https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-great

 

Thanks to everyone who commented on last week’s post Secrets Of The Great Families. Some highlights:

Many people knew of interesting families I’d missed. Stephen Frug brings up the Jameses:

Any short list of the great families (or at least the great American families) should include the James's: Henry James is one of the perennial candidates for the greatest American novelist, and his brother William James is one of the perennial candidates for the greatest American philosopher. Their sister Alice James got a posthumous reputation as a diarist. (There were two other brothers who never became famous. Their father, Henry James Sr., had some reputation as a theologian, although not in the Henry (Jr)/William James league.

Kalimac writes:

Another member of the Darwin family who achieved fame in a different area was the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, who was on a slightly different branch but was 4 generations down from both Erasmus Darwin and Josiah Wedgwood.

Watch out, too, for other cases where the surnames differ. I like to offer the story of Stanley Baldwin, Prime Minister and a leading figure in British politics in the 1920s and 30s. He had a particular ability to deliver powerful and effective speeches, which is perhaps partly explained by some of them having been written for him by his cousin, whose name was Rudyard Kipling.