Andrew Maunder

Little remembered today, Hugh Walpole (b. 13 March 1884) was a prolific and best-selling English novelist in the 1920s and 1930s, known for his vivid scene-setting and wide-ranging literary output. Walpole produced 36 novels, five volumes of short stories, and several plays and memoirs during his career. He was a high-profile figure who was knighted in 1937 and maintained close friendships with literary giants like J. B. Priestly, Virginia Woolf, and Henry James. (According to Somerset Maugham, as a young protégé of James, Walpole made a sexual proposition to the great man, who was too startled and inhibited to respond.) During the early years of WWI, Walpole worked for the Red Cross at the Russian front, followed by a stint in the service of the Anglo-Russian Propaganda Bureau. During his time in Russia, he had a brief but significant affair with the artist Konstantin Somov with whom he lived before departing Russia on 07 November 1917, missing the Bolshevik Revolution which began on that day. After the war, Walpole was much in demand not only as a novelist but also as a lecturer on literature, making four exceptionally well-paid tours of North America, where his books were highly successful. As a gay man at a time when homosexual practices were illegal in Britain, Walpole conducted a succession of intense but discreet relationships with other men and was for much of his life in search of what he called "the perfect friend". One such relationship was with the tenor Lauritz Melchior, who became one of the most important friendships of his life (though supposedly nonsexual), and Walpole did much to foster the singer's career. In 1924, he found his “perfect friend” in Harold Cheevers, a married policeman and the father of two children, with whom he settled in the English Lake District. Cheevers became his chauffeur and constant companion and remained so for the rest of Walpole's life, even while Walpole provided a house in Hampstead for Cheevers and his family. In addition to his literary output and lectures, in 1934 Walpole accepted an invitation from MGM to go to Hollywood to write the scenario for a film adaptation of David Copperfield (1935). He followed this with the screenplay for Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936) but found work at the studio boring and unappealing. He soon returned to England. By the 1930s, though his public success remained considerable, many literary critics saw Walpole as outdated. His reputation in literary circles took a blow from a malicious caricature in Somerset Maugham's novel Cakes and Ale in which the character Alroy Kear, a superficial novelist of more pushy ambition than literary talent, was widely taken to be based on Walpole. Walpole, as expected, was devastated, not only by the portrayal, but by someone he considered a close friend. Having accumulated substantial wealth, in his later years he was a generous sponsor of many younger writers and a patron of the visual arts. A discriminating collector, he bequeathed a substantial legacy of paintings to the Tate Gallery and other British institutions. He died of a heart attack on 01 June 1941 at the age of 57 with Harold Cheevers at his side, passing away at their home, Brackenburn, located near Keswick in the English Lake District.