1943–1945
Orwell began work as Literary Editor of Tribune immediately on leaving the BBC at the end of November 1943. The first of his eighty causeries, ‘As I Please’, was published on 3 December 1943 and on Christmas Eve Tribune published an article by ‘John Freeman’ – Orwell under an assumed name – ‘Can Socialists Be Happy?’. For the next two years he was remarkably busy writing articles, reviews, columns, and journalism of every kind. He was, as he told Dorothy Plowman on 19 February 1946, ‘smothered under journalism’ and desperate to get away – to Jura. Nevertheless, smothered or not, some of his outstanding essays were published in this period – ‘Raffles and Miss Blandish’, ‘Benefit of Clergy’, ‘In Defence of P.G. Wodehouse’, ‘Funny but not Vulgar’, ‘Good Bad Books’, and ‘The Sporting Spirit’.
Relatively few letters by Orwell have survived from autumn 1944 to spring 1945 other than brief business notes. On 15 February 1945 he went to Paris to begin a three-month stint as a war correspondent for the Observer and Manchester Evening News, contributing nineteen reports. These articles tend to be dismissed too easily, partly, perhaps, because they were entirely overlooked for so many years. One result of this experience was another fine essay, ‘Revenge is Sour’, 9 November 1945. During this time his contributions to Tribune and the Manchester Evening News were taken over by Jennie Lee* for the former and the critic Daniel George for the latter.
It was a time of personal gain and loss for Orwell. In June 1944 he and Eileen adopted a son, Richard. On the 28th their flat was bombed and they had to move out, Orwell trundling his books four miles each lunchtime to the Tribune office in a wheelbarrow. Eileen had never fully come to terms with the death of her brother, Eric, during the retreat to Dunkirk. She was not well, was overworked, and depressed throughout the war (see her letter to Norah Myles, 5 December 1940, and her cryptic note – so unlike her – of March 1941). A medical examination arranged by Gwen O’Shaughnessy revealed tumours of the uterus. The operation was to take place in Newcastle upon Tyne. She awaited the operation at Greystone, the O’Shaughnessy family home near Stockton-on-Tees, where Gwen and her children had taken refuge when the flying-bomb raids started. Richard had also gone there when the Orwells were bombed out. He was cared for by the O’Shaughnessy nanny, Joyce Pritchard. Long and moving letters from Eileen to her husband have survived from this period, planning and looking forward to their future. Unfortunately she died under the anaesthetic on 29 March 1945. Orwell rushed back from Europe, settled Richard, and then returned to bury himself in work. VE-Day (8 May) followed shortly after. As a day it meant little to Orwell (the experience of many people). ‘I was not in England for VE-Day, but I am told it was very decorous – huge crowds, but little enthusiasm and even less rowdiness – just as it was in France. No doubt in both cases this was partly due to the shortage of alcohol’ (‘London Letter’, XVII, 2672, p. 163). For an excellent account of the day confirming this, see Chapter 1 of David Kynaston’s, Austerity Britain, 1945–51 (Bloomsbury, 2007).
From November 1943 to February 1944 he wrote Animal Farm and after many difficulties, some posed by a KGB agent working in the Ministry of Information, it was published by Fredric Warburg on 17 August 1945, two days after VJ-Day. Then, in September, when he stayed in a fisherman’s cottage his love affair with Jura – his ‘Golden Country’ – began.
Dwight Macdonald wrote to Orwell on 22 October 1943 telling him he had resigned from Partisan Review. His letter of resignation, with, he said, ‘a rather hot reply from my ex-colleagues’, appeared in the July–August issue. He was starting a new journal and asked Orwell whether he had done any writing lately on ‘popular culture’ (Macdonald gives it quotations marks). He suggested something on British advertising since the war and also asked whether Orwell had ever written anything on the Spanish civil war.
To Dwight Macdonald*
11 December 1943
10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6
Dear Macdonald,
Many thanks for your letter dated October 22nd (only just arrived!) I hope your new magazine will be a success. I’d like to write something for it, but I think I can’t write anything of a strictly political nature while I have my arrangement with P[artisan] R[eview]. Apart from anything else, my periodical ‘London Letters’ so to speak use up anything I have to say about the current situation in this country. That article about the Spanish war that I spoke to you of I did finally write, but I sent it to New Road 1943, edited by Alex Comfort and Co, who somewhat to my annoyance printed it in a mutilated form.1 Recently I did a short thing for a French magazine on the English detective story,2 and it struck me that something interesting could be done on the change in ethical outlook in the crime story during the last 50 years or so. This subject is so vast that one can only attack corners of it, but how would you like an article on Raffles (‘The Amateur Cracksman’), comparing him with some modern crime story, eg. something from one of the pulp mags? (I could only do this in a rather sketchy way as one can’t buy the pulp mags in this country since the war, but I was a reader of them for years and know their moral atmosphere). Raffles, about contemporary with Sherlock Holmes, was a great favourite in England and I fancy in the USA too, as I remember he is mentioned in the O. Henry stories. And into the essay I could bring some mention of Edgar Wallace, who in my opinion is a significant writer and marks a sort of moral turning-point. Tell me whether you would like this, and if so, how many words about. I dare say I could turn the stuff in fairly soon after hearing from you, but how soon it would get to you I can’t say.3 You see what the posts are like nowadays.
I have left the BBC after wasting 2 years in it, and have become editor4 of the Tribune, a leftwing weekly I dare say you know. The job leaves me a little spare time, so I am at last getting on with a book again, not having written one for nearly 3 years.
Yours sincerely
Geo. Orwell
[XVI, 2392, pp. 24–5; typewritten]
1. ‘Looking Back on the Spanish War’; the headnote to which lists the cuts. (See XIII, 1421, pp. 497–511.)
2. ‘Grandeur et décadence du roman policier anglais’, Fontaine, 17 November 1943 [XV, 2357, pp. 309–20].
3. Orwell wrote ‘Raffles and Miss Blandish’, which appeared in Horizon, October 1944 (XVI, 2538, pp. 345–7); it was reprinted in Macdonald’s new journal, Politics, the following month with a slightly extended title: ‘The Ethics of the Detective story: from Raffles to Miss Blandish’.
4. Actually as literary editor.
To Leonard Moore*
9 January 1944
10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6
Dear Mr Moore,
Thanks for your letter. I think there might be the basis for a book of reprinted critical pieces when I have done one or two more which at present are only projected.1 I don’t think it is worth reprinting anything which has already been in print twice, but the other possible ones are:
Charles Dickens. (about 12,000?)
Wells, Hitler and the World State. (about 2000).
Rudyard Kipling. (about 4000).
W. B. Yeats. (about 2000).
Gandhi in Mayfair. (about 3000).
The last 4 are all in Horizon. In addition, when I can get the books for it, I am going to do for an American magazine an essay on ‘Raffles’, probably about 3–4000. I also did one of about 2000 on Sherlock Holmes for the Free French2 magazine Fontaine. This I think could be put in but could do with some expansion. I would also like to put in an ‘imaginary conversation’ I did on the wireless with Jonathan Swift, and perhaps the substance of another talk I did on Gerrard° Manley Hopkins, if I can get hold of the script of the latter. In all this might make a book of about 30,000 words or more.
I can’t see to this now because I am overwhelmed with work. I am getting on with my book and unless I get ill or something hope to finish it by the end of March.3 After that I have contracted to do one for the ‘Britain in Pictures’ series, but that shouldn’t take long.4
This thing I am doing now will be very short, about 20,000 to 25,000 words. It is a fairy story but also a political allegory, and I think we may have some difficulties about finding a publisher. It won’t be any use trying it on Gollancz nor probably Warburg, but it might be worth dropping a hint elsewhere that I have a book coming along. I suppose you know which publishers have paper and which haven’t?
Yours sincerely
Eric Blair
[XVI, 2403, p. 59; typewritten]
1. The collection was published in England by Secker & Warburg on 14 February 1946 as Critical Essays, and in the United States by Reynal & Hitchcock, New York, on 29 April 1946 as Dickens, Dali & Others: Studies in Popular Culture. Of the essays mentioned, ‘Gandhi in Mayfair’ and those on Sherlock Holmes, Swift, and Hopkins are not included; not mentioned here, but included are ‘Boys’ Weeklies’, ‘The Art of Donald McGill’, and those on Dali, Koestler, and P.G. Wodehouse.
2. Free French: those fighting with the Allies under General de Gaulle. Of some 100,000 French soldiers who were rescued from the beaches of Dunkirk with about a quarter of a million British, some 10,000 joined de Gaulle and about 90,000 returned to France.
3. Animal Farm.
4. The English People, belatedly published, with unauthorised changes, by Collins in 1947.
To Gleb Struve*
17 February 1944
Dear Mr Struve,
Please forgive me for not writing earlier to thank you for the very kind gift of 25 Years of Soviet Russian Literature with its still more kind inscription. I am afraid I know very little about Russian literature and I hope your book will fill up some of the many gaps in my knowledge. It has already roused my interest in Zamyatin’s We, which I had not heard of before. I am interested in that kind of book, and even keep making notes for one myself that may get written sooner or later.1 I wonder whether you can tell if there is an adequate translation of Blok?2 I saw some translated fragments about ten years ago in Life and Letters, but whether they were any good as a translation I do not know.
I am writing a little squib which might amuse you when it comes out, but it is so not O.K. politically that I don’t feel certain in advance that anyone will publish it. Perhaps that gives you a hint of its subject.3
Yours sincerely
Geo. Orwell
[XVI, 2421, p. 99; typewritten]
1. This would become Nineteen Eighty-Four.
2. Alexander Blok (1880–1921), lyric poet much influenced by Symbolism. Although he welcomed the 1917 Revolution he quite quickly became disillusioned.
3. Animal Farm.
To C. K. Ogden*
1 March 1944
Tribune
Dear Mr. Ogden
Very many thanks for the booklet. I was aware, of course, that you have much to put up with from the Esperanto people, and that that was why you drew attention to their very unfortunate choice for the verb ‘to be’ or whatever it is. We have had them on to us since mentioning Basic, but I have choked them off. Also the Ido1 people.
As I told you when I was in the B.B.C. (I have left there now) there was great resistance against doing anything over the air about Basic, at any rate for India. I rather gathered that its chief enemies were the writers of English textbooks, but that all Indians whose English is good are hostile to the idea, for obvious reasons. At any rate it was with great difficulty that I got Miss Lockhart on to the air.2
I don’t know a great deal about G. M. Young.3 He is the ordinary silly-clever ‘intelligent’ conservative whose habitual manoeuvre is to deal with any new idea by pointing out that it has been said before. The only time I met him he struck me as ordinarily snobbish, talking about the terrible sacrifices the upper classes had made on account of the war etc. He was also trying to chase our little Indian Section of the B.B.C. for broadcasting ‘unsound’ ideas. I think he was a supporter of appeasement. That’s about all I know about him.
Hope to see you some time.
Yours sincerely,
Geo. Orwell,
Literary Editor
[XVI, 2427, pp. 108–9; typewritten]
1. An artificial language based on Esperanto.
2. Leonora Lockhart was an assistant to C.K. Ogden. Orwell arranged for her to speak to India on Basic English. Basic was developed in the 1920s and attempted to provide a readily learned ‘English’ based on a strictly limited number of words.
3. George Malcolm Young (1882–1959), historian and essayist specialising in Victorian England. His Charles I and Cromwell was published in 1936, and he contributed The Government of Britain to the Britain in Pictures series in 1941.
To Roy Fuller*
7 March 1944
10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6
Dear Mr Fuller,
Since receiving your letter I have procured a copy of the Little Reviews Anthology1 and read your story, ‘Fletcher’. I must say that I myself cannot see anything anti-semitic in it. I imagine that what Cedric Dover2 meant was that the central character was a Jew and also a not very admirable character, and perhaps that counts as anti-semitism nowadays. I am sorry about this, but you will understand that as Literary Editor I cannot read all the books sent out for review and have to take the reviewers’ judgement for granted. Of course if he had made a bald-headed attack on you as an anti-semite I should have checked up on it before printing, but I think he only said ‘subtly anti-semitic’ or words to that effect.3 I am sorry that you should have had this annoyance. I must add, however, that by my own experience it is almost impossible to mention Jews in print, either favourably or unfavourably, without getting into trouble.
Yours truly
Geo. Orwell
[XVI, 2431, pp. 116–7; typewritten]
1. Little Reviews Anthology was edited by Denys Val Baker (1917–1984), novelist, short-story writer, and editor. Five numbers appeared, in 1943, 1945, 1946, 1947–48, and 1949. Cedric Dover reviewed Baker’s Little Reviews, 1914–1943 at the same time (‘a useful but pedestrian record’), Tribune, 18 February 1944. Orwell’s review of three of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, which had first appeared in Poetry (London), October–November 1942, was included in the Anthology.
2. Cedric Dover (1904–51), born in Calcutta and educated there and at the University of Edinburgh. He wrote books and articles and listed his special subjects as ‘Race, Colour & Social Problems, India, Hybrids & Negro America’. He worked with Orwell at the BBC and it was he who had suggested to Orwell that it was racialist to print ‘Negro’ without a capital ‘N’ in Talking to India. See his ‘As I Please,’ 2, 10 December 1943 [XVI, 2391, pp. 23–24].
3. Dover had written: ‘Roy Fuller’s “Fletcher” is subtle and subtly anti-Semitic: a good example, in fact, of the growing anti-Semitism of which Alec° Comfort complains’—a reference to Alex ‘Comfort’s biting analysis of the “Social Conventions of the Anglo-American Film,”’ which Dover had just mentioned. It is very difficult to understand how the story can be regarded as anti-Semitic. The only reference to Fletcher direct or indirect as Jewish is the statement, ‘Fletcher, a middle-aged bachelor of Jewish ancestry and intellectual tastes….’ He is shown as sensitive and alone. Fuller’s story is entirely from the point of view of those who attack the vulnerable, whether they be Jewish or women. (For further details see XVI, 2431, n. 4.)
