Horace Walpole’s Gothic Castles, Part 2

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracey V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Frye. This is part two of our
episode on Horace Walpole, in which we will finally get
to all the Gothic horror, Gothic castles, Gothic everything that
we promised in part one and did not talk about
at all, starting basically now.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
In seventeen forty six, Horace Walpole leased a villa in Twickenham,
which is today considered part of Greater London. At the time,
this villa was known locally as Chopped Straw Hall and
it had been built in sixteen ninety eight. The local
lore around it was that its original builder had been
a coachman who had made enough money for the house

(00:54):
by selling all the good hay while feeding chopped straw
to his employer's horses instead. Old paperwork gave the name
of the land that it sat on as Strawberry Hill Shot,
which is where Walpole got the name for the house.
He called it Strawberry Hill.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
When Walpole found this house, it belonged to Elizabeth Deard's Shnevis,
who was the wife of toy maker Paul Daniel Shenevicks,
and also the daughter of toymaker William Deard's. She was
also a toy maker in her own right. Walpole described
her as Missus Shenevick's, the famous toy woman. Walpole finished

(01:32):
out a lease on the house before buying it a
couple of years later.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
His plan from the start was to turn this small
house on five acres of land into a Gothic castle
with its own gardens. This plan doesn't seem to have
come as a surprise to the people who knew him.
In the words of Dorothy Margaret Stewart, quote, it was
inevitable that Walpole should buy a little house somewhere and
make a plaything of it, and cram it with bric

(01:58):
a brac. That he should conceived the idea of making
its roof bristle with many pinnacles, and its sealing's unfurrol
much fan tracery is perhaps no matter for wonder, but
it is matter for thankfulness, since this conception of his
was destined to exert a singular influence upon the most
salutary of all the intellectual movements that mark the second

(02:20):
half of his century. The return to Romance.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
I think this is one of the many passages in
which Dorothy Margaret Stewart comes off to me as both
complimentary to Walpole and also kind of backhandedly judging. Novelist
Clara Reeve, whose book The Old English Baron was inspired
by Walpole's The Castle of a Toronto, included a brief

(02:45):
memoir of him in a combined edition of their two books,
and in it she wrote, quote, mister Walpole's domestic occupations,
as well as his studies, bore evidence of a taste
for English antiquities, which was then uncommon. He loved as
a satirist, has expressed it to gaze on Gothic toys

(03:07):
through Gothic glass in The villa at Strawberry Hill, which
he chose for his abode, gradually swelled into a feudal
castle by the addition of turrets, towers, galleries and corridors,
whose fretted roofs, carved panels, and illuminated windows were garnished
with the appropriate furniture of Sutchen's armorial bearings, shields, tilting lances,

(03:31):
and all the paniply of chivalry.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
A big part of the planning and execution on Walpole's
expansion of this house into a castle was his quote
Committee of Taste, which was made up of Walpole, architect
John Shute, and designer Richard Bentley. Walpole added a library
and a refractory in seventeen fifty three, a gallery, round tower,

(03:55):
great cloister and cabinet in seventeen sixty and seventeen sixty one,
a grand bedchamber in seventeen seventy and another tower in
seventeen seventy six. There were multiple guest bedrooms. Strawberry Hill
also had china cabinets, a pantry, cellars for wine and beer,
a kitchen, an armory, and servants quarters. He more than

(04:19):
doubled the size of the house, adding on turrets and
embellishments and a lot of stained glass windows. He eventually
installed a printing press, and the works he printed included
the poetry of his friend Thomas Gray.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
He also traveled all over parts of rural England to
buy things to fill and decorate this castle with. In
the words of L. B. Seely quote as chamber. After
chamber was added to the castle, it became Walpole's next
care to fill them with fresh antiques. In furniture pictures bronzes, armor,

