1949–1950

On 2 January 1949 Orwell left Jura for the last time. He became a patient at The Cotswold Sanatorium in Cranham, Gloucestershire, a mile or two from where Laurie Lee, the author of Cider with Rosie, grew up at Slad. The description of how patients were cared for now sounds harsh but at the time was thought beneficial. Films of such hospitals, with patients lying out in the open air, often in near freezing conditions, can produce quite remarkably contrasting audience reactions. When Fredric and Pamela Warburg came to see him they were shocked by what they saw and the seeming lack of treatment he was receiving (see note following 18 January 1949).

Nineteen Eighty-Four was hastily set and proofed by Secker & Warburg in London and by Harcourt, Brace in New York. Orwell corrected the proofs in March and in the same month was strong enough to protest vigorously at the attempts in New York to cut out ‘about a fifth or a quarter of the book’. He also demanded that the conversion of the metric measurements he had shown practised in 1984 – which had been changed back to imperial measure by Harcourt, Brace – revert to metric measurements. In June this, his last book, was published in London and New York (as 1984) and in July the American Book of the Month Club printed some 190,000 copies. Late in August NBC broadcast a radio dramatisation with David Niven as Winston Smith. Its and Orwell’s fame, were almost instantaneous.

On 14 February (St Valentine’s Day), Jacintha Buddicom, having discovered that her childhood playmate, Eric Blair, was George Orwell, wrote to him, to his delight. At the end of March Celia Kirwan came to see him on behalf of the Information Research Department which had been set up by the Labour Government to try to counteract the Soviet’s ‘global and damaging campaign to undermine Western power and influence’. He did not feel strong enough to write for the IRD but suggested names of those who might do so and also those too ‘unreliable’ to be asked.

In September he was transferred to University College Hospital in London. He was probably past being cured but he was well cared for, and friends could drop in to see him. It was in this room that he married Sonia Brownell on 13 October. On 18 January 1950 he signed his Will on the eve of his proposed journey to Switzerland. Alas, before he could go, he died of a massive haemorrhage of the lungs in the early hours of Saturday, 21 January 1950.

An illustration by Bobby Longden from Orwell’s story, The White Man’s Burden, College Days No 3, 29 November 1919

Dr Bruce Dick* to David Astor*

5 January 1949

as from The Peel, Busby [south of Glasgow]

Dear Mr David,°

I am sorry for the delay in reply to your letter.

I was for a time in correspondence with Eric Blair. It was obvious° a relapse story, presumably of fairly acute onset. When we saw him in Sept. we thought he was as good as when he left us.

I had offered to take him into our hospital or this one. However he had a hankering for the less rigorous south. He had decided on Mundesley1 I expect the delay in getting fixed up made him decide on the Cotswold Sanatorium.² I have not been in touch with the Superintendent personally, but one of my assistants sent a detailed history.

I believe the disease will respond again to a course of streptomycin. It can now be procured more easily at home. Certainly no other form of treatment is available.

It is all bad luck for such a fine character & gifted man. I know he gets great heart from your continued comradeship & kindness.

I hope the poor fellow will do well. It is now obvious that he will need to live a most sheltered life in a sanatorium environment. I fear the dream of Jura must fade out.

If I can be of the least help, I will. If he was to come north later we would give him refuge.

With kind regards.

Yours sincerely,

Bruce Dick

[XX, 3518, pp. 13–14; handwritten]

1. On the east coast of England about 20 to 22 miles northeast of Norwich. It is not known why he did not go there. Gwen O’Shaughnessy helped him find a place at Cranham.

2. Orwell was admitted to The Cotswold Sanatorium on 6 January 1949. Richard Rees drove Orwell on the first stage of the long journey from Barnhill to Cranham (George Orwell: Fugitive from the Camp of Victory, p. 150). He notes that at Barnhill, Orwell ‘was certainly happy…. He felt that he was at last putting down roots. But in reality it was obvious that he had chosen a too rocky soil’ (p. 149). Orwell completed his journey by train.

To David Astor*

12 January 1949

The Cotswold Sanatorium1

Cranham, Glos.

Dear David,

Thanks so much for your two wires & the offer about the streptomycin. But at present they aren’t treating me with strepto, & in any case it appears that it is now easier to get & comparatively cheap. They are giving me something called P.A.S.² which I gather stands for para-amino-salicylic acid. This sounds rather as if it was just aspirin in disguise, but I assume it isn’t. We will give it a trial any way. If it doesn’t work I can always have another go of strepto. This seems quite a nice place & comfortable. If you can come any time I should love it, though of course don’t put yourself out. I can even arrange meals for you if I get notice. I have felt better the last week or so but I am not going to attempt any work for at least a month.

Yours

George

P.S. Looking at the map this isn’t so very far from your Abingdon place by road. I’ve never been in Glos. before but I think it must be rather like the Oxfordshire country I knew as a little boy.

[XX, 3520, pp. 15–16; handwritten]

1. Cranham was a private sanatorium 900 feet up in the Cotswold hills between Stroud and Gloucester with views across the Bristol Channel to the mountains of Wales. It is only a mile or two from Slad, described in Cider with Rosie (1959) by Laurie Lee. The patients were in individual chalets with central heating; rest, altitude and fresh, cold air were then believed to be appropriate treatments for tuberculosis (Crick, p. 553). The resident physicians were Geoffrey A. Hoffman BA, MB, TC, Dublin, and Margaret A. Kirkman, MB, BS, London. But see 18.1.49 to Fredric Warburg.

2. P.A.S. was a chemotherapeutic drug introduced in 1946 for the treatment of tuberculosis. It was only slightly effective used alone and was usually combined with isoniazid or streptomycin. Such a combination delayed the development of the disease. Shelden notes that these drugs were so new that no doctors ‘had enough experience with them to understand the best way to use them in treating advanced cases such as Orwell’s. He might have benefited from smaller doses or from a combination of drugs and other forms of treatment. Unfortunately, the most potent drug—isoniazid—was not developed for use in tuberculosis cases until 1952…. But the fact that he was given PAS at the sanatorium in Cranham shows that he was receiving the latest treatment for the disease. The doctors there seem to have made every effort to achieve an improvement in his condition’ (pp. 466–7).

To Leonard Moore*

17 January 1949

The Cotswold Sanatorium

Cranham

Dear Moore,

I enclose the 6 contracts,1 duly signed. Thanks also for sending the copies of Burmese Days, & the magazine with that cartoon.

I am glad the new book is fixed up for the USA. I assume it does no harm for it to have a different title here & there.² Warburg seems to prefer the title 1984, & I think I prefer it slightly myself.³ But I think it would be better to write it Nineteen Eighty-four, but I expect to see Warburg shortly & I’ll talk to him about that. It’s possible that the American publishers will want to cut out the Appendix,⁴ which of course is not a usual thing to have in something purporting to be a novel, but I would like to retain it if possible.

The above address will, I am afraid, find me for the next 2 or 3 months. It is a nice place & I am quite comfortable. I am trying to do no work whatever, which I think is the wisest thing at the moment. So, with reference to your other letter, could you tell Harper’s Bazaar that I would have liked to do the article, but have been seriously ill & cannot undertake anything. I dare say in a month or so I shall be fit to begin working again, but for the moment I do not want to make any commitments.

Yours sincerely

Eric Blair

[XX, 3525, pp. 19–20; handwritten]

1. Unidentified. Possibly contracts for foreign-language versions of Animal Farm.

2. Nineteen Eighty-Four was used in the United Kingdom; 1984 in the USA.

3. The facsimile of the draft shows clearly that the novel was first set in 1980; then, as time passed in the writing of the book, 1982, and finally 1984. This is particularly plain on page 23 of the facsimile, but the consequential changes occur at various points. It is arguable that, in setting the novel in, successively, 1980, 1982, and 1984, Orwell was projecting forward his own age, 36, when World War II started, from the time when he was planning or actually writing the novel. Thus, 1944 + 36 = 1980; 1946 + 36 = 1982; 1948 + 36 = 1984. It is not, perhaps, a coincidence that in 1944, when the idea for the novel might reasonably be said to be taking shape, Richard was adopted. It would be natural for Orwell to wonder at that time (as many people did) what prospects there would be for war or peace when their children grew up. By choosing Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell set his novel in both present and future. Had Orwell only been writing about the present, there would have been no need for him to have advanced the year beyond 1980, and preserving the interval he did – of 36 years – must have had significance for him. Inverting the final digits of 1980 and 1982 would have been meaningless; the inversion of those for 1984 was probably coincidental.