To Leonard Moore*
19 March 1944
10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6
Dear Mr Moore,
I have finished my book1 and will be sending you the Ms in a few days’ time. It is being typed now. I make it about 30,000 words. To avoid wasting time I think we ought to decide in advance what to do about showing it to Gollancz. According to our contract he has the first refusal of my fiction books, and this would come under the heading of fiction, as it is a sort of fairy story, really a fable with a political meaning. I think, however, Gollancz wouldn’t publish it, as it is strongly anti-Stalin in tendency. Nor is it any use wasting time on Warburg, who probably wouldn’t touch anything of this tendency and to my knowledge is very short of paper. I suggest therefore that we ought to tell Gollancz but let him know that the book is not likely to suit him, and say that we will only send it along if he very definitely wants to see it. I am going to write to him in this sense now. The point is that if Gollancz and his readers get hold of it, even if they end by not taking it, they will probably hang onto the Ms for weeks. So I will write to him, and then he will know about it before you get the Ms.
As to what publisher to approach, I think Nicholson and Watson might be the best.2 I told one of their men I had a book coming along and he seemed anxious to get hold of it. Or else Hutchinson, where I have a contact in Robert Neumann. Or anyone else who (a) has got some paper and (b) isn’t in the arms of Stalin. The latter is important. This book is murder from the Communist point of view, though no names are mentioned. Provided we can get over these difficulties I fancy the book should find a publisher, judging by the stuff they do print nowadays.
I am going to send two copies. I think we might have a try at an American publication as well. About a year ago the Dial Press wrote asking me to send them the next book I did, and I think they might like this one.3
I am contracted now to do a ‘Britain in Pictures’ book, which I suppose will take me 6–8 weeks. After that I am arranging to do two longish literary essays, one on No Orchids for Miss Blandish, and one on Salvador Dali, for two magazines. When I have done those two we shall have enough stuff for the book of reprinted essays.
Yours sincerely
Eric Blair
[XVI, 2436, pp. 126–7; typewritten]
1. Animal Farm. Paper was in desperately short supply (except, of course, for government bureaucracy).
2. At the top of this letter to Moore someone has written the names of two more publishers: Eyre & Spottiswoode and Hollis & Carter.
3. In Partisan Review, 63 (1996), William Phillips claimed he was the first person in America to read Animal Farm; he then recommended it to the Dial Press.
To Leonard Moore*
23 March 1944
10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6
Dear Mr Moore,
Thanks for your letter. I sent off two copies of the Ms of the book yesterday and hope they reached you safely. I haven’t heard from Gollancz and I dare say he will write direct to you.
We must on no account take this book to either Eyre & Spottiswoode or Hollis & Carter. They are both Catholic publishers and Hollis, in particular, has published some most poisonous stuff since he set up in business. It would do me permanent harm to be published by either of these. I don’t know what the objections to Hutchinson’s and N. & W.1 are, but perhaps you could let me know. I should think Cape is another possibility. Or Fabers°. I have a contact in Faber’s and a slight one at Cape’s.2 But let me know whom you are going to take it to. I should like it settled as early as possible.
Yours sincerely
Eric Blair
[XVI, 2440, pp. 130–1; typewritten]
1. Nicholson & Watson.
2. T.S. Eliot at Faber & Faber and Miss C. V. Wedgwood at Cape. Daniel George (who reviewed novels for Tribune) was chief reader at Cape.
To Leonard Moore*
15 April 1944
10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6
Dear Mr Moore,
Nicholson & Watson refuse to print Animal Farm, giving much the same reason as Gollancz, ie. that it is bad taste to attack the head of an allied government in that manner etc.1 I knew we should have a lot of trouble with this book, at any rate in this country. Meanwhile I have taken the copy I had round to Cape’s, as Miss Wedgwood2 there had often asked me to let them see something, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they made the same answer. I think Faber’s is just possible, and Routledges rather more so if they have the paper. While Cape’s have it I’ll sound both Eliot and Herbert Read.3 I saw recently a book published by Eyre and Spottiswoode and I think they must be all right—perhaps, as you say, I was mixing them up with Burns, Oates and Washburne. Failing all else I will try to get one of the small highbrow presses to do it, in fact I shouldn’t wonder if that is the likeliest bet. I know of one which has just started up and has a certain amount of money to dispose of. Naturally I want this book printed because I think what it says wants saying, unfashionable though it is nowadays.
I hope the copy went off to the USA? I suppose you still have one copy, so perhaps you might send it me to show to Read if I can contact him.
How do my copyrights with Gollancz stand? When I have done the necessary stuff I want to compile that book of essays and I am anxious to include the Dickens essay which was printed by Gollancz. I suppose if I fixed up with some other publisher, eg. Cape, to do Animal Farm they might ask for my next book, which would be the essays. Have I the right to reprint the Dickens essay, since the book is out of print?
Your sincerely
Eric Blair
[XVI, 2453, pp. 155–6; typewritten]
1. In a letter to The Observer, 23 November 1980, Andre Deutsch, who was working for Nicholson & Watson in 1944, told how, having been introduced to Orwell in 1943 by George Mikes, he had occasionally been commissioned to write reviews for Tribune for a fee of £1. About Whitsun 1944, Orwell let him read the typescript of Animal Farm, and he was convinced that Nicholson & Watson would be keen to publish Orwell’s book. Unfortunately, though they did not share Gollancz’s political reservations, they lectured Orwell on what they perceived to be errors in Animal Farm. Orwell was calm but depressed; Deutsch, deeply embarrassed. Deutsch was even then hoping to start publishing in his own right, but though Orwell twice offered him Animal Farm, and he would dearly have loved to publish it, he felt himself still a novice and not yet able to start his own firm.
2. Veronica Wedgwood (1910–1997; DBE, 1968), the historian, was then working for Cape.
3. T.S. Eliot was working for Faber & Faber, and Herbert Read for Routledge.
To Noel Willmett
18 May 1944
10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6
Many thanks for your letter. You ask whether totalitarianism, leader-worship etc. are really on the up-grade and instance the fact that they are not apparently growing in this country and the USA.
I must say I believe, or fear, that taking the world as a whole these things are on the increase. Hitler, no doubt, will soon disappear, but only at the expense of strengthening (a) Stalin, (b) the Anglo-American millionaires and (c) all sorts of petty fuhrers° of the type of de Gaulle. All the national movements everywhere, even those that originate in resistance to German domination, seem to take non-democratic forms, to group themselves round some superhuman fuhrer (Hitler, Stalin, Salazar, Franco, Gandhi, De Valera are all varying examples) and to adopt the theory that the end justifies the means. Everywhere the world movement seems to be in the direction of centralised economies which can be made to ‘work’ in an economic sense but which are not democratically organised and which tend to establish a caste system. With this go the horrors of emotional nationalism and a tendency to disbelieve in the existence of objective truth because all the facts have to fit in with the words and prophecies of some infallible fuhrer. Already history has in a sense ceased to exist, ie. there is no such thing as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted, and the exact sciences are endangered as soon as military necessity ceases to keep people up to the mark. Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history. He can’t say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it.1 That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the process is reversible.
As to the comparative immunity of Britain and the USA. Whatever the pacifists etc. may say, we have not gone totalitarian yet and this is a very hopeful symptom. I believe very deeply, as I explained in my book The Lion and the Unicorn, in the English people and in their capacity to centralise their economy without destroying freedom in doing so. But one must remember that Britain and the USA haven’t been really tried, they haven’t known defeat or severe suffering, and there are some bad symptoms to balance the good ones. To begin with there is the general indifference to the decay of democracy. Do you realise, for instance, that no one in England under 26 now has a vote and that so far as one can see the great mass of people of that age don’t give a damn for this? Secondly there is the fact that the intellectuals are more totalitarian in outlook than the common people. On the whole the English intelligentsia have opposed Hitler, but only at the price of accepting Stalin. Most of them are perfectly ready for dictatorial methods, secret police, systematic falsification of history2 etc. so long as they feel that it is on ‘our’ side. Indeed the statement that we haven’t a Fascist movement in England largely means that the young, at this moment, look for their fuhrer elsewhere. One can’t be sure that that won’t change, nor can one be sure that the common people won’t think ten years hence as the intellectuals do now. I hope3 they won’t, I even trust they won’t, but if so it will be at the cost of a struggle. If one simply proclaims that all is for the best and doesn’t point to the sinister symptoms, one is merely helping to bring totalitarianism nearer.
You also ask, if I think the world tendency is towards Fascism, why do I support the war. It is a choice of evils—I fancy nearly every war is that. I know enough of British imperialism not to like it, but I would support it against Nazism or Japanese imperialism, as the lesser evil. Similarly I would support the USSR against Germany because I think the USSR cannot altogether escape its past and retains enough of the original ideas of the Revolution to make it a more hopeful phenomenon than Nazi Germany. I think, and have thought ever since the war began, in 1936 or thereabouts, that our cause is the better, but we have to keep on making it the better, which involves constant criticism.
Yours sincerely,
Geo. Orwell
[XVI, 2471, pp. 190–2; typewritten]
1. and. 2. Foreshadowings of Nineteen Eighty-Four.
3. Compare Nineteen Eighty-Four, p. 72, ‘If there is hope, wrote Winston, it lies in the proles’.
To Leonard Moore*
8 June 1944
10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6
Dear Mr Moore,
Many thanks for your letter.1 It is awkward about Gollancz. I don’t however remember anything in that contract about full-length novels. As I remember it, it simply referred to my next three works of fiction (you could verify that from the contract.) If so, Animal Farm which is certainly a work of fiction (and any way what is ‘full-length’) would be one of them. But even so there is one more novel to be accounted for. Do you think it would be possible to arrange with Cape that Gollancz had the refusal of my next novel (or two novels if Animal Farm doesn’t count), on the understanding that all other works went to Cape, including novels after the Gollancz contract ran out? In that case I should only be going away from Cape for one or at most two books. (Incidentally, I don’t know when I shall write another novel. This doesn’t seem a propitious time for them.) I shouldn’t in any case go to Gollancz again for non-fiction books. His politics change too fast for me to keep up with them. Could you find out what Cape thinks about that?
Meanwhile how do we stand about the book of reprints? Cape could have that too if he wants it. But the Dickens essay, which I should like to reprint, was in a Gollancz book. Has he the copyright of that, or have I? I have only one more essay to do, then I can start assembling the book.
I am sorry about Keep the Aspidistra Flying, but I don’t think it worth reprinting a book I don’t care about. If you tell Lane’s I don’t want that one done I dare say they’ll be readier to close with Coming up for Air.2
I hope it will be O.K. with Cape and this book won’t have to start on its rounds once again. I do want it to see the light this year if possible.
Yours sincerely
E. A. Blair
[XVI, 2485, pp. 250–1; typewritten]
1. Jonathan Cape wrote to Victor Gollancz on 26 May 1944 to say that he was inclined to publish Animal Farm, and to publish Orwell’s future work. He wished to know whether that would be acceptable to Gollancz. On 1 June, Gollancz wrote to Moore, pointing out that he had a contract dated 1 February 1937 to publish three novels by Orwell, only one of which, Coming Up for Air, had been delivered. He argued that his rejection of Animal Farm did not affect that agreement. Moore then wrote to Orwell—his letter has not been traced—and this is Orwell’s response.
2. Penguin Books did not publish Coming Up for Air in Orwell’s lifetime. It was reprinted in the first of Secker’s Uniform series in May 1948.
To Leonard Moore*
10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6
Dear Mr Moore,
It is a pity about Cape’s.1 I rang up T. S. Eliot, telling him the circumstances, and shall give him the other copy of the MS on Monday. I have no doubt Eliot himself would be on my side in this matter, but, as he says, he might not be able to swing the rest of the board of Faber’s.
About the contract with Gollancz. If 30,000 words is not ‘full-length’, what does amount to full-length? Is an actual amount of words named in our existing contract?2 If not, could we get from Gollancz a definite statement as to what he considers a full-length work of fiction. It is clearly very unsatisfactory to have this clause in the contract without a clear definition of it.
Yours sincerely
Eric Blair
[XVI, 2494, pp. 265–6; typewritten]
1. Jonathan Cape wrote to Victor Gollancz on 26 May 1944 to say that he was inclined to publish Animal Farm. His principal reader, Daniel George, and C. V. Wedgwood, then working for Cape, both strongly urged publication. However, on 19 June 1944, Cape wrote to Leonard Moore to say he would not publish the book. He did have some anxiety about Orwell having to offer his next two works of fiction to Gollancz, but the basis for the rejection was the representation made to him by ‘an important official in the Ministry of Information’ whom he had consulted. He had come to the conclusion that it would be ‘highly ill-advised to publish [it] at the present time’, partly because it was not a generalised attack on dictatorships but was aimed specifically at the Soviets, and partly because the ‘choice of pigs as the ruling caste’ would be especially offensive. (Crick gives the full text of this letter, with background details, pp. 454–56.) Inez Holden, in a letter to Ian Angus of 27 May 1967, summarised Cape’s reason for the rejection and Orwell’s reaction: ‘He said he couldn’t publish that as he was afraid “Stalin wouldn’t like it”. George was amused at this. I will quote what he said on this: “Imagine old Joe (who doesn’t know one word of any European language) sitting in the Kremlin reading Animal Farm and saying ‘I don’t like this’”’. It is now known that the ‘important official in the Ministry of Information’ was Peter Smollett, the alias for Peter Smolka, an Austrian who had come to England in the 1930s and was a Soviet spy, codename ‘Abo’. Smollett’s deception was so successful that he was not only appointed OBE by a grateful Britain, but the Soviets thought he had been turned and came to disregard him (see The Lost Orwell, pp. 207, 210–12).
2. Annotated in Moore’s office: ‘Agreement only states “full-length.”’
To T. S. Eliot*
28 June 1944
(or Tribune CEN 2572)
Dear Eliot,
This Ms.1 has been blitzed which accounts for my delay in delivering it & its slightly crumpled condition, but it is not damaged in any way.
I wonder if you could be kind enough to let me have Messrs. Faber’s decision fairly soon. If they are interested in seeing more of my work, I could let you have the facts about my existing contract with Gollancz, which is not an onerous one nor likely to last long.
If you read this MS. yourself you will see its meaning which is not an acceptable one at this moment, but I could not agree to make any alterations except a small one at the end which I intended making any way. Cape or the MOI, I am not certain which from the wording of his letter, made the imbecile suggestion that some other animal than the pigs might be made to represent the Bolsheviks. I could not of course make any change of that description.
Yours sincerely
Geo. Orwell
Could you have lunch with me one of the days when you are in town?
[XVI, 2496, p. 269; handwritten]
1. Of Animal Farm. The Orwells’ flat was bombed on the very day he dated his letter to Eliot.
To John Middleton Murry*
14 July 1944
Tribune
Dear Murry,
Thanks for your letter1. I have not the text by me, but you wrote in an article in the Adelphi something that ran more or less as follows:
‘We are in the habit of describing the war between Japan and China as though it were a war in the European sense. But it is nothing of the kind, because the average Chinese expects to be conquered. That is what the history of thousands of years has taught him to expect. China will absorb Japan, and Japan will energise China. And so also with India.’
If this is not praise and encouragement of the Japanese invasion of China, and an invitation to the Japanese to go on and invade India, I don’t know what it is. It takes no account of what has been happening in China since 1912 and uses exactly the same argument (‘these people are used to being conquered’) that was always brought forward to justify our own rule in India. In any case its moral is, ‘don’t help the Chinese’
As to the general charge of ‘praising violence’ which your correspondent refers to. Many remarks you have made in recent years seem to me to imply that you don’t object to violence if it is violent enough. And you certainly seem or seemed to me to prefer the Nazis to ourselves, at least so long as they appeared to be winning.
If you’ll send the book along I’ll naturally be glad to give it a notice, but I might have to turn it over to someone else, though I’ll do it myself if possible. I am smothered under work, and also I’ve been bombed out and we have a very young baby,2 all of which adds to one’s work.
Yours,
George Orwell
[XVI, 2509, p. 288; typewritten]
1. On 11 July 1945, Murry wrote to Orwell saying that a correspondent (possibly Dr Alfred Salter, 1873–1945, a sponsor of the Peace Pledge Union) had asked him to comment on Orwell’s statement in a review that Murry had praised the Japanese invasion of China. Murry told Orwell that he was ‘given to taking pot-shots’ at him and suggested instead that he tackle him frankly by reviewing his latest book, Adam and Eve.
2. The Orwells had adopted Richard Blair (born 14 May 1944 in Greenwich) in June. Orwell reviewed Adam and Eve in the Manchester Evening News on 19 October 1944 (XVI, 2565, pp. 432–4). Although not without criticism it concludes, “This is an interesting book and a good antidote to the current notion that we should all be perfectly happy if we could get rid of Hitler and then go back to 1939 with shorter working hours and no unemployment.
To Rayner Heppenstall*
21 July 1944
Tribune
Dear Rayner,
Herewith that book.1 About 600 words perhaps? I’d like you very much to draw little Richard’s horoscope.2 He was born on May 14th. I thought I had told you, however, that he is an adopted child. Does that make any difference to the horoscope? Don’t forget to look me up if you do get to town. The above is the safest address for the time being.
Yours
Eric
[XVI, 2515, p. 295; typewritten]
1. Presumably Stephen Hero, to which Orwell refers, 17 July 1944 (XVI, 2511, pp. 290–1).
2. Heppenstall had offered to cast this horoscope and sent it on 14 October but said he seemed to have lost the technique and feeling for casting a horoscope (XVI, 2558, n. 2, p. 420).
When Richard was adopted in June, Eileen gave up her job at the Ministry of Food. Orwell told Leonard Moore that the flat in Canonbury Square, which the Orwells were to rent, would be theirs on 1 September but they would probably move in only on 9 September, although it proved to be later. In the following letter, Eileen writes, ‘When and if Richard comes’; he was therefore not then living with them. It is possible that the reason for the journey north was to see Richard at the O’Shaughnessy family home near Stockton-on-Tees. Although Eileen had left the Ministry of Food when she wrote this letter, she evidently still had some of the Ministry’s headed paper.
Eileen* to Lydia Jackson*
Wednesday [9? August 1944]
Ministry of Food
Portman Court
Portman Square
London W 1
Dear Lydia,
I didn’t know where to write to you and indeed I don’t know whether this is a very good idea because one of Gwen’s letters to Florrie took ten days in transit. However we’ll hope.
So far as I can see the cottage is going to repeat its Disney act. Two babies are now supposed to be going into residence, one with a mother and father the other with a mother (fortunately the father is in Normandy or somewhere). I pity them but it’s satisfactory to have the space so well used. Mrs. Horton1 has seen the space now so it’s her responsibility. And about that, I thought I might come down for an hour or two while you’re there and pack away some of our oddments—papers chiefly. I’ve arranged that the old tin trunk can stay locked but I think it would be a good idea to put it in the bottom of the larder (if it’ll go) and also that the linen chest will be used for our things or yours. They’re providing their own linen of course and will bring it in something in which it can be kept. I expect they will move most of the furniture about and the two passage rooms will go into use again. By the way, do you …° (There was a long interruption on the telephone and I can’t at all remember what this important enquiry was.)
But I have remembered what I really wanted to write to you about. It was a confession. Lettice Cooper* and her sister went down to the cottage for the week-end. Barbara the sister is in the act of recovering from a nervous breakdown and this life is not good for her. She won’t go away without Lettice and Lettice couldn’t free herself for the week-end until just before it came. Then she did but of course it was too late to make any ordinary arrangements. They had a lovely time they say. Mrs. Anderson2 swore she would clean on Tuesday and I hope she did but Lettice has a curious liking for housewifery and doubtless did clean quite well herself; the real crisis was about the sheets as usual—they carried one but couldn’t well do more than that. Anyway I hope you don’t mind. It seemed a pity to have the place empty for the bank holiday and I couldn’t contact you. Seeing how much they enjoyed it and how well they looked I rather hoped that all these babies wouldn’t like the place after all. It would be fun to send people down all the time and I don’t think it need have been empty for a night for the rest of the summer anyway. But of course it won’t be empty!
Can I come to tea? It’s a bit of a job because we are going North with Gwen on the 17th [August] to help with the luggage primarily. But I could manage Saturday or Monday—or Sunday I suppose but the travelling back is so ungodly. It’ll have to be a compressed trip because we are also more or less in the act of moving. We have a flat in Canonbury Square—at least references are now being taken up and we shall have it unless the bombs beat us to the post which is rather likely. It’s a top floor flat and there have been numbers of bombs in the vicinity though the square itself has lost nothing but a window or two. I rather like it, in fact in some ways I like it very much indeed. The outlook is charming and we have a flat roof about three yards by two which seems full of possibilities. Disadvantage is that to get to it you climb an uncountable number of stone stairs—to get to the flat I mean; to get to the roof you climb one of those fire-escape ladders with very small iron rungs. I don’t know how Richard will be managed if the bombing ever stops. I thought we might have a crane and sling and transport him the way they do elephants in the films but George thinks this unsuitable.
Which day? With preference Saturday or Monday. No. Posts being as they are, I think I’ll come on Saturday unless I hear to the contrary, and hope to see you. I expect I shan’t get on the bus anyway but I’ll come some time in the afternoon and leave in the late afternoon, having put away the papers and possibly collected one or two things. When and if Richard comes I’ll be wanting a few things but probably the best thing to do will be to leave them for the moment in the linen chest so that they don’t get bombed before they’re used. I meant to brood on this when I went over with Mrs. Horton but she had to get back and we only had half an hour in the cottage which didn’t leave much time for brooding.
See you on Saturday I hope.
With love
Eilee.3
[Handwritten postscript] (One thing I want to do with you is to check up on the things you want out of the garden. Kay wants you to have the crops of course but she’d better be forewarned so that the apple disaster isn’t repeated the day they arrive.
Also I want to arrange to buy the coal and the Calor Gas.
[XVI, 2528A, pp.323–6; typewritten with handwritten postscript]
1. Mrs Horton was evidently the new tenant of The Stores at Wallington.
2. Mrs Anderson was one of the Orwells’ neighbours at Wallington; she often looked after their affairs in their absence.
3. Eileen signs off with an indecipherable scrawl. She possibly writes ‘With best wishes/Eilee.’ but it is a little more likely that it is ‘With love/Eilee.’—and the degree of scrawl is indicated by interpretations that see two and three words here. What is clear is that there is no final ‘n’ to ‘Eilee’, which may have been a name she was familiarly called at the Ministry of Food.
To Leonard Moore*
15 August 1944
Care of The Tribune
Dear Mr Moore,
Thanks for your letter of 14th August. Yes, it is O.K. about Gollancz retaining the rights of Wigan Pier.
I think Warburg is going to publish Animal Farm—I say ‘I think’, because although W. has agreed to do so there may be a slip-up about the paper. But so long as we can lay hands on the paper he will do it. So that will save me from the trouble of doing it myself.
I am now doing that essay I spoke to you of,1 & I shall then be able to compile the book of essays, but I shall have to find someone to do the typing as I have not time to do it myself.
We are, I think, taking a flat in Islington at the end of this month, & I will let you have the address when we move in.
Yours sincerely
E. A. Blair
[XVI, 2533, p. 335; handwritten]
1. ‘Raffles and Miss Blandish’ was completed on 28 August 1944, according to Orwell’s Payments Book. It was published in Horizon, October 1944 (XVI, 2538, pp. 345–58).
To Leonard Moore*
29 August 1944
Care of The Tribune
Dear Mr Moore,
I have just seen Warburg. He has definitely arranged to publish Animal Farm about March 1945, so perhaps you can get in touch with him about the contract. He is willing to pay an advance of £100, half of this to be paid about Christmas of this year. I shall give him an option on all my future books, but this can be arranged in such a way as not to tie me down if for some special reason I want to take a book elsewhere. I have finished the final essay for the book of essays, & as soon as possible I will get the whole thing typed & send you a copy. Warburg presumably won’t be able to do it till some time next year, but meanwhile we should make an attempt at an American edition. The Dial Press have asked to see this book & I more or less promised to send it to them.
Yours Sincerely
E. A. Blair
P.S. My address as from Sept. 1st will be 27B Canonbury Square Islington London N. 1 but I probably shan’t move in there till Sept. 8th, so Tribune is the safest address for the time being.
[XVI, 2539, p. 358; handwritten]
[Ivor Brown]* to Dr Thomas Jones*
14 October 1944
Dear T. J.,
I would be very grateful for your opinion on this review by George Orwell, which I held out of the paper this week.1 It came in very late and there was not time to talk it over with him. It seems to me that the whole tone of it breathes a distaste for Christianity, which would be offensive to a great many of our readers and, almost certainly, to Lord Astor. I dont,° myself, complain as a member of the Faith who is pained, but simply as the Editor of a paper having a tradition of Protestant christianity, which I believe the Chairman of Directors is eager to maintain. That does not mean that a reviewer like Orwell need be barred from such topics, but it does mean that he should endeavour to express himself in a different way.
The effect his review had on me was this: I felt that the reader who is a churchman, or chapelman, would say to himself ‘This man so dislikes us and our ideas that we will never get any justice out of him’. I may be quite wrong in feeling this and that is why I am asking your opinion. Do you think the review as a whole is likely to create the impression that I have suggested, and that a few minor alterations would put it right, or do you think that a few changes, such as I have pencilled in, would put the matter right?
I am sorry to trouble you, but this is a case where the atmosphere built up by a review is of great importance, and I very much want your sense of the atmosphere.
Yours ever,
[unsigned]
[XX, 2563B, pp. 557–8; typewritten copy]
1. This must refer to a review of Beyond Personality by C. S. Lewis, which the Observer did not publish. It was set in type and is published in XVI, 2567, pp. 437–9 from its galley-proofs.
Whilst waiting for her operation in Newcastle upon Tyne Eileen stayed at the O’Shaughnessy family home, Greystone. Meanwhile, Orwell had gone abroad as War Correspondent for the Observer and the Manchester Evening News, reporting from France and later Germany and Austria. See the Chronology for details of his reports.
Eileen Blair* to Leonard Moore*
Greystone
Carlton
Near Stockton-on-Tees
Co. Durham1
Dear Mr. Moore,
Thank you very much for your letter and various press cuttings. I am sorry to have been so dilatory but I had to go to London to complete the adoption of the son that Eric may have told you about and was held up there by illness while my mail waited for me here.
I am afraid I can’t sign the letter on his behalf. If I had been in London while he was getting ready to go I should probably have a power of attorney as before, but as it is I have only the most informal authority. So I have sent the letter on to him and I suppose it will be back in about three weeks. I have had one letter and that took eleven days. I have also written to Warburg about the letter—I know Eric spoke to Frederick° Warburg about it and I imagine there will be no trouble about it, though I quite see that from your point of view these loose ends are very unsatisfactory.
