The Online Library of Liberty

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• Preface.
• List of Illustrations.
• Errata.
• The Works and Life of Walter Bagehot, Volume X
• Chapter I.: Introductory.
• Chapter II.: Langport and Its Surroundings.
• Chapter III.: Home and Family.
• Chapter IV.: Early Education.
• Chapter V.: University College.
• Chapter VI.: An Interregnum.
• Chapter VII.: Paris.
• Chapter VIII.: Author and Banker.
• Chapter IX.: Engagement and Marriage.
• Chapter X.: “the Arches” and London.
• Chapter XI.: India.
• Chapter XII.: “the Economist”
• Chapter XIII.: “the English Constitution.”
• Chapter XIV.: “physics and Politics.”
• Chapter XV.: “lombard Street.”
• Chapter XVI.: “economic Studies.”
• Chapter XVII.: Tributes From Contemporaries.
• Errata For Index.

CHAPTER XVI.

“ECONOMIC STUDIES.”

After returning from their travels in France in the autumn of 1874, the Bagehots moved into London to the house in Rutland Gate they had taken for a year. The diary records pleasant dinners given there to interesting guests, many visits to picture galleries, to the Old Masters at Burlington House, and to Burne Jones’s studio. It was when there that the friendly intercourse began between Lord Bryce and the Bagehots. We were staying with them at the time, and on one Sunday afternoon my husband accompanied Walter on a visit to Mr. and Mrs. George Lewes at the Priory. There they met Lord Bryce, and my husband remembers that on leaving the house together, Bagehot asked him to come to Rutland Gate to see him and my sister, which he did. This acquaintanceship led to the very important results that, at Lord Bryce’s suggestion, the early essays were republished after Walter Bagehot’s death—consequently a widespread appreciation of Bagehot in America and a rebound of it in England.

After the Bagehots had returned to The Poplars in the spring of 1874, the diary relates how the great reception on 21st May took place, given by Lady Derby at the Foreign Office to meet the Emperor of Russia, the Grand Duke Alexis, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh. The Bagehots and my family greatly enjoyed this evening, but the drive back to Wimbledon was long, especially for Walter, who had to drive into London early the next morning to breakfast with Mr. Goschen.

On the following day, 23rd May, my sister Julia and Mr. Greg were married quietly at St. Stephen’s Church, Gloucester Road. With the exception of Lord Avebury and Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff, my sister’s trustees, only relations were present. Walter fathered all the necessary business transactions and behaved in a very characteristic manner with regard to an amusing incident which happened in connection with the marriage settlements. These were brought to my mother’s house in South Kensington in a hansom cab by a lawyer’s clerk on the evening before the wedding. He paid the cab and then rang the bell. When the door was opened he turned round to fetch his papers and found that the cab had driven off with the settlements inside it. The ceremony was to have taken place at nine o’clock in the morning in order that the Cumberland Lakes should be reached the same day. Particular associations were attached to the Lakes, and Mr. Greg made a point of this plan being carried out. It was, however, impossible if the settlements were to be copied out afresh, even if the clerk sat up all night, which he did. A friendly battle ensued, Mr. Greg wishing to waive the signing of the settlements, Walter obdurate in maintaining that no marriage should take place before the settlements were signed. The result of the contest appears in the diary. “22nd May. Mr. Greg stayed till 11 o’clock and notes were written putting Julia’s wedding off from 9 to 11. 23rd May. They left for Matlock at 2.” Two copies of the settlements were forthcoming on the morning of the wedding; the cabman returned with the original copy and the lawyer’s clerk brought the second.

During that year the Bagehots decided to buy a house in London, and settled on 8 Queen’s Gate Place, which they gave into the hands of William Morris’s firm to furnish and decorate, De Morgan tiles, of course, being a feature of the decoration.

Walter wrote to me that “Wardle is doing most of the house, but the great man himself, William Morris, is composing the drawing-room, as he would an ode”. Walter would at times meet William Morris at the Bloomsbury depôt when choosing papers and tiles, and the two would talk poetry as well as furniture. Walter’s fancy was tickled at the quaint combination, and at William Morris’s autocratic attitude towards all questions of taste. However amusing the culture of æsthetics might be they could not wean Walter entirely. He had always had a great fondness for children. Amidst the choice designs of an inner hall, which the Morris firm had treated as a special feature in the new house, stood a fine large rocking-horse, crude in colour and carving as such things are, my sister’s gift to my boy. As we were passing it one day Walter spurted out suddenly, as he used to do when he enunciated something that was really true, “That’s the best thing in the house”.

