贺瑞斯·沃波尔

第四代奥福德伯爵霍勒斯·沃波尔（英语：Horace Walpole，1717年9月24日—1797年3月2日），是英国艺术史学家，文学家，辉格党政治家。

他以伦敦西南部特威克纳姆草莓山庄（Strawberry Hill House）闻名于世，他以这栋建筑作为哥特小说《奥特兰托堡（或译奥托兰多城堡）》背景。

家族

他是英国第一任首相罗伯特·沃波尔儿子、海军上将第一代纳尔逊子爵霍雷肖·纳尔逊亲戚。

Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford (24 September 1717 – 2 March 1797), better known as Horace Walpole, was a British Whig politician, writer, historian and antiquarian.

He had Strawberry Hill House built in Twickenham, southwest London, reviving the Gothic style some decades before his Victorian successors. His literary reputation rests on the first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764), and his Letters, which are of significant social and political interest. They have been published by Yale University Press in 48 volumes. In 2017, a volume of Walpole's selected letters was published.

The youngest son of the first British prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, he became the 4th and last Earl of Orford of the second creation on his nephew's death in 1791.

Early life: 1717–1739

Walpole was born in London, the youngest son of British Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole and his wife, Catherine. Like his father, he received early education in Bexley; in part under Edward Weston. He was also educated at Eton College and King's College, Cambridge.

Walpole's first friends were probably his cousins Francis and Henry Conway, to whom he became strongly attached, especially Henry. At Eton he formed a schoolboy confederacy, the "Triumvirate", with Charles Lyttelton (later an antiquary and bishop) and George Montagu (later a member of parliament and Private Secretary to Lord North). More important were another group of friends dubbed the "Quadruple Alliance": Walpole, Thomas Gray, Richard West, and Thomas Ashton.

At Cambridge, Walpole came under the influence of Conyers Middleton, an unorthodox theologian. Walpole came to accept the sceptical nature of Middleton's attitude to some essential Christian doctrines for the rest of his life, including a hatred of superstition and bigotry even though he was a nominal Anglican. Ceasing to reside at Cambridge at the end of 1738, Walpole left without taking a degree.

In 1737, Walpole's mother died. According to one biographer, his love for his mother "was the most powerful emotion of his entire life ... the whole of his psychological history was dominated by it". Walpole did not have any serious relationships with women; he has been called "a natural celibate".

His sexual orientation has been the subject of speculation. He never married, engaging in a succession of unconsummated flirtations with unmarriageable women, and counted among his close friends a number of women such as Anne Seymour Damer and Mary Berry named by a number of sources as lesbian.

Many contemporaries described him as effeminate (one political opponent called him "a hermaphrodite horse"). Biographers, such as W. S. Lewis, Brian Fothergill, and Robert Wyndham Ketton-Cremer, interpreted Walpole as asexual.

Walpole's father secured for him three sinecures which afforded him an income: in 1737 he was appointed Inspector of the Imports and Exports in the Custom House, which he resigned to become Usher of the Exchequer, which gave him at first £3900 per annum but this increased over the years. Upon coming of age he became Comptroller of the Pipe and Clerk of the Estreats which gave him an income of £300 per annum. Walpole decided to go travelling with Thomas Gray and wrote a will in which he left Gray all his belongings.

In 1744, he wrote in a letter to Conway that these offices gave him nearly £2,000 per annum; after 1745 when he was appointed Collectorship of Customs, his total income from these offices was around £3,400 per annum.

Grand Tour: 1739–1741

Walpole went on the Grand Tour with Gray, but as Walpole recalled in later life: "We had not got to Calais before Gray was dissatisfied, for I was a boy, and he, though infinitely more a man, was not enough to make allowances".