Editing Horace Walpole (section)

==Rumours of paternity==
[[File:SIR ROBERT WALPOLE 1676-1745 Prime Minister and his son HORACE WALPOLE 1717-1797 Connoisseur and Man of Letters lived here.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Blue plaque]] at Arlington Street, [[City of Westminster]], London commemorating Horace and his father Robert]] 
After Walpole's death, [[Lady Louisa Stuart]], in the introduction to the letters of her grandmother, [[Lady Mary Wortley Montagu]] (1837), wrote of rumours that Horace's biological father was not Sir Robert Walpole but Carr, Lord Hervey (1691–1723), elder half-brother of the more famous [[John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey|John Hervey]]. [[T. H. White]] writes: "Catherine Shorter, Sir Robert Walpole's first wife, had five children. Four of them were born in a sequence after the marriage; the fifth, Horace, was born eleven years later, at a time when she was known to be on bad terms with Sir Robert, and known to be on romantic terms with Carr, Lord Hervey."{{sfn|White|1950|pp=84–89}} The lack of physical resemblance between Horace and Sir Robert,{{sfn|White|1950|p=88|ps=: No beings in human shape could resemble each other less than the two passing for father and son." (Lady Louisa Stuart)}} and his close resemblance to members of the Hervey family, encouraged these rumours. [[Peter Cunningham (British writer)|Peter Cunningham]], in his introduction to the letters of Horace Walpole (1857), vol. 1, p. x, wrote: 
{{blockquote|"[Lady Louisa Stuart] has related it in print in the Introductory Anecdotes to Lady Mary's Works ; and there is too much reason to believe that what she tells is true. Horace was born eleven years after the birth of any other child that Sir Robert had by his wife; in every respect he was unlike a Walpole, and in every respect, figure and formation of mind, very like a Hervey. Lady Mary Wortley divided mankind into men, women, and Herveys, and the division has been generally accepted. Walpole was certainly of the Hervey class. Lord Hervey's Memoirs and Horace Walpole's Memoires are most remarkably alike, yet Walpole never saw them. [Yet] we have no evidence whatever that a suspicion of spurious parentage ever crossed the mind of Horace Walpole. His writings, from youth to age, breathe the most affectionate love for his mother, and the most unbounded filial regard for Sir Robert Walpole."}}