2 April 1938 Handwritten
Jellicoe Ward, Preston Hall, Aylesford, Kent
Dear Spender,
I hope things go well with you. I really wrote to say I hoped you’d read my Spanish book (title Homage to Catalonia) when it comes out, which should be shortly. I have been afraid that having read those two chapters1you would carry away the impression that the whole book was Trotskyist propaganda, whereas actually about half of it or less is controversial. I hate writing that kind of stuff and I am much more interested in my own experiences, but unfortunately in this bloody period we are living in one’s only experiences are being mixed up in controversies, intrigues etc. I sometimes feel as if I hadn’t been properly alive since the beginning of 1937. I remember on sentry-go in the trenches near Alcubierre I used to say Hopkins’s poem ‘Felix Randal’, I expect you know it, over and over to myself to pass the time away in that bloody cold, & that was about the last occasion when I had any feeling for poetry. Since then it’s gone right out of my head. I don’t know that I can give you a copy of my book because I’ve already had to order about 10 extra ones and it’s so damned expensive, but you can always get it out of the library.
I have been in this place about 3 weeks. I am afraid from what they say it is TB. all right but evidently a very old lesion and not serious. They say I am to stay in bed and rest completely for about 3 months and then I shall probably be O.K. It means I can’t work and is rather a bore, but perhaps is all for the best.
The way things are going in Spain simply desolates me. All those towns & villages I knew smashed about, & I suppose the wretched peasants who used to be so decent to us being chased to & fro & their landlords put back onto them. I wonder if we shall ever be able to go back to Spain if Franco wins. I suppose it would mean getting a new passport anyway. I notice that you and I are both on the board of sponsors or whatever it is called of the S.I.A.2 So also is Nancy Cunard, all rather comic because it was she who previously sent me that bloody rot which was afterwards published in book form (called Authors Take Sides). I sent back a very angry reply in which I’m afraid I mentioned you uncomplimentarily, not knowing you personally at that time. However I’m all for this S.I.A. business if they are really doing anything to supply food etc., not like that damned rubbish of signing manifestos to say how wicked it all is.
Write some time if you get time. I’d like to meet again when I get out of here. Perhaps you will be able to come and stay with us some time.
Yours
Eric Blair
1. Probably what are now Appendixes I and II (pp. 169–215, above).
2. Solidaridad Internacional Antifascista, subtitled, on its letterhead, ‘International AntiFascist Solidarity’. Other sponsors included W. H. Auden, Havelock Ellis, Sidonie Goossens, Laurence Housman, C. E. M. Joad, Miles Malleson, John Cowper, Llewelyn Powys, Herbert Read, Reginald Reynolds and Rebecca West. Ethel Mannin (see 575) was the Honorary Treasurer; Emma Goldman, the Honorary Secretary. Goldman wrote to Eileen (as ‘Miss Blair’) on 14 April 1938 thanking her for her kind contribution and for help in distributing fifty of SIA’s folders and bulletins. She also sent wishes for Orwell’s recovery. The periodical Spain and the World for 8 April 1938 advertised, with Reg Groves’s But We Shall Live Again (on Chartism) and Rudolf Rocker’s Anarcho-Syndicalism, Ethel Mannin’s Women and the Revolution, the last advertised as ‘Biographies of great women rebels from Charlotte Corday to Emma Goldman, from Mary Wollstonecraft to Mme Sun Yat Sen and Maria Spridonova.’ For Rudolf Rocker’s Anarcho-Syndicalism, there was a commendation by Orwell: ‘Of great value. It will do something towards filling a great gap in political consciousness.’ See Nicolas Walter, ‘Orwell and the Anarchists’, Freedom, 42, no. 2, 30 January 1981; Crick, 351.