Family fortunes
Sir: Jonathan Mirsky’s review of Alexander Waugh’s book on the family Wittgenstein (Books, 20 September) perhaps reveals more about The Spectator’s sturdy Europhobia than about the Wittgensteins themselves. He doubts if the Wittgensteins would have merited a group biography if they hadn’t been extremely rich and included among them the ‘notorious’ philosopher Ludwig. But the Wittgenstein family included a father who became the Andrew Carnegie of AustriaHungary and who befriended and acted as patron to Brahms and Gustav Klimt, among others; three brothers who committed suicide; and a fourth who, despite losing an arm, became a concert pianist of international repute. One wonders who Mirsky thinks would merit a group biography.
Perhaps the most interesting fact about the Wittgenstein family wealth is not mentioned by Mirsky. Ludwig, as a young man, gave his share of it entirely to his siblings, with the words, ‘They’ve got so much money already
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that some more won’t do them any harm.’ Neither is it strictly true that everything that Ludwig wrote and said — as Mirsky suggests — is baffling nonsense. Some of it is really quite lucid, and one of his choicer epigrams remains as true today as when he coined it and seems particularly timely: ‘In this country [Britain] politics alternates between an evil purpose and no purpose.’
Patrick Skelton
London SW1
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