4. The appendix, ‘The Principles of Newspeak’, was included in English and US editions.

To Sir Richard Rees*

18 January 1949

The Cotswold Sanatorium

Cranham

Dear Richard,

I hope you got home all right & were not too exhausted by all your journeyings on my behalf. I am well settled in here & quite comfortable. The ‘chalet’ isn’t as grim as I had feared—quite warm, with central heating & hot & cold water, & the food is quite good. My appetite has definitely improved. The Tawneys¹ came in & saw me, but now have left for London. Karl Schnetzler also came, & Warburg is coming on Friday. I’ll send back your book In Parenthesis² when I can. I think it’s very good in a way, but it’s what I call mannered writing, a thing I don’t approve of. I haven’t heard from Barnhill yet, but trust Avril has got properly over her cold. I don’t know how the weather has been there, but here it has been as mild & sunny as early April, & the birds have even been trying to sing. My book has been accepted for the USA & they’ve also agreed to reprint a number of earlier ones on quite good terms, which is unusual in an American publisher. Actually I’m somewhat against this, as they’re sure to lose money on the reprints & this may sour them on later books.

They are giving me something called P.A.S., which I believe stands for para-amino-salicylic acid. They say it is good. It’s very expensive, though not so expensive as streptomycin. You take it by mouth, which I must say I prefer to those endless injections. I have been thinking things over, & have decided that even if I am reasonably well by the summer, I must from now on spend my winters within reach of a doctor—where, I don’t know yet, but possibly somewhere like Brighton. If, therefore, it is impossible for me to be at Barnhill in the winter, can we fix things somehow so that Bill is looked after during those months? I don’t in the least wish to sever my connection with Barnhill, because it is a marvellous place to be at, & in any case we have now sent down fairly respectable roots there, but I think it would be wiser to do as I first intended, when I took the place in 1946, & use it only for the summers. I must try & stay alive for 5–10 years, which involves having medical attention at hand when necessary, & in addition I am just a nuisance to everybody when I am ill, whereas in a more civilized place this doesn’t matter. In the summers no doubt I shall generally be well enough to potter about, provided that this present infection is got under. In more reasonable times we might arrange to live every winter in Sicily or somewhere, but nowadays I suppose it will have to be somewhere in England.3 In the beginning we took the house on the understanding that we should only stay there April–November, but now there is Bill. It is a question of finding a housekeeper for him. Have you got any ideas about this? I’ll also write to Avril setting forth the problem.

Gleb Struve sent me a translation of some remarks about me in a Russian magazine.⁴ They’re really very annoying, but disquieting in a way because the whole thing is somehow so illiterate.

Yours

Eric

[XX, 3529, pp. 22–4; handwritten]

1. Professor R. H. Tawney (1888–1962), historian, author of Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926), joint editor of Economic History Review, 1926–33, and of Studies in Economic and Social History from 1934. He and his wife were very old friends of Richard Rees, who had asked them to visit Orwell at Cranham, as they were on holiday nearby at their country home.

2. In Parenthesis (1937) by David Jones (1895–1974), poet, novelist, and artist. It combines free verse with an account of his World War I experience. It won the Hawthornden Prize.

3. Travel abroad was made difficult because the government limited severely the amount of money that could be taken out of the country.

4. With his letter to Orwell of 1 January 1949, Gleb Struve had enclosed two articles by Ivan Anisimov attacking Arthur Koestler and Orwell, ‘typical of the literary xenophobia now raging in the Soviet Union’.

To Fredric Warburg*

18 January 1949

Telegram

LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU FRIDAY DO BRING PAMELA CAR WILL MEET YOU

GEORGE

[XX, 3530, p. 24]

The visit was arranged for Friday, 21 January 1949. Warburg went with his wife, Pamela, and in All Authors are Equal (1973) he gives a vivid account of Cranham (which horrified them) and of Orwell’s distressing state. Warburg, confirming the visit in a letter to Orwell of 19 January, asked his permission to have a frank discussion with his doctors: ‘Your future is important to more people than yourself.’ In reply to their questions, Orwell told Pamela Warburg that ‘a woman doctor [presumably Margaret Kirkman] visits me every morning…. I think she’s thoroughly competent and kind, and asks me how I feel and all that.’ However, in response to Mrs Warburg’s questions, it transpired that no chest examination by stethoscope had taken place. ‘I expect they’re understaffed here, you know,’ Orwell told her, ‘she probably hasn’t got time,’ to which Mrs Warburg angrily replied: ‘It’s monstrous, absolutely shocking’ (p. 109). Nevertheless, Orwell thought the doctors knew what they were doing, and Warburg remarks, ‘The reply was so typical of him—he couldn’t bear to make a fuss—and so heartrending that I could hardly believe my ears, but at least it made it easy for Pamela to beg him to see a London specialist.’ She persuaded Orwell to promise to let them know if he would like Dr Andrew Morland (a leading specialist in the field who had treated D. H. Lawrence) to see him and, if necessary, to get him into University College Hospital, London. Warburg also recounts how at this time, Louis Simmonds, a bookseller with whom Orwell dealt and who was a warm admirer of Orwell, told Warburg that he and one or two friends would raise £500—a very large sum in those days—to enable Orwell to go to Switzerland for treatment because ‘he is far too precious to lose’ (pp. 107–9).

To Julian Symons*

2 February 1949

The Cotswold Sanatorium

Cranham

Dear Julian,

I wonder how you & family are getting on. I have been in this place about a month. [Progress of his treatment – P.A.S.] During the last month my weight has only increased 4 ounces, but actually I do feel better & I am well looked after here, though the doctors don’t strike me as very brilliant.

Your baby must be getting quite a size & must be cutting teeth & eating solid food. I wonder if you had the battle over weaning that we had with Richard. It’s like Machiavelli says about government, you can’t do it except by force or fraud. Richard is getting [on] for 5 now & is enormous & very healthy, though still not interested in learning his letters. He likes to be read to, but doesn’t see that as a reason for learning to read himself. I suppose this coming winter he will have to start going to school, which he is certain to enjoy as he is very gregarious.

My new book is supposed to come out in July (Warburg said May or June, which means July in publisher’s language) but maybe the American edition will be out first. Any way I’ll see you get a copy. I must thank you for some friendly references in the M[anchester] E[vening] News, including one to that ghastly book of pamphlets in which I reluctantly collaborated. I am having another try to get Warburg to reprint some of Gissing’s books, to which I would write introductions. They reprinted (I forget which publishers) those 3 last year, but of course the wrong ones.1 Meanwhile I am still trying to get hold of a copy of New Grub Street, & am now trying in New York. Somewhat to my annoyance that paper Politics & Letters got me to write an essay on Gissing & then died, & have never sent my article back or answered my queries about it, though it appears distinctly unlikely that the magazine will re-appear. What a calamity that we can’t find a way of financing one decent magazine in this country. I suppose it’s only a question of losing about £2000 a year. The Partisan Review have either increased their sales or got hold of some money from somewhere, as I notice they now pay one quite decently. For all those articles I did during the war for them I got only 10 dollars a time.²

I don’t know this part of the country but it’s supposed to be a beauty spot. Professor Tawney lives nearby, but unfortunately he’s had to go back to London as the L.S.E. term had started. The weather is quite incredible, bright sunshine & birds singing as though it were April. Please remember me to your wife & excuse this bad handwriting.

Yours

George

[XX, 3538, pp. 31–2; handwritten]

1. In the Year of the Jubilee and The Whirlpool were published by Watergate Classics; the former had an introduction by William Plomer, and the latter, one by Myfanwy Evans.

2. Ten dollars was then approximately £2.50.

To Sir Richard Rees*

4 February 1949

The Cotswold Sanatorium

Cranham

Dear Richard,

I enclose cheque for what I owed you. You will notice I have added £3. Do you think you could be kind enough to get your wine merchant to send me 2 bottles of rum, which I suppose will come to about that. I assume he will know how to pack them so as not to get them broken.

I have heard from Avril who says she and Bill both think it would be better to move to a farm on the mainland. I think they are right, but can’t help feeling bad about it as I feel my health is the precipitating factor, though the state of the road is a good second. I think you would be rash to sink more money in any non-removable improvements etc.,¹ because such a place might of its nature become untenable at some time. I trust it will be possible to move without selling off the stock and losing on the transaction. I am afraid the actual move will be a godawful° business from which I shall probably absent myself whenever it happens. I have asked Avril to tell Robin [Fletcher] that unless he happens on a tenant who would actually farm the place, I would like to keep on the lease of the house. I don’t see why we shouldn’t have it as a summer holiday place, and one could leave camp beds etc. there. Of course I may never be strong enough for that kind of thing again even in the summer, but others may be and the rent is next to nothing.

