Alexander Beresford Hope
Beresford Hope, was an aristocrat, Conservative politician and author. He was a pupil at Harrow School between 1833 and 1837, and subsequently took an active interest in its affairs, particularly Scott’s work there. Scott had probably first met him at Ecclesiologist Society meetings which had helped to found, and he had been an Honorary Fellow of the Institute (RIBA) since 1850. He co-founded the The Saturday Review in 1855. Scott’s book,Remarks on Secular & Domestic Architecture, Present & Future, published by John Murray in 1857, was dedicated to Beresford Hope, who was just the sort of person that Scott could have been expected to honour in this way; he was wealthy, influential, and a well-known Gothic enthusiast. Hope was Scott’s most persistent ally in the Foreign Office controversy while he was in the House of Commons, and in the pages of The Saturday Review, which Hope owned, as well as being its joint-editor, and its chief contributor on architectural matters. Events show that the aristocratic Hope liked Scott personally although he was never one of the various architects that Hope employed directly. Perhaps he was too evangelical for Hope’s high-church beliefs. Beresford Hope was elected as President of the Institute (RIBA) in 1865, seeming to signify the final triumph of Gothicists. However, Scott, ever wary of criticism, was unsure of Hope’s stance on his Albert Memorial design when it was completed and unveiled in 1872. He said:
I believe that Mr Beresford Hope though nominally friendly is only too glad to promote these attacks … I am told that I have to expect another probably this week in the Saturday Review. I must trust in God & take Courage.
This, of course, was Scott being paranoid again and nothing appeared. Certainly Hope had criticised him in the Saturday in July 1860, for having given in to Palmerston’s demands to a classical Foreign Office, but although Hope appeared somewhat aloof he was basically a solid supporter of Scott and his work. When he was a member of the select Committee on Public Offices and Buildings in June 1877, he described Scott as an eminent architect, and at his cross-examination of Scott he carefully framed his questions to enable Scott’s replies to appear in the best possible light. After Scott’s death, a few month’s later, he headed a list of subscribers towards a prize fund set up as a memorial to Scott and acted as one of the pall-bearers at his funeral.
