As a gay man at a time when homosexual practices were illegal for men in Britain, Hugh Walpole condu
As a gay man at a time when homosexual practices were illegal for men in Britain, Hugh Walpole conducted a succession of intense but discreet relationships with other men, and was for much of his life in search of what he saw as “the perfect friend”. Hugh Walpole, (1884-1941) was an English novelist, though largely forgotten today, he was a best selling author in both the USA and Great Britain, a name that everyone would know in the 1920s/30’s. He would write thirty-six novels, five volumes of short stories, two original plays and three volumes of memoirs and two Hollywood screenplays before his one time friend, Somerset Maugham, would betray him and set him on the path to irrelevance depicting Walpole as a “selfish, social climbing opportunist”. An unhappy childhood in boarding schools, rebuffed by an older AC Benson in his infatuation and later, Henry JamesI, in 1924 Walpole would meet a married with 2 children, Harry Cheevers, who if not the “perfect friend”, Walpole would spend the rest of his life with. As chauffeur and traveling companion and a house provided for Cheevers family, together the had a “happy” life until Walpole’s death at the age of 57, as Cheever held his hand. https://www.instagram.com/p/CaIA8ZgON4g/?utm_medium=tumblr -- source link