A Reputation

Hugh Walpole was born on this day in 1884. His career stands as a salutary reminder of the fragility of literary reputation. A prolific, versatile and ambitious writer and an energetic (as we'd say now) 'networker', he built a huge popular and critical success in the Twenties, selling large numbers of books, while attracting the encouragement of Henry James and the praise of Joseph Conrad and Virginia Woolf, to say nothing of lesser critics. It was widely assumed that he was a major English novelist, a classic whose fame would last, and deluxe editions of his books were considered highly collectible. This was just as Walpole wanted it, and he was seriously put out when Hilaire Belloc named Wodehouse rather than him as the greatest English writer of the time. Not that this perceived slight did him any harm; it was Somerset Maugham who, arguably, dealt a real blow to his hopes of lasting fame, with his thinly disguised caricature of Walpole as the ruthlessly ambitious, superficial writer Alroy Kear in Cakes And Ale. Through the Thirties, the reputation of Sir Hugh, that giant of English letters, declined, to the point where he was already passing out of fashion by the time of his death in 1941. He continued to be read - indeed the volumes of his Herries Chronicle are still is print - but today his work is most likely to be found sitting neglected, in its handsome bindings, on the shelves of charity shops and junk shops, and his name is all but forgotten. Literary fame is a fickle mistress. Every age has its Hugh Walpoles - giants whose mighty, apparently secure reputations will barely outlast them. I wonder who are the Walpoles of our time?...