We were fortunate enough to be visited on Saturday 24th May by the Hugh Walpole Society, an organisation gathered through shared appreciation for the Old Dunelmian and early twentieth century author. Hugh Walpole (1884-1941) attended Durham School as a Day Boy from 1898 to 1903, an experience that was by all accounts uncomfortable for the young boy. Nicholas Redman, the Chairman of the Society, has written an excellent piece of scholarship entitled Hugh Walpole at Durham School in the most recent issue of the 'The Hugh Walpole Review' (Volume 6, Number 1, Spring 2025). By piecing together elements from various autobiographical pieces written by Walpole, as well as testimony from his contemporaries, he has reconstructed Walpole's days at the school in a way that brings turn of the century Durham to life. 

The School itself demonstrated its appreciation of Walpole's abilities during the 1939 speech day, to which Walpole was invited. The Epilogue, which by tradition was a direct poetical address made by members of the Upper Sixth to the Guest Speaker, provided a response to a teacher's statement that Walpole could become the mayor of a small town: "Scorning this prospect nor attracted by 

Episcopalian heredity,

You chose a course more perilous though better, 

And long have made the reading world your debtor.

Since first you launched the lamentable tale 

Of Mr. Perrin and of Mr. Traill, 

You have found worthier themes to write about, 

Rogues with red hair and other Rogues without, 

Mirrors of green, and scarecrows made of gold, 

Young Jeremys and Hamlets; Ladies Old;

Cathedrals, Duchesses, and others, too, 

Still unrecorded in my old 'Who's Who.'" 

I shall leave it to the reader's discretion to unpick the references to Hugh Walpole's myriad books, such as Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill (1911), The Duchess of Wrexe (1914), The Golden Scarecrow (1915), The Green Mirror (1918), Jeremy (1919), The Cathedral (1922), Jeremy and Hamlet (1923), and The Old Ladies (1924) and Rogue Herries (1930).

It was archival documents like this that I was able to show the Society, as well as provide them with a tour of the school. They adjoined for refreshments in the orangery, before continuing by retracing the steps Walpole would have taken on returning home, all of which are outlined in Nicholas Redman's marvellous essay. 

A sanctuary frequently visited by Walpole was the Durham Subscription Library. Walpole's Reading: An Essay (1926) recounts how "at the moment of freedom from school I plunged down side-streets to the town subscription library, left the three volumes I had borrowed a day or two before, climbed a wobbling ladder to the dark mysteries beneath the ceiling, and had a glorious half hour of choosing and rejecting." The same anecdote is repeated in his autobiographical pieces The Crystal Box (1924) and The Apple Trees (1932). The Subscription Library was located in Owengate House on the corner of Owengate and Saddler Street; its current location, sandwiched between the Cafédral restaurant and the Georgian Window giftshop, was a spot on the tour.

Nicholas Redman in his essay advances the theory that here Walpole is conflating two different stories. In 1952, after the publication of Rupert Hart-Davis' definitive biography on the author, the owner of Durham's House of Andrews bookshop recalled the presence of the young Walpole in his shop. "[He] spent most of his free time during our business hours in the House of Andrews reading through book after book, which he left specifically placed ready to pick up again and continue reading at such a time as it suited him," wrote the bookshop owner, a man named Warneford Smart. "I tolerated it because I much liked his father, who was a charming man, so different from his son, who never showed the least appreciation of the kindness I allowed myself to extend to him." 

Hugh Walpole's father, the Reverend Somerset Walpole, was indeed a charming figure, if a little outside the social circle of the Cathedral or University sets. He had been appointed to the post of Principal of Bede College in 1897, and so the Walpole family lived in "a large pile in the Domestic Gothic style" which Hugh Walpole found quite ugly. Every morning Hugh would travel from Bede College through the marketplace and over Prebends Bridge to reach the School, and, as he lived the life of the Day Boy, found himself quite excluded from the school community. This was the journey in reverse taken by the Society, and they concluded their day at the large, imposing structure of the college. Having curtailed their Walpoling activities, the group went their separate ways. 

I would like to register my thanks to the Hugh Walpole Society for visiting the school, as well as taking the time to provide such excellent scholarship on the author's childhood. This month marks Pride Month, and Hugh Walpole, as one of the school's most notable LGBT alumni, is a figure that deserves celebration and recognition.