Plucky little fellow
Alan Watkins
Part of my Life A. J. Ayer (Collins £6.95)
Most writing is hard work, if the result is to be worth anything; and writing a good book, or indeed a book of any kind, is harder work than writing a good review. I have often noticed that reviewers who themselves write good books, such as A. J. P. Taylor and Hugh Trevor-Roper, err if anything on the side of kindliness. Such is not, however, the prevailing fashion, which is for `slashing articles' reminiscent of Mr Rigby (who was based on J. W. Croker) in Coningsby. The fashion is perhaps best exemplified by a young smartyboots called Mr • Peter Conrad, who seems to be an authority on practically everying but to like practically nothing.
As I do not follow this fashion, I should like to begin by paying some tribute not so much to Professor Ayer's autobiography (which takes us to 1947 and his departure from Oxford for London) as to Professor Ayer himself. He was one of my boyhood heroes, along with Bertrand Russell, Denis Compton, Bleddyn Williams, William (of the `William' books), Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell, whom I discovered before the critics did. As an influence both liberating and subversive, Ayer was comparable to Russell, though of course his range was not so wide. A few crisp quotations from Language, Truth and Logic usually sufficed to controvert the most acute teacher of Scripture; while English mistresses with a tendency towards spirituality could be reduced to confused silence by a short discourse on the principle of verification.
And Ayer had — has — something else in common with Russell. By reading him carefully, you can actually learn something about the craft of writing. This is more than you can learn from, say, Dr Leavis. Ayer's autobiography is written with typical clarity, though he does not know the difference between each other and one another — or, if he does know it, he does not acknowledge it. He also tends to get his prepositions in a twist in either • . or constructions. These minor matters apart, his prose is, as always, admirable. The trouble is, however, that what works in a book on philosophy or a learned article does not necessarily work quite so well in an autobiography. I sometimes wanted more detail and fewer generalisations.
For example, Ayer is remarkable among philosophers in liking both girls and games (sports of various kinds, I mean). Indeed, it could be said that he is famous, even notorious, for these tastes, though more for the former than for the latter. Nor is this disproportion in relative interest at all sur prising. To the common reader, girls are surely more interesting than games. In the general scheme of things, moreover, girls are undoubtedly more important than games. And Ayer is, on his own admission, no duffer certainly, but no Compton either (it is only in the last twelve years, he tells us, that he has learnt to bat properly, playing for the New College Fellows against the choir school). His sporting observations and reminiscences possess a strictly limited interest. And yet his book contains more about games than about girls. He loses his virginity at nineteen to a girl to whom he remains faithful and whom he later marries. In the early years of the war the marriage breaks down. `Since the breakdown of my marriage I had made no attempt to resist the attraction which women had for me.' Yes indeed. Quite so. But who? How many? When? Where? What did he get up to? Ayer does not tell us. Perhaps this reticence is both prudent and honourable. It hardly makes for the liveliest possible read.
At Eton he seems to have been a plucky little fellow, nippy at soccer, adept also at those funny football games with strange rules which were, as they presumably still are, played at the school. He was a wing forward at rugger but too small to make a success of the position; in any case, the game was not taken seriously at Eton. All this sporting activity appears to have been genuine enough, in that Ayer took a real pleasure in his skills. Nevertheless there was an element, not exactly of buying popularity, but of seeking acceptance.
His father was French-Swiss, his mother Dutch-Jewish. Ayer senior wrote a treatise. on comparative statistics; was employed by Alfred Rothschild (after whom Ayer was called, though he does not like the name); was dismissed by Rothschild following some imprudent speculation which resulted in bankruptcy; and afterwards prospered in the timber trade. However, the force in the family and in Ayer's life was his maternal grandfather. He wanted young Freddie to become a barrister and a politician and was slightly disappointed when he turned out to be a philosopher instead. He was also conveniently rich. He insisted on paying Ayer's full fees at Eton, even though he had won a scholarship, because he did not want him to be different from other boys. , Any early difficulties he encountered he attributes not to anti-semitism, which does not seem to have been a factor in his life, but to his general air of foreign-ness. Altogether he pushes the spirit of forgiveness and a kind of retrospective stoicism to ludicrous lengths. Thus, of his preparatory school: `except for the time I was being bullied, I got on reasonably well with the other boys'. This is about as sensible as saying that, apart from the • unfortunate accident to Mr Lincoln, a splendid evening at the theatre was enjoyed by one and all; or that, except that the bridegroom was drunk, the bride fainted away and the best man forgot the ring, the marriage ceremony turned out to be an unqualified success. At Eton Lord Hailsham puts in an appearance: `One of the boys who beat me was Quintin Hogg, who displayed what seemed to me a more than judicial severity in the performance of the exercise. I have long since ceased to bear him any grudge for this . . . our relations. . . have always been friendly.' (Now if the mad flagellant Hogg had beaten me I should have made very sure of doing him some serious mischief— not necessarily of a physical nature, though even that possibility should not be excluded —in later life, preferably when he was not looking. There is no moral merit in indiscriminate charity.) It is the same story when Ayer joins the Welsh Guards and, later, Intelligence. He does not repine. He makes the best of things. Philip Toynbee visits the motley collection at Sandhurst and gives a lecture on guerrilla warfare — this is about the nearest Ayer comes to acerbity — `contriving to suggest, without actually stating, that he had had some experience of it'. This refusal to indulge in self-pity has its attractive side. It also has its less attractive side: for Ayer is, as he admits, anxious to be liked. Furthermore, he is anxious to be liked by the right people. It is extremely awkward both to profess inconvenient opinions and to be liked by the right people: but Ayer manages the feat with skill and even honour. Russell, by contrast, did not greatly care what people thought of him.
There is a more important difference between the two. It resides in Ayer's ignorance of (or, at any rate, lack of aptitude for) mathematics and the physical sciences. yet in his first book he wrote that only the propositions of mathematics and science had meaning. In these circumstances one would have expected him to learn something about them. He made a perfunctorY attempt but quickly desisted. Subsequently he modified his philosophical position but did not turn, as many of his colleagues did, to linguistic analysis, to political theory or to ethics — all branches of philosophy in which scientific knowledge, though no hindrance, would be no great help. Instead he became a traditional British philosopher, con' centrating on the problem of perception and on probability and evidence. Still Ayer did nothing to repair his ignorance. I do not say he would have written better philosopilY had he done so: only that the omission is odd. Nonetheless I look forward to reading his next book, Postscript: This is yet another book which mentions Maurice Bowra several times and fails to record a single witty observation by him. Either Bowra's wit was of a peculiarlY evanescent quality, or he has been singularly unfortunate in his Boswells.
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