I am reading B. Russell’s latest book, about human knowledge.² He quotes Shakespeare, ‘Doubt that the stars are fire, Doubt that the earth doth move’ (it goes on I think, ‘Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.’) But he makes it ‘Doubt that the sun doth move,’ and uses this as an instance of S.’s ignorance. Is that right? I had an idea it was ‘the earth.’ But I haven’t got Shakespeare here and I can’t even remember where the lines come (must be one of the comedies I think.) I wish you’d verify this for me if you can remember where it comes.3 I see by the way that the Russian press has just described B. R. as a wolf in a dinner jacket and a wild beast in philosopher’s robes.

I don’t know really that I’d be very interested in that book about the cards etc. I had heard of that chap before,⁴ but I can’t get very interested in telepathy unless it could be developed into a reliable method.

I’ve been reading The First Europe⁵ (history of the Dark Ages), very interesting though written in a rather tiresome way. For the first week or two here I hadn’t got my book supply going and had to rely on the library, which meant reading some fearful trash. Among other things I read a Deeping⁶ for the first time—actually not so bad as I expected, a sort of natural novelist like A. S. M. Hutchinson.⁷ Also a Peter Cheyney.⁸ He evidently does well out of his books as I used often to get invites from him for slap-up parties at the Dorchester. I have sent for several of Hardy’s novels⁹ and am looking at them rather unenthusiastically.

Yours

Eric

[XX, 3540, pp. 33–5; typewritten]

1. Rees had invested £1,000 in developing Barnhill.

2. Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948). In his list of what he read in 1949, Orwell wrote against this book, ‘Tried & failed.’

3. Russell was almost textually correct. The passage is from Hamlet, 2.2.116–19; the first line should read: ‘Doubt thou’ not ‘Doubt that’. Russell takes the meaning at its simple, face value—that the earth does not move. If that is correct, Shakespeare (or Hamlet) cannot be accused of ignorance because, as the cosmos was still almost uniformly then understood, that was correct according to Ptolomaic theory. Copernicus and Galileo were challenging that theory (Galileo and Shakespeare were born in the same year), and their theory was regarded as heretical, as the Inquisition pointedly explained to Galileo. However, this passage is usually interpreted as hinting that the earth does move; Shakespeare was more subtle than either Russell or Orwell seems to have realised, and Hamlet, perhaps, more devious.

4. Professor J. B. Rhine, Director of the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University.

5. By Cecil Delisle Burns; Orwell lists it under March and annotates it, ‘Skimmed.’

6. Warwick Deeping (1877–1950), a prolific novelist who trained as a doctor. His most successful book was Sorrell and Son (1925), based on his work in the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War I. Orwell does not list which book he read. He expressed some scorn for ‘the Dells and Deepings’, although he admits in Keep the Aspidistra Flying, p. 34: ‘Even the Dells and Deepings do at least turn out their yearly acre of print.’

7. Arthur Stuart-Menteith Hutchinson (1879–1971), born in Uttar Pradesh, India; a prolific novelist whose If Winter Comes had earlier attracted Orwell’s attention; see ‘Good Bad Books’, Tribune, 2 November 1945 (XVII, 2780, p. 348).

8. Peter Cheyney (1896–1951), prolific author, chiefly of detective stories and thrillers, though he also published poems and lyrics. He served in World War I, rose to the rank of major, and in 1916 was severely wounded. Orwell had read his Dark Hero.

9. Orwell records reading Jude the Obscure and Tess of the D’Urbevilles in February 1949.

To Julian Symons*

4 February 1949

The Cotswold Sanatorium

Cranham

Dear Julian,

Thanks so much for your letter. Do send me a copy of your thriller.¹ I’m sure I should enjoy it. I do nothing now except read anyway, and I’m rather an amateur of detective stories, although, as you know, I have old-fashioned tastes in them. I recently by the way read for the first time The Postman always Rings Twice²—what an awful book. [Arrangements for a proposed visit.]

My new book is a Utopia in the form of a novel. I ballsed it up rather, partly owing to being so ill while I was writing it, but I think some of the ideas in it might interest you. We haven’t definitively fixed the title, but I think it will be called Nineteen Eighty-four. Tony says Malcolm Muggeridge has a novel coming out about the same time.³

Please remember me to the family.

Yours

George

[XX, 3541, p. 35; typewritten]

1. Bland Beginning; read by Orwell in February 1949.

2. By James M. Cain, published in 1934; read by Orwell in January 1949.

3. Affairs of the Heart (1949). It was the last book listed by Orwell as read in 1949.

In her book Eric and Us, Jacintha Buddicom explains that after Orwell—to her then, Eric Blair—‘had slipped away without trace’ after his visit in 1927, they had no contact. Then, on 8 February 1949, she received a letter from her Aunt Lilian (with whom they had all stayed in 1927) to say that George Orwell was Eric Blair. She telephoned Martin Secker to find where Orwell was and wrote to him on 9 February. The following two letters arrived on 17 February enclosed in the same envelope. (See Eric and Us, pp. 143–45 and 146–58, and especially her letter of 4 May 1972 to her cousin on page 8 of this book.)

To Jacintha Buddicom*

14 February 1949

The Cotswold Sanatorium

Cranham

Dear Jacintha,

How nice to get your letter after all these years. I suppose it really must be 30 years since the winter holidays when I stayed with you at Shiplake, though I saw Prosper and Guinever a good deal later, in 1927, when I stayed with them at Ticklerton after coming back from Burma. After that I was living in various parts of the world and often in great difficulties about making a living, and I rather lost touch with a lot of old friends. I seem to remember Prosper got married about 1930. I am a widower. My wife died suddenly four years ago, leaving me with a little (adopted) son who was then not quite a year old. Most of the time since then Avril has been keeping house for me, and we have been living in Jura, in the Hebrides, or more properly the Western Isles. I think we are going in any case to keep on the house there, but with my health as it now is I imagine I shall have to spend at least the winters in some get-at-able place where there is a doctor. In any case Richard, my little boy, who will be 5 in May, will soon have to start going to school, which he can’t satisfactorily do on the island.

I have been having this dreary disease (T.B.) in an acute way since the autumn of 1947, but of course it has been hanging over me all my life, and actually I think I had my first go of it in early childhood. I spent the first half of 1948 in hospital, then went home much better after being treated with streptomycin, then began to feel ill again about September. I couldn’t go for treatment then because I had to finish off a beastly book which, owing to illness, I had been messing about with for eighteen months. So I didn’t get to this place till about the beginning of the year, by which time I was rather sorry for myself. I am trying now not to do any work at all, and shan’t start any for another month or two. All I do is read and do crossword puzzles. I am well looked after here and can keep quiet and warm and not worry about anything, which is about the only treatment that is any good in my opinion. Thank goodness Richard is extremely tough and healthy and is unlikely, I should think, ever to get this disease.

I have never been back to the Henley area, except once passing through the town in a car. I wonder what happened to that property your mother had which we used to hunt all over with those ‘saloon rifles,’1 and which seemed so enormous in those days. Do you remember our passion for R. Austin Freeman?² I have never really lost it, and I think I must have read his entire works except some of the very last ones. I think he only died quite recently, at a great age.

I hope to get out of here in the spring or summer, and if so I shall be in London or near London for a bit. In that case I’ll come and look you up if you would like it. Meanwhile if you’d care to write again and tell me some more news I’d be very pleased. I am afraid this is rather a poor letter, but I can’t write long letters at present because it tires me to sit up for long at a time.

Yours

Eric Blair

[XX, 3550, pp. 42–3; typewritten]

1. Small-bore rifles used in shooting galleries – at fairs, for example.

2. Richard Austin Freeman (1862–1943), author of many novels and short stories, particularly featuring the pathologist-detective John Thorndyke, the first of which, written after his enforced retirement as a physician and surgeon in what is now Ghana, The Red Thumb Mark (1907), established Freeman (and Thorndyke). His novels and stories were characterised by their scientific accuracy. In ‘Grandeur et décadence du roman policier anglais’ (‘The Detective Story’), Fontaine, 1944 (XV, 2357, pp. 309–20)), Orwell describes his The Eye of Osiris and The Singing Bone as ‘classics of English detective fiction’.

