Horace Walpole
liorace Walpole. A Biography. By R. W. Kerton-Cremer. (Duckworth. 16s.)
IN an article written in 1833 Macaulay condemned Horace Walpole for devoting a lifetime of eighty years to nothing but the sunny halves of peaches. This charge cannot be sustained, but if it could it is likely that the present age would be more disposed to admire than to accuse. The nineteenth century was too confident and assertive to have much sympathy to spare for the forgotten subtleties of conduct and motive by which Horace Walpole's life was regulated ; but our own age which makes up in sympathetic insight what it has lost in self-confidence is quite capable of appreciating the variety and extent of his achievement. Mr. Ketton-Cremer makes no attempt to conceal Walpole's faults and absurdities, but he is the first of Walpole's biographers to do full justice to his subject. Walpole was in the best sense an amateur who attained distinction in many fields, and even in his early twenties it had become the main conscious object of his life to chronicle the social and political history of his age. In carrying out this task, for which he knew he possessed qualifications which were altogether exceptional, Walpole was brilliantly successful ; he never once ceased to be aware of the value of the service which he was rendering to posterity, and he was happy all his life in that awareness.
In writing this extremely readable biography, Mr. Ketton- Cremer has enjoyed the friendship and assistance of that fine scholar and collector of Walpole material, Mr. W. S. Lewis, of Farmington, Connecticut. The Yale edition of Walpole's cor- respondence which Mr. Lewis is at present occupied in editing is expected to run into about 5o volumes. It is upon the trans- cendant merit of the best of these letters—modelled admittedly in the beginning upon those of Madame de Sevigne—that Walpole's fame ultimately rests, and Mr. Ketton-Cremer shows very entertainingly the manner in which Walpole's principal correspondents were selected, and, when the need arose, replaced. At intervals Walpole demanded from his correspondents the return of all his letters in order that they might be annotated, edited, altered and finally handed over to his executors in the form most suitable for the instruction and delectation of posterity.
One aspect of Horace Walpole's life which is brought out particularly well by Mr. Ketton-Cremer is his attitude of emotional aloofness. Walpole possessed an abundance of high spirits, and to the end of his life he adored a masquerade ; but he evaded all entangling relationships and politely repulsed the affectionate possessiveness of Madame Grifoni, Thomas Gray or Madame du Deffand. Walpole was, as Mr. Ketton-Cremer observes, a natural celibate, and the relationships which really influenced his life were those into which the element of physical passion did not enter—his love for his mother and for his soldier cousin, Harry Conway. It was by a curious irony that after seventy years of such emotional detachment Horace Walpole should at last in extreme old age have become " the helpless victim of a love which he could neither deflect nor overcome "—an old man's doting passion for Mary Berry.
Mr. Ketton-Cremer's portrait of Horace Walpole is subtly and elegantly drawn. It depicts with admirable lucidity the main interests of Walpole's life—his career as a man of fashion and an Inimitable correspondent ; his career as an antiquarian, the creator of Strawberry Hill and the author of a varied body of literary work ; and lastly his career as a politician and a writer of political memoirs. Mr. Ketton-Cremer has made use of a considerable amount of new material, and he brings out fully for the first time the nature and importance of Walpole's political activities. There are one or two places only in which the seams of Mr. Ketton-Cremer's narrative appear slightly obtrusive, and it might have been an advantage if discussions of controversial matter, such as the quarrel between Walpole and Gray, had been rele- gated to the notes, or to an appendix, instead of being incorporated
in the text. This is, however, a minor point of criticism and every page of this excellent biography is enjoyable. Mr. Ketton- Cremer modestly expresses the hope that Mr. Lewis, after com- pleting his great edition of Walpole's correspondence, will write his final and definitive biography. Unless and until he does so this book is likely to remain the standard Life.
PHILIP MAGNUS.
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