(04:53):
painted glass, and other like articles. Over time, Walpole amassed
a collection of more than four four thousand paintings, figurines, enamels,
books and artifacts. Walpole thought the collection of miniatures and
enamels in particular was the finest in all of England.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
At one point during all of this work, in seventeen
sixty two, there was a labor dispute, which Walpole wrote
about in one of his letters. Quote, last Saturday night
my workmen took their leave, made their bow and left
me up to the knees in shavings. In short, the
journeyman carpenters, like the cabinet makers, have entered into an
association not to work unless their wages are raised. And

(05:37):
how can one complain the poor fellows who's all the
labor is, see their masters advance their prices every day
and think it reasonable to touch their share. Strawberry Hill
wasn't meant just for Walpole's personal lodgings. It was also
open for tours when he was not in London for
the season, and it was open during that time between

(05:59):
the hours of noon and three for prominent people. He
led these tours himself, but everybody else got led through
by the housekeeper after paying a guinea to do it.
I love everything about this.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
I am enamored, yes.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
And he wrote a guide book for all of this.
It's called A Description of the Villa of mister Horace Walpole,
youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole, Earl of Orford, at
Strawberry Hill, near Twickenham, Middlesex, with an inventory of the furniture, pictures, curiosities, etc.
And it begins quote, it will look I fear a
little like arrogance in a private man to give a

(06:36):
printed description of his villa and collection in which almost
everything is diminutive. It is, not, however, intended for public sale,
and originally was meant only to assist those who should
visit the place. His description of a person's first entrance
into Strawberry Hill in this guide goes like this quote.

(06:57):
You first enter a small, gloomy hall, paved with hexagon
tiles and lighted by two narrow windows of painted glass
representing Saint John and Saint Francis. This hall is united
with the staircase, and both are hung with Gothic paper
painted by one tutor from the screen of Prince Arthur's

(07:18):
tomb in the Cathedral of Worcester. The balustrade was designed
by mister Bentley. At every corner is an antelope one
of Lord Orford's supporters holding a shield. In the well
of the staircase by a cord of black and yellow
hangs a gothic lantern of ting Japan, designed by mister

(07:38):
Bentley and filled with painted glass. The door of it
has an old pane with the arms of their Earl
of Oxford. From there, the guidebook walks through all the rooms,
noting what's in each of them, along with some drawings
of the castle and the features within it, like the
details of the fireplaces. This includes a list of all

(07:59):
the china in the china room. It also includes descriptions
of the chapel and the cottage and the flower garden
that were part of the grounds, and a list of
material printed at Strawberry Hill. I should recall he had
a printing press. There are also floor plans and appendices
and editions of things that had been added to the
house after the guide was originally printed. As I was

(08:21):
reading this, I was like, Okay, I'm at the end.
Why are there still so many more pages than it was?
Multiple additional adenda of lists of things that had been
added to the house. In terms of like the collections,
not the physical structure.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
This house is described as almost the opposite of his
father's neoclassical estate of Houghton Hall. Dorothy Margaret Stewart put
it this way. Quote anything less Gothic than Houghton it
would be impossible to conceive. And Strawberry Hill sparked a
revival in Gothic architecture, which mostly took place in the UK,

(08:57):
but also inspired some buildings in the US and elsewhere
as well. Some of these elements were also part of
Georgian architecture more broadly, that period, of course, being named
for the time in British history spanning the reins from
King George the First through the fourth, but Gothic architecture,
sometimes spelled with a K at the end, included a

(09:19):
lot of decorative motifs that harkened back to the medieval period,
lots and lots of turrets and spires and stained glass.
This trend continued into the nineteenth century and eventually became
known as Victorian Gothic. Walpole eventually started calling Strawberry Hill
his a Toronto, and his most famous novel was interconnected

(09:41):
with his personal castle, and we'll get into all of
that after a sponsor break. Although The Castle of a
Toronto is Horace Walpole's most famous work today, it was
not his first work to be published, or the only

(10:03):
one at all. He had written various poems and essays,
some of which criticized the British government and were published anonymously.
In seventeen fifty seven he published a pamphlet called A
Letter from Choho, a Chinese philosopher at London, to his
friend Lan Chi at picking So. Walpole had developed an