As soon as 8 Queen’s Gate Place was habitable, Mr. and Mrs. Hutton and my husband and I lunched with the Bagehots. Walter did showman and explained William Morris’s views as to the morality or immorality of different colours and designs. The poet was composing a specially beautiful blue damask silk for the curtains and furniture of the drawing-rooms. This composition took a long time. Walter said, “They bring me sample-threads every two or three months but the curtains don’t come”.

On the 13th April, 1875, Walter Bagehot was elected by the Committee of the Athenæum under rule 2. He wrote to my sister who was at Herd’s Hill: “The Committee elected me yesterday at the Athenæum quite cheerfully. By the rules they can only elect nine persons a year, and those ‘who have attained eminence in Science, Literature, the Arts or for public services’. I wonder in which my eminence is.” One use to which Bagehot put the Athenæum was to play chess there with Mr. Hutton. Both excelled in the game.

On 7th July of 1875 Sir Stafford Northcote wrote to Bagehot: “A wish has been expressed by the Committee or Banks of Issue to have the advantage of your evidence. Would it be agreeable to you to attend the Committee either on Monday or Thursday in next week or the week after? I should, in that case, be happy to see you and talk over the course of examination beforehand.” Again on the 9th he writes: “I have received your telegram and have arranged that, if quite convenient to you, we should take your evidence on Thursday, the 22nd, which will probably be our last day of meeting. Would it suit you to call here on Friday next at a little before 2 o’clock for the purpose of talking over the course of your examination? If so I shall be very glad to see you.”

It was this examination which began the personal relations which existed between Sir Stafford Northcote and Bagehot.

On the death of Professor Cairnes in July, 1875, Bagehot wrote an article in the Economist notable for the fine feeling of consideration he evinces for the pathetic conditions under which the eminent political economist worked. With the following words Bagehot concludes the short notice: “In the presence of great difficulties silence is ‘better than many words,’ and there are few greater difficulties than that a mind so strong and pure should have been so cast aside from life and subjected to so much pain”.

In the July of this year Walter lost his friend Lady Carnarvon. Her friendship, no less than her husband’s, had given him much pleasure for many years. The visits to Highclere and his frequent intercourse with them in London had been among his greatest social enjoyments, whereas the more intimate talks when he saw them alone were intellectually extremely interesting to him. He estimated both Lord and Lady Carnarvon’s abilities very highly. After his wife’s death, Lord Carnarvon at once sought Walter Bagehot’s sympathy. No one could be a friend of Walter Bagehot’s without knowing that he could give help in time of trouble, the genuine warmth of his compassion for sorrow being unfailing, and the manner in which he conveyed his sympathy peculiarly helpful.

In February, 1875, from Rutland Gate, Bagehot writes to Mr. John Morley: “I am very sorry to say I cannot review Harrison. I am writing, or trying to write a book on Political Economy which takes all my leisure (which is not very great), and I cannot think of any other subject till this task is done.” This task, grievous to say, was never finished.

In November of the same year Bagehot writes:—

“My dear Morley,

“As the Fortnightly Review was in the hidden period between the ‘fertilisation of the press’ and the appearance of the number, I had no doubt you were abroad when your answer did not come. Might I write in the Fortnightly a series of Articles on English Political Economy? or some such title bringing out its position,—or what I think its position,—both as to the historical method and as to the mathematical which are now competing with it, besides some other things which I wish to say on the subject. It would be six articles and probably more, and I should want to have the right of republishing them separately as one instalment of a book which I have long been trying to write, but which I fear will never be finished except in pieces. If you will have the articles I could begin early in the next year, and go on at a decent pace I hope.”

