mind C. S. Lewis' assertion that "I write the stories that I want to read, because no one else is going to write them for me."

[Hana · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hurry is so dear to me and he’s excellent company through the 18th century. Well-cultured, witty, woefully flawed, effortlessly charming, which is why it’s such a shame that he’s barely a presence in his own bloody book.

The author seems too preoccupied with proving his ludicrous contention that Horace was gay and therefore an outsider which, either as a product of or coincidence, made him a nasty man.

This book is painfully homophobic in places but it’s a mind boggling kind of homophobic because the author seems to think he’s being progressive. No babes, you can’t say that homosexuals make bad historical sources because being outcasts from society makes them catty and fickle - that’s plain dumb. Horace is catty and fickle, he also might happen to gay. That’s the point you should make instead.

Learnt nothing much about Walpole but lots about small dogs (wonderful, great content) the Duke of Lincoln’s penis (terrible, I want to bleach my eyes).