The best of Bagehot

by Ruth Dudley (edit). Edwards

Some wear to the dust jacket. Orders received by 3pm Sent from the UK that weekday.

Genres: Essays

Hardcover

First published September 2, 1993

Reviews

[Gille Liath · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bagehot - a household name in the Victorian heyday of the belles-lettrist. Nowadays 'belle-lettres' is hardly even a phrase, let alone a genre. The last essayist of note, the last who reached beyond the literary papers into mainstream culture, was probably Orwell; and Bagehot has many of Orwell's qualities, an appealing personality, originality of thought, an approach based on 'common sense' (so called) rather than party lines, and essential seriousness coloured by quiet humour. Like Orwell his mind is enquiring and various, and you could well see that prolonged and extensive study of his writings would result in the loyal, proprietorial feeling towards him which editor Ruth Dudley Edwards clearly has. But, once you get over the good impression made by his style, you start to notice that on pretty much all practical questions he is wrong - or at least, shall we say, on the wrong side of history. To him the teachings of liberal economist Adam Smith are 'hard fact'; slavery is a defensible institution, and slaves are basically just domestics; and the Irish Nationalist movement (less than 30 years after the Great Famine) is just 'agitation' for the sake of it.

In many ways - not least his whiskers - Bagehot seems to have been the embodiment of his era of ideological compromise and laissez-faire, combined with a simple faith in 'progress' and the importance of hard work (especially for others). For example he justifies monarchy, not on the grounds that there is a Divine Right of Kings, but on the grounds that people *think* there is and therefore it makes for stability (I'm a lifelong Republican - ie anti-monarchist - but looking at what has happened in Britain lately I can't help thinking he had a point about this one). And, like many Victorian thinkers, he had the same sort of attitude to religion - the 'Victorian compromise' in which religion was tacitly disavowed by the writer but recommended as good for the hoi polloi (however, both these views depend on a more or less conscious suspension of disbelief which was a lot easier in his time than ours).

And what about his power of prophecy? If we're comparing him with Orwell, as we all know the latter pretty accurately predicted many world developments, both of (what was for him) the immediate future, and reaching into our own time 70-odd years later. Bagehot? Of the then-recent unification of Italy and Germany, he says that 'there is no greater security for the peace of the world'. Ahem! Nuff said.

Well, it would be hard to be wronger than that. How is someone so obviously clever so generally wrong? I'm afraid it's because his values are wrong. Although he doesn't reach for simplistic party-political justifications, his faith in 'progress' is as naive and simple-minded as the religious faith of the the most superstitious peasant whom Bagehot might produce for you to - not sneer - smile at . And his theoretical belief in individual freedom, paradoxically, requires that individuals - even very large numbers of individuals - are submitted to terrible suffering for the perceived good of society (Orwell, by contrast, was generally right, because he never forgot that political movements are worthless unless they make ordinary people's lives better). He says that there is no way that you can have both freedom equality at the same time; we might argue, learning from his mistakes, that on the contrary you can only have the two together. And ultimately, you can't admire a writer whose skill is so misapplied; his work is vitiated by his lack of sympathy for the little guy.

And that's why, in spite of Ms Edwards' pious hopes, Bagehot is not due for a revival but is likely to sink further into oblivion. She makes no bones about the fact that this is a very personal selection; not being familiar with his oeuvre I am not really in a position to question it although, although I do think there are some surprising choices. Otherwise I would only say that, although there are some full-length essays (eg on Gibbon) and chapters from longer books (the English Constitution), there are too many short excerpts, some of only a single line; indeed the books is arranged alphabetically, which practically forces this on the editor. Few writers of quality benefit from this treatment. Witty, pithy aphorisms and epigrams have so much more effect when they come in context. That said, the man should be pleased to have such an editor, someone who clearly knows his work inside out, and really believes in his genius and continued relevance.

I did feel a bit cut by one piece in which he scoffs - self-deprecatingly - at book reviewing, imagining what the mighty Achilles would have made of being asked to do it. But at least he - Bagehot - got paid for it; at least mighty Achilles got a share of the spoil! We live in still less heroic times...