I have no real news from Eric. He wrote the day after arriving in Paris and had seen little except his hotel which seems to be full of war correspondents and quite comfortable—with central heating on. I expect the next letter will be more informative, though it will mostly concern this son we have adopted in whom Eric is passionately interested. The baby is now nine months old and according to his new father very highly gifted— ‘a very thoughtful little boy’ as well as very beautiful. He really is a very nice baby. You must see him sometime. His name is Richard Horatio.
Yours sincerely,
Eileen Blair
[XVII, 2630, p. 81; typewritten]
To Mrs Sally McEwan*
12 March 1945
Room 329
Hotel Scribe1
Rue Scribe
Paris 9e
Dear Sally,
I hope you are getting on O.K. I won’t say without me but in my absence. I haven’t had a copy of Tribune yet, thanks to the condition of the posts I suppose. I expect you also got via the Observer some frantic S.O.Ss for tobacco, but at the moment the situation isn’t so bad because I got a friend who was coming across to bring me some. None has arrived by post, needless to say. Our Paris opposite number, Libertés, with whom I want Tribune to arrange a regular exchange, are never able to get the paper commercially but see copies at the Bibliothèque Nationale and frequently translate extracts. I went to a semi-public meeting of their readers and also to the paper’s weekly meeting which was very like Tribune’s Friday meeting but on a higher intellectual level I thought. I don’t know whether Louis Levy2 came and saw Bevan and Strauss about his idea of a continental edition of T., but if that can’t be arranged it would certainly be a good idea if they could manage to send a few copies over here weekly, even say 50. A lot of British and American papers are sold regularly here, and there is a considerable public which would be glad to get hold of T.
I am trying to arrange to go to Cologne for a few days, or, if not Cologne, at any rate some where in occupied territory. After that I fancy I shall go to Toulouse and Lyons, then return to Paris and come back to England towards the end of April. By the time the posts seem to take, I don’t think it would be worth forwarding any letters after about the 10th of April. Otherwise they are liable to arrive here after I have left and then will probably be lost for good. But it’s all right forwarding letters while I am out of Paris because I should come back here to pick up my stuff in any case. I wonder whether you could be kind enough to do one thing for me. I only rather hurriedly saw, before leaving, Stefan Schimanski3 who had had a war diary of mine from which he thought he might like to use extracts in some book or other. I wonder if you could ring him up (I think he is at Lindsay Drummonds°) and impress upon him that if he does want to use such extracts, he must in no case do so without my seeing them beforehand.
I dare say you heard that the court case went off all right and little Richard is now legally mine. I hear that he has 5 teeth and is beginning to move about a bit. I saw the other day a knitted suit in a shop that I thought would be nice for him, so I went in and asked the price and it was Frs. 2500, ie. about £12.10s.4 That is what prices are like here. If you take two people out to lunch it costs at least Frs 1000 for the three. However it isn’t me that is paying. I am glad I managed to bring a lot of soap and coffee across with me because you can produce a terrific effect by distributing small quantities of either, also English cigarettes. Luckily it isn’t at all cold. I’ve taken to wearing a beret, you’ll be glad to hear. Please give everyone my love and impress on them again not to expect any silk stockings because there just aren’t such things here. The Americans bought them all up long ago.
Yours
George
P.S. Before being able to send this off, ie. before getting hold of some envelopes which aren’t too plentiful here, I got your letter of March 6th and 2 Tribunes, 2nd and 9th March. It was nice to see Tribune again, and it seems so fat and heavy compared with French papers.
[XVII, 2634, pp. 88–90; typewritten]
1. Very many war correspondents were based at the appropriately named Hotel Scribe in Paris.
2. Louis Levy was editor of Libertés.
3. Stefan Schimanski (d. 1950), journalist and editor (for example, of the annual Transformation, with Henry Treece, 1943–47). He and Treece edited Leaves in the Storm: A Book of Diaries (published by Lindsay Drummond, 1947). Orwell’s diaries were not included. Schimanski was killed when the plane in which he was travelling on an assignment to Korea for Picture Post to cover that war, exploded. (See Tom Hopkinson, Of This Our Time (1982), pp. 278–81.)
4. It was reported in the Manchester Evening News, 8 February 1945, that a pay award of £4 per week was made by the official Resettlement Committee to a soldier who had served for five years and was returning to a civilian job – the employer had offered £1 15s. Thus the knitted suit was the equivalent in cost to three weeks of his pay.
To Roger Senhouse*
Room 329
Hotel Scribe
Rue Scribe
Paris 9e
Dear Roger,
Thanks so much for your letter, and for sending the copy of Homage to Catalonia. I didn’t after all give it to André Malraux, who is not in Paris, but to, of all people, Jose Rovira, who was the commander of my division in Spain and whom I met at a friend’s house here.
I don’t know whether Animal Farm has definitely gone to press. If it has not actually been printed yet, there is one further alteration of one word that I would like to make. In Chapter VIII (I think it is VIII), when the windmill is blown up, I wrote ‘all the animals including Napoleon flung themselves on their faces.’ I would like to alter it to ‘all the animals except Napoleon.’ If the book has been printed it’s not worth bothering about, but I just thought the alteration would be fair to J[oseph] S[talin], as he did stay in Moscow during the German advance.1
I hope Fred [Warburg]* will have a good long rest. I know how long it takes to get one’s strength back. I am trying to arrange to go to Cologne for a few days, but there keep being delays. I shall be back in England at the end of April.
Yours
George
[XVII, 2635, p. 90; typewritten]
1. This change was made. The source of the correction is almost certainly Orwell’s meeting in Paris with Joseph Czapski, a survivor of Starobielsk, and of the series of massacres of Polish prisoners carried out by the Russians and associated especially with that at Katyn. (See Orwell’s letter to Arthur Koestler, 5.3.46.)
Eileen Blair* to her husband
Greystone1
Carlton
Dearest your letter came this morning—the one written on the 7th after you got my first one. I was rather worried because there had been an interval of nearly a fortnight, but this one took 14 days whereas the last one came in 10 so probably that explains it. Or one may have gone astray.
I am typing in the garden. Isn’t that wonderful? I’ve only got a rug for myself and typewriter and the wind keeps blowing the paper down over the machine which is not so good for the typing but very good for me. The wind is quite cold but the sun is hot. Richard is sitting up in his pram talking to a doll. He has the top half of a pram suit on but he took off the rest some time ago and has nothing between himself and the sky below his nappies. I want him to get aired before the sun gets strong so that he’ll brown nicely. That’s my idea anyway. And he is enjoying the preliminaries anyway. I bought him a high chair—the only kind I could get. It sort of breaks in half and turns up its tail like a beetle if you want it to, and then you have a low chair attached to a little table, the whole on wheels. As a high chair it has no wheels and the usual tray effect in front of the chair. He loves it dearly and stretches out his hands to it—partly I’m afraid because what normally happens in the chair is eating. When it is being a low chair Laurence2 takes him for rides round the nursery and down the passage—indeed Laurence wheeled the whole contraption home from the station and I found it very useful myself on the way up as a luggage trolley. I came by night in the end so that George Kopp*3 could see me off at King’s X which was very nice, but there were no porters at all at Thornaby or Stockton—and only one at Darlington but I got him. There is no real news about Richard. He is just very well. I was sorry to be away from him for a week because he always stops feeding himself when I don’t act as waiter, but today he did pick up the spoon himself from the dish and put it in his mouth—upside down of course, but he was eating rather adhesive pudding so he got his food all right. I bought him a truck too for an appalling sum of money. I had to forget the price quickly but I think it’s important he should have one.
We’re no longer in the garden now. In fact Richard is in bed and has been for some time. Blackburn4 came and told me all about his other jobs and how Mr. Wilson fished and Sir John once had to go to his office on August 12th but the car went with him full of guns and sandwiches and they got to the moors by 1.30. And Blackburn’s predecessor here shot himself. I think perhaps the general shooting standard was rather lower than at Sir John’s, because this man shot a wood pigeon and tried to pull it out of the bush into which it had fallen with his gun (this might be better expressed but you can guess it). Naturally the bush pulled the trigger and there was another shot in the other barrel and the ass was actually holding the barrel to his belly, so he might as well have been an air raid casualty. This convinced me not that Richard must never have a gun but that he must have one very young so that he couldn’t forget how to handle it.
Gwen rang up Harvey Evers5 and they want me to go in for this operation at once. This is all a bit difficult. It is going to cost a terrible lot of money. A bed in a kind of ward costs seven guineas a week and Harvey Evers’s operation fee is forty guineas. In London I would have to pay about five guineas a week in a hospital but Gwen says the surgeon’s fee would be higher. The absurd thing is that we are too well off for really cheap rates— you’d have to make less than £500 a year. It comes as a shock to me in a way because while you were being ill I got used to paying doctors nothing. But of course it was only because Eric6 was making the arrangements. I suppose your bronchoscopy would have cost about forty guineas too— and I must say it would have been cheap at the price, but what worries me is that I really don’t think I’m worth the money. On the other hand of course this thing will take a longish time to kill me if left alone and it will be costing some money the whole time. The only thing is, I think perhaps it might be possible to sell the Harefield house7 if we found out how to do it. I do hope too that I can make some money when I am well—I could of course do a job but I mean really make some money from home as it were. Anyway I don’t know what I can do except go ahead and get the thing done quickly. The idea is that I should go in next week and I gather he means to operate quickly—he thinks the indications are urgent enough to offset the disadvantages of operating on a bloodless patient; indeed he is quite clear that no treatment at all can prevent me from becoming considerably more bloodless every month. So I suppose they’ll just do a blood transfusion and operate more or less at once.
While I was in London I arranged to take Evelyn’s8 manuscript in to Tribune. I set off with it all right, broke the journey to go to the bank and was taken with a pain just like the one I had the day before coming North, only rather worse. I tried to have a drink in Selfridges’ but couldn’t and all sorts of extraordinary things then happened but after a bit I got myself into the Ministry. I simply could not do any more travelling, so Miss Sparrow9 rang up Evelyn for me and they arranged between them about the transfer of the manuscript. People from Tribune then rang up in the most friendly way, offering to come and look after me, to bring me things and to get you home. I was horrified. But yesterday I had a phase of thinking that it was really outrageous to spend all your money on an operation of which I know you disapprove, so Gwen rang Tribune to know whether they had means of communicating with you quickly and could get your ruling. They hadn’t but suggested she should ring the Observer, which she did and talked to Ivor Brown*. He said you were in Cologne now he thought and that letters would reach you very slowly if at all. He suggested that they would send you a message about me by cable and wireless, like their own. Gwen says he couldn’t have been nicer. But I’m not having this done. It’s quite impossible to give you the facts in this way and the whole thing is bound to sound urgent and even critical. I have arranged with Gwen however that when the thing is over she’ll ask the Observer to send you a message to that effect. One very good thing is that by the time you get home I’ll be convalescent, really convalescent at last and you won’t have the hospital nightmare you would so much dislike. You’d more or less have to visit me and visiting someone in a ward really is a nightmare even to me with my fancy for hospitals—particularly if they’re badly ill as I shall be at first of course. I only wish I could have had your approval as it were, but I think it’s just hysterical. Obviously I can’t just go on having a tumour or rather several rapidly growing tumours. I have got an uneasy feeling that after all the job might have been more cheaply done somewhere else but if you remember Miss Kenny’s fee for a cautery, which is a small job, was fifteen guineas so she’d certainly charge at least fifty for this. Gwen’s man might have done cheaper work for old sake’s sake, but he’s so very bad at the work and apparently he would have wanted me in hospital for weeks beforehand—and I’m morally sure I’d be there for weeks afterwards. Harvey Evers has a very high reputation, and George Mason10 thinks very well of him and says Eric did the same, and I am sure that he will finish me off as quickly as anyone in England as well as doing the job properly—so he may well come cheaper in the end. I rather wish I’d talked it over with you before you went. I knew I had a ‘growth’. But I wanted you to go away peacefully anyway, and I did not want to see Harvey Evers before the adoption was through in case it was cancer. I thought it just possible that the judge might make some enquiry about our health as we’re old for parenthood and anyway it would have been an uneasy sort of thing to be producing oneself as an ideal parent a fortnight after being told that one couldn’t live more than six months or something.
You may never get this letter but of course it’s urgent about the house in the country. Inez [Holden]* thinks we might do something together with her cottage near Andover. It’s quite big (6 rooms and kitchen) but it has disadvantages. The 25/– a week rent which she considers nominal I think big considering there is no sanitation whatever and only one tap, no electricity or gas, and expensive travelling to London. She and Hugh [Slater]* (incidentally they are more or less parting company at present but they might join up again I think) hire furniture for another 25/– a week which wouldn’t be necessary if we were there, and it might be possible a) to get a long lease for a lower rent and b) to have modern conveniences installed. I am now so confident of being strong in a few months that I’m not actually frightened as I should have been of living a primitive life again (after all when you were ill soon after we were married I did clean out the whole of Wallington’s sanitation and that was worse than emptying a bucket) but it does waste a lot of time. So we can consider that. Then George Kopp* has a clever idea. Apparently people constantly advertise in the Times wanting to exchange a house in the country for a flat in London. Most of these, probably all, would want something grander than N.1, but we might advertise ourselves—asking for correspondingly humble country accommodation. In the next few months people who have been living in the country for the war will be wanting somewhere in London and we might do well like that. Meanwhile there is a letter from the Ardlussa factor enclosing the contractor’s estimate for repairing Barnhill11—which is £200. I found to my distress that George was not forwarding letters to you, although I gave him the address by telephone the day I got it, because he had not heard from you. I opened one from the Borough and found it was to say that the electricity supply would be cut off as soon as the man could get in to do it. I paid that bill and decided I’d better look at the rest of the mail. There was nothing else quite so urgent except perhaps a letter from the BBC Schools about your two broadcasts for them. They want the scripts as soon as possible! There’s also a contract. I didn’t send anything on at once because I thought you might be moving and in view of Ivor Brown’s news of you I’m not sending them now, but I’ve written to say that you are abroad but expected home next month. The broadcasts aren’t till June after all. If you don’t come next month I’ll have to think again, but there may be a firmer address to write to. I can do nothing with this except send it to the Hotel Scribe and hope they’ll forward it. To get back to Barnhill. I’m going to write to the factor to say that you’re away and I’m ill and will he wait till you get back. He’s very apologetic about having kept us waiting and I’m sure they won’t let the house to anyone else. I think this £200 can be very much reduced, but the house is quite grand—5 bedrooms, bathroom, W.C., H & C and all, large sitting room, kitchen, various pantries, dairies etc. and a whole village of ‘buildings’—in fact just what we want to live in twelve months of the year. But we needn’t have all this papered and painted. I put my hopes on Mrs. Fletcher.12 The only thing that bothers me is that if it’s thought worth while to spend £200 on repairs the kind of rent they have in mind must be much higher than our £25–£30, let alone David’s £5. Incidentally I had a letter from David [Astor]* who just missed you in Paris.
It’s odd—we have had nothing to discuss for months but the moment you leave the country there are dozens of things. But they can all be settled, or at least settled down, if you take this week’s leave when you get back. I don’t know about Garrigill.13 It depends when you come. But at worst you could come here couldn’t you? If you were here we should stay mainly in my room, indeed I suppose I’ll be there for some time after I get back in any case, and Richard will be available. Mary14 and Laurence both spend a lot of time with me now but they could be disposed of. Laurence by the way has improved out of recognition. He has three passions: farms, fairy tales, Richard. Not in that order—Richard probably comes first. So you ought to get on nicely. He has begun to invent fairy tales now, with magic cats and things in them, which is really a great advance. The pity is that the country isn’t better but almost any country is good round about May and if I’m still at the picturesque stage of convalescence you could go out with Blackburn who knows every inch of the countryside or perhaps amuse yourself with Mr. Swinbank the farmer who would enjoy it I think. Or you could go over to Garrigill for a weekend’s fishing on your own.
I liked hearing about Wodehouse.15 And I’m very glad you’re going to Cologne. Perhaps you may get East of the Rhine before you come home. I have innumerable questions.
I think it’s quite essential that you should write some book again. As you know, I thought Tribune better than the BBC and I still do. Indeed I should think a municipal dustman’s work more dignified and better for your future as a writer. But as I said before I left London, I think you ought to stop the editing soon, as soon as possible, whether or not you think it worth while to stay on the editorial board or whatever it’s called. And of course you must do much less reviewing and nothing but specialised reviewing if any. From my point of view I would infinitely rather live in the country on £200 than in London on any money at all. I don’t think you understand what a nightmare the London life is to me. I know it is to you, but you often talk as though I liked it. I don’t like even the things that you do. I can’t stand having people all over the place, every meal makes me feel sick because every food has been handled by twenty dirty hands and I practically can’t bear to eat anything that hasn’t been boiled to clean it. I can’t breathe the air, I can’t think any more clearly that° one would expect to in the moment of being smothered, everything that bores me happens all the time in London and the things that interest me most don’t happen at all and I can’t read poetry. I never could. When I lived in London before I was married I used to go away certainly once a month with a suitcase full of poetry and that consoled me until the next time—or I used to go up to Oxford and read in the Bodleian and take a punt up the Cher if it was summer or walk in Port Meadow or to Godstow if it was winter. But all these years I have felt as though I were in a mild kind of concentration camp. The place has its points of course and I could enjoy it for a week. I like going to theatres for instance. But the fact of living in London destroys any pleasure I might have in its amenities and in fact as you know I never go to a theatre. As for eating in restaurants, it’s the most barbarous habit and only tolerable very occasionally when one drinks enough to enjoy barbarity. And I can’t drink enough beer. (George Mason took me out to dinner the night after I got to London and gave me to drink just what I would have drunk in peacetime—four glasses of sherry, half a bottle of claret and some brandy—and it did cheer me up I admit.) I like the Canonbury flat but I am suicidal every time I walk as far as the bread shop, and it would be very bad for Richard once he is mobile. Indeed if the worst comes to the worst I think he’d better go to Wallington for the summer, but it would be better to find somewhere with more space because you and Richard would be too much for the cottage very soon and I don’t know where his sister16 could go. And I think the cottage makes you ill—it’s the damp and the smoke I think.
While this has been in progress I have read several stories to Laurence, dealt with Richard who woke up (he has just stopped his 10 o’clock feed), dealt with Mary who always cries in the evening, had my supper and listened to Mrs. Blackburn’s distresses about Raymond17 who has just got a motor bike. That’s why it’s so long. And partly why it’s so involved. But I should like to see you stop living a literary life and start writing again and it would be much better for Richard too, so you need have no conflicts about it. Richard sends you this message. He has no conflicts. If he gets a black eye he cries while it hurts but with the tears wet on his cheeks he laughs heartily at a new blue cat who says miaow to him and embraces it with loving words. Faced with any new situation he is sure that it will be an exciting and desirable situation for him, and he knows so well that everyone in the world is his good friend that even if someone hurts him he understands that it was by accident and loses none of his confidence. He will fight for his rights (he actually drove Mary off the blue cat today, brandishing a stick at her and shouting) but without malice. Whether he can keep his certainties over the difficult second year I don’t know of course but he’s much more likely to if he has the country and you have the kind of life that satisfies you—and me. I think Richard really has a natural tendency to be sort of satisfied, balanced in fact. He demands but he demands something specific, he knows what he wants and if he gets it or some reasonable substitute he is satisfied; he isn’t just demanding like Mary. I’m not protecting him. That is, he takes the troubles I think proper to his age. He gets no sympathy when his face is washed and very little when he topples over and knocks his head and I expect him to take in good part the slight sort of bumps he gets when the children play with him. But he can be tough only if he knows that it’s all right really.
Now I’m going to bed. Before you get this you’ll probably have the message about this operation and you may well be in England again if you keep what Ivor Brown calls on the move. What a waste that would be.
All my love, and Richard’s.
E.
Mary calls Richard Which or Whicher or Which-Which. I suppose he’ll call himself something like that too. Whicher I find rather attractive. She is better with him now and I must say I am proud to see that she is more apt to be frightened of him than he of her, sad though it is. I actually heard her say to him yesterday ‘No no Whicher, no hurt Mamie.’ She takes things from him but she runs away from him, relying on her mobility; once he can move himself I don’t believe she’ll dare to—she never stays within his reach once she has the thing in her hand. She tries to gain confidence for herself by saying Baby wet all the time—generally with truth because he has now got to the stage of rejecting his pot (this is the usual preliminary to being ‘trained’ and I hope we’ll reach that stage soon though at present I see not the slightest indication of it), but when she dirtied her pants for the second time today I heard this conversation with Nurse: ‘No cross with Mamie Nurse?’ ‘Yes I am cross this time’ ‘Iodine no cross?’ ‘“Yes, Iodine’s cross too.’ ‘Whicher cross?’ ‘Whicher says he’ll have to lend you some nappies.’ ‘No…. Baby’s.’ And she began to cry—so she’s not sure of her superiority even in this. She isn’t so superior either. This has been a bad day, but she never gets through one with dry pants poor little wretch.
Dearest thank you very much for the books—Psmith in the City18 has been making me laugh aloud. By the way, he arrived yesterday and the other three this afternoon although according to your letter you posted the three first. The oranges came too, and the fats.19 I think you’re being too generous but as the oranges have come I’m going to eat them. Blackburn got some the other day and I gave all mine and most of Richard’s to the children so they’re all right for the moment. Richard has the juice of half an orange every other day and Mary has his other half and Laurence a whole one.
This is being typed under difficulties as Mary is on my knee and trying to contribute.
Tomorrow I’m going to Newcastle, primarily to see the man in charge of Welfare Foods for the North of England. So far as I can see I can’t get Richard’s back orange juice as Stockton Food Office has stolen the coupons, but I hope to arrange that they won’t bring off the same coup again. I now have some reason to think that they take orange juice out of stock on these extra coupons and sell it but of course I’m not proposing to mention this theory to Watkins. I’m also going to three food meetings and two infant welfare clinics with Nell.20 If I stay the course. It will be very interesting and I hope profitable because I ought to lay hold of some Ostermilk21 somewhere.
Don’t bother about blankets. I’ve bought two from Binns’ in Sunderland— they cost 22/– each and are more like rugs than blankets but they’ll do quite well. I hope to make one into a frock for myself. They’re dark grey which isn’t I think the colour of choice for blankets but they’ll come in useful one way or another and they’re certainly cheap. I hope you have enough at home and are not economising by leaving out the underblanket because without that you’ll be cold if you have a dozen on top of you.
The playpen has come and all the children are entranced by it. Richard laughed heartily as soon as he was put in and then the others joined him and there was a riot. I don’t know how he’ll take to it when he is left alone but I think he’ll be OK. I have made him some strings of beads which he passionately loves and he will now play by himself quite happily for as long as you like. He’s had more trouble with his teeth but no more are through. He might have another couple by the 21st though. As for his appetite, he ate for his lunch the same food as Mary and very nearly the same quantity, but he didn’t want his milk. I’d just announced that I was going to replace the midday milk by water so this came very aptly. But I’ve had to replace the cereal after his evening bath. I gave him Farex22 for a couple of nights and the last two he has had MOF again made much thinner. When he had just milk he was restless at night and screaming for his late feed by nine o’clock. So I’m just going to risk his getting overweight—he’s still below the average for his age and length I’m sure. He’s beginning to drink cows’ milk instead of Ostermilk but I can’t go ahead with this as fast as I might because I’m terrified that he’ll turn against the Ostermilk and we’ll be dependent on that when we’re in London. The other thing that doesn’t progress well is his drinking. He’s much worse at it since he had the teeth. But I think part of the trouble is that he can’t manage the mug which he’s supposed to use now. I’ll try to buy one or two cups or mugs in Newcastle (I’m staying the night there and coming back on Friday to fit all these things in).
I’ve been dressed every day since you went away but I’ve done very little else except give Richard most of his food and have him for his social between five and six and play with Mary for half an hour or so after feeding Richard because she’s so jealous of him, quite naturally. This morning
[Handwritten] At this point typing became impossible—I am now in the train but I got your wire last night (Wed). I hope you’ll be able to do the Court23 but of course you mustn’t mess up the French trip.
Could you ring me up on Friday or Saturday evening? It’s quite easy— Stillington, Co. Durham, 29. A trunk call of course—you dial TRU & ask for the number. Then we can talk about the plans. Unless of course you’re coming up this weekend which would be nice. I’ll be home at Greystone on Friday afternoon.
Eileen24
[XVII, 2638, pp. 95–103; typed and handwritten]
1. Greystone was the O’Shaughnessy family home. Joyce Pritchard, the O’Shaughnessys’ nanny, told Ian Angus in a letter of 27 September 1967 that Eileen visited Greystone frequently between July 1944 (when the children were taken there) and March 1945.
2. Laurence (born 13 November 1938) was the son of Gwen* and Laurence O’Shaughnessy,* both doctors. Eileen was the sister of the elder Laurence.
3. George Kopp,* Orwell’s commander in Spain, married Gwen O’Shaughnessy’s half-sister Doreen Hunton. He and Doreen lived a few doors away from the Orwells in Canonbury Square so he had not got far to go to collect the mail, but he failed to forward it.
4. Raymond Blackburn was gardener and odd-job man at Greystone.
5. Harry Evers was Eileen’s surgeon.
6. Gwen O’Shaughnessy’s husband (see n. 2).
7. Eileen owned a house, Ravensden, at Harefield, Middlesex; this was let. See her letter of 25 March 1945 (XVII, 2642), and for a reference to its disposal, 11 January 1946 (XVIII, 2856, p. 33).
8. Evelyn Anderson, foreign editor of Tribune. She had studied at Frankfurt and came to England as a refugee. Orwell had ‘volunteered Eileen’s help … in correcting her English for a book’ (Crick, p. 446). This was Hammer or Anvil: The Story of the German Working-Class Movement, reviewed by Orwell in the Manchester Evening News, 30 August 1945 (XVIII, 2734, pp. 271–3).
9. Presumably Miss Sparrow was a secretary at the Ministry of Food, where Eileen had worked until June 1944.
10. George Mason was a surgeon and one-time colleague of Laurence O’Shaughnessy.
11. In his Diary for 20 June 1940 Orwell writes, ‘Thinking always of my island in the Hebrides’ (see Diaries, pp. 257 and 258). This may have been prompted by his reviewing Priest Island by E.L. Grant Wilson on 21 June 1940 (XII, 640, pp. 190–1). Jura itself was doubtless chosen because it was recommended by David Astor who owned land there. He also suggested Barnhill which had been empty for several years. Avril describes Barnhill in her letter of 1.7.46.
12. Margaret Fletcher (1917–; later Mrs Nelson) went to Jura with her husband, Robin, when he inherited the Ardlussa Estate, on which stood Barnhill.
13. Garrigill, a village near Alston, Cumbria, about midway between Penrith and Hexham.
14. Catherine Mary, Gwen O’Shaughnessy’s adopted daughter, who was known as Mary until her cousin, Mary Kopp was born, when she took Catherine as her first name. She was also known as ‘Mamie’.
15. Orwell had taken P.G. Wodehouse and his wife to a small restaurant near Les Halles in Paris.
16. Eileen and Orwell had hoped to adopt a little girl as a sister to Richard.
17. Raymond Blackburn, son of Mrs Blackburn, the housekeeper.
18. Psmith in the City, a novel by P.G. Wodehouse (1910) is discussed by Orwell in ‘In Defence of P.G. Wodehouse’ (XVII, 2624, pp. 51–63).
19. Oranges were unobtainable for most of the war and fats were severely rationed. A special allowance of concentrated orange juice was made available to children as a Welfare Food.
20. Not identified with certainty, but probably Nell Heaton, a friend of Eileen’s. They met when they worked together at the Ministry of Food. In 1947 Nell Heaton published The Complete Cook, the foreword of which states: ‘I owe a debt of gratitude … to George Orwell and Emily Blair, to whose sympathy and encouragement I owe so much.’ Eileen was known as Emily at the Ministry of Food.
21. Ostermilk is a proprietary brand of milk powder for babies.
22. Farex is a proprietary brand of food for newly weaned babies.
23. This may possibly mean attend Court in connection with the final formalities for Richard’s adoption, although Eileen, in her letter to Lettice Cooper (23.3.45), says ‘Richard’s adoption was through’. An alternative possibility is the kind of law court Orwell refers to in his report, ‘Creating Order out of Cologne Chaos’, Observer, 25 March 1945 (XVII, 2641, pp. 106–7).
24. The signature is an indecipherable scrawl.
Eileen Blair* to Lettice Cooper*
23 March 1945 or thereabouts
Greystone
Carlton
Dear Lettice,
I’m sorry about the paper and the typewriter but Mary got at both. You practically can’t buy paper here so I can’t waste that and although I could do something about the machine I am bored with it after about twenty minutes spent in collecting the ribbon and more or less replacing it. A typewriter ribbon is the longest thing in the world. It will go round every chair leg in a good sized house. So I’ve just discovered.
Richard was delighted with his coat and it will see him through the summer. He was just getting very short of jackets because he is so large. Mary’s cast-offs will hardly go on, knitted things anyway. He took over her nightgowns the day after she inherited some pyjamas of Laurence’s and even those aren’t at all too big. He’s still backward but has great charm which will be a lot more useful to him than talent. And he is not so stupid as Mogador1 because he found out about pulling trucks by their strings before he was ten months old and is now investigating the principles of using one object to drag nearer or to pick up another. He’s a hard worker.
I really would have written sooner but I came up to London about a fortnight ago to see my dentist so I thought I’d ring you up. Then I got ill and rang no one up and finished with all kinds of dramas at the Ministry. On the way up I went to see a Newcastle surgeon because as Richard’s adoption was through I thought I might now deal with the grwoth° (no one could object to a grwoth) I knew I had. He found it or rather them without any difficulty and I’m going into his nursing home next week for the removal. I think the question about the hysterectomy is answered because there is hardly any chance that the tumours can come out without more or less everything else removable. So that on the whole is a very good thing. It was worth coming to the north country because there is to be none of the fattening up in hospital before the operation that I was to have in London. London surgeons love preparing their patients as an insurance against unknown consequences. I think they’re all terrified of their knives really—probably they have a subconscious hope that the patient will die before getting as far as the theatre and then they can’t possibly be blamed. In London they said I couldn’t have any kind of operation without a preparatory month of blood transfusions etc.; here I’m going in next Wednesday to be done on Thursday. Apart from its other advantages this will save money, a lot of money. And that’s as well. By the way, if you could write a letter that would be nice. Theoretically I don’t want any visitors, particularly as I can’t get a private room; in practice I’ll probably be furious that no one comes—and no one can because such friends as I have in Newcastle will be away for the school holidays. So if you have time write a letter to Fernwood House, Clayton Road, Newcastle. It’s a mercy George is away—in Cologne at the moment. George visiting the sick is a sight infinitely sadder than any disease-ridden wretch in the world.
[Handwritten] I hate to think that you are no longer at the Ministry & that this will be the last extract from Miss Tomkins’ conversation. I clearly remember the sweetly pretty painting of snowdrops.
Tell me whether the flat materialises. It sounds perfect. Incidentally if you want somewhere to work or to live for that matter, use our flat which is rotting in solitude. Doreen Kopp2, who lives at 14A Cannonbury° Square, has the key. Ours is 27B Cannonbury Square. And her telephone number is CAN 4901. She has a son, very large, with the hair and hands of a talented musician. I expected to be jealous but find that I didn’t prefer him to Richard, preferable though he is. To return to the flat, Doreen can tell you whatever you don’t know about its amenities, which don’t include sheets. The last lot have disappeared since I came North. But you could have a peat fire which is a nice thing.
Raymond Blackburn is going to Stockton & he must carry this in his hand. It has taken about a week to write …3 But all this time we have been thanking you for Richard’s present, he & I.
Lots of love
Emily4
[XVII, 2640, pp. 104–5; typed and handwritten]
1. Unidentified, but possibly a grand form of ‘Moggie’ and therefore the blue cat Eileen refers to in her letter of 21.3.45.
2. Doreen Kopp, half-sister of Doctor Gwen O’Shaughnessy, and wife of George Kopp*.
3. As in the original; nothing has been omitted.
4. ‘Emily’ was the pet-name by which Eileen was known at the Ministry of Food.
Eileen Blair* to her husband
25 March 1945
Greystone
Carlton
Dearest
I’m trying to get forward with my correspondence because I go into the nursing home on Wednesday (this is Sunday) & of course I shan’t be ready. It’s impossible to write or do anything else while the children are up. I finish reading to Laurence about a quarter to eight (tonight it was five to eight), we have supper at 8 or 8.15, the 9 o’clock news now must be listened to & lasts till at least 9.30 (the war reports the last two nights have been brilliant1) & then it’s time to fill hotwater bottles etc. because we come to bed early. So I write in bed & don’t type. Incidentally I did while explaining the poaching laws as I understand them to Laurence make my will2—in handwriting because handwritten wills are nearly always valid. It is signed & witnessed. Nothing is less likely than that it will be used but I mention it because I have done an odd thing. I haven’t left anything to Richard. You are the sole legatee if you survive me (your inheritance would be the Harefield house which ought to be worth a few hundreds, that insurance policy, & furniture). If you don’t, the estate would be larger & I have left it to Gwen absolutely with a note that I hope she will use it for Richard’s benefit but without any legal obligation. The note is to convince Richard that I was not disinheriting him. But I’ve done it that way because I don’t know how to devise the money to Richard himself. For one thing, there has been no communication from the Registrar General so I suppose Richard’s name is still Robertson. For another thing he must have trustees & I don’t know who you want & they’d have to be asked. For another, if he is to inherit in childhood it’s important that his trustees should be able to use his money during his minority so that he may have as good an education as possible. We must get all this straightened out properly when you come home but I thought I must cover the possibility that you might be killed within the next few days & I might die on the table on Thursday. If you’re killed after I die that’ll be just too bad but still my little testament will indicate what I wanted done. Gwen’s results in child-rearing have not been encouraging so far but after the war she will have a proper house in the country containing both the children & herself, she loves Richard & Laurie adores him. And all the retainers love him dearly. I’m sure he would be happier in that household than with Marjorie though I think Marjorie would take him on. Avril I think & hope would not take him on anyway. That I couldn’t bear.3 Norah & Quartus4 would have him & bring him up beautifully but you’ve never seen either of them. Quartus is in India & I can’t arrange it. So in all the circumstances I thought you would agree that this would be the best emergency measure.
RICHARD HAS SIX TEETH. Also he got hold of the playpen rail when I was putting him in & stood hanging on to it without other support. But he doesn’t really know at all how to pull himself up so don’t expect too much. Yesterday Nurse & I took all three to the doctor for whooping cough injections. He lives about 2½–3 miles away, partly across fields. We got lost & had to cross ploughland. The pram wouldn’t perambulate & neither would Mary. She sat in a furrow & bellowed until carried. Laurence cried to be carried too … 5 Laurence however didn’t cry when the needle went in but Mary did and made an enormous pool on the surgery floor. Richard was done last. He played with a matchbox on my knee, looked at the doctor in some surprise when his arm was gripped & then turned to me in astonishment as though to say ‘Why is this apparently nice man sticking needles into me? Can it be right?’ On being told it was he looked up at the doctor again rather gravely—& then smiled. He didn’t make a sound & he was perfectly good all day too, though his arm is sort of bruised. The other two unfortunately remembered that they’d been injected & screamed in agony if either arm was touched. It was a happy day.
But Richard did a terrible thing. He will not use his pot, nearly always goes into a tantrum when put on it & if he does sit on it does nothing more. The tooth upset his inside a bit too. After lunch I sent the other two to bed & left Richard in his playpen while I helped wash up. Then there were cries of agony. He had done what Mary calls tick-tocks for the third time, got his hands in it & put his hands in his mouth. I tried to wash his mouth out, hoping he’d be sick. But no. He seemed to swallow most of the water I poured in, so it was worse than useless. In the end I scoured his mouth with cotton wool, gave him some boiled water & hoped for the best. And he is very well. Poor little boy. And I was sorry for myself too. I was sick. Blackburn however says a lot of children do this every day – – – – –6
I haven’t had a copy of Windmill 7 & I haven’t had a proof. Surely you said they were sending a proof. And I failed to get the Observer one week which must have been the relevant one. I’ve also failed to get today’s but shall get it I hope.
Your letter with the Animal Farm document came yesterday & I’ve sent the enclosure on to Moore. He will be pleased. This is much the quickest exchange we’ve had.
I suppose I’d better go to sleep. By the way the six teeth are 3 top & 3 bottom which gives rather an odd appearance, but I hope the fourth top one will be through soon.
All my love & Richard’s
E.
[XVII, 2642, pp. 107–9; typed and handwritten]
1. On 23 March, Operation Plunder, the offensive across the Rhine, began; it may be reports of this to which Eileen refers.
2. Eileen’s will can be read in XVII, 2643, pp. 109–10.
3. After Orwell had also died, it was Avril who took care of Richard, and he was very happy with her. Eileen’s fears proved completely unfounded.
4. Norah Myles and her husband Quartus, a general practitioner. (See headnote to 3.11.36.)
5. and 6. Nothing has been deleted at either of these points: the stops and dashes are Eileen’s.
7. The journal Windmill, in which ‘In Defence of P. G. Wodehouse’ was to appear (XVII, 2624).
Eileen Blair* to her husband
29 March 1945
Fernwood House
Clayton Road
Newcastle-on-Tyneo
Dearest
I’m just going to have the operation, already enema’d, injected (with morphia in the right arm which is a nuisance), cleaned & packed up like a precious image in cotton wool & bandages. When its’° over I’ll add a note to this & it can get off quickly. Judging by my fellow patients it will be a short note. They’ve all had their operations. Annoying—I shall never have a chance to feel superior.
I haven’t seen Harvey Evers since arrival & apparently Gwen didn’t communicate with him & no one knows what operation I am having! They don’t believe that Harvey Evers really left it to me to decide—he always ‘does what he thinks best’! He will of course. But I must say I feel irritated though I am being a model patient. They think I’m wonderful, so placid & happy they say. As indeed I am once I can hand myself over to someone else to deal with.
This is a nice room—ground floor so one can see the garden. Not much in it except daffodils & I think arabis but a nice little lawn. My bed isn’t next the window but it faces the right way. I also see the fire & the clock.
[XVII, 2647, pp. 112–3; handwritten]
The letter ends here. No note was added. Eileen suffered a heart attack and died under the anaesthetic. She was thirty-nine. Orwell was in Paris when he received the news that Eileen had died; he got to Greystone on Saturday, 31 March. Eileen was buried in St Andrew’s and Jesmond Cemetery, Newcastle upon Tyne. The grave is number 145 in Section B. Orwell took Richard back with him to London, and Doreen Kopp took care of him when Orwell returned to France to complete his assignment.
To Lydia Jackson*
1 April 1945
at Greystone, Carlton
Dear Lydia,
I do not know whether you will have heard from anyone else the very bad news. Eileen is dead. As you know she had been ill for some time past and it was finally diagnosed that she had a growth which must be removed. The operation was not supposed to be a very serious one, but she seems to have died as soon as she was given the anaesthetic, and, apparently, as a result of the anaesthetic. This was last Thursday. I was in Paris and didn’t even know she was to have the operation till two days before. It was a dreadful shock and a very cruel thing to happen, because she had become so devoted to Richard and was looking forward to living a normal life in the country again as soon as the war was over. The only consolation is that I don’t think she suffered, because she went to the operation, apparently, not expecting anything to go wrong, and never recovered consciousness. It is perhaps as well that Richard wasn’t a bit older, because I don’t think he actually misses her, at any rate he seems in very good spirits as well as health. I am going to bring him back to London when I come, and for the time being he is going to stay with Doreen [Kopp] who lives in the same square and has a baby a month old herself. I think we shall be able to find a nurse whom we can share, and when the war stops I can probably get him a nurse of his own and make a proper home for him in the country. It is a shame Eileen should have died just when he is becoming so charming, however she did enjoy very much being with him during her last months of life. Please give my love to Pat. I don’t know about my plans, but I think that if the Observer want me to I shall go back to France for a month or two when I have settled Richard.
