Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/591

 are in many cases in private ownership in America and Australia as well as in England. Waller's great knowledge of horses and his skill in representing them gave his work much vogue among sportsmen. He took great pains in studying animals, and related some of his experiences in articles contributed to the 'Art Journal' (1893–6). His pictures usually tell a story effectively and dramatically, but he was more of an illustrator than a genuine artist.

He died at his studio, Haverstock Hill, London, N., on 14 June 1903, after a long illness, and was buried at Golder's Green. He married in 1874 Mary Lemon, daughter of the Rev. Hugh Fowler of Burnwood, Gloucestershire. His widow, a well-known artist, who exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1877 to 1904, survived him with a son.

A very fine oil portrait of Waller—a head—by John Pettie, R.A., belongs to the family.

 WALPOLE, SPENCER (1839–1907), historian and civil servant, born in Serle Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, on 6 Feb, 1839, was elder son of  [q. v.] by his wife Isabella, fourth daughter of Spencer Perceval, the prime minister. His younger brother. Sir Horatio George Walpole, was assistant under-secretary for India from 1883 to 1907.

Walpole's health in childhood was delicate, and it was chiefly on his account that his father, when the boy was six years old, moved with his family from London to Ealing for the sake of purer air. In the autumn of 1852 he was sent to Eton, where he became a favourite pupil of the Rev. [q. v.]. In 1854, when Cookesley left Eton, he changed to the pupil-room of (afterwards Cory) [q. v. Suppl. I]. At Eton Walpole gained health and strength through rowing—becoming captain of a boat; to the effects of that exercise he attributed the excellent constitution which he enjoyed through life after an ailing childhood. Acceptance of office as home secretary in the short-lived administration of 1852 involved for Walpole's father the loss of a good practice at the bar, and for this reason the son, instead of being sent to a university on leaving Eton in 1857, became at the age of nineteen a clerk in the war office, achieving his first success in life by winning the first place in the preliminary examination. Though Walpole always regretted that he missed a university career, the loss allowed him, when his father again became home secretary in 1858, to gain an early insight into public life as his private secretary. He continued to hold the same position under Sotheran Estcourt, home secretary after the elder Walpole resigned in Jan. 1859. Estcourt on his retirement in the following June wrote to the head of the war office that almost his only regret in quitting office was that he lost Walpole as a companion of his work. Walpole resumed his duties at the war office until, on his father's return to the home office in 1866, he once more became his private secretary. Those were the years of the volunteer movement—the origin and significance of which Walpole afterwards described in his history. He entered with characteristic energy into the movement, taking his full share of the work of organisation at the war office, and himself joining the Ealing division. In March 1867 Walpole was appointed, on his father's recommendation, one of two inspectors of fisheries for England and Wales with a salary of 100l. a year. The income enabled him to marry, while the work with its promise of 'many a pleasant wandering by river, lake and sea-shore' was most congenial. His great practical ability gave every assurance of success in the performance of his duties. He was fortunate, too, in his colleague, Frank Buckland, the naturalist, whose energy and kindliness rivalled his own. Nevertheless these were difficult years. After his marriage he lived, when in London, in a small house in Coleshill Street, where he supplemented his official income by hard work for the press. [q. v. Suppl. II], to whose suggestions he owed something in the formation of his literary style, had recently become editor of the newly founded 'Pall Mall Gazette,' and Walpole contributed, often in hours stolen from sleep, the financial articles. His domestic expenses were increasing, and there had been loss of money through failure of an investment. Happily, in the intervals of official work and journalism he made time to write the life of his grand-father, Spencer Perceval. This book, published in 1874, so pleased Lord Egmont, the head of the Perceval family, that he bequeathed 10,000l. to the author, and his speedy death brought Walpole into possession of this bequest. This turn of fortune enabled him to relinquish journalism and to devote himself to the chief achievement of his life—the ’History of England from 1815' 