To Jacintha Buddicom*

[15 February] 1949

Cranham

Hail and Fare Well, my dear Jacintha,

You see I haven’t forgotten. I wrote to you yesterday but the letter isn’t posted yet, so I’ll go on to cheer this dismal day. It’s been a day when everything’s gone wrong. First there was a stupid accident to the book I was reading, which is now unreadable. After that the typewriter stuck & I’m too poorly to fix it. I’ve managed to borrow a substitute but it’s not much better. Ever since I got your letter I’ve been remembering. I can’t stop thinking about the young days with you & Guin & Prosper, & things put out of mind for 20 and 30 years. I am so wanting to see you. We must meet when I get out of this place, but the doctor says I’ll have to stay another 3 or 4 months.

I would like you to see Richard. He can’t read yet & is rather backward in talking, but he’s as keen on fishing as I was & loves working on the farm, where he’s really quite helpful. He has an enormous interest in machinery, which may be useful to him later on. When I was not much more than his age I always knew I wanted to write, but for the first ten years it was very hard to make a living. I had to take a lot of beastly jobs to earn enough to keep going & could only write in any spare time that was left, when I was too tired & had to destroy a dozen pages for one that was worth keeping. I tore up a whole novel once1 & wish I now hadn’t been so ruthless. Parts of it might have been worth re-writing, though it’s impossible to come back to something written in such a different world. But I’m rather sorry now. (“’An w’en I sor wot ’e’d bin an’ gorn an’ don, I sed coo lor, wot ’ave you bin an’ gorn an’ done?”²) I think it’s rather a good thing Richard is such an entirely practical child.

Are you fond of children? I think you must be. You were such a tender-hearted girl, always full of pity for the creatures we others shot & killed. But you were not so tender-hearted to me when you abandoned me to Burma with all hope denied. We are older now, & with this wretched illness the years will have taken more of a toll of me than of you. But I am well cared-for here & feel much better than I did when I got here last month. As soon as I can get back to London I do so want to meet you again.

As we always ended so that there should be no ending.

Farewell and Hail.

Eric

[XX, 3551, pp. 43–4; typewritten]

1. In the Introduction to the French edition of Down and Out in Paris and London, Orwell says he wrote two novels when living in Paris.

2. In Eric & Us Jacintha Buddicom refers to this ‘old favourite joke from Punch’ which they both enjoyed: a sailor had knocked over a bucket of tar onto a deck newly scrubbed for an admiral’s inspection. Another sailor gave this explanation to the petty officer in charge. She comments, ‘That old joke alone, together with the ever-constant beginning and ending, would hallmark that letter as Eric’ (p. 152).

Wiadomości, a Polish émigré literary weekly published in London, sent a questionnaire on Joseph Conrad to several English writers asking them two questions:

‘First, what do you believe to be his permanent place and rank in English letters? When Conrad died, some critics were uncertain of his final position, and Virginia Woolf, in particular, doubted whether any of his later novels would survive. Today, on the occasion of a new edition of his collected writings, Mr Richard Curle wrote in Time and Tide that Conrad’s works now rank among the great classics of the English novel. Which of these views, in your opinion, is correct?

‘The other question to which we would like to have your answer, is whether you detect in Conrad’s work any oddity, exoticism and strangeness (of course, against the background of the English literary tradition), and if so, do you attribute it to his Polish origin?’

To [the Editor], Wiadomości

25 February 1949

The Cotswold Sanatorium

Cranham

Dear Sir,

Many thanks for your letter dated the 22nd February. I cannot answer at great length, as I am ill in bed, but I am happy to give you my opinions for what they are worth.

[1.] I regard Conrad as one of the best writers of this century, and— supposing that one can count him as an English writer—one of the very few true novelists that England possesses. His reputation, which was somewhat eclipsed after his death, has risen again during the past ten years, and I have no doubt that the bulk of his work will survive. During his lifetime he suffered by being stamped as a writer of ‘sea stories,’ and books like The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes went almost unnoticed. Actually Conrad only spent about a third of his life at sea, and he had only a sketchy knowledge of the Asiatic countries of which he wrote in Lord Jim, Almayer’s Folly, etc. What he did have, however, was a sort of grown-upness and political understanding which would have been almost impossible to a native English writer at that time. I consider that his best work belongs to what might be called his middle period, roughly between 1900 and 1914. This period includes Nostromo, Chance, Victory, the two mentioned above, and several outstanding short stories.

2. Yes, Conrad has definitely a slight exotic flavour to me. That is part of his attraction. In the earlier books, such as Almayer’s Folly, his English is sometimes definitely incorrect, though not in a way that matters. He used I believe to think in Polish and then translate his thought into French and finally into English, and one can sometimes follow the process back at least as far as French, for instance in his tendency to put the adjective after the noun. Conrad was one of those writers who in the present century civilized English literature and brought it back into contact with Europe, from which it had been almost severed for a hundred years. Most of the writers who did this were foreigners, or at any rate not quite English—Eliot and James (Americans), Joyce and Yeats (Irish), and Conrad himself, a transplanted Pole.

Yours truly

Geo. Orwell

[XX, 3553, pp. 47–8; typewritten]

To Roger Senhouse*

2 March 1949

The Cotswold Sanatorium

Cranham

Dear Roger,

I’m awfully sorry I haven’t yet dealt with your queries, but the reason is that I lent my spare copy of proofs to Julian Symons, who was in here last week, and haven’t had them back yet. [Answers one or two queries.] As to ‘onto.’ I know this is an ugly word, but I consider it to be necessary in certain contexts. If you say ‘the cat jumped on the table’ you may mean that the cat, already on the table, jumped up and down there. On the other hand, ‘on to’ (two words) means something different, as in ‘we stopped at Barnet and then drove on to Hatfield.’ In some contexts, therefore, one needs ‘onto.’ Fowler, if I remember rightly, doesn’t altogether condemn it.1

I’m afraid there is going to be a big battle with Harcourt Brace, as they want to alter the metric system measurements all the way through the book to miles, yards etc., and in fact have done so in the proofs. This would be a serious mistake. I’ve already cabled in strong terms, but I don’t like having to fight these battles 3000 miles from my base.

Yours

George

[XX, 3557, pp. 50–1; typewritten]

1. Orwell was allowed to use ‘onto’: see IX, p. 13, line 27. He had used the one-word form in earlier novels, although, as the Gollancz editions show, that usage is not always systematic. He won his battle with Harcourt Brace.

To Sir Richard Rees*

3 March 1949

Cranham

Dear Richard,

Thanks so much for your letter, with the cuttings, which I thought gave quite a good exposition of C.P. policy. I always disagree, however, when people end by saying that we can only combat Communism, Fascism or what-not if we develop an equal fanaticism. It appears to me that one defeats the fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself, but on the contrary by using one’s intelligence. In the same way, a man can kill a tiger because he is not like a tiger and uses his brain to invent the rifle, which no tiger could ever do.

I looked up the passage in Russell’s book.1 If the antithesis to a ‘some’ statement is always an ‘all’ statement, then it seems to me that the antithesis of ‘some men are tailless’ is not ‘all men have tails,’ but ‘all men are tailless.’² Russell seems, in that paragraph, to be citing only pairs of statements of which one is untrue, but clearly there must be many cases when both ‘some’ and ‘all’ are true, except that ‘some’ is an understatement. Thus ‘some men are tailless’ is true, unless you are implying by it that some men have tails. But I never can follow that kind of thing. It is the sort of thing that makes me feel that philosophy should be forbidden by law.

I have arranged to write an essay on Evelyn Waugh and have just read his early book on Rossetti and also Robbery under Law (about Mexico.) I am now reading a new life of Dickens by Hesketh Pearson, which I have to review.³ It isn’t awfully good. There doesn’t seem to be a perfect life of Dickens—perverse and unfair though it is, I really think Kingsmill’s book is the best.⁴ You were right about Huxley’s book⁵—it is awful. And do you notice that the more holy he gets, the more his books stink with sex. He cannot get off the subject of flagellating women. Possibly, if he had the courage to come out and say so, that is the solution to the problem of war. If we took it out in a little private sadism, which after all doesn’t do much harm, perhaps we wouldn’t want to drop bombs etc. I also re-read, after very many years, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure (for the first time). Tess is really better than I had remembered, and incidentally is quite funny in places, which I didn’t think Hardy was capable of.

The doctor says I shall have to stay in bed for another 2 months, i.e. till about May, so I suppose I shan’t actually get out till about July. However I don’t know that it matters except for being expensive and not seeing little R[ichard]. I am so afraid of his growing away from me, or getting to think of me as just a person who is always lying down and can’t play. Of course children can’t understand illness. He used to come to me and say ‘Where have you hurt yourself?’—I suppose the only reason he could see for always being in bed.6 But otherwise I don’t mind being here and I am comfortable and well cared-for. I feel much better and my appetite is a lot better. (By the way I never thanked you for sending that rum. Did I pay you enough for it?) I hope to start some serious work in April, and I think I could work fairly well here, as it is quiet and there are not many interruptions. Various people have been to see me, and I manage to keep pretty well supplied with books. Contrary to what people say, time seems to go very fast when you are in bed, and months can whizz by with nothing to show for it.

Yours

Eric

[XX, 3560, pp. 52–3; handwritten]

1. Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits, by Bertrand Russell (1948).

2. “all men are tailless” is underlined, and, written in the margin by Rees, is ‘But this is not what Russell says!’

3. Orwell’s review of Dickens: His Character, Comedy and Career by Hesketh Pearson, appeared in The New York Times Book Review, 15 May 1949 (see XX, 3625, pp. 113–16).

4. The Sentimental Journey: A Life of Charles Dickens, by Hugh Kingsmill (1934).

5. Ape and Essence by Aldous Huxley (New York, 1948; London, 1949).

6. Richard Blair later recalled his relationship with his father: ‘He was very concerned about not being able to see me as much as he ought to. His biggest concern was that the relationship wouldn’t develop properly between father and son. As far as he was concerned, it was fully developed, but he was more concerned about sonto-father relationships. He’d formed a bond with me, but it wasn’t as strong the other way around.’ Lettice Cooper described the problems posed for Orwell in establishing this bond when he became severely ill and the effect Orwell’s illness and Eileen’s early death had had. Orwell ‘was terrified to let Richard come near him, and he would hold out his hand and push him away—and George would do it very abruptly because he was abrupt in his manner and movements. And he wouldn’t let the child sit on his knee or anything. And I suppose Richard had never asked [if his father loved him]. Children don’t, do they? And he said, did they love him? And I said they both did, so much. It was very hard, that, wasn’t it?’ (Remembering Orwell, pp. 196–97.)

To Michael Meyer*

12 March 1949

The Cotswold Sanatorium

Cranham

Dear Michael,

Thanks ever so much for sending all that food, which arrived a day or two ago, and for your letter. You really shouldn’t have sent the food, but I take your word that you could spare it, and of course I am delighted to receive it. As a matter of fact I’m sending most of it on to Jura, where food is always welcome as there’s usually someone staying.

[Paragraph about his sedentary life and Richard.]

I always thought Sweden1 sounded a dull country, much more so than Norway or Finland. I should think there would probably be very good fishing, if you can whack up any interest in that. But I have never been able to like these model countries with everything up to date and hygienic and an enormous suicide rate. I also have a vague feeling that in our century there is some sort of interconnection between the quality of thought and culture in a country, and the size of the country. Small countries don’t seem to produce interesting writers any longer, though possibly it is merely that one doesn’t hear about them. I have ideas about the reason for this, if it is true, but of course only guesswork. I hope your novel gets on.² Even if one makes a mess of it the first time, one learns a great deal in making the attempt, also if you once have a draft finished, however discouraging it is, you can generally pull it into shape. I simply destroyed my first novel after unsuccessfully submitting it to one publisher, for which I’m rather sorry now. I think Thomas Hood³ is a very good subject. He is incidentally no longer as well known as he should be, and very thoroughly out of print. I have only a selection of his poems and have for a long time been trying in vain to get the rest. I want particularly the one where he is writing a poem on the beauties of childhood but can’t get on with it because the children are making such a noise (I remember it has the beautiful line, ‘Go to your mother, child, and blow your nose.’⁴) I don’t know whether one could call him a serious poet—he is what I call a good bad poet. I am glad you like Surtees. I think after being so long abandoned to the hunting people, who I don’t suppose read him, he is beginning to be appreciated again. I haven’t however read much of his works, and am trying to get hold of several now.⁵ At present I do nothing except read—I’m not going to try and start any work till some time next month. [He had read some Hardy, Pearson’s Dickens, and Huxley.] Koestler’s new book I haven’t seen yet.⁶ I am going to do an essay on Evelyn Waugh for the Partisan Review, and have been reading his early works, including a quite good life of Rossetti.7 My novel is supposed to come out in June. I don’t know whether the American edition may come out before the English, but I should think not. I hope to hear from you again some time. This place will be my address till about July, I’m afraid.

Yours

George

[XX, 3570, pp. 61–3; typewritten]

1. Meyer was then a lecturer in English at Uppsala University, 1947–50.

2. The End of the Corridor, published in 1951.

3. Thomas Hood (1799–1845), poet and journalist. His comic poetry was marked by gallows humour, and he could write with great bitterness (for example, ‘The Song of the Shirt,’ 1843, on sweated labour), and splendid wit.

4. From ‘A Parental Ode to My Son, Aged Three years and Five Months’. Orwell has ‘blow’ for ‘wipe’, so is doubtless (as so often) quoting from memory.

5. Orwell recorded having read Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour in April 1949.

6. Insight and Outlook.

7. Rossetti: His Life and Works (1928).

To Sir Richard Rees*

16 March 1949

Cranham

Dear Richard,

I hope all is going well with you. I have heard once or twice from Barnhill and things seem to be fairly prosperous. Avril says Bill is going to plant about an acre of kale. Ian M’Kechnie is there at present, working on the road, and Francis Boyle¹ has done some work in the garden. Bill suggested we should sell off the milch cows, as some of his own cows will be calving and will have surplus milk, and of course it would make more room in the byre. On the other hand there is the question of overlapping, so I suggested keeping one Ayrshire. The boat is apparently in good order and they have been over to Crinan in her. Avril says Richard has found out about money, ie. has grasped that you can buy sweets with it, so I expect I had better start giving him pocket money, though at present he hasn’t any opportunity to spend it. Incidentally, getting pocket money would probably teach him the days of the week.

I have been feeling fairly good, though of course they won’t dream of letting me up. Most of the time it has been beautiful spring-like weather. [Reading Evelyn Waugh and Hesketh Pearson on Dickens.] Also re-reading Israel Zangwill’s Children of the Ghetto, a book I hadn’t set eyes on for very many years. I am trying to get hold of the sequel to it, Grandchildren of the Ghetto,2 which I remember as being better than the other. I don’t know what else he wrote, but I believe a whole lot. I think he is a very good novelist who hasn’t had his due, though I notice now that he has a very strong tinge of Jewish nationalism, of a rather tiresome kind. I sent for Marie Bashkirtseff’s diary, which I had never read, and it is now staring me in the face, an enormous and rather intimidating volume.³ I haven’t seen Koestler’s new book, which I think has only been published in the USA, but I think I shall send for it. My book is billed to come out on June 15th. It is going to be the Evening Standard book of the month, which I believe doesn’t mean anything in particular.

Have you torn up your clothing book?⁴ The reaction of everybody here was the same—‘it must be a trap.’ Of course clothes are now sufficiently rationed by price. I think I shall order myself a new jacket all the same.

Yours

Eric

[XX, 3574, pp. 65–6; typewritten]

1. Ian M’Kechnie was an estate worker at Ardlussa; Francis Boyle, a roadworker on Jura. Both helped at Barnhill from time to time.

2. Israel Zangwill (1864–1926), English novelist and playwright who was one of the first to present the lives of immigrant Jews in fictional form in English literature. He was for a time a Zionist and later served as President of the Jewish Territorial Organization for the Settlement of the Jews within the British Empire, 1905–25.

3. Marie Bashkirtseff (1860–1884), Russian-born diarist and painter. Her Journal was published posthumously in 1887 and became very fashionable.

4. Clothes were rationed during the war. Clothes rationing ended on 15 March 1949.

To Leonard Moore*

17 March 1949

The Cotswold Sanatorium

Cranham

Dear Moore,

You will have had Robert Giroux’s letter, of which he sent me a duplicate.

I can’t possibly agree to the kind of alteration and abbreviation suggested. It would alter the whole colour of the book and leave out a good deal that is essential. I think it would also—though the judges, having read the parts that it is proposed to cut out, may not appreciate this—make the story unintelligible. There would also be something visibly wrong with the structure of the book if about a fifth or a quarter were cut out and the last chapter then tacked on to the abbreviated trunk. A book is built up as a balanced structure and one cannot simply remove large chunks here and there unless one is ready to recast the whole thing. In any case, merely to cut out the suggested chapters and abridge the passages from the ‘book within the book’ would mean a lot of re-writing which I simply do not feel equal to at present.