Yours
George
[XVII, 2650, p. 118; typewritten]
To Anthony Powell*
13 April 1945
Hotel Scribe
Paris 9e
Dear Tony,
I tried to get in touch with you when I was in London last week, but failed. I don’t know whether you will have heard from some other source about what has happened. Eileen is dead. She died very suddenly and unexpectedly on March 29th during an operation which was not supposed to be very serious. I was over here and had no expectation of anything going wrong, which indeed nobody seems to have had. I didn’t see the final findings of the inquest and indeed don’t want to, because it doesn’t bring her back, but I think the anaesthetic was responsible. It was a most horrible thing to happen because she had had five really miserable years of bad health and overwork, and things were just beginning to get better. The only good thing is that I don’t think she can have suffered or had any apprehensions. She was actually looking forward to the operation to cure her trouble, and I found among her papers a letter she must have written only about an hour before she died and which she expected to finish when she came round. But it was terribly sad that she should die when she had become so devoted to Richard and was making such a good job of his upbringing. Richard I am glad to say is very well and for the moment is provided for. He is staying with his sort of aunt1 who lives in the same square as me and has a young baby of her own, and I hope within a fairly short time to find a good nurse whom I can take on as a permanency. As soon as I can get a nurse and a house I shall remove him to the country, as I don’t want him to learn to walk in London. I just got him settled in and then came straight back here, as I felt so upset at home I thought I would rather be on the move for a bit. I was in Germany for a few days recently and am now going back there for a week or two.
What I partly wrote for was to ask if you know Malcolm Muggeridge’s address. He has left Paris and I have no idea how to get in touch with him. I vaguely heard there had been some kind of row in which l’affaire Wodehouse was mixed up, but have no idea what it is. Letters generally take about a fortnight, but the above address will find me. Please remember me to Violet.2
Yours
George
[XVII, 2656, p. 124; typewritten]
1. Doreen Kopp.
2. The Lady Violet Powell (1912–2002),* Anthony Powell’s wife.
To Lydia Jackson*
11 May 1945
Hotel Scribe
Paris 9e
Dear Lydia,
I just had letters from you and Pat1 about simultaneously. I don’t want to relet the cottage, because for the time being I want to keep it on as a place to go down to for an occasional week end. I can however make either of the following arrangements with you. Either I will lend you the cottage for a month in the summer at any time you choose to name, or else you can continue to use the cottage at all times, but on the understanding that I can come and have it for a week or so any time I want to. In either case I don’t want you to pay me anything. I should be back in London about May 25th and we can make any final arrangements then. You could have it for June or July or really whenever you like provided I know beforehand. At present it seems impossible to get a house in the country and for that reason I want to keep on the cottage so that Richard can get a few days of country air now and then. Eileen and I had hoped that it would not be necessary for him to learn to walk in London, but it seems unavoidable, so I am going to keep on the flat.
Gwen [O’Shaughnessy] says you borrowed a refrigerator of hers. Do you think we could have it back, because it is so hard to keep milk from going sour in the summer months and that makes it so difficult with the children.
I came straight back here after Eileen’s death and have felt somewhat better for being at work most of the time. The destruction in Germany is terrifying, far worse than people in England grasp, but my trips there have been quite interesting. I am making one more trip, to Austria I hope, and then coming back about the end of next week. I get bulletins about Richard from Doreen and it seems he is doing very well and had tripled his birth weight at 11 months. The next thing is to find a nurse for him which is next door to impossible at present. I don’t know how long this letter will take getting to you—sometimes they take only 4 days, sometimes about 3 weeks—but if it gets to you before I get back, and you want to go down to the cottage, you can do so. Looking forward to seeing you both.
Yours
George
[XVII, 2666, pp. 138–9; typewritten]
1. Patricia Donoghue shared Orwell’s cottage at Wallington with Lydia Jackson.
Unpublished letter to Tribune
This letter was set up in type but, according to Orwell’s marginal note on the galley slip, ‘withdrawn because Tribune altered attitude in following week’.
[26?] June 1945
POLISH TRIAL
I read with some disappointment your comment on the trial of the sixteen Poles in Moscow,1 in which you seemed to imply that they had behaved in a discreditable manner and deserved punishment.
Early in the proceedings I formed the opinion that the accused were technically guilty: only, just what were they guilty of? Apparently it was merely of doing what everyone thinks it right to do when his country is occupied by a foreign power—that is, of trying to keep a military force in being, of maintaining communication with the outside world, of committing acts of sabotage and occasionally killing people. In other words, they were accused of trying to preserve the independence of their country against an unelected puppet government, and of remaining obedient to a government which at that time was recognised by the whole world except the U.S.S.R. The Germans during their period of occupation could have brought exactly the same indictment against them, and they would have been equally guilty.
It will not do to say that the efforts of the Poles to remain independent ‘objectively’ aided the Nazis, and leave it at that. Many actions which Left-wingers do not disapprove of have ‘objectively’ aided the Germans. How about E.A.M., for instance?2 They also tried to keep their military force in being, and they, too, killed Allied soldiers—British in this case—and they were not even acting under the orders of a government which was recognised by anyone as legal. But what of it? We do not disapprove of their action, and if sixteen E.A.M. leaders were now brought to London and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment we should rightly protest.
To be anti-Polish and pro-Greek is only possible if one sets up a double standard of political morality, one for the U.S.S.R. and the other for the rest of the world. Before these sixteen Poles went to Moscow they were described in the Press as political delegates, and it was stated that they had been summoned there to take part in discussions on the formation of a new government. After their arrest all mention of their status as political delegates was dropped from the British Press—an example of the kind of censorship that is necessary if this double standard is to be made acceptable to the big public. Any well-informed person is aware of similar instances. To name just one: at this moment speakers up and down the country are justifying the Russian purges on the ground that Russia ‘had no quislings,’ at the same time as any mention of the considerable numbers of Russian troops, including several generals, who changed sides and fought for the Germans is being suppressed by cautious editors. This kind of whitewashing may be due to a number of different motives, some of them respectable ones, but its effect on the Socialist movement can be deadly if it is long continued.
When I wrote in your columns I repeatedly said that if one criticises this or that Russian action one is not obliged to put on airs of moral superiority. Their behaviour is not worse than that of capitalist governments, and its actual results may often be better. Nor is it likely that we shall alter the behaviour of the rulers of the U.S.S.R. by telling them that we disapprove of them. The whole point is the effect of the Russian mythos on the Socialist movement here. At present we are all but openly applying the double standard of morality. With one side of our mouths we cry out that mass deportations, concentration camps, forced labour and suppression of freedom of speech are appalling crimes, while with the other we proclaim that these things are perfectly all right if done by the U.S.S.R. or its satellite states: and where necessary we make this plausible by doctoring the news and cutting out unpalatable facts. One cannot possibly build up a healthy Socialist movement if one is obliged to condone no matter what crime when the U.S.S.R. commits it. No one knows better than I do that it is unpopular to say anything anti-Russian at this moment. But what of it? I am only 42, and I can remember the time when it was as dangerous to say anything pro-Russian as it is to say anything anti-Russian now. Indeed, I am old enough to have seen working class audiences booing and jeering at speakers who had used the word Socialism. These fashions pass away, but they can’t be depended on to do so unless thinking people are willing to raise their voices against the fallacy of the moment. It is only because over the past hundred years small groups and lonely individuals have been willing to face unpopularity that the Socialist movement exists at all.
George Orwell
[XVII, 2685, pp. 193–5]
1. The British had called for a meeting of the leaders of the Polish underground to discuss the implementation of the Yalta decisions on the formation of a Polish Government of National Unity. The preliminary meeting was to be held in Moscow and a further meeting was planned for London. However, when the Poles reached Moscow they were put on trial.
2. E.A.M. (Ethnikon Apeleftherotikon Metopon), the National Liberation Front, was formed in Greece in 1941 after the German invasion. It started as a true resistance movement with nearly the whole population as members. By early 1942 it was discovered that it was in fact a Communist-organised movement. A national guerrilla army was then formed to fight the Germans, but found itself also fighting the E.A.M. When the British returned to Greece in 1945, they also found themselves fighting the E.A.M.
To C. E. de Salis
29 June 1945
27B Canonbury Square
Islington
London N 1
Dear Sir,
Your letter was sent on to me by the Observer. I am very sorry I made the bad slip of speaking of the scuttling of the ship in Lord Jim.1 Of course I meant to say abandonment of the ship, and would probably have corrected this if I had sent the article in early enough to see a proof.
With regard to the other points in your letter. The rest of Lord Jim seems to me absurd, not because a young man who had behaved in that way would not seek redemption, but because the actual incidents of Jim’s life among the Malays are of a kind I find incredible. Conrad could describe life in the Far East from a sailor’s angle, with the emphasis on jungle scenery and the life of seaport towns, but if one has actually lived in one of those countries his descriptions of life inland are not convincing. As a whole, Lord Jim seems to me to be a very distinguished version of the type of book in which the hero is expelled from his club for cheating at cards and goes off to Central Africa to shoot big game. Even the Dorothy Lamour figure2 comes in. When I made that remark about people who could have adventures and also appreciate them, I thought of T. E. Lawrence, whom you mention, but after all how common or typical are such people? Marlow himself seems to me quite incredible. A person like that would not be a sea captain. Conrad himself was perhaps rather like that, but then the point is that he left the sea and took to writing. That way of writing a book also seems to me unsatisfactory, because one is so often brought up by the thought, ‘No one could possibly talk like this, or at such length.’
The Observer article rather deformed what I meant to say about Conrad, because as so often happens they had to cut out about 300 words from lack of space. I had written a paragraph or two in elaborating the point that with his Polish background Conrad had a remarkable understanding of the atmosphere of revolutionary movements—an understanding which very few Englishmen would have, and certainly no Englishman with anything resembling Conrad’s political outlook. I especially praised The Secret Agent, and suggested that this book, which now seems quite difficult to get hold of, should be reprinted.
Yours truly
George Orwell
[XVII, 2690, pp. 200–1; typewritten]
1. This was in a review by Orwell published on 24 June 1945 (XVII, 2683, pp. 90–1).
2. Dorothy Lamour (Dorothy Kaumeyer, 1914–96) was first dressed by Hollywood in a sarong-like garment in The Jungle Princess, 1936, and came to typify exotic beauty, and especially so dressed in the ‘Road’ films to the point of self-parody. The film Typhoon, 1940, in which she appeared, had nothing to do with Conrad’s novel of that title. Orwell very briefly reviewed her Moon over Burma, 5 July 1941 (XII, 828, p. 522), but devoted more attention to an elephant and a cobra than to Miss Lamour.
‘Orwell and the Stinkers’: A Correspondence
29 June 1945
Tribune
On 29 June 1945, Tribune published a short review by Subramaniam1 of Million: Second Collection,2 edited by John Singer. This briefly summarised the contents and recommended the collection, but devoted half its length to an essay by J. E. Miller, ‘George Orwell and Our Times,’ which was said to deserve a separate paragraph:
This article, which is as provocative as any of Orwell’s, is analytical, stimulating and almost brilliant. Mr. Miller, however, fails in one respect. He does not give enough importance to the fact that Orwell is one of the few writers who give political writing a literary form. Instead, he seems to be primarily concerned as to how far George Orwell has correlated his beliefs with correct Socialist behaviour and submits a long indictment with several counts.
A lively correspondence followed, and Tribune clearly played it for all it was worth. Twice letters were given headings as provocative as the argument: ‘Orwell and the Stinkers’ and ‘More Views on Stinkers’. The first letter, from Paul Potts,3 was published on 6 July 1945:
When reviewing Million last week Subramaniam mentioned an article on George Orwell by J. E. Miller. In this article Miller reiterates an old libel on Orwell, current at the time The Road To Wigan Pier first appeared, that Orwell said somewhere in that book that working-class folks stank. What he did say was that as a schoolboy at Eton he was brought up to believe they did. This error has been pointed out to Mr. Miller, who persists in circulating it. May one remind him that the particular version of socialism that he advocates is in no way aided by a mean untruth?
Further letters are included in XVII, pp. 202–3, and Orwell’s letter to the Editor of Million is to be found in The Lost Orwell, pp. 107–8. This is an extract from Orwell’s response in Tribune:
[…] what I was discussing in this chapter of Wigan Pier was the theory taught to us as children that the working classes are, as it were, smelly by nature. We were taught that the ‘lower classes’ (as it was usual to call them) had a different smell from ourselves, and that it was a nasty smell; we were taught just the same about Jews, Negroes and various other categories of human beings. In the book, I explained elaborately how I was taught this, how I accepted it, and how and why I afterwards got rid of it. Mr. Miller ignores all this and simply picks out isolated sentences which seem to support his thesis, a method by which anybody can be made to say anything.4
[XVII, 2691, pp. 201–205]
1. Unidentified.
2. Million ran for three issues. It was undated; they are assigned to 1943–45. It was published in Glasgow and carried one of two subtitles: ‘New Left Writing’ or ‘The People’s Review’.
3. For Paul Potts, see 1.7.46, n. 5.
4. Orwell wrote, ‘That was what we were taught—the lower classes smell’ (V, p. 119); the italics are in the original. He then discussed this proposition on the following four pages. It was Somerset Maugham who unequivocally stated that the working man stank. Orwell quoted a dozen lines from Maugham’s On a Chinese Screen, the only book, Orwell said, he knew in which this issue ‘is set forth without humbug’. Maugham wrote, and Orwell quoted, ‘I do not blame the working man because he stinks, but stink he does.’ Orwell concluded his discussion by saying, ‘Actually people who have access to a bath will generally use it. But the essential thing is that middle-class people believe that the working class are dirty’ (V, p. 122).
To Leonard Moore*
27B Canonbury Square
Islington N 1
Dear Mr Moore,
I had a talk with Warburg about the contract position. He is quite satisfied with my assurance that I will bring him all my future work, subject to books of a special nature (eg. that Britain in Pictures book)1 being allowed to go elsewhere. He is not pressing for a hard and fast contract, but he would no doubt prefer to have one when the other business is settled.