(10:24):
interest in Chinese history and culture while studying at Cambridge,
and this was written from the perspective of one Chinese
man writing to another, but it was really a commentary
on what Walpole saw as the cruelty of the English government.
This followed the execution of Admiral John Bing during the
Seven Years' War. Bing's squadron had been ordered to keep

(10:47):
the French from capturing Minorca and had failed to do so.
Bing was court martialed and found guilty under the twelfth
Article of War, which placed a penalty of death on
anyone who did not quote do his utmost to take
or destroy every ship which it shall be his duty
to engage. Walpole strongly opposed a decision to execute being,

(11:10):
and when he failed to save the admiral wrote this
letter in response, appropriating a Chinese persona to criticize both
the English as a people and the execution specifically. In
seventeen sixty two, Walpole started publishing Anecdotes of painting in England,
with some account of the principal artists and incidental notes

(11:30):
on other arts, collected by the late mister George Virtue
and now digested and published from his original manuscripts by
mister Horace Walpole. This was a work on British art
history that would come out in multiple volumes over the
subsequent decades. As its name suggests, it was expanded from
unpublished notebooks that had been kept by engraver and antiquary

(11:54):
George Virtue, and Walpole had purchased those notebooks. This was
a really ambitition work. It was one that was meant
to provide a thorough account of British art history, and
it is still cited as a useful history of British art.

Speaker 1 (12:10):
In seventeen sixty three as the biggest additions to Strawberry
Hill were nearing completion, Walpole wrote The Castle of a Toronto.
Here's how he described this work in a letter to
the Reverend William Cole quote. I waked one morning in
the beginning of last June from a dream of which
all I could recover was that I had thought myself

(12:31):
in an ancient castle, a very natural dream for a
head filled like mine with Gothic story, and that on
the uppermost banister of a great staircase I saw a
gigantic hand in armor. In the evening, I sat down
and began to write, without knowing in the least what
I intended to say or relate. The work grew on
my hands, and I grew fond of it, ad that

(12:53):
I was very glad to think of anything rather than politics.
In short, I was so engrossed with my tale, which
I completed in less than two months, that one evening
I wrote from the time I had drunk my tea
about six o'clock till half an hour after one in
the morning, when my hand and fingers were so weary
that I could not hold the pen to finish the sentence.

Speaker 2 (13:15):
This book was published on Christmas Eve, seventeen sixty four,
initially without Walpole's name on it, and also not at
the press at Strawberry Hill. The premise was that this
was a translation of a found manuscript, that manuscript originally
written in Italian and dating back to fifteen twenty nine,
and also containing an even earlier work, and in that

(13:38):
first edition not published at Strawberry Hill, not with Walpole's name.
There were definitely readers who thought this framing device was
the real story of where this manuscript had come from.

Speaker 1 (13:50):
The novel itself was set in medieval Naples during the Crusades,
and it blended elements of mystery, horror, and the supernatural.
It told the story of a family that inhabited the castle,
and this family was the subject of an ancient prophecy
that the castle quote should pass from the present family
whenever the real owner should be grown too large to

(14:11):
inhabit it. At the beginning of this story, an enormous
helmet falls from the sky and crushes Conrad. I read
this in college, and this is the one thing I
remember about it was the giant helmet. Conrad was about
to be married to a princess, and that it was
also his father's only male heir, So Conrad's father tries

(14:35):
to marry this princess himself, but a series of events
get in the way of that, some of those events
involving ghosts and other supernatural occurrences. There's a giant sword,
and another prophecy, and a big family secret, and the
castle itself just looms over the whole thing. An eighteen
eleven edition of The Castle of a Toronto includes an

(14:57):
introduction attributed to Scottish author, poet and historians Sir Walter Scott.
Scott said of the novel quote, the Castle of a
Toronto is remarkable not only for the wild interest of
the story, but as the first modern attempt to found
a tale of amusing fiction upon the basis of the
ancient romances of chivalry. Scott went on to say that

(15:18):
it had been quote justly considered not only as the
original and model of a peculiar species of composition, but
as one of the standard works of our lighter literature.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
Scott also described how Walpole wove together the mundane and
the spectacular.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
Quote.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
It was his object to draw such a picture of
domestic life and manners during the feudal times as might
actually have existed, and to paint it checkered and agitated
by the action of supernatural machinery, such as the superstition
of the period received as a matter of devout credulity.

