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Hugh Walpole
The author draws on Walpole's journals, letters and diaries to give a skillful and intimate portrayal of both the man and the writer.
- GenresBiographyNonfiction
520 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
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About the author
Rupert Hart-Davis
38 books1 followerSir Rupert Charles Hart-Davis was an English publisher, editor and man of letters.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 13, 2012
Read this a few years ago back in 2001 just as I got into my 'wow I love Hugh Walpole and want to read anything and everything about him' phase. To my knowledge there are only four books written about this rather overlooked storyteller and now I have only Elizabeth Steele's contribution to read. Hart-Davis writes sympathetically and fairly euphemistically about Walpole, a closeted gay man at a time thirty or forty years before the Wolfenden report began the long journey from criminality of homosexuality to its present position, but it is an interesting trawl through the man's enormous literary output and, for the two decades prior to World War II, his enormous literary influence.
He died in 1941 and very swiftly the backstabbing began. Prior to his death, with the notable exception of Somerset Maugham, most writers had kept their vicious barbs under wraps but with his death came a quite horrible feeding frenzy in which people seemed to compete to see who could belittle and make fun of him the most. This literary cowardice on the part of writers seems unworthy and , more to the point, wholly unnecessary. The man was dead, surely if his writing is worthless it would sink , no need to cruelly destroy.
Walpole was not a great writer, he did not contribute hugely to the moving on of literature but he did tell a brilliant story and could paint a vibrant character with a few phrases and images. The assassination of his admittedly small talent has served to send him into the backroom of forgotten disregard which in my opinion is a waste. I believe his story telling would have survived to be read and enjoyed had others not gone out of their way to 'explode the myth'. His writing career painting pictures of a stratified society took off just as the 'Great War' began and so, as some commentators say, his youthful style was to an extent out of vogue almost immediately as the trenches swept aside the remnants of the squirearchy and society began to question and uproot long accepted opinions.
His style changed and he wrote a good deal; some excellent such as his two novels of the russian revolution, a revolution he experienced first hand whilst in the british embassy in Petrograd at the time of the October Bolshevik bloodlust. Indeed Hart-Davis quotes letters Walpole wrote to friends and diary entries in which he records things he saw, murders he witnessed and these same incidents appear most powerfully in 'The Secret City', the second of the two Russian novels.
Walpole created a whole world, focusing around families and people who dwelt in Glebeshire an imagined county complete with Cathedral City, Polchester. I got into reading Walpole whilst living and working in Truro, Cornwall which boasts the last Anglican Diocese to be created in England. Its cathedral built in the 1870's and 18880's. Reading the book I was fascinated to read that Walpole's father was a canon of this cathedral whilst Walpole was a boy and then they moved to another of my favourite cathedral cities Durham. Interestingly the imagined city of Polchester is quite clearly a conjoining of the two cities of Truro and Durham. I love the way Walpole was able so easily to take and mould his own experiences and life path and absorb it into his stories. Of course, i realize that is what novelists do all the time but Hart-Davis cleverly brings out the links about which one might otherwise have no idea.
I thought I had already reviewed this book but evidently not. It is not a brilliant biography, perhaps because Walpole was not a brilliant subject but Hart-Davis does a good job in bringing to the public eye an overlooked novelist. He wrote a mean ghost story and some in the volume 'All Souls' Eve' are genuinely unsettling and unnerving. He wrote historical sagas, most famously the Herries Chronicles following 200 years in the same family and he wrote story after story featuring and revolving around the same characters linked and counterlinked by relationship and marriage and reputation. Some of his stories were sinister, some bizarre and some intriguing but they were all, almost without exception, easy page turners. If character and plot and simpe stories entertain you from time to time, Walpole does a useful job.
He also has a great turn of phrase and one of his descriptions has always stuck in my mind just because it was so cleverly expressive. Speaking of one of his matriarchs seeking to marry off daughters he wrote
'She flung her daughters at suitors, rather as one throws darts at a dartboard'
For some reason i have alsways loved this sentence. It is clever, funny and I defy anyone not to be able to conjure up, relatively easily, a picture of the 'Grande dame' of which he was speaking.
He died in 1941 and very swiftly the backstabbing began. Prior to his death, with the notable exception of Somerset Maugham, most writers had kept their vicious barbs under wraps but with his death came a quite horrible feeding frenzy in which people seemed to compete to see who could belittle and make fun of him the most. This literary cowardice on the part of writers seems unworthy and , more to the point, wholly unnecessary. The man was dead, surely if his writing is worthless it would sink , no need to cruelly destroy.
Walpole was not a great writer, he did not contribute hugely to the moving on of literature but he did tell a brilliant story and could paint a vibrant character with a few phrases and images. The assassination of his admittedly small talent has served to send him into the backroom of forgotten disregard which in my opinion is a waste. I believe his story telling would have survived to be read and enjoyed had others not gone out of their way to 'explode the myth'. His writing career painting pictures of a stratified society took off just as the 'Great War' began and so, as some commentators say, his youthful style was to an extent out of vogue almost immediately as the trenches swept aside the remnants of the squirearchy and society began to question and uproot long accepted opinions.
His style changed and he wrote a good deal; some excellent such as his two novels of the russian revolution, a revolution he experienced first hand whilst in the british embassy in Petrograd at the time of the October Bolshevik bloodlust. Indeed Hart-Davis quotes letters Walpole wrote to friends and diary entries in which he records things he saw, murders he witnessed and these same incidents appear most powerfully in 'The Secret City', the second of the two Russian novels.
Walpole created a whole world, focusing around families and people who dwelt in Glebeshire an imagined county complete with Cathedral City, Polchester. I got into reading Walpole whilst living and working in Truro, Cornwall which boasts the last Anglican Diocese to be created in England. Its cathedral built in the 1870's and 18880's. Reading the book I was fascinated to read that Walpole's father was a canon of this cathedral whilst Walpole was a boy and then they moved to another of my favourite cathedral cities Durham. Interestingly the imagined city of Polchester is quite clearly a conjoining of the two cities of Truro and Durham. I love the way Walpole was able so easily to take and mould his own experiences and life path and absorb it into his stories. Of course, i realize that is what novelists do all the time but Hart-Davis cleverly brings out the links about which one might otherwise have no idea.
I thought I had already reviewed this book but evidently not. It is not a brilliant biography, perhaps because Walpole was not a brilliant subject but Hart-Davis does a good job in bringing to the public eye an overlooked novelist. He wrote a mean ghost story and some in the volume 'All Souls' Eve' are genuinely unsettling and unnerving. He wrote historical sagas, most famously the Herries Chronicles following 200 years in the same family and he wrote story after story featuring and revolving around the same characters linked and counterlinked by relationship and marriage and reputation. Some of his stories were sinister, some bizarre and some intriguing but they were all, almost without exception, easy page turners. If character and plot and simpe stories entertain you from time to time, Walpole does a useful job.
He also has a great turn of phrase and one of his descriptions has always stuck in my mind just because it was so cleverly expressive. Speaking of one of his matriarchs seeking to marry off daughters he wrote
'She flung her daughters at suitors, rather as one throws darts at a dartboard'
For some reason i have alsways loved this sentence. It is clever, funny and I defy anyone not to be able to conjure up, relatively easily, a picture of the 'Grande dame' of which he was speaking.
April 14, 2013
The most comprehensive work about Hugh Walpole's life and work. I use it regularly as a reference guide for my Hugh Walpole collection, and for inspiring insights into the life of this incredibly imaginative and prolific man.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews