Hutton On Bagehot

Beard of the Year
1877

Richard Holt Hutton was Walter Bagehot's contemporary and friend at University College London; the two were together co-editors of the National Review before Hutton took up the editorship of the Spectator and Bagehot that of the Economist; Hutton wrote the original entry for Bagehot in the National Dictionary of Biography. By the Overgraduate patented scale for measuring fame it is noted that Hutton gets fourteen lines in the 1959 Britannica and our boy Walter occupies six times that number.

I have been reading Hutton's Memoir of Walter Bagehot which prefaced his edition of Bagehot's Literary Studies. It is a fine estimation of our man and all the better for its balance. Hutton's admiration and affection for Bagehot are hugely evident but he deftly distances himself from some of Walter's aberrations.

Hutton and Bagehot were both Liberals by political affiliation, but, as Bagehot's definitive editor Norman St John-Stevas perceived, there was a more conservative side to his nature. Hutton highlights this when he spots Bagehot quoting their old mate Artur Hugh Clough (himself no tory),

Old things need not be therefore true, / O brother men, nor yet the new; / Ah, still awhile, th'old thought retain, / And yet consider it again.

Which all in all sounds like a pretty sound mantra to me and one to which your correspondent might like to cleave in his more outrageous moments. As we have said plenty of times before - don't hold your breath.