(15:56):
The natural parts of the narrative are so contrived that
they so ssociate themselves with the marvelous occurrences, and by
the force of that association, render those speciosa miraculous, striking,
and impressive, though our cooler reason admits their impossibility, and
he ticked off a number of the things that would

(16:17):
become some of the hallmarks of Gothic literature. Quote his
feudal tyrant, his distressed damsel, He's resigned yet dignified churchmen,
the castle itself, with its feudal arrangement of dungeons, trapdoors,
oratories and galleries, the incidents of the trial, the chivalrous procession,
and the combat. In short, the scene, the performers, and action,

(16:40):
so far as it is natural, form the accompaniments of
his specters and his miracles, and have the same effect
on the mind of the reader that the appearance and
drapery of such a chamber as we have described may
produce upon that of a temporary inmate. The whole point
in Scott's words was quote not merely to site surprise

(17:01):
and terror by the introduction of supernatural agency, but to
wind up the feelings of his reader till they become,
for a moment identified with those of a ruder age,
which held each strange tale devoutly true.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
A second edition of The Castle of a Toronto came
out in seventeen sixty five, and that one revealed that
Horace Walpole had written it. He had named the Castle
for a place that he had seen on a map
of Italy but had not visited during his travels there.
As we sat up at the top of the show.
There are other earlier works that contain some elements of

(17:37):
mystery or horror or the supernatural, like The Castle of
a Toronto did, but this novel is credited with launching
Gothic literature as a genre. It inspired works like Anne
Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho, as well as Jane Austen's Northinger Abbey,
which satirized this genre and was published posthumously. Elements of

(18:01):
Gothic fiction also inspired authors and poets during the Romantic
period that included Mary Shelley with her novel Frankenstein or
the Modern Prometheus Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights and Charlotte Bronte's
Jane Eyre. Walpole continued to write and publish other work
after this. There was an account of the Giants Lately

(18:22):
Discovered in a Letter to a Friend in the Country,
which was published in seventeen sixty six, in which Dorothy
Margaret Stewart said he quote satirized everything and almost everybody
that he disliked methodism and pedantry, slavery and the Stamp Act,
Whitefield and the Grenvilles. Walpole also wrote histories, including Historic

(18:44):
Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third,
which was published in seventeen sixty eight that was a
more sympathetic treatment of the king and raised doubts about
whether he had killed the Princes in the Tower. We
covered the Princes in the Tower in November of twenty
twenty one year. He also published a blank verse drama
called The Mysterious Mother a Tragedy, which was a story

(19:05):
of family betrayal that included a lot of accidental incest.
He also published memoirs of King's George the Second and
George the Third, which were essentially political histories of those
kings reigns. There was even a long essay on modern gardening,
which started out as part of a collection of essays
but was eventually printed as its own standalone booklet. I

(19:29):
wanted to talk more about this essay, but could not
for reasons. We will talk about on Friday. We're going
to take a quick sponsor break, and then we will
talk about some things that happened in the later half
of Walpole's life. Aside from all the Gothic We're going

(19:54):
to spend the last part of this episode on some
of the bigger moments from.

