In the south-west corner of All Saints' there is a model ship; it represents a two-decker warship of the late 19th or early 10th century. It is believed to have been given to the church by Dr Dorothea Walpole, a member of the congregation who lived on North Castle Street. She had acquired it from her brother, Hugh Walpole, the novelist, in whose study it had been hanging. None of this can be verified, but it seems true, except for the novelist's study.
Hugh Walpole was the son of George Walpole, Bishop of Edinburgh from 1910 until his death in 1929. As a clergyman George Walpole served in New Zealand where Hugh was born, and was professor in a seminary in New York, "unexpectedly". In later years Hugh visited the place and lamented his mother's having to live there, due to "the grim grey ugliness of it all". (We lived in the same seminary and it was far from ugly.) But by this time George Walpole was well-known for his writings, and over his lifetime he produced a total of thirty small books on devotional and religious subjects, none of which are remembered today. He then returned to England, became Vicar of Lambeth, and in 1910 was elected Bishop of Edinburgh, where he remained until his death in 1929.
He was the subject of rather strong attacks in the church press since he had no Scottish experience before being elected, though this was really the responsibility of the electors. But he was also attacked for bringing Oxford and Cambridge men in to fill important posts in the diocese, though he was hardly the first bishop to do this. And the diary of Dean Farquhar, who had opinions about everyone, recorded that he was not considered to have been a good bishop. The reason was probably due to his "guilelessness", as his son Hugh noted; he was incapable of seeing anything but good in anyone. And, as Hugh also noted, this did not make him popular with practical men and "especially Scotchmen". His first aim in Edinburgh was to raise money to raise the west spires of he cathedral - he admitted that the same money would have built twelve mission churches, but he had an odd Jungian notion that the mere sight of a complete cathedral would swing onlookers towards being Episcopalians. It did not. He also tried to prevent Benediction of the Sacrament at All Saints', Edinburgh, which led to a long battle and a remarkable book bluntly called Benediction in Scotland which argued that Benediction was not essential, but was that extra offering by Catholic Christians equivalent to support of foreign missions amongst Evangelicals.
To return to Hugh Walpole, he was sent from New York to a boarding school in England where he was so bullied that he lived in fear for the rest of his life. After Cambridge he went to a seamen's mission in Liverpool to see if he had a vocation for ordination. This succeeded brilliantly in showing he had not, and he soon gave up religion altogether until 1933 when he got up one morning and went to early service, and continued to do so until his death. And he began writing fiction, the only thing for which he said he had any aptitude, and duly produced over fifty books which were wildly popular and made him rich, but of which none are available today. (Oddly enough, I read some as a teenager and remember them with appreciation, so when it is said they are totally forgotten there is one exception.) He said his books were "simple stories about clergymen and old maids and cuckoo clocks", but they ranged more widely than that. A few were set in Russia where he served in a Red Cross unit at the front during the First World War, and later at a British literary bureau in Petrograd. Here he had a famous quarrel with Arthur Ransome who picked up a newspaper without first asking, and when Hugh Walpole exploded he "burst out laughing", went off to play chess with Lenin, married Trotsky's secretary, and wrote Swallows and Amazons. They made up the quarrel sixteen years later. But if Ransome knew Lenin, Walpole came to know Hitler before he was famous - he liked him but thought him pathetic and was later horrified at his own misjudgement.
Hugh Walpole knew everyone in the literary world and was admired by most, though Rebecca West told him his work was "facile and without artistic impulse", and Virginia Woolf, "it's a daydream, unreal, all spangles, like a Christmas tree ... I expect all his books are glorified dreams of Hugh - never a glimpse of any reality", though she envied him his income, and regarded him with affection. He was knighted in 1935, and died in 1941, still popular as a novelist, Hollywood screen-writer, and lecturer.
His sister Dorothea depended wholly on Hugh for her income, her improvident father having left her almost penniless. Hugh gave her an allowance, bought her a car for a Christmas present, paid for her medical education, and leaned on her "indomitable fortitude" when he was in some crisis or other. She practised medicine with distinction in Edinburgh until the late 1950s, and retired to St Andrews. The biography of Hugh says nothing of a ship model, and it is unlikely to have, hung in his study; he spent vast amounts on paintings and sculpture and surrounded himself with them - a ship model would have been out of place. But somebody might have given it to him, or he might have bought it to do someone a good turn - he was constantly besieged by people trying to sell or give him things, though he did refuse "hairs from the tail of the horse that Wellington rode at Waterloo". Whatever its origin, it must have come from his sister, and almost certainly had a connection with him, and thus with various dictators, Virginia Woolf, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and a whole world which is now passed.
Article by: Gavin White