Yanks at Cambridge
SIMON RAVEN
The Cambridge Mind: Ninety Years of the 'Cambridge Review' 1879-1969 edited by Eric Homberger, William Janeway and Simon Schama (Cape 80s) First let me state where I stand. While up at Cambridge, I was a regular contributor to the Cambridge Review from the autumn of 1950 to the high summer of 1952, during much of which time I wrote the weekly theatre col- umn. So the Cambridge Review is, in a sense tny mag., and I am still eager for its honour.
And so, I suppose, are Messrs Homberger, Janeway and Schama. Both Mr Homberger (formerly of Berkeley and Chicago) and Mr Schama have edited the paper in the very recent past, while Mr Janeway (once of Princeton and now of New York) has been an associate editor. The three of them have now celebrated ninety years of publication by gathering together`a wealth of uncollected writings by some of the most distinguished scholars and scientists of our time', the earliest of which (by William Cunningham) originally appeared in the Review in 1882, the latest (by Raymond Williams) in May 1969. 'If our title is mildly tendentious,' write the anthologists in their introduction, 'it is be- cause it seems to us that nearly all of the contributions . . exhibit common qualities which might be collectively identified with The Cambridge Mind: a rigour of logical analysis; an uncompromising exercise of sceptical inquiry; a commitment to verifica- tion rather than imaginative construction.'
Well, yes. But what about such little matters as style and wit? Or even entertain- ment and humour? As far as I remember, it was permissible to laugh in Cambridge in my day (though I dare say the practice is no longer encouraged), and if we are to believe e.g. E. F. Benson and the oral evidence of our more recent elders, jokes were quite common around the turn of the century and persisted, even in intellectually reputable circles, right up to 1939. Irony and satire were also to be found at least as late as 1948, and there are even rumours that certain Can- tabs who left since 1880 have distinguished themselves as playwrights or novelists, a good example being Mr P. M. (Peter) Green, who himself edited the Review in the early 'fifties.
Yet seek as one may through the pages of this collection, one is hard put to it to find one single witty remark or one single stroke of irony—except in Sir Arthur Quitter- Couch's letter to a soldier at the front (1915), Which, however, the editors advise us to re- gard as a prime example of a literary fossil. Or again, poetry is only represented by one brief lyric of Thom Gunn's and two of Sylvia Platte's; the existence of the cinema (to say nothing of television) is unrecognised; and novels (or indeed anything else except aca- demic treatises) apparently ceased to be Written at the death of D. H. Lawrence'
Now I know very well that the three editors are confined to reproducing pieces which were actually printed in the Review. But I also know that all the matters whose omission from this book I deplore have been much discussed, both in Cambridge and in the Cambridge Review, for many years now, and that the tone of voice which I miss (satirical, mocking, etc) has frequently sounded, indeed resounded, through both the University and its eponymous weekly. Which things being so, to call this volume The Cambridge Mind is worse than 'tenden, tious', it is fraudulent.
Of course, there are excellent things here, The first section, which is given over to external affairs such as 'War and Peace' and money, contains quietly efficient essays by Russell and Keynes and a succinct piece of wrangling by Joan Robinson. Section two (`History and Historians') includes a fascina- ting review by M. I. Finley which turns on education in classical antiquity; section three (Philosophy and the Social Sciences') has Ludwig Wittgenstein's scathing refutation of a dud logician; section four gives some use- ful hints on the progress, over the years, of the Natural Sciences; and the last section (`Art and Artists') is distinguished by F. L. Lucas's moving obituary of Julian Bell and by Joan Bennett's shrewd insights into the `illuminating failures' of T. S. Eliot as a critic.
For all of this one is very grateful; and all of it exhibits the 'rigour of logical ana- lysis' and 'the uncompromising exercise of sceptical inquiry' which are rightly prized by the editors. But a great deal of the rest is rigorous only in the reading of it and provokes but one inquiry, how anyone can ever haVe thought it worth writing in the first place. Indeed, most of it is so flat, timid, dank and dowdy that one would think some spectral supervisor must have risen up out of the Fens, demanding essays on pain of rustication and oozing over the authors as they wrote.
For is it possible, I ask myself, that any man could have written so dull and dingy an obituary of the mighty Rutherford as J. J. Thomson contributes? Is it conceivable that any man could be so niggling as I. A. Richards about Forster's Aspects of the Novel? And what on earth possessed the editors to print Raymond Williams's tauto- logous article, in which he gratulates Marcuse on being in agreement with Raymond Williams? As for F. R. Leavis, who has written so brilliantly and acutely elsewhere of George Eliot and Conrad, why punish
the poor fellow by reminding us how in- sufferably tedious he could be about the `genius' of D. H. Lawrence?
And so to revert to my original complaint. Even if all the pieces here embodied the qualities which the editors claim for them, it would still be true that these qualities, though admirable in their. way, are not enough to represent 'the Cambridge mind'. They are part, and only part, of a tradition which also includes elegance, poetry, gaiety, melancholy, irony, drama (and melodrama), and a nice slice of bawdry to boot. Puritans may deprecate such things as frivolous, fanatics may denounce them as 'irrelevant'; but they are, or have been, there: and in so far as they are all lacking in this selection, its editors have piteously wronged the dear old Review and grossly cheated their Alma Mater,
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