Speaker 2 (19:58):
The later part of Horace walpole life. In seventeen fifty one,
Horace Walpole's brother, Robert Walpole, second Earl of Orford, died
and the title then passed to his son, George. Horace
tried to help find a wife for his nephew, and
this led to a huge dispute between him and his
uncle Horace about who George should marry. This was just

(20:23):
a whole additional drama that we're not going to get
into the details of. But George was just one of
the family connections that Horace really tried to help after
his father's death. That also included financially providing for at
least two of his father's natural daughters.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
In the seventeen fifties, Walpole also developed gout, which is
a form of arthritis. Gout is caused by a complex
process related to how the body breaks down purines into
uric acid. In some people, uric acid builds up and
causes crystals to accumulate in the joints, often affecting the
big toe, and it can be very painful. Sugary beverages, alcohol,

(21:03):
and some types of meat and seafood are high in purines.
So for a long time, gout was primarily associated with
people's diets and their weight. Diet and weight are still
considered to be risk factors, but gout can happen to
anyone regardless of what they eat or what their body
looks like. All of this is connected to Horace Walpole's
experience with gout. We've talked about his being a really

(21:26):
slender person, something that people just commented on his whole life,
But beyond that, he was also known for having a
pretty meager diet, including in what he served to guests
at his home. So he just did not fit the
stereotype of somebody with gout. He referenced this in a
letter to John Shoot, Earl of Stafford, in seventeen sixty quote,

(21:50):
I have got the gout, Yes, the gout in earnest.
I was seized on Monday morning, suffered dismally all night,
and am now wrapped in fur like the picture of
a Morocco ambassador, and am carried to bed by two servants.
You see, virtue and leanness are no preservatives. He also

(22:11):
wrote about how he would have found it easier to
bear if there had been a family history of gout. Quote,
if either my father or mother had had it, I
should not dislike it so much. I am herald enough
to approve it if descended genealogically. But it is an
absolute upstart in me. And what is more provoking, I
had trusted in my great abstinence for keeping me from it.

(22:33):
But thus it is. If I had any gentleman like virtue,
as patriotism or loyalty, I might have got something by them.
I had nothing but that beggarly virtue temperance, and she
had not enough interest to keep me from a fit
of the gout.

Speaker 2 (22:49):
For the rest of his life, while Pole periodically dealt
with intense pain that sometimes made him unable to walk.
Gout was really not well understood, and Walpole also did
not really trust doctors, especially after his father's death. He
blamed his father's death on the medical care that he

(23:09):
had received. So Walpole tried to treat the gout himself,
using tightly wrapped foot coverings made of oiled silk and flannel,
which he called bouticans, and also soaking his feet in
ice water. Sometimes. He also visited bath for therapeutic treatments
in the spas there.

Speaker 1 (23:28):
In seventeen sixty nine, Horace Walpole exchanged a series of
letters with Thomas Chatterton. Chatterton was a poet and writer,
and sent Walpole what was basically a fan letter along
with what he said was a fifteenth century treatise. He
was hoping that Walpole would become his mentor, and Walpole
seems to have been interested in this at first, but

(23:50):
he quickly started to suspect that this document was a forgery.
For example, it was supposedly dated to fourteen sixty nine,
but it used rhyming couplets in a ste from Walpole
in Chatterton's own era. Walpole was also fifty two at
this point, and he distanced himself from Chatterton when he
realized that Chatterton was only sixteen.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
So some time passed between their letters, and Chatterton eventually
wrote to ask for this manuscript back. Walpole didn't send
it back right away. He was getting ready for a
trip to Paris, and it seems like he just forgot
about it. Chatterton later sent him some pretty accusatory letters,
and Walpole started writing an answer, but he did not

(24:32):
send it because he did not want to start some
kind of a big argument. Later on, Chatterton's poetry came
up at a dinner that Walpole was attending at the
Royal Academy, and in that conversation, Walpole was stunned to
learn that Chatterton had taken his own life. A lot
of people really blamed Walpole for Chatterton's suicide, and afterward

(24:54):
Chatterton came to be viewed as a poetic prodigy.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
In August of seventeen seventy one, Walpole learned that his
friend Thomas Gray had died. Afterward, he wrote in a
letter quote, methinks, as we grow old, our only business
here is to adorn the graves of our friends, or
to dig our own. In seventeen seventy five, in the
early months of the Revolutionary War, he wrote a letter

