On 28 January 1754, Horace Walpole coined a pretty bauble of a word in a letter to Horace Mann, apropos of a happy discovery made while browsing in an old book of Venetian heraldry: Mann had just sent him the Vasari portrait of the Grand Duchess Bianca Capello, and Walpole stumbled on the Capello coat of arms. He thought this accident to be no accident, but rather a special talent of his, 'by which I find everything I want, à point nommé, wherever I dip for it. This discovery, indeed, is almost of that kind which I call Serendipity, a very expressive word, which, as I have nothing better to tell you, I shall endeavour to explain to you: you will understand it better by the derivation than by the definition.' Walpole had read The Travels and Adventures of Three Princes of Sarendip, a 1557 Italian romance (itself purporting to be a translation from the Persian) that had made it into English via a French translation (pilfered by Voltaire for Zadig) by 1722. The mellifluous 'Sarendip' or 'Serendib' preceded 'Ceylon', which in turn preceded 'Sri Lanka', as the ancient name of the South Asian island, redolent for European readers of the exotic Orient. The three princes travel, Rasselas fashion, in search of the wisdom that only experience can provide, having completed an excellent education of the more bookish sort at home. They astonish their hosts along the way with Sherlock-Holmes-like inferences from sharply observed particulars strewn in their path; Walpole's homegrown example for this sort of 'accidental sagacity' was 'of my Lord Shaftesbury, who happening to dine at Lord Chancellor Clarendon's, found out the marriage of the Duke of York and Mrs Hyde, by the respect with which her mother treated her at table'.

LRB 23 September 2004 | PDF Download