Bagehot’s glittering prose makes it a pleasure to read even his most mistaken opinions
W.W. Norton; 368 pages; $29.95 and £19.99.’s greatest editor. During his 16 years in the job—from 1861 to his death in 1877—he transformed the publication from the mouthpiece of a laissez-faire sect into the voice of mature Gladstonian liberalism. He did this through a combination of natural literary genius and somewhat reluctant networking.
This is a dazzling range of achievements—and may explain why Bagehot fell down dead at the age of 51. But does it justify the claim first made for him by G.M. Young, the most intelligent historian of Victorian England, and echoed in the title of James Grant’s new book, that he was not just a great editor and great figure about town but also “the greatest Victorian”?
Bagehot came from the provincial bourgeoisie. His father was a well-off banker, but hardly the sort of man to rub shoulders with the greatest in the land. His mother suffered from frequent mental breakdowns. His home town of Langport in Somerset was comfortable but out of the way. Rather than Oxford or Cambridge, Bagehot attended University College, London, a new “radical infidel college” designed for people who refused to subscribe to the tenets of the Church of England.
Rather than resenting the upstart, the great and the good embraced him, awed by his knowledge of arcane subjects such as finance, dazzled by the bright light of his intellect and by his sparkling prose. E.D.J. Wilson, a journalistic contemporary, judged that, at the height of his powers, he was “an unofficial member of every Cabinet, Conservatives as well as Liberal” and an adviser to every chancellor.
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