(25:19):
to Horace Mann in which he said, quote, you will
not be surprised that I am what I always was,
a zealot for liberty in every part of the globe,
and consequently that I most heartily wish success to the Americans.
In seventeen eighty, a wave of anti Catholic rioting struck
London in response to the Catholic Relief Act of seventeen

(25:41):
seventy eight. This act allowed Catholics who signed an oath
of allegiance to buy land and join the army. Walpole
documented this through his letters as well. We said earlier
that Walpole showed some anti Catholic sentiments in his writing,
but in these letters he is critical of the rioters
and their leaders. His letter to the Reverend mister Cole

(26:03):
set in part quote, I can give you little account
of the origin of this shocking affair. Negligence was certainly
its nurse, and religion only its godmother. The ostensible author
is in the tower. Twelve or fourteen thousand men have
quashed all tumults, and as no bad account is come
from the country except for a moment at Bath. And

(26:24):
as eight days have passed nay more since the commencement,
I flatter myself the whole nation is shocked at the scene,
and that if planned there was, it was laid only
in and for the metropolis. The lowest and most villainous
of the people, and to no great amount, were almost
the sole actors.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
I think this rioting might wind up being a episode
of the show in the future, because it is not
something that I was even aware had happened. By this point,
Walpole was in his sixties. Dorothy Margaret Stewart described his
last years this quote, So violent and so profound were
the social and political changes that marked his last two decades.

(27:06):
Walpole took refuge as in a fortress within the embattled
walls of Strawberry, and felt himself beleaguered there by uncouth
people and ideas even more uncouth. In December of seventeen
ninety one, Walpole's nephew George died, having developed a reputation
for being extravagant, eccentric, and mentally ill. After his death,

(27:30):
Horace Walpole became fourth Earl of Orford. He described the
estate and title as quote a source of lawsuits among
my near relations, endless conversations with lawyers, and packets of
letters to read every day and answer all. This weight
of new business is too much for the rag of
life that yet hangs about me. He never took his

(27:51):
seat in the House of Lords. Horace Walpole died in
London at his house there, which was at number eleven
Berkeley Square, on March second, seventeen ninety seven. He was
seventy nine. He had dictated an obituary to his secretary
a couple of weeks before, and it read quote yesterday
died at the very advanced age, but of between eighty

(28:14):
and ninety at his house in Berkeley Square, Horace Walpole,
fourth Earl of Orford, after a severe fit of the
gout all over him.

Speaker 1 (28:24):
Walpole never married or had children, so his earldom became
extinct after his death, although it was later revived, only
to become extinct again. He left his property to people
he had been close to later in his life. He
had built a house called Cliveden in seventeen sixty eight,
named for actor Kitty Clive, who lived there for a time.

(28:45):
He left it to sisters Mary and Agnes Barry. Their
father was Walpole's literary executor, but with the understanding that
Mary would be the ones selecting and arranging manuscripts. There
had been some rumors that Walpole planned marriage to Mary,
although at the time he was seventy and she was
twenty four.

Speaker 2 (29:05):
Yeah, I have no idea whether that was a thing
that anyone was actually talking about. Whalpole left Strawberry Hill
to Lady Anne Seymour Damer another person to maybe do
an episode about sometime. She was his cousin's daughter and
his goddaughter. She was a sculptor and he was a

(29:25):
big supporter of her work. He called her a female genius.
While her contemporaries described her as a saphist, the word
lesbian wasn't widely used during her lifetime. She did not
claim the label of saphist, and to be clear, this
was something other people were calling her in order to

(29:45):
denigrate her. But it is clear that she had deep
and loving relationships with other women, including with Mary Barry, which.