In answer Lord Morley wrote:—

When Bagehot’s mind was engaged on any special piece of writing he did not travel abroad but chose some attractive place in England where he could write at leisure during the autumn holiday. In the summer of 1875 he commenced writing the first chapters on political economy for the Fortnightly Review, and in August he and my sister went into Surrey, making their head-quarters first at Barford Bridge, afterwards at Guildford. He would work in the mornings, and in the afternoons they would drive together for hours around these two centres, or, as was his habit when he had no horse to ride, he would take long walks exploring the country. He would often talk out his thoughts aloud during these solitary rambles.

A visit to Herd’s Hill followed the Surrey exploration, and then a last tour in Devonshire to those places full of happy associations with his childhood. The results of this autumn’s work, “The Postulates of English Political Economy,” appeared in the January and February numbers of the Fortnightly Review, 1876. It seemed he had some difficulty in continuing the series. Perhaps he felt he could not hurry his mind over so important a work. He writes to Mr. Morley as quoted, that he had long been “trying to write a book which I fear will never be finished except in pieces”. But the pieces even seemed to require great deliberation. Instead of a third chapter of the series he writes in the spring of 1876:—

“My dear Morley,

“Would you have an article on ‘Adam Smith as a Person’ from me? I have it written and could easily adapt it, I think, for the Fortnightly, and I am invited to publish it by this centenary discussion. The general conception would be something like that of the first article in the Economist this week, especially the first part of that article,—but grounded on biographical detail. No picture of Adam Smith has ever been given that I know of. I have a third article on Political Economy coming but not ready for July; but even if I had it ready, I should like to finish up this article on ‘Adam Smith’ just now that the world is thinking of him. I should like to have the right of republishing this essay on Smith if you like it as it was to be one of several on our Economists.”

The work which Bagehot contemplated writing on Political Economy was to consist of three volumes. The second volume was to contain the biographies of celebrated Political Economists. Near the beginning of the first chapter of Economic Studies Bagehot demonstrates “The inherent difficulty, which,” he writes, “no other science, I think, presents in equal magnitude. Years ago I heard Mr. Cobden say at a league meeting that ‘Political Economy was the highest study of the human mind, for that the physical sciences required by no means so hard an effort’. An orator cannot be expected to be exactly precise, and of course Political Economy is in no sense the highest study of the mind—there are others which are much higher, for they are concerned with things much nobler than wealth or money; nor is it true that the effort of mind which Political Economy requires is nearly as great as that required for the abstruser theories of physical science, for the theory of gravitation, or the theory of natural selection; but, nevertheless, what Mr. Cobden meant had—as was usual with his firsthand mind—a great fund of truth. He meant that Political Economy—effectual Political Economy, Political Economy which in complex problems succeeds—is a very difficult thing; something altogether more abstruse and difficult, as well as more conclusive, than that which many of those who rush in upon it have a notion of. It is an abstract science which labours under a special hardship. Those who are conversant with its abstractions are usually without a true contact with its facts; those who are in contact with its facts have usually little sympathy with and little cognisance of its abstractions. Literary men who write about it are constantly using what a great teacher calls ‘unreal words’—that is, they are using expressions with which they have no complete vivid picture to correspond. They are like physiologists who have never dissected; like astronomers who have never seen the stars; and, in consequence, just when they seem to be reasoning at their best, their knowledge of the facts falls short. Their primitive picture fails them, and their deduction altogether misses the mark—sometimes, indeed, goes astray so far that those who live and move among the facts boldly say that they cannot comprehend ‘how any one can talk such nonsense’. Yet, on the other hand, these people who live and move among the facts often, or mostly, cannot of themselves put together any precise reasonings about them. Men of business have a solid judgment—a wonderful guessing power of what is going to happen—each in his own trade; but they have never practised themselves in reasoning out their judgments and in supporting their guesses by argument: probably if they did so some of the finer and correcter parts of their anticipations would vanish. They are like the sensible lady to whom Coleridge said: ‘Madam, I accept your conclusion, but you must let me find the logic for it’. Men of business can no more put into words much of what guides their life than they could tell another person how to speak their language. And so the ‘theory of business’ leads a life of obstruction, because theorists do not see the business and the men of business will not reason out the theories. Far from wondering that such a science is not completely perfect, we should rather wonder that it exists at all.”

In the letter in which he offers the article of “Adam Smith,” Bagehot writes: “I should much like to write on Althorp, but it could only be in the summer, if then.”

The essay “Lord Althorp and the Reform Act of 1832,” was written in the autumn of 1876. Walter did not accompany my sister to her German baths, but remained at home writing it. On her return to England they went to the Royal Hotel, Ascot, where it was finished, and it appeared in the November number of the Fortnightly Review. This was the last from Bagehot’s pen which appeared in any review. I have found it necessary to refrain from re-reading this account of Lord Althorp, otherwise the temptation to quote nearly the whole of it would become irresistible. Every page you turn offers some choice sentence either witty or wise. To repeat one to which Mr. Augustine Birrell called attention in his Lecture on Walter Bagehot at Leighton House: “Through life Lord Althorp continued to be a man strong, though perhaps a little crude in religious belief; and thus gained at the back of his mind a solid seriousness which went well with all the rest of it; and his grief for his wife was almost equally durable. He gave up not only society, which perhaps was no great trial, but also hunting—not because he believed it to be wrong, but because he did not think it seemly or suitable that a man after such a loss should be so very happy as he knew that hunting would make him.” Over the page are these few words: “Nothing is so cruel as fear,”—and so on, wisdom and wit throughout.

From 5th February to 30th December, 1876, Bagehot wrote seventeen important articles on the “Depreciation of Silver”. Two thousand copies of these he had printed in the Economist Office in pamphlet form with Preface and Appendix by himself. They were all sold and have till now never been reprinted.1

It was in the early days of 1877 that Sir Stafford Northcote asked Bagehot’s advice as to how the difficulty could be met caused by the Exchequer Bills having fallen out of favour with the public, while the growing demands on the Exchequer increased owing to Parliament having authorised an extensive system of loans to education and sanitary authorities. Bagehot promptly invented the Treasury Bills which were then, and have been ever since, completely successful in meeting these difficulties.1

During the winter of 1876-7, when he had leisure, which was seldom, he worked at the Economic Studies. Ideas evidently were always cropping up in his mind on the subject. Valuable records of these were found in a fragmentary form, notes dotted down, which Mr. Hutton, aided by Sir R. Giffen, pieced together into the volume which was published after Bagehot’s death in 1879. Sir Robert Giffen writes that the Economic Studies were really “with all their incompleteness, the most important work which Bagehot left”. In 1885 a “Student’s Edition” was published of the two completed chapters under the title of The Postulates of English Political Economy,2 with a Preface by Alfred Marshall, Professor of Political Economy, Cambridge. “I do not think,” writes Sir Robert Giffen,3 after citing other writings by Bagehot on financial questions, “anything he did in this way will compare in quality with the work in Lombard Street or the Economic Studies. His work in this respect, to use Mr. Hutton’s phrase, was that of the least part of him; he was often not deeply interested in it himself, taking it only as ‘all in the day’s work,’ to use his own phrase; but what he did was none the less considerable, enough, and more than enough, to account for his authority and reputation, and to have made a name for him as an economist alone. Even here, however, he succeeded by qualities not specially economic, by quickness to see and say the right thing because his point of view commanded so large a field. . . . I have already hinted at the infinite regret which must be felt at the non-completion of the programme sketched out in these Economic Studies. No event could more powerfully suggest the notion of a life beyond life, so as to explain the mystery of so fair a work being left incomplete. . . . The fragments left are those of a grand building, the design went much farther than what we see, and that, fine and noble as the work is, it is greatly interesting as proving how much finer and nobler the whole structure would have been.”

After quoting Mr. Hutton’s description in his Memoir of Bagehot, from the point of an intimate friend, Sir Robert Giffen writes:—1

Francis Galton writes: “I value it [Economic Studies] very highly, as I value all of your late husband’s work, and it gives me peculiar pleasure to learn by it that some of my facts and speculations have been of interest and service to him. In reading the book, both the subtlety and accuracy of the thoughts and the clearness and cleanness from extraneous matter with which they are conveyed, make one realise afresh how great has been the loss to political science through his death. How completely he stood alone as a writer, able to raise political economy from a collection of confused and heavy facts into the status of an exact and attractive science!”