The only terms on which I could agree to any such arrangement would be if the book were published definitely as an abridged version and if it were clearly stated that the English edition contained several chapters which had been omitted. But obviously the Book of the Month people couldn’t be expected to agree to any such thing. As Robert Giroux says in his letter they have not promised to select the book in any case, but he evidently hopes they might, and I suppose it will be disappointing to Harcourt & Brace° if I reject the suggestion. I suppose you, too, stand to lose a good deal of commission. But I really cannot allow my work to be mucked about beyond a certain point, and I doubt whether it even pays in the long run. I should be much obliged if you would make my point of view clear to them.1

Yours sincerely

Eric Blair

[XX, 3575, pp. 66–7; typewritten]

1. The ‘book within the book’ suggests Goldstein’s The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism was to be cut.

Orwell and the Information Research Department

When Celia Kirwan* worked for the IRD, she was, so far as her relationship with Orwell was concerned, far more a close friend than merely a government official. Much of the information here and for 6.4.49 is based on documents in Foreign Office files released by the Public Record Office on 10 July 1996 under the Government’s ‘open government policy’. The permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office to reproduce Crown copyright material is gratefully acknowledged.

The IRD was set up by the Foreign Office in 1948. ‘Its creation was prompted by the desire of Ministers of Mr Attlee’s Labour Government to devise means to combat Communist propaganda, then engaged in a global and damaging campaign to undermine Western power and influence. British concern for an effective counter-offensive against Communism was sharpened by the need to rebut a relentless Soviet-inspired campaign to undermine British institutions, a campaign which included direct personal attacks on the Prime Minister and members of the Cabinet and divisive criticism of government policies.’ Among the activities in which it engaged, it commissioned special articles and circulated books and journals to appropriate posts abroad. Thus, Tribune, because of its anti-Stalin stance, was widely distributed. Much fuller details relative to 30.3.49 and 6.4.49 will be found in XX, 3590A, pp. 319, 321, 323-5.

On 29 March 1949, Celia Kirwan went to see Orwell at Cranham at the IRD’s request. This report, written the following day, and Orwell’s letter of 6 April, are the outcome of that meeting.

30 March 1949

Yesterday I went to visit George Orwell, who is in a sanatorium in Gloucestershire. I discussed some aspects of our work with him in great confidence, and he was delighted to learn of them, and expressed his wholehearted and enthusiastic approval of our aims. He said that he could not agree to write an article himself at present, or even to re-write one, because he is too ill to undertake any literary work at all; also because he does not like to write ‘on commission’, as he feels he does not do his best work that way. However I left some material with him, and shall send him photostats of some of his articles on the theme of Soviet repression of the arts, in the hope that he may become inspired when he is better to take them up again.

He suggested various names of writers who might be enlisted to write for us, and promised to think of more in due course and to communicate them to us. The ones he thought of while I was there were:–

D’Arcy Gillie, the Manchester Guardian Paris correspondent, who he says is a serious opponent of Communism, and an expert on Poland as well as on French politics;

C. D. Darlington,*1 the scientist. Mr Orwell considers that the Lysenko case should be fully documented, and suggested that Darlington might undertake this;

Franz Borkenau, the German professor, who wrote a History of the Comintern, and has also written some articles recently in the Observer.²

Mr Orwell said that undoubtedly Gollancz would be the man to publish such a series of books as we had in mind. He would have been very willing to act as a go-between if he had been well enough; as it was, he would try to think of someone else who would do so, and he suggested that a glance at a list of Gollancz writers would probably recall to our minds someone who would be able to help us. He says, however, that Gollancz has a one-track mind, and at present it is running along the track of Arab refugees, so it might be a good plan to allow him to get these out of his system before trying to interest him in our plan. He said that Gollancz books always sell well, and that they are well displayed and given the widest publicity.

As Mr Orwell was for two° years in the Indian Police stationed in Burma, and as he ran a B.B.C. service to the Indians during the war, I asked him what in his view would be the best way of furthering our aims in India and Burma. He said that whatever was the best way, the worst was undoubtedly broadcasting, since hardly any of the natives had radio sets, and those who did (who were mostly Eurasians) tended only to listen in to local stations. He thought that one plane-load of leaflets probably did more good than six months broadcasting.

Indeed he did not think that there was a great deal of scope for propaganda in India and Pakistan, where Communism meant something quite different from what it did in Europe—it meant, on [t]he whole, opposition to the ruling class, and he thought that more good would be done by maintaining the closest possible links with these countries, through trade and through the interchange of students. He thought this latter aspect of Anglo-Indian relations very important, and was of the opinion that we ought to offer far more scholarships to Indian and Pakistan° students.

In Burma, he thought that propaganda should avoid ‘atrocity’ stories, since the Burmese were ‘rather apt to admire that kind of thing’, or, if they did not actually admire it, to think ‘If that’s what the Communists are like, better not oppose them.’

Incidentally, he said that the Commander Young,3 whose wife committed suicide the other day, is a Communist, and is the Naval equivalent, on a more modest scale, of the Archbishop of Canterbury⁴—that is, he is called in to confirm the Soviet point of view about matters relating to the Navy. Also, his wife was a Czech; and Mr Orwell wonders whether there is any connection between these two facts and Mrs Young’s suicide.

[XX, 3590A, pp. 318–21]

1. See 19.3.47.

2. For Franz Borkenau, see 31.7.37, n. 3.

3. Orwell included Cdr. Edgar P. Young in his list of crypto-communists. He wrote, ‘Naval expert. Pamphlets’; under ‘Remarks’, ‘F. T.? Active in People’s Convention. Quite possibly an underground member I should think. Wife (Czech) committed suicide (in slightly doubtful circumstances) 1949.’ Mrs Ida Young was found hanged in their flat on 23 March 1949.

4. ‘Archbishop’ has been mistakenly written for Dean Hewlett-Johnson, the ‘Red Dean’.

To Sir Richard Rees*

31 March 1949

Cranham

Dear Richard,

Thanks so much for your letter. I send herewith a copy of P[artisan] R[eview] with the article I spoke of.1 I’d have sent it before, as I thought it would interest you, but I was under the impression that you took in PR. Celia Kirwan was here the other day & she will send me a copy of that number of Polemic which I lost & which has the essay on Tolstoy in it. It really connects up with the Gandhi article.

Yes, I must get this will business sewn up. I had my will properly drawn up by a solicitor, then, as I wanted to make some alterations, re-wrote it myself, & I dare say this second draft, though duly witnessed etc., is not legal. Have you got a solicitor in Edinburgh? I am out of touch with my London ones. It is important to get the literary executorship sewn up properly, & also to be quite sure about Richard’s position, because there is some legal difference, I forget what, in the case of an adopted child. In addition I must bring up to date the notes I left for you about my books, which editions to follow, etc. When Avril came back from town she brought some box files marked ‘Personal’ which I think have all the relevant stuff in them. Do you think when you are at Barnhill you could go through these files & send the relevant papers to me. I want my will, ie. the second will, dated about the beginning of 1947 I think, the notes I left for you, & a notebook marked ‘Reprintable Essays’² which wants bringing up to date. It’s important that your powers should be made clear, ie. that you should have the final say when any definitely literary question is involved. For example. The American Book of the Month people, though they didn’t actually promise, half promised to select my present book if I would cut out about a quarter of it. Of course I’m not going to do this, but if I had died the week before, Moore & the American publishers would have jumped at the offer, ruining the book & not even benefiting my estate much, because whenever you make a large sum you are in the surtax class & it is all taken away again.

I have been very poorly, spitting up quantities of blood. This doesn’t necessarily do any harm, indeed Morlock, the specialist I went to before the war, said it might even do good, but it always depresses & disgusts me, & I have been feeling rather down. There is evidently nothing very definite they can do for me. They talked of doing the ‘thora’ operation, but the surgeon wouldn’t undertake it because you have to have one sound lung which I haven’t. Evidently the only thing to do is to keep quiet. It worries me not to see little R., but perhaps later I can arrange somehow for him to visit me. If I do get up this year I want to take him for a trip to London.

Yours

Eric

Excuse this writing. They’ve forbidden me to use a typewriter at present because it is tiring!

[XX, 3584, pp. 73–4; handwritten]

1. ‘Reflections on Gandhi’ (see XX, 3516, pp. 5–12).