Speaker 1 (29:53):
Brings us to Walpole's own identity. Like a number of
other people that we've talked about on the show, he's
definitely someone who has a place under the umbrella of
queer history. But different historians have drawn different conclusions on
exactly how using today's understanding of things like gender and
sexual orientation, and this can be difficult to do, both

(30:15):
because of how people in the past express their thoughts
and feelings and because as a society, our understanding of
sex and gender is continually evolving. Some historians conclude that
Horace Walpole had romantic and sexual relationships with men and women,
others that he only had them with men, and some

(30:36):
that he never had a sexual relationship with anyone of
any gender.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
Beyond the Barry sisters and Lady Anne Seymour Damer. Walpole's
social circle was full of people who just didn't follow
conventions about gender and relationships. Accounts of his relationships with
the men in his life can come across as very campy,
and a number of essays framed Strawberry Hill as a

(31:01):
giant closet that he built for himself so that he
and his friends would have the space to be themselves.
There are also literary critics who have noted that Walpole,
who was living outside the bounds of what was expected
for a man in masculinity, helped launch a literary genre
that gave a lot of women the space to be
transgressive in their writing and the relationships that they were

(31:24):
writing about, including people like Anne Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, Charlotte
Bronte even more recent writers like Daphne de Maurier, who
we covered on the show in June of twenty twenty one.
These relationships included people like Sir Horace Mann, who also
never married and who raised eyebrows for his friendship with

(31:44):
painter Thomas Patch, who moved to Florence after being expelled
from Rome after a charge related to homosexuality. Even though
Man and Walpole never saw one another in person again,
their letters suggest a deep connection of something unfulfilled. For example,
when Robert Walpole's time in the government was coming to

(32:05):
its tumultuous end, Man wrote a letter suggesting this might
pave the way for Horace to come back to Italy.
He wrote, quote, we may be quiet and happy here together,
far from the insults of saucy, ungrateful people in such
melancholy circumstances. What a satisfaction would it be to a
heart that overflows with love and gratitude? As I assure you,

(32:28):
my eyes at present do with tears. To have it
in his power to enjoy the only satisfaction it would
have left. I say no more. You must certainly understand me.
You have a heart too tender yourself not to excuse
the want of utterance on such an occasion. So Walpole
didn't respond to this letter, though, and Man never brought

(32:51):
this idea up again. But then Walpole did after Man's
last surviving brother died in seventeen seventy five and Man
inherent an estate in Kent, So Walpole's suggestion that Man
might then move to England was not as emotionally charged
as what Holly just read, although he did say quote,

(33:12):
I flatter myself this thought delights you as much as
it does me. I own it was the moment I
always looked to. But in his response Man pointed out
a number of reasons that it was just out of
the question for him, at the age of seventy to
try to return to England. Their letters make it seem
like this was an upsetting conversation to both of them,

(33:35):
but they eventually smoothed things over and they continued their
correspondence until Man's death on November sixth of seventeen eighty six.
We've referenced Walpole's letters so many times, and they really
are one of his biggest legacies, not just because he
wrote a lot of letters, but because he saw letter
writing as an art that he tried to nurture and cultivate.

(33:57):
He intentionally chose to write to people who lived away
from London, people who would want and need to hear
the news of the day, so he had a reason
to document it. He was writing these letters to be
preserved for later generations, and he kept copies of them.
One edition of Walpole's Correspondence spans forty eight volumes and

(34:17):
it's available online at the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale. Yeah,
to be clear, these are walpoles letters and a lot
of their responses from other people. Obviously many quotes from
his letters in these two episodes. Do you have listener
mail to quote?

Speaker 1 (34:34):
I do.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
We have a listener mail that is also about literature,
and it is from Cheryl. Cheryl wrote, Dear Tracy and Holly,
I'm nearing the end of a marathon of listening to
past episodes starting from as far back as I could
on my podcast app, and now that the end is
in sight, literally all remaining episodes to here are on
the iHeart dot com stuff you miss in history class page.