The real trouble is with Gollancz. The contract to bring him my next two novels is still extant, and as he refused to regard Animal Farm as working off one of these, it looks as if he wants to keep to it. At the same time I frankly would prefer not to give or offer him any more books if we can get out of it. I have no quarrel with him personally, he has treated me generously and published my work when no one else would, but it is obviously unsatisfactory to be tied to a publisher who accepts or refuses books partly on political grounds and whose own political views are constantly changing. When I wrote Animal Farm for instance, I knew in advance that it would be a very difficult book to find a publisher for, and having to submit it to Gollancz simply meant that much time wasted. This might happen over and over again, and judging by some of the things he has published during the past year or two, I doubt whether I could now write anything that Gollancz would approve of. For instance, I recently started a novel2. Considering how much work I have to do elsewhere I don’t expect to finish it till some time in 1947, but I am pretty sure Gollancz would refuse it when the time comes, unless by that time his views have altered again. He might say that so far as novels go he does not mind what views they express, but it is a bad arrangement to take novels to one publisher and non-fiction to another. For example, that Spanish war book, which is about the best I have written, would probably have sold more if published by Gollancz, as by that time I was becoming known to the Gollancz public. With Warburg these difficulties don’t arise. He is less interested in propaganda and in any case his views are near enough to mine to prevent serious disagreement. From Gollancz’s own point of view I do not imagine I am a good proposition either. Having me on his list means that from time to time he will publish a book which neither he nor his friends can disapprove° of. It seems to me that if he will agree it would be better to scrap the contract. If he won’t agree I will keep to the strict letter, ie. as regards two more novels, and I have no doubt I can make this all right with Warburg. Perhaps you could approach Gollancz about this. You can quote this paragraph if you wish.
I saw W. J. Turner the other day and asked him about the Britain in Pictures book. He said Edmund Blunden3 is writing the companion volume and the two will be published simultaneously. I said that as they had had the Ms a year I thought I ought to have some money. The agreed advance was £50 and I suggested they should give me £25 now. He said there would be no objection to this and I told him you would write to him, which you have perhaps done already.
Hamish Hamilton wrote to say Harper’s would like to see something more of mine. I told him about the book of essays, and perhaps if the Dial Press people turn it down it might be worth showing it to Harpers,° though I shouldn’t think it is much in their line.
Yours sincerely
Eric Blair
[XVII, 2694, pp. 207–8; typewritten]
1. The English People: see the penultimate paragraph. Turner was the general editor of the series.
2. Nineteen Eighty-Four.
3. Edmund Blunden (1896–1974; CBE), poet, editor, man of letters. He contributed to broadcasts to India for Orwell on English literature. His English Villages (1941) is No. 11 in the Britain in Pictures series.
To Lydia Jackson*
1 August 1945
Dear Lydia,
Of course use the cottage second half of August. Even if I did manage to go down there some time, it wouldn’t be then.
I am still trying to take that cottage in the Hebrides. I don’t know if it will materialise, but if it does, I shall send the Wallington furniture there. That wouldn’t be until early next year, however.
I am frightfully busy, but I am glad to say I have got a good nurse who looks after Richard and cooks my meals as well. Richard is extremely well although he is teething rapidly. He is now 14½ months and weighs about 26 pounds. He can stand up without support but doesn’t actually walk yet, and I don’t want to hurry him as I am afraid he may be too heavy for his legs. He isn’t talking yet, ie. he utters word-like sounds, but no actual words. He doesn’t seem to have taken any harm from the many changes in his short life. When you are back, come over and see us both. I am nearly always at home in the afternoons. Richard has his tea about half past four and I have a high tea about seven.
My love to Pat.
Yours
Eric
[XVII, 2712, p. 236; typewritten]
Gleb Struve had written to Orwell on 28 August 1945, saying he had found Animal Farm ‘delightful, even though I do not necessarily agree with what one of the reviewers described as your “Trotskyist prejudices.” ’ He was teaching in the Russian section of a Summer School at Oxford and students were queuing for the book. He had been very amused ‘by the pudeur’ of those reviewers who had praised the book but had avoided mentioning its real target. He wished to translate Animal Farm, not for the benefit of Russian émigrés, but for Russians abroad who could read the truth about their country only when outside it. He asked Orwell whether he had severed his connection with Tribune; he missed his articles. His own book, on Soviet literature, was soon to be published in French with a special preface emphasising the fact that there was no freedom of expression in the Soviet Union.
To Gleb Struve*
1 September 1945
27B Canonbury Square
Islington N 1
Dear Mr Struve,
Many thanks for your letter of August 28th.
I will keep in mind your suggestion about translating Animal Farm, and naturally, if it could be in any way arranged, I should be highly honoured if it were you who made the translation. The thing is that I don’t know what the procedure is. Are books in Russian published in this country, ie. from nonofficial sources? At about the same time as your letter a Pole wrote wanting to do the book into Polish. I can’t, of course, encourage him to do so unless I can see a way of getting the book into print and recompensing him for his work, and ditto with yourself. If there is any way of arranging this that would allow a reasonable fee to the translators, I would be most happy to do it, as naturally I am anxious that the book should find its way into other languages. If translations into the Slav languages were made, I shouldn’t want any money out of them myself.1
No, I haven’t severed connection with Tribune, though I have stopped editing for them. I was away in France and Germany between February and May, and my affairs have been disorganised in other ways which obliged me to cut down my journalistic work for some time. However, I am going to start a weekly column again in Tribune in October, but not under the old title.
I am glad your book should be° translated into French. My impression in France was that the Soviet mythos is less strong there than in England, in spite of the big Communist party.
I am leaving London shortly for a holiday, but shall be back about the 25th. I would like to meet you if you are in London any time. My phone number is can 3751.
Yours sincerely
George Orwell
[XVII, 2737, pp. 274–5; typewritten]
1. Gleb Struve did translate Animal Farm into Russian, in conjunction with M. Kriger, as Skotskii Khutor. It first appeared as a serial in Possev (Frankfurt-am-Main), Nos. 7–25, 1949, and then in two book versions, one on ordinary paper for distribution in Western Europe and one on thin paper for distribution behind the Iron Curtain. Orwell’s practice was never to benefit from his work distributed in Communist-dominated countries.
To Kay Dick*
27B Canonbury Square
Islington N 1
Dear Kay,
I was very glad to get your letter because I had been trying to get in touch with you. When I rang up John o’ London°1 they just said you had left, and I had lost your home address.
I simply haven’t any ideas for a story at this moment, and I don’t want to force one. Later on I don’t know. I did one time contemplate a story about a man who got so fed up with the weeds in his garden that he decided to have a garden just of weeds, as they seem easier to grow. Then of course as soon as he started to do this he would find the garden being overwhelmed with flowers and vegetables which came up of their own accord. But I never got round to writing it.
I note that you will be back in London about the 4th and will get in touch with you after that. I’ll try and not lose your address this time. I wish you would come round here some time and see my little boy, who is now aged nearly 17 months. If you come from Hampstead you have to go to the Angel and then take a bus, or if you come from the City you come on the 4 bus to Highbury Corner. I am almost always at home because I don’t go to an office now. The child goes to bed about 6 and after that I have high tea about 7.
You may be interested to hear that poor old Wodehouse was most pathetically pleased about the article in the Windmill. I met him in Paris and afterwards heard from him once or twice.
Looking forward to seeing you,
Yours
George Orwell
[XVII, 2754, p. 290; typewritten]
1. John O’ London’s Weekly was a popular literary journal founded in 1919.
To Leonard Moore*
29 November 1945
27B Canonbury Square
London N 1
Dear Mr Moore,
I have just heard from Erval of Nagel Paris. He says that the contract you drew up for Animal Farm provides for publication in not less than a year, and says that this is an impossible condition. The main reason he gives is that it is not usual in France to publish two books by a foreign writer within 18 or 20 months of one another. Burmese Days is supposed to appear about February, so Animal Farm would clash with it if published in 1946. He also hints that from a political point of view this may not be a happy moment for producing a book like Animal Farm and says Nagel Paris would like to be able to judge the right moment. I fancy the second objection is the real one, as they are so short of books of any kind in France at present that the first consideration would not be likely to carry much weight.
I am going to tell him that I leave the matter in your hands. The point is that we don’t want the publication of A.F. put off for 18–20 months if it is at all avoidable. I have no doubt that now such a book would be likely to get a hostile reception in France, but it would in any case be a question of publishing it some time late in 1946, by which time pro-Russian feeling may have worn thin as it seems to be doing here. I don’t fancy the book would be suppressed while Malraux has the Ministry of Information. I met him when in Paris and found him very friendly, and he is far from being pro-Communist in his views. Could we at need take it to another French publisher? The Fontaine people asked for it, you may remember. How does the contract stand with Nagel? Have they an option on all my books? I should be glad to hear what you are doing about this.
I had to make a new will when my wife died, and I am just having it put into proper legal form. It is not that there is likely to be much to leave, but I must think of copyrights and reprints. I am naming Christy & Moore as my literary agents and Sir Richard Rees as my literary executor, and I am leaving it to him to sort out whatever unpublished or reprintable material I may leave behind and decide what is worth preserving. I am also leaving records of anything I publish in periodicals, as there might at any given moment be a good deal that was worth salvaging for some kind of reprint. It is just as well to get all this cleared up, what with atomic bombs etc.
Yours sincerely
Eric Blair
[XVII, 2806, pp. 401–2; typewritten]
To Michael Sayers
11 December 1945
27B Canonbury Square
London N 1
Dear Michael,
Please forgive delay in answering. I’ve been rather overwhelmed since I saw you.
I’d love to meet again, but I haven’t many spare dates before Christmas. Dates I could manage would be Monday 17th or Friday 21st, for dinner either day. I can’t arrange any lunch times at present, because I’m in the throes of getting a secretary1, and when she starts I want to see how the time works out.
I don’t think I could fairly be described as Russophobe. I am against all dictatorships and I think the Russian myth has done frightful harm to the leftwing movement in Britain and elsewhere, and that it is above all necessary to make people see the Russian regime for what it is (ie. what I think it is). But I thought all this as early as 1932 or thereabouts and always said so fairly freely. I have no wish to interfere with the Soviet regime even if I could. I merely don’t want its methods and habits of thought imitated here, and that involves fighting against the Russianisers in this country. The danger as I see it is not our being conquered by Russia, which might happen but depends chiefly on geography. The danger is that some native form of totalitarianism will be developed here, and people like Laski, Pritt, Zilliacus, the News Chronicle and all the rest of them seem to me to be simply preparing the way for this. You might be interested in the articles I wrote for the first two numbers of Polemic.2
Looking forward to seeing you.
Yours
George
P.S. Nearly everyone calls me George now though I’ve never changed my name.3
1. Miss Siriol Hugh-Jones (see XVII, afternote to 2689, pp. 199–200).
2. ‘Notes on Nationalism’, Polemic 1, October 1945 (XVII, 2668, pp. 141–57) and ‘The Prevention of Literature’, Polemic 2, January 1946 (XVII, 2792, pp. 369–81). Orwell records payment for the former of £25 on 15 May 1945 and of £26 5s on 12 November 1945. ‘The Prevention of Literature’ was translated and published in French, Dutch, Italian and Finnish journals.
3. This important letter was one of two addressed to Michael Sayers discovered as this volume was in the press. The editor is extremely grateful to Michael Sayers (now aged 98 and living in New York) and his sons, Sean and Peter, for permission to publish it. In his first letter of 29 November 1945, Orwell expresses pleasure in hearing from Mr Sayers and suggests meeting over lunch. Sayers, Rayner Heppen-stall and Orwell had shared a flat in 1935 (see letter to Heppenstall, 24.9.35, n. 1).
To G. H. Bantock
Late 1945–early 1946
These extracts are from a letter Orwell wrote to G. H. Bantock (1914– ), who was then doing research for his L.H. Myers: A Critical Study, published in 1956. Myers had died in 1944. (See 19.2.46, n. 1).
I was staying with him when war broke out. He spoke with the utmost bitterness of the British ruling class and said that he considered that many of them were actually treacherous in their attitude towards Germany. He said, speaking from his knowledge of them, that the rich were in general very class-conscious and well aware that their interests coincided with the interests of the rich in other countries, and that consequently they had no patriotism—‘not even their kind of patriotism,’ he added. He made an exception of Winston Churchill….
… I didn’t see Leo very frequently during the war. I was in London and he was generally in the country. The last time I saw him was at John Morris’s flat.1 We got into the usual argument about Russia and totalitarianism, Morris taking my side. I said something about freedom and Leo, who had got up to get some more whisky, said almost vehemently, ‘I don’t believe in freedom.’ (NB. I think his exact words were ‘I don’t believe in liberty.’) I said, ‘All progress comes through heretics,’ and Leo promptly agreed with me. It struck me then, not for the first time, that there was a contradiction in his ideas which he had not resolved. His instincts were those of a Liberal but he felt it his duty to support the USSR and therefore to repudiate Liberalism. I think part of his uncertainty was due to his having inherited a large income. Undoubtedly in a way he was ashamed of this. He lived fairly simply and gave his money away with both hands, but he could not help feeling that he was a person who enjoyed unjustified privileges. I think he felt that because of this he had no right to criticise Russia. Russia was the only country where private ownership had been abolished, and any hostile criticism might be prompted by an unconscious desire to protect his own possessions. This may be a wrong diagnosis, but that is the impression I derived. It was certainly not natural for such a sweet-natured and open-minded man to approve of a regime where freedom of thought was suppressed.
[XVII, 2825, p. 456; typewritten]
1. John Morris was one of Orwell’s colleagues at the BBC. Their relations were rather sour. For an unfavourable account of Orwell by Morris, see his ‘Some Are More Equal than Others,’ Penguin New Writing, No. 40 (1950); as ‘That Curiously Crucified Expression’, in Orwell Remembered, pp. 171–76, and Crick’s comments thereon, pp. 419–20.