2. See XX, 3728, pp. 223–31, which includes a section on ‘Reprintable Essays’.

Orwell’s letter to Celia Kirwan, which follows, should be read in the context of what the Information Research Department was seeking: those who might reliably represent British interests in writing on its behalf to counteract Soviet propaganda designed to undermine democratic institutions. The copious notes and annotations relevant to this letter will be found in XX, 3590B, pp. 323–7.

To Celia Kirwan*

6 April 1949

Cranham

Dear Celia,

I haven’t written earlier because I have really been rather poorly, & I can’t use the typewriter even now, so I hope you will be able to cope with my handwriting.

I couldn’t think of any more names to add to your possible list of writers except FRANZ BORKENAU (the Observer would know his address) whose name I think I gave you, & GLEB STRUVE* (he’s at Pasadena in California at present), the Russian translator and critic. Of course there are hordes of Americans, whose names can be found in the (New York) New Leader, the Jewish monthly paper Commentary, & the Partisan Review. I could also, if it is of any value, give you a list of journalists & writers who in my opinion are crypto-Communists, fellow-travellers or inclined that way & should not be trusted as propagandists. But for that I shall have to send for a notebook which I have at home, & if I do give you such a list it is strictly confidential, as I imagine it is libellous to describe somebody as a fellow-traveller.¹

Just one idea occurred to me for propaganda not abroad but in this country. A friend of mine in Stockholm² tells me that as the Swedes don’t make many films of their own one sees a lot of German & Russian films, & some of the Russian films, which of course would not normally reach this country, are unbelievably scurrilous anti-British propaganda. He referred especi[ally] to a historical film about the Crimean war. As the Swedes can get hold of these films I suppose we can: might it not be a good idea to have showings of some of them in this country, particularly for the benefit of the intelligentsia?

I read the enclosed article3 with interest, but it seems to me anti-religious rather than anti-semitic. For what my opinion is worth, I don’t think anti-anti-semitism is a strong card to play in anti-Russian propaganda. The USSR must in practice be somewhat anti-semitic, as it is opposed both to Zionism within its own borders & on the other hand to the liberalism and internationalism of the non-Zionist Jews, but a polyglot state of that kind can never be officially anti-semitic, in the Nazi manner, just as the British Empire cannot. If you try to tie up Communism and anti-semitism, it is always possible in reply to point to people like Kaganovich⁴ or Anna° Pauker,⁵ also to the large number of Jews in the Communist parties everywhere. I also think it is bad policy to try to curry favour with your enemies. The Zionist Jews everywhere hate us & regard Britain as the enemy, more even than Germany. Of course this is based on misunderstanding, but as long as it is so I do not think we do ourselves any good by denouncing anti-semitism in other nations.

I am sorry I can’t write a better letter, but I really have felt so lousy the last few days. Perhaps a bit later I’ll get some ideas.

With love

George

[Postscript] I did suggest DARCY GILLY,° (Manchester Guardian) didn’t I? There is also a man called CHOLLERTON (expert on the Moscow trials) who could be contacted through the Observer.⁶

[XX, 3590B, pp. 322–7; handwritten]

1. Orwell’s Lists of Crypto-Communists and Fellow-Travellers are to be found in XX, 3732, pp. 240–59; supplemented in LO, pp. 149–51; and in LO, pp.140–9 is the list of names Orwell sent to Celia Kirwan, 2 May 1949. Orwell wrote that the list wasn’t very sensational but ‘it isn’t a bad idea to have the people who are probably unreliable listed’. There is a very serious aspect to the list. It includes, for example, two on the NKVD payroll (Tom Driberg, Labour MP (codename ‘Lepage’) and Peter Smollet, OBE (= Smolka, codename ‘Abo’ and probably the man who persuaded Cape not to publish Animal Farm). There is also a jokey element – Orwell’s income tax inspector is listed. The project has raised considerable comment, some unfavourable, some ill-informed.

2. Michael Meyer.*

3. Not identified.

4. Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich (1893–1991), a Jew, originally a shoemaker, who became Secretary of the Central Committeee of the Commuist Party. He managed the Soviet Union’s transport system during the war.

5. Ana Pauker (1894–1960), daughter of a Jewish butcher, spent some time in the USA, served as a Colonel in the Red Army and became a leader of the Romanian Communist Party when the Soviets occupied Romania in 1944.

6. Darsie Gillie, the Guardian’s Paris correspondent, told Adam Watson (one of Celia’s colleagues) that Chollerton was ‘an expert on Russia, & would be useful in various ways’. A.T. Chollerton was the Daily Telegraph’s correspondent in Moscow in 1939 when the Soviet Union was in alliance with Germany.

To Sir Richard Rees*

8 April 1949

Cranham

Dear Richard,

I thought you’d all like to know that I have just had a cable saying that the Book of the Month Club have selected my novel after all, in spite of my refusing to make the changes they demanded. So that shows that virtue is its own reward, or honesty is the best policy, I forget which. I don’t know whether I shall ultimately end up with a net profit, but at any rate this should pay off my arrears of income tax.

I’ve had the sanatorium cable the magazines to which I had promised articles saying I am unfit to do any work, which is the truth. Don’t depress the others too much with this, but the fact is I am in a bad way at present. They are going to try streptomycin again, which I had previously urged them to do & which Mr Dick* thought might be a good idea. They had been afraid of it because of the secondary effects, but they now say they can offset these to some extent with nicotine, or something, & in any case they can always stop if the results are too bad. If things go badly—of course we’ll hope they won’t, but one must be prepared for the worst—I’ll ask you to bring little Richard to see me before I get too frightening in appearance. I think it would upset you less than it would Avril, & there may be business deals to talk over as well. If the stuff works, as it seemed to do last time, I shall take care this time to keep the improvement by leading an invalid life for the rest of the year.

I forgot to say, I wish some time you’d have a look at my books & see they’re not getting too mildewy (I asked Avril to light a fire from time to time for that reason) & that the magazines in the bottom shelf are in some sort of order. I want to keep all the magazines that are there, as some of them have articles of mine that I might want to reprint. The books are piling up here & I’m going to start sending them home some time, but I can’t do up parcels at present.

Love to all

Eric

[XX, 3594, pp. 82–3; handwritten]

To Tosco Fyvel*

Fyvel lost the original of this letter after most of it had been printed in Encounter, January 1962. It is reproduced here as printed in Encounter.

15 April 1949

[The Cotswold Sanatorium]

Cranham

Dear Tosco,

Thanks so much for sending Ruth Fischer’s book.1 I had intended buying it, but perhaps after reading a borrowed copy I shan’t need to. I’ll see you get it back. I read Margarete Neumann’s book² with some interest. It wasn’t a particularly good book but she struck me as a sincere person. Gollancz also has a quite remarkable novel about the forced-labour camps coming along, by someone calling himself pseudonymously ‘Richard Cargoe’³—a Pole I should say—how authentic I couldn’t be sure, but quite a striking book, in the Slav manner.

There were several points in your articles that I had been meaning to take up with you. One is about Graham Greene. You keep referring to him as an extreme Conservative, the usual Catholic reactionary type. This isn’t so at all, either in his books or privately. Of course he is a Catholic and in some issues has to take sides politically with the church, but in outlook he is just a mild Left with faint CP leanings. I have even thought that he might become our first Catholic fellow-traveller, a thing that doesn’t exist in England but does in France, etc. If you look at books like A Gun for Sale, England Made Me, The Confidential Agent and others, you will see that there is the usual left-wing scenery. The bad men are millionaires, armaments manufacturers etc., and the good man is sometimes a Communist. In his last book there is also the usual inverted colour-feeling. According to Rayner Heppenstall, Greene somewhat reluctantly supported Franco during the Spanish civil war, but The Confidential Agent is written from the other point of view.

The other thing is that you are always attacking novelists for not writing about the contemporary scene. But can you think of a novel that ever was written about the strictly contemporary scene? It is very unlikely that any novel, i.e. worth reading, would ever be set back less than three years at least. If you tried, in 1949, to write a novel about 1949 it would simply be ‘report-age’ and probably would seem out of date and silly before you could get it into print. I have a novel dealing with 1945 in my head now, but even if I survive to write it I shouldn’t touch it before 1950.4 The reason is not only that one can’t see the events of the moment in perspective, but also that a novel has to be lived with for years before it can be written down, otherwise the working-out of detail, which takes an immense time and can only be done at odd moments, can’t happen. This is my experience and I think it is also other people’s. I have sometimes written a so-called novel within about two years of the original conception, but then they were always weak, silly books which I afterwards suppressed. You may remember that nearly all the worthwhile books about the 1914 war appeared 5, 10 or even more years after it was over, which was when one might have expected them. I think books about the late war are about due to appear now, and books about the immediate post-war at some time in the fifties.