(34:57):
I thought i'd write in there have been a number
of episodes for something one of you said triggered a
wish to respond, But when the episode in question is
four to five years old, I just couldn't justify bringing
up something so ancient. I mean, it's a history podcast,
but I'm writing regarding a few episodes. I too, just

(35:18):
read Alex Harro's Starling House, so I found the cave
Wards episode interesting and timely. Tracy, I think you and
I have very similar book loves, as Connie Willis is
another big favorite of mine. Have you read any t Kingfisher,
which's another wonderful writer. My sourdough starter is named for
the carnivorous starter in her A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking.

(35:41):
I have a possible topic for you, street painting. My
husband and I paint at street painting festivals all over
the country. It's an avocation, not a vocation, including one
coming up next month in Marietta, Georgia. Details below in
case Holly is in town and would like to come see.
I know the recent history of the art forums, starting
with the first street Painting festival fifty years ago near Mantua, Italy,

(36:04):
but earlier than that, I feel I'm repeating hearsay, not
anything verifiable. I would love to be able to share
the real history of this art form I enjoy so much.
Then Cheryl had a link to the festival and some
other stuff. We don't have any pets, unless you count
the alligator lizards that row our yards, so for a
pet tax, I'm sharing photos of my niece's big burnt marshmallow,

(36:27):
a dog Willow with their new puppy cricket, their farh
rescue Colby aka the Cheeseman, who has happily adapted to
inside cat life, where he steals willows food and insists
that no, he has not been fed second dinner yet
and you should get right on that this instant. I'll
also include the neighbor kitty I just met this morning
because he is so cute, friendly and curious. I'm also

(36:50):
including a couple of street painting photos just for fun too. Well,
there's a little addundum about if Holly goes to chok Toberfest,
which is the name of the street panting festival. Best
to you both and thanks for the many, many hours
of enjoyment. Cheryl Cheryl, thank you so much. Personally, if
somebody writes us about an episode that's four or five

(37:11):
years old, I have no problem with that, with one caveat,
which is that if someone asks me a detail about
that episode from four or five years ago, I probably
don't remember.

Speaker 1 (37:22):
Gods are good. It is a blur.

Speaker 2 (37:26):
Yeah, I'm probably not gonna be able to answer questions,
but I do not mind at all hearing about things
that people may have liked or resonated with or whatever
from episodes from a long time ago. Question number two
t King Fisher. Yes, I have read A Wizard's Guide
to Defensive Baking. I have also read, I think all

(37:46):
of the currently available books from the Temple of the
White Rat World. So those are Clockwork Boys and the
Wonder Engine and Swordheart, and then all the Paladin books.
If you read these books, you know what I'm talking
talking about. With the Paladin books, I like them a lot.
And then we have adorable animal pictures kitty cats and

(38:11):
puppy dogs. Oh, just a great piece of street painting
art that has like a three dimensional look to it.
It looks like a kid in a bathtub with a
cat who is stalking the rubber duck that has fallen
on the floor. What's this next one? Oh? This is

(38:33):
another very like. Imagine a child who has turned a
cardboard box into an airplane, being flanked by a dog
in a cardboard kit box and a cat in a
different cardboard box. And we have a kitty cat in
a tree.

Speaker 1 (38:49):
So cute. I love all of these. I will note
this will air after the fact that I will miss
choctober Fest this year. I think I only made it
to like one because there is also it's one of
those things where because it's fall. Oh sure, every municipality
is doing fall festivals and I am. I already promised

(39:09):
to do some stuff close to home and one of mine,
so yeah, because I don't live in Marietta.

Speaker 2 (39:16):
Yeah. Well, thank you, thank you, Thank you Cheryl for
this email and the pictures and all of that. If
you'd like to send us a note or at history
Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe to
our podcast on iHeartRadio app or wherever else you'd like
to get your podcasts. Stuff you missed in History Class

(39:39):
is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Stuff You Missed in History Class News

Follow Us On

Hosts And Creators

Holly Frey

Tracy Wilson

Show Links

Popular Podcasts

40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season

Dateline NBC

The Bobby Bones Show

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Horace Walpole’s Gothic Castles, Part 2