Huffington on Clintons

It’s a little startling of the arch-conservative Arianna Huffington to quote Samuel Butler in a catty put-down of the Clinton marriage (Commentary, Jan. 19). Maybe her Cambridge friends will remind her that Butler was pronounced “the greatest English writer of the latter half of the 19th century” by a fervent Fabian socialist, George Bernard Shaw--anathema, surely, to the Huffingtons.

Butler suggested that the Thomas Carlyles, Victorian conservatism personified, had done at least two other people a great favor by marrying each other. One other such couple comes to mind.

FRED SCIFERS

Downey