Ludwig W. and the burden of family names

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‘The House of Wittgenstein’ by Alexander Waugh, the grandson of Evelyn Waugh and the son Auberon Waugh, surely raises the question here in the U.S. (which celebrates family as much as apple pie and the flag): Why are we hard-pressed to think of any writerly American families, let alone ones as distinguished as the Waughs, the Mitfords and the Mosleys? Do we think of prominent families only when it has to do with a celebrity child embarrassing a celebrity parent?

Alexander Waugh has pondered the matter of families in another book, ‘Fathers and Sons,’ which he calls “The Autobiograpy of a Family.” There he skillfully avoids any reductive answer based upon heredity. He does include a letter there, written to his own infant son, which contains the sage advice: “Beware of seriousness: it is a form of stupidity.” And at the same time he urges the boy, “Do not let [the family name] browbeat you into thinking you have to become a writer, that it is your destiny or your duty to do so. It isn’t. There is no point in writing unless you have something to say and are determined to say it well.”

The notion of what can be said — and said well — was at the center of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s entire philosophical life, ending with the final posthumous, ironically titled book ‘On Certainty.’ Waugh, in ‘The House of Wittgenstein,’ has a very good grasp of the complexity of the Wittgenstein family, the richest family in Austria at that time, and he has the necessary discretion to avoid easy summary. Waugh makes accessible both Ludwig, whose life is the epitome of temptations resisted and the sheer difficulty of living modestly, and the life of his brother Paul, a pianist and composer who lost an arm in World War I, survived being a prisoner of war in Siberia, escaped the Nazi occupation and spent much of his life on Long Island.

This book may cause some readers to reflect, would they have been able to renounce their inheritances as did Ludwig in the interests of art or philosophy.

And, can you think — with the Waughs in mind — of any distinguished writerly American families? Tell us.

— Thomas McGonigle