Lord Granville writes to my sister of the volume of Economic Studies: “I cannot tell you the intellectual pleasure it has given me, partly from its own merits and partly from the reminder it has given me of all the instruction and enjoyment I derived for so many years from your husband’s writings”.

The winter of 1876-7 was spent in the new house in London, Walter paying the usual fortnightly visits to Herd’s Hill, and the usual entertaining at dinner, dining out, and political evening parties taking place. From the middle of February my husband and I, our boy and his governess, were staying there. I remember one Sunday morning in March going to his study, which was high up on the third floor of the Queen’s Gate Place house, because so, he said, it was “out of the fuss of the front door,” to discuss with him the request Watts, the artist, had made that I should help him in his work. Every subject of interest was always talked over with Walter, and in painting and art generally I had from a child found an engrossing pleasure. He was lying on his sofa, “inventing his books” or otherwise “playing with his mind”. He never showed signs of objecting to being interrupted, and was always an excellent listener. It was then, I think, that he said: “You must take me to see Watts, I should like to see the outside of the person who does these things”. He had caught a chill, the precursor of his last illness. I also had a cold, but Watts had asked me to go that morning to see his work and talk over matters, and I remember Walter, with his usual thoughtfulness, insisting that I should have the carriage to go in.

Walter Bagehot never saw those curtains that William Morris was “composing”. The last time I saw him alive was at Waterloo Station, when he and my sister were starting on his last journey to Herd’s Hill. I had driven there with them en route to Queen’s Square, in order to implore the poet to weave the threads into curtains, as the March winds were blowing cold through the thin lace draperies, the only protection over the windows against them. I remember well the last evening he spent “in the new toy” as he called the house. He was lying full length on a sofa under these unsheltered windows and I was sitting over the fire. I thought he was asleep, but suddenly he came out with a few very kind words, the last which I definitely remember.

During those last days he appears to have thought seriously of his state of health, though he certainly took no precautions against increasing his cold. His old college friend, Mr. Fowler, wrote to Mr. Hutton in the following April: “It seems that Bagehot felt very poorly, for he told one of the men of the staff of the Economist that he did not think he should get over his cold”.

Another sign that he thought his life precarious showed itself in the fact that one night, during the last week he was in London, he left his bed and, going up to his study, made his will.

He and my sister were to have left London on Tuesday morning, 20th March, but the journey was postponed till the afternoon, in order that Walter should vote for Mr. George Trevelyan at the Athenæum.1

I still clearly see that departing scene outside 8 Queen’s Gate Place. When he started he was ill. My sister and I were in the carriage and my husband was on the pavement to see us off. Before Walter got into the carriage he turned to him to say good-bye. But there was no accustomed quaint word of fun, no life. The lamp was already burning low. For the first time the boyish spirit seemed extinguished. The journey, the long wait at Yeovil Station in the night air, made matters worse. On arriving at Herd’s Hill he saw his father, who was confined to his bed, for the last time. The doctor was sent for, and found the right lung congested. Each day he became more ill. On the Friday the local doctor telegraphed for Liddon from Taunton, who found him dangerously ill; all the same, that day Walter played a game of cribbage with his Aunt Emma, Mrs. Michell, who was nursing him. On the Saturday the bronchitis was supposed to be better, and my sister lay by his side all the morning, cutting open the leaves of a new copy of Rob Roy, which he read. He spoke often of feeling extreme weakness, increasing as the day advanced. In the afternoon he exerted himself, moving his pillows, and when my sister tried to help him, he said “Let me have my own fidgets,” but called her to him, then fell asleep, breathing loud and hard. Gradually the sound quieted, till, as the sun was setting, the end came peacefully—painlessly.

Since the Tuesday we had been staying at Park Lodge, and on that evening as the sky shone gold and crimson behind the silver birches on the common, my husband, who had been waiting outside the house in Cheyne Walk the previous night to hear what news he could of our dying friend Janie Nassau Senior, came in and told us the end had come. We had had no alarming accounts from Herd’s Hill, and our minds turned solely to this trouble. Rumours appeared in Sunday papers which the servants saw, but we were not told of them. It was supposed that some mistake had been made, and that it was Walter’s father, not himself, who was dead. On the Monday morning, letters, telegrams and newspapers all announced the truth. On the Wednesday my sister, Mrs. Greg, my husband and myself went to Herd’s Hill. The funeral took place on Thursday. A photograph exists of the simple procession as it passed through the street of the little ancient Langport town, the gig of the undertaker leading the way, which was the local fashion in those days. Langport Church was closed, being under repair, the funeral service was therefore at Huish Episcopi Church, but we returned to the spot in Langport Churchyard where his mother and brother were buried. There, looking down on the river winding along the moors to Muchelney Abbey, and away over the wide-reaching landscape, grey and chilly on that March day, we stood by the grave as he was buried. On Easter Sunday the funeral sermon was preached by the Vicar, Mr. Henslowe, the corporation of the town attending in their robes, Walter Bagehot having been their Deputy Recorder.

It seemed right that he should have returned to the old home to die. Though his life had expanded beyond its early associations, he had never lost touch in any sense with those things he had most loved and revered in his youth. Whether the rash act of taking that last journey—having regard to his health no act could have been more rash—was committed in order to reach the old home before the end, it is impossible to say. He never spoke to us of his belief that the end was near.

In death as in life, the sense of reality hovered over everything that happened in connection with Walter during those days. Nothing seemed unnatural. As I sat by his bedside trying to make a drawing of his face, which looked tired but younger than in life, solemn as death must always be, there was no sense that he was divided from us, or that his life was ended;—it was only being continued in a different way. In his nature the spiritual and the natural had ever had equally full play. They had been interwoven from earliest childhood. He had lived to the full every moment of his life, in mind and in spirit. “All things are yours, whether the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come.”

His own words come to mind.

“The nature of man is not two things, but one thing. We have not one set of affections, hopes, sensibilities to be affected by the present world, and another and a different to be affected by the invisible world: we are moved by grandeur, or we are not; we are stirred by sublimity, or we are not; we hunger after righteousness, or we do not; we hate vice, or we do not; we are passionate or not passionate; loving or not loving; cold or not cold; our heart is dull, or it is wakeful; our soul is alive or it is dead. Deep under the surface of the intellect lies the stratum of the passions of the intense, peculiar, simple impulses which constitute the heart of man; there is the eager essence, the primitive desiring being. What stirs this latent being we know. In general it is stirred by everything. Sluggish natures are stirred little, wild natures are stirred much; but all are stirred somewhat. It is not important whether the object be in the visible or invisible world; whoso loves what he has seen, will love what he has not seen; whoso hates what he has seen, will hate what he has not seen. Creation is, as it were, but the garment of the Creator; whoever is blind to the beauty on its surface, will be insensible to the beauty beneath; whoso is dead to the sublimity before his senses, will be dull to that which he imagines; whoso is untouched by the visible man, will be unmoved by the invisible God. These are no new ideas; and the conspicuous evidence of history confirms them. Everywhere the deep religious organisation has been deeply sensitive to this world. If we compare what are called sacred and profane literatures, the depth of human affection is deeper in the sacred. A warmth as of life is on the Hebrew, a chill as of marble is on the Greek. In Jewish history the most tenderly religious character is the most sensitive to earth. Along every lyric of the Psalmist thrills a deep spirit of human enjoyment; he was alive as a child to the simple aspects of the world; the very errors of his mingled career are but those to which the open, enjoying character is most prone; its principle, so to speak, was a tremulous passion for that which he had seen, as well as that which he had not seen.”

[Page 446, line 10 from foot,]for league read League.

[1 ] This pamphlet will form part of vol. vi. of the complete edition of Walter Bagehot’s works.

[1 ] See Lord Welby’s letter, p. 22, chap. i.

[2 ] Longmans, Green & Co.

[3 ] “Bagehot as an Economist,” Fortnightly Review, 1st April, 1880.

[1 ] “Bagehot as an Economist.”

[1 ] Ten years after this fatal journey was taken, Mr. George Trevelyan wrote, when complying with a request of my sister’s to vote for a friend of hers at the Athenæum: “I do not know whether you are aware how closely the voting in the Athenæum is and always will be in my memory connected with a most honoured name. Your husband, I believe, actually altered his hour of leaving London to vote for me there in that last week.”