I’ve been horribly ill the last few weeks. I had a bit of a relapse, then they decided to have another go with streptomycin, which previously did me a lot of good, at least temporarily. This time only one dose of it had ghastly results, as I suppose I had built up an allergy or something. I’m a bit better now, however, but I can’t work and don’t know when I shall be able to. I’ve no hope of getting out of here before the late summer. If the weather is good I might then get up to Scotland for a few weeks, but not more, and then I shall have to spend the autumn and winter somewhere near a doctor, perhaps even in some kind of residential sanatorium. I can’t make plans till my health takes a more definite turn one way or the other. Richard is blooming, or was when I last saw him. He will be five in May. I think he will go to the village school this winter, but next year I shall have to remove him to the mainland so that he can go to a proper day school. He is still backward about talking but bright in other ways. I don’t think he will ever be one for books. His bent seems to be mechanical, and he is very good at farm work. If he grew to be a farmer⁵ I should be pleased, though I shan’t try to influence him….⁶

Yours

George

[XX, 3598, pp. 85–7; handwritten]

1. Stalin and German Communism, by Ruth Fischer; Orwell lists it as read in April.

2. Under Two Dictators, by Margarete Buber-Neumann; Orwell lists it as read in April.

3. The Tormentors; listed by Orwell as read in February. Cargoe’s real name was Robert Payne (1911–1983). Orwell apparently did not know him by his pseudonym, but he may have known him as Payne when he was a war correspondent in Spain in 1938 (the year after Orwell fought there). In 1941–42 he worked for the British Ministry of Information in Chungking, China.

4. This was the second of the two books Orwell had in mind at his death.

5. Richard Blair did initially take up farming as a career. In 1964 he married Eleanor Moir, a schoolteacher; they have two sons.

6. The letter was cut here by Encounter.

To Sir Richard Rees*

17 April 1949

[The Cotswold Sanatorium]

Cranham

Dear Richard,

Thanks so much for sending on the things. It doesn’t matter much about the book marked Essays. I can remember most of the items I wanted to note down, and I dare say the book itself will turn up among the papers which were sent to Pickfords. You might ask Avril whether, when she cleaned out my papers at Canonbury, she threw any notebooks away. There was another one, a dirty old red book,¹ which had notes that I might need some time.

I am somewhat better I think. The streptomycin after only one dose had the most disastrous results, so they dropped it promptly. Evidently I had built up an allergy or something. However I’ve now got over that, and today for the first time I was allowed to sit out in a deck chair for an hour or two. When I’ll get to the point of putting some clothes on, lord knows. However, I’ve ordered myself a few new clothes, just to keep my morale up. I have discovered that there is a stream just near here with trout in it, so when I am somewhere near the point of getting up I’ll ask Avril to send me my fishing things. I do hope I’ll be able to get up to Jura for a few weeks some time in the summer, perhaps in August or so, and that the motor boat will be running then. I can’t make plans till I know more about my health, but I suppose I’ll have to spend this winter in some kind of institution, or at any rate near a doctor, and conceivably abroad. Probably somewhere like Brighton would be better, but in case of going abroad I’m taking steps to get my passport renewed. And after that I’m going to look about for a flat somewhere. It’s evident that from now on I must spend the winters in civilized places, and in any case Richard will soon have to spend most of his time on the mainland, because of schooling. But I needn’t remove anything from Barnhill, except perhaps my books, or some of them, because I think I could afford to furnish a second establishment now.

Inez [Holden] is coming to see me next week and Brenda [Salkeld] the week after. I asked Inez to get me a birthday present for R., or at least to go to Gamage’s and see what they’ve got. I can’t think what to get him. I suppose he’s almost ripe for a pocket knife, but somehow I don’t fancy the idea.

I get visits occasionally from the people at Whiteway, [which] seems to be some sort of Anarchist colony run, or financed, by the old lady whose name I forget2 who keeps the Freedom Bookshop. One of them is old Mat Kavanagh, whom you perhaps know, an old Irish I.R.A. Anarchist hairdresser, a figure at meetings for many years, who used to cut my hair in Fleet Street. He now tells me, what I hadn’t known, that when a person with my sort of hair comes into the shop there is a sort of competition not to deal with him. He said he always used to cut my hair because the others pushed me off onto him, feeling that I wasn’t the sort of person they could do themselves credit with.

Re. the cryptos and fellow travellers. I don’t think Laski³ is a fellow traveller, much as he has aided them by his boosting of Russia. In this country he loathes the CP, because they menace his job. I suppose he imagines they are different elsewhere. I also think he is too integrally a part of the L[abour] P[arty], and too fond of being in an official position, to go over to the enemy if, for instance, we were at war with the USSR. The thing one can’t imagine Laski doing is breaking the law. Cole⁴ I think should probably not be on the list, but I would be less certain of him than of Laski in case of a war. Martin⁵ of course is far too dishonest to be outright a crypto or fellow-traveller, but his main influence is pro-Russian and is certainly intended to be so, and I feel reasonably sure he would quislingise in the case of a Russian occupation, if he had not managed to get away on the last plane. I think there must be two Niebuhrs.⁶ I saw an unmistakeable fellow-traveller statement over that name, quoted in the New Leader about two years ago. The whole business is very tricky, and one can never do more than use one’s judgement and treat each case individually. I feel reasonably sure that Zilliacus,⁷ for instance, is a crypto, but I would concede perhaps a twenty-five percent chance that he is not, whereas about Pritt⁸ I feel completely certain. I feel less sure about John Platt-Mills⁹ than about Z., but I feel pretty sure of Lester Hutchinson¹⁰ after meeting him once. Mikardo¹¹ is I should say simply a fool, but he is also one of those who think they see a chance of self-advancement in making mischief and are quite ready to flirt with the cryptos.

I’m just reading Ruth Fischer’s enormous book, Stalin and German Communism. It’s extremely good—not at all the sort of doctrinaire Trotskyism I would have expected. Have you seen the new Catholic magazine, the Month? It’s lousy. I also read Margarete Neumann’s book (the woman who gave evidence for Kravchenko), but it’s about the Russian and German concentration camps, not about the party squabbles in Germany. I must send some books home soon. They’re piling up fast here. Ask Avril to wipe the books now and then, will you, and to light a fire in those rooms. Otherwise the covers end by bending.

Love to all

Eric

[XX, 3600, pp. 87–90; typewritten]

1. Described, with contents, and reproduced at XX, 3729, pp. 231–3.

2. Lilian Wolfe (1875–1974), born in London, worked for twenty years as a Post Office telegraphist. She became a socialist and women’s suffragist in 1907, and in 1913 an anarcho-syndicalist. She was active in the anti-war movement, 1914–16, and was imprisoned, as was her companion, Thomas Keell (1866–1938). After the war she ran health-food shops in London and Stroud, living in the main at the anarchist colony at Whiteway, some five miles from Cranham; Richard stayed there when visiting his father. She earned enough to keep her husband and son and support the anarchist journal, Freedom. In 1966 the anarchist movement gave her a holiday in the United States as a ninetieth birthday present. After a lifetime devoted to anarchism she died at her son’s home in Cheltenham at ninety-eight (Nicolas Walter’s account of her life, Freedom, Centenary Number, 1986, 23–24).

3. Harold Laski (see 20.9.47, n. 1). Re list of crypto-Communists and fellow-travellers, see 6.4.49, n. 1.

4. G. D. H. Cole (1889–1959), economist and prolific author; his books include The Intelligent Man’s Guide to the Post-War World (1947) and The Meaning of Marxism (1948), based on his What Marx Really Meant (1934).

5. Kingsley Martin (1887–1969), then editor of the New Statesman (see 9.2.38, n. 1).

6. One was presumably Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971), American theologian and professor at Union Theological Seminary, 1930–60, for a time a socialist and pacifist; later a supporter of the war against Hitler. Regarding a second Niebuhr, it is possible that there is confusion between Reinhold and his brother, Helmut Richard (1894–1962), ordained a minister of the Evangelical & Reformed Church in 1916 and from 1931 pursued a distinguished career at Yale. He was involved in the union of the Congregational and the Evangelical & Reformed churches.

7. Konni Zilliacus (see 2.1.48 n. 5).

8. Dennis Noel Pritt (1887–1972), Labour and then Independent Labour MP and chairman of the Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR.

9. John Platt-