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Table of Contents

The Walpoles of Houghton.—Horace Walpole born, 24 September, 1717.—Lady Louisa Stuart's Story.—Scattered Facts of his Boyhood.—Minor Anecdotes.—'La belle Jennings.'—The Bugles.—Interview with George I. before his Death.—Portrait at this time.—Goes to Eton, 26 April, 1727.—His Studies and Schoolfellows.—The 'Triumvirate,' the 'Quadruple Alliance.'—Entered at Lincoln's Inn, 27 May, 1731.—Leaves Eton, September, 1734.—Goes to King's College, Cambridge, 11 March, 1735.—His University Studies.—Letters from Cambridge.—Verses in the Gratulatio.—Verses in Memory of Henry VI.—Death of Lady Walpole, 20 August, 1737.

The Walpoles of Houghton, in Norfolk, ten miles from King's Lynn, were an ancient family, tracing their pedigree to a certain Reginald de Walpole who was living in the time of William the Conqueror. Under Henry II. there was a Sir Henry de Walpol of Houton and Walpol; and thenceforward an orderly procession of Henrys and Edwards and Johns (all 'of Houghton') carried on the family name to the coronation of Charles II., when, in return for his vote and interest as a member of the Convention Parliament, one Edward Walpole was made a Knight of the Bath. This Sir Edward was in due time succeeded by his son, Robert, who married well, sat for Castle Rising,[1] one of the two family boroughs (the other being King's Lynn, for which his father had been member), and reputably filled the combined offices of county magnate and colonel of militia. But his chief claim to distinction is that his eldest son, also a Robert, afterwards became the famous statesman and Prime Minister to whose 'admirable prudence, fidelity, and success' England owes her prosperity under the first Hanoverians. It is not, however, with the life of 'that corrupter of parliaments, that dissolute tipsy cynic, that courageous lover of peace and liberty, that great citizen, patriot, and statesman,'—to borrow a passage from one of Mr. Thackeray's graphic vignettes—that these pages are concerned. It is more material to their purpose to note that in the year 1700, and on the 30th day of July in that year (being the day of the death of the Duke of Gloucester, heir presumptive to the crown of England), Robert Walpole, junior, then a young man of three-and-twenty, and late scholar of King's College, Cambridge, took to himself a wife. The lady chosen was Miss Catherine Shorter, eldest daughter of John Shorter, of Bybrook, an old Elizabethan red-brick house near Ashford in Kent. Her grandfather, Sir John Shorter, had been Lord Mayor of London under James II., and her father was a Norway timber merchant, having his wharf and counting-house on the Southwark side of the Thames, and his town residence in Norfolk Street, Strand, where, in all probability, his daughter met her future husband. They had a family of four sons and two daughters. One of the sons, William, died young. The third son, Horatio,[2] or Horace, born, as he himself tells us, on the 24th September, 1717, O. S., is the subject of this memoir.

With the birth of Horace Walpole is connected a scandal so industriously repeated by his later biographers that (although it has received far more attention than it deserves) it can scarcely be left unnoticed here. He had, it is asserted, little in common, either in tastes or appearance, with his elder brothers Robert and Edward, and he was born eleven years after the rest of his father's children. This led to a suggestion which first found definite expression in the Introductory Anecdotes supplied by Lady Louisa Stuart to Lord Wharncliffe's edition of the works of her grandmother, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.[3] It was to the effect that Horace was not the son of Sir Robert Walpole, but of one of his mother's admirers, Carr, Lord Hervey, elder brother of Pope's 'Sporus,' the Hervey of the Memoirs. It is advanced in favour of this supposition that his likeness to the Herveys, both physically and mentally, was remarkable; that the whilom Catherine Shorter was flighty, indiscreet, and fond of admiration; and that Sir Robert's cynical disregard of his wife's vagaries, as well as his own gallantries (his second wife, Miss Skerret, had been his mistress), were matters of notoriety. On the other hand, there is no indication that any suspicion of his parentage ever crossed the mind of Horace Walpole himself. His devotion to his mother was one of the most consistent traits in a character made up of many contradictions; and although between the frail and fastidious virtuoso and the boisterous, fox-hunting Prime Minister there could have been but little sympathy, the son seems nevertheless to have sedulously maintained a filial reverence for his father, of whose enemies and detractors he remained, until his dying day, the implacable foe. Moreover, it must be remembered that, admirable as are Lady Louisa Stuart's recollections, in speaking of Horace Walpole she is speaking of one whose caustic pen and satiric tongue had never spared the reputation of the vivacious lady whose granddaughter she was.

With this reference to what can be, at best, but an insoluble question, we may return to the story of Walpole's earlier years. Of his childhood little is known beyond what he has himself told in the Short Notes of my Life which he drew up for the use of Mr. Berry, the nominal editor of his works.[4] His godfathers, he says, were the Duke of Grafton and his father's second brother, Horatio, who afterwards became Baron Walpole of Wolterton. His godmother was his aunt, the beautiful Dorothy Walpole, who, escaping the snares of Lord Wharton, as related by Lady Louisa Stuart, had become the second wife of Charles, second Viscount Townshend. In 1724, he was 'inoculated for the small-pox;' and in the following year, was placed with his cousins, Lord Townshend's younger sons, at Bexley, in Kent, under the charge of one Weston, son to the Bishop of Exeter of that name. In 1726, the same course was pursued at Twickenham, and in the winter months he went to Lord Townshend's. Much of his boyhood, however, must have been spent in the house 'next the College' at Chelsea, of which his father became possessed in 1722. It still exists in part, with but little alteration, as the infirmary of the hospital, and Ward No. 7 is said to have been its dining-room.[5] With this, or with some other reception-chamber at Chelsea, is connected one of the scanty anecdotes of this time. Once, when Walpole was a boy, there came to see his mother one of those formerly famous beauties chronicled by Anthony Hamilton—'la belle Jennings,' elder sister to the celebrated Duchess of Marlborough, and afterwards Duchess of Tyrconnell. At this date she was a needy Jacobite seeking Lady Walpole's interest in order to obtain a pension. She no longer possessed those radiant charms which under Charles had revealed her even through the disguise of an orange-girl; and now, says Walpole, annotating his own copy of the Memoirs of Grammont, 'her eyes being dim, and she full of flattery, she commended the beauty of the prospect; but unluckily the room in which they sat looked only against the garden-wall.'[6]

Another of the few events of his boyhood which he records, illustrates the old proverb that 'One half of the world knows not how the other half lives,' rather than any particular phase of his biography. Going with his mother to buy some bugles (beads), at the time when the opposition to his father was at its highest, he notes that having made her purchase—beads were then out of fashion, and the shop was in some obscure alley in the City, where lingered unfashionable things—Lady Walpole bade the shopman send it home. Being asked whither, she replied, 'To Sir Robert Walpole's.' 'And who,' rejoined he coolly, 'is Sir Robert Walpole?'[7] But the most interesting incident of his youth was the visit he paid to the King, which he has himself related in Chapter I. of the Reminiscences. How it came about he does not know, but at ten years old an overmastering desire seized him to inspect His Majesty. This childish caprice was so strong that his mother, who seldom thwarted him, solicited the Duchess of Kendal (the maîtresse en titre) to obtain for her son the honour of kissing King George's hand before he set out upon that visit to Hanover from which he was never to return. It was an unusual request, but being made by the Prime Minister's wife, could scarcely be refused. To conciliate etiquette and avoid precedent, however, it was arranged that the audience should be in private and at night. 'Accordingly, the night but one before the King began his last journey [i.e., on 1 June, 1727], my mother carried me at ten at night to the apartment of the Countess of Walsingham [Melusina de Schulemberg, the Duchess's reputed niece], on the ground floor, towards the garden at St. James's, which opened into that of her aunt, … apartments occupied by George II. after his Queen's death, and by his successive mistresses, the Countesses of Suffolk [Mrs. Howard] and Yarmouth [Madame de Walmoden]. Notice being given that the King was come down to supper, Lady Walsingham took me alone into the Duchess's ante-room, where we found alone the King and her. I knelt down, and kissed his hand. He said a few words to me, and my conductress led me back to my mother. The person of the King is as perfect in my memory as if I saw him but yesterday. It was that of an elderly man, rather pale, and exactly like his pictures and coins; not tall; of an aspect rather good than august; with a dark tie-wig, a plain coat, waistcoat, and breeches of snuff-coloured cloth, with stockings of the same colour, and a blue ribband over all. So entirely was he my object that I do not believe I once looked at the Duchess; but as I could not avoid seeing her on entering the room, I remember that just beyond His Majesty stood a very tall, lean, ill-favoured old lady; but I did not retain the least idea of her features, nor know what the colour of her dress was.'[8] In the Walpoliana (p. 25)[9] Walpole is made to say that his introducer was his father, and that the King took him up in his arms and kissed him. Walpole's own written account is the more probable one. His audience must have been one of the last the King granted, for, as already stated, it was almost on the eve of his departure; and ten days later, when his chariot clattered swiftly into the courtyard of his brother's palace at Osnabruck, he lay dead in his seat, and the reign of his successor had begun.

Although Walpole gives us a description of George I., he does not, of course, supply us with any portrait of himself. But in Mr. Peter Cunningham's excellent edition of the Correspondence there is a copy of an oil-painting belonging (1857) to Mrs. Bedford of Kensington, which, upon the faith of a Cupid who points with an arrow to the number ten upon a dial, may be accepted as representing him about the time of the above interview. It is a full length of a slight, effeminate-looking lad in a stiff-skirted coat, knee-breeches, and open-breasted laced waistcoat, standing in a somewhat affected attitude at the side of the afore-mentioned sundial. He has dark, intelligent eyes, and a profusion of light hair curling abundantly about his ears and reaching to his neck. If the date given in the Short Notes be correct, he must have already become an Eton boy, since he says that he went to that school on the 26th April, 1727, and he adds in the Reminiscences that he shed a flood of tears for the King's death, when, 'with the other scholars at Eton College,' he walked in procession to the proclamation of his successor. Of the cause of this emotion he seems rather doubtful, leaving us to attribute it partly to the King's condescension in gratifying his childish loyalty, partly to the feeling that, as the Prime Minister's son, it was incumbent on him to be more concerned than his schoolfellows; while the spectators, it is hinted, placed it to the credit of a third and not less cogent cause—the probability of that Minister's downfall. Of this, however, as he says, he could not have had the slightest conception. His tutor at Eton was Henry Bland, eldest son of the master of the school. 'I remember,' says Walpole, writing later to his relative and schoolfellow Conway, 'when I was at Eton, and Mr. Bland had set me an extraordinary task, I used sometimes to pique myself upon not getting it, because it was not immediately my school business. What, learn more than I was absolutely forced to learn! I felt the weight of learning that, for I was a blockhead, and pushed up above my parts.' That, as the son of the great Minister, he was pushed, is probably true; but, despite his own disclaimer, it is clear that his abilities were by no means to be despised. Indeed, one of the pièces justificatives in the story of Lady Louisa Stuart, though advanced for another purpose, is distinctly in favour of something more than average talent. Supporting her theory as to his birth by the statement that in his boyhood he was left so entirely in the hands of his mother as to have little acquaintance with his father, she goes on to say that 'Sir Robert Walpole took scarcely any notice of him, till his proficiency at Eton School, when a lad of some standing, drew his attention, and proved that whether he had or had not a right to the name he went by, he was likely to do it honour.'[10] Whatever this may be held to prove, it certainly proves that he was not the blockhead he declares himself to have been.

Among his schoolmates he made many friends. For his cousins, Henry (afterwards Marshal) Conway and Lord Hertford, Conway's elder brother, he formed an attachment which lasted through life, and many of his best letters were written to these relatives. Other associates were the later lyrist, Charles Hanbury Williams, and the famous wit, George Augustus Selwyn, both of whom, if the child be father to the man, must be supposed to have had unusual attractions for their equally witty schoolmate. Another contemporary at school, to whom, in after life, he addressed many letters, was William Cole, subsequently to develop into a laborious antiquary, and probably already exhibiting proclivities towards 'tall copies' and black letter. But his chiefest friends, no doubt, were grouped in the two bodies christened respectively the 'triumvirate' and the 'quadruple alliance.'

Of these the 'triumvirate' was the less important. It consisted of Walpole and the two sons of Brigadier-General Edward Montagu. George, the elder, afterwards M.P. for Northampton, and the recipient of some of the most genuine specimens of his friend's correspondence, is described in advanced age as 'a gentleman-like body of the vieille cour,' usually attended by a younger brother, who was still a midshipman at the mature age of sixty, and whose chief occupation consisted in carrying about his elder's snuff-box. Charles Montagu, the remaining member of the 'triumvirate,' became a Lieut.-General and Knight of the Bath. But it was George, who had 'a fine sense of humour, and much curious information,' who was Walpole's favourite. 'Dear George,'—he writes to him from Cambridge—'were not the playing fields at Eton food for all manner of flights? No old maid's gown, though it had been tormented into all the fashions from King James to King George, ever underwent so many transformations as those poor plains have in my idea. At first I was contented with tending a visionary flock, and sighing some pastoral name to the echo of the cascade under the bridge. How happy should I have been to have had a kingdom only for the pleasure of being driven from it, and living disguised in an humble vale! As I got further into Virgil and Clelia, I found myself transported from Arcadia to the garden of Italy; and saw Windsor Castle in no other view than the Capitoli immobile saxum.' Further on he makes an admission which need scarcely surprise us. 'I can't say I am sorry I was never quite a schoolboy: an expedition against bargemen, or a match at cricket, may be very pretty things to recollect; but, thank my stars, I can remember things that are very near as pretty. The beginning of my Roman history was spent in the asylum, or conversing in Egeria's hallowed grove; not in thumping and pummelling King Amulius's herdsmen.'[11] The description seems to indicate a schoolboy of a rather refined and effeminate type, who would probably fare ill with robuster spirits. But Walpole's social position doubtless preserved him from the persecution which that variety generally experiences at the hands—literally the hands—of the tyrants of the playground.

The same delicacy of organisation seems to have been a main connecting link in the second or 'quadruple alliance' already referred to—an alliance, it may be, less intrinsically intimate, but more obviously cultivated. The most important figure in this quartet was a boy as frail and delicate as Walpole himself, 'with a broad, pale brow, sharp nose and chin, large eyes, and a pert expression,' who was afterwards to become famous as the author of one of the most popular poems in the language, the Elegy written in a Country Church Yard. Thomas Gray was at this time about thirteen, and consequently somewhat older than his schoolmate. Another member of the association was Richard West, also slightly older, a grandson of the Bishop Burnet who wrote the History of My Own Time, and son of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland. West, a slim, thoughtful lad, was the most precocious genius of the party, already making verses in Latin and English, and making them even in his sleep. The fourth member was Thomas Ashton, afterwards Fellow of Eton College and Rector of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate. Such was the group which may be pictured sauntering arm in arm through the Eton meadows, or threading the avenue which is still known as the 'Poet's Walk.' Each of the four had his nickname, either conferred by himself or by his schoolmates. Ashton, for example, was Plato; Gray was Orosmades.

On 27 May, 1731, Walpole was entered at Lincoln's Inn, his father intending him for the law. 'But'—he says in the Short Notes—'I never went thither, not caring for the profession.' On 23 September, 1734, he left Eton for good, and no further particulars of his school-days remain. That they were not without their pleasant memories may, however, be inferred from the letters already quoted, and especially from one to George Montagu written some time afterwards upon the occasion of a visit to the once familiar scenes. It is dated from the Christopher Inn, a famous old hostelry, well known to Eton boys—'The Christopher. How great I used to think anybody just landed at the Christopher! But here are no boys for me to send for; there I am, like Noah, just returned into his old world again, with all sorts of queer feels about me. By the way, the clock strikes the old cracked sound; I recollect so much, and remember so little; and want to play about; and am so afraid of my playfellows; and am ready to shirk Ashton; and can't help making fun of myself; and envy a dame over the way, that has just locked in her boarders, and is going to sit down in a little hot parlour to a very bad supper, so comfortably! And I could be so jolly a dog if I did not fat—which, by the way, is the first time the word was ever applicable to me. In short, I should be out of all bounds if I was to tell you half I feel—how young again I am one minute, and how old the next. But do come and feel with me, when you will—to-morrow. Adieu! If I don't compose myself a little more before Sunday morning, when Ashton is to preach ['Plato' at the date of this letter had evidently taken orders], I shall certainly be in a bill for laughing at church; but how to help it, to see him in the pulpit, when the last time I saw him here was standing up funking over against a conduit to be catechised.'[12]

This letter, of which the date is not given, but which Cunningham places after March, 1737, must have been written some time after the writer had taken up his residence at Cambridge in his father's college of King's.[13] This he did in March, 1735, following an interval of residence in London. By this time the 'quadruple alliance' had been broken up by the defection of West, who, much against his will, had gone to Christ Church, Oxford. Ashton and Gray had, however, been a year at Cambridge, the latter as a fellow-commoner of Peterhouse, the former at Walpole's own college, King's. Cole and the Conways were also at Cambridge, so that much of the old intercourse must have been continued. Walpole's record of his university studies is of the most scanty kind. He does little more than give us the names of his tutors, public and private. In civil law he attended the lectures of Dr. Dickens of Trinity Hall; in anatomy, those of Dr. Battie. French, he says, he had learnt at Eton. His Italian master at Cambridge was Signor Piazza (who had at least an Italian name!), and his instructor in drawing was the miniaturist Bernard Lens, the teacher of the Duke of Cumberland and the Princesses Mary and Louisa. Lens was the author of a New and Complete Drawing Book for curious young Gentlemen and Ladies that study and practice the noble and commendable Art of Drawing, Colouring, etc., and is kindly referred to in the later Anecdotes of Painting. In mathematics, which Walpole seems to have hated as cordially as Swift and Goldsmith and Gray did, he sat at the feet of the blind Professor Nicholas Saunderson, author of the Elements of Algebra.[14] Years afterwards (à propos of a misguided enthusiast who had put the forty-seventh proposition of Euclid into Latin verse) he tells one of his correspondents the result of these ministrations: 'I … was always so incapable of learning mathematics that I could not even get by heart the multiplication table, as blind Professor Saunderson honestly told me, above threescore years ago, when I went to his lectures at Cambridge. After the first fortnight he said to me, 'Young man, it would be cheating you to take your money; for you can never learn what I am trying to teach you.' I was exceedingly mortified, and cried; for, being a Prime Minister's son, I had firmly believed all the flattery with which I had been assured that my parts were capable of anything. I paid a private instructor for a year; but, at the year's end, was forced to own Saunderson had been in the right.'[15] This private instructor was in all probability Mr. Trevigar, who, Walpole says, read lectures to him in mathematics and philosophy. From other expressions in his letters, it must be inferred that his progress in the dead languages, if respectable, was not brilliant. He confesses, on one occasion, his inability to help Cole in a Latin epitaph, and he tells Pinkerton that he never was a good Greek scholar.

His correspondence at this period, chiefly addressed to West and George Montagu, is not extensive, but it is already characteristic. In one of his letters to Montagu he encloses a translation of a little French dialogue between a turtle-dove and a passer-by. The verses are of no particular merit, but in the comment one recognizes a cast of style soon to be familiar. 'You will excuse this gentle nothing, I mean mine, when I tell you I translated it out of pure good-nature for the use of a disconsolate wood-pigeon in our grove, that was made a widow by the barbarity of a gun. She coos and calls me so movingly, 'twould touch your heart to hear her. I protest to you it grieves me to pity her. She is so allicholly[16] as any thing. I'll warrant you now she's as sorry as one of us would be. Well, good man, he's gone, and he died like a lamb. She's an unfortunate woman, but she must have patience.'[17] In another letter to West, after expressing his astonishment that Gray should be at Burnham in Buckinghamshire, and yet be too indolent to revisit the old Eton haunts in his vicinity, he goes on to gird at the university curriculum. At Cambridge, he says, they are supposed to betake themselves 'to some trade, as logic, philosophy, or mathematics.' But he has been used to the delicate food of Parnassus, and can never condescend to the grosser studies of Alma Mater. 'Sober cloth of syllogism colour suits me ill; or, what's worse, I hate clothes that one must prove to be of no colour at all. If the Muses cœlique vias et sidera monstrent, and quâ vi maria alta tumescant; why accipiant: but 'tis thrashing, to study philosophy in the abstruse authors. I am not against cultivating these studies, as they are certainly useful; but then they quite neglect all polite literature, all knowledge of this world. Indeed, such people have not much occasion for this latter; for they shut themselves up from it, and study till they know less than any one. Great mathematicians have been of great use; but the generality of them are quite unconversible: they frequent the stars, sub pedibusque vident nubes, but they can't see through them. I tell you what I see; that by living amongst them, I write of nothing else: my letters are all parallelograms, two sides equal to two sides; and every paragraph an axiom, that tells you nothing but what every mortal almost knows.'[18] In an earlier note he has been on a tour to Oxford, and, with a premonition of the future connoisseur of Strawberry Hill, criticises the gentlemen's seats on the road. 'Coming back, we saw Easton Neston [in Northamptonshire], a seat of Lord Pomfret, where in an old greenhouse is a wonderful fine statue of Tully, haranguing a numerous assemblage of decayed emperors, vestal virgins with new noses, Colossus's, Venus's, headless carcases and carcaseless heads, pieces of tombs, and hieroglyphics.'[19] A little later he has been to his father's seat at Houghton: 'I am return'd again to Cambridge, and can tell you what I never expected—that I like Norfolk. Not any of the ingredients, as Hunting or Country Gentlemen, for I had nothing to do with them, but the county; which a little from Houghton is woody, and full of delightfull prospects. I went to see Norwich and Yarmouth, both which I like exceedingly. I spent my time at Houghton for the first week almost alone. We have a charming garden, all wilderness; much adapted to my Romantick inclinations.' In after life the liking for Norfolk here indicated does not seem to have continued, especially when his father's death had withdrawn a part of its attractions. He 'hated Norfolk,'—says Mr. Cunningham. 'He did not care for Norfolk ale, Norfolk turnips, Norfolk dumplings, or Norfolk turkeys. Its flat, sandy, aguish scenery was not to his taste.' He preferred 'the rich blue prospects' of his mother's county, Kent.

Of literary effort while at Cambridge, Walpole's record is not great. In 1736, he was one of the group of university poets—Gray and West being also of the number—who addressed congratulatory verses to Frederick, Prince of Wales, upon his marriage with the Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha; and he wrote a poem (which is reprinted in vol. i. of his works) to the memory of the founder of King's College, Henry VI. This is dated 2 February, 1738. In the interim Lady Walpole died. Her son's references to his loss display the most genuine regret. In a letter to Charles Lyttelton (afterwards the well-known Dean of Exeter, and Bishop of Carlisle), which is not included in Cunningham's edition, and is apparently dated in error September, 1732, instead of 1737,[20] he dwells with much feeling on 'the surprizing calmness and courage which my dear Mother show'd before her death. I believe few women wou'd behave so well, & I am certain no man cou'd behave better. For three or four days before she dyed, she spoke of it with less indifference than one speaks of a cold; and while she was sensible, which she was within her two last hours, she discovered no manner of apprehension.' That his warm affection for her was well known to his friends may be inferred from a passage in one of Gray's letters to West: 'While I write to you, I hear the bad news of Lady Walpole's death on Saturday night last [20 Aug., 1737]. Forgive me if the thought of what my poor Horace must feel on that account, obliges me to have done.'[21] Lady Walpole was buried in Westminster Abbey, where, on her monument in Henry VIIth's Chapel, may be read the piously eulogistic inscription which her youngest son composed to her memory—an inscription not easy to reconcile in all its terms with the current estimate of her character. But in August, 1737, she was considerably over fifty, and had probably long outlived the scandals of which she had been the subject in the days when Kneller and Eckardt painted her as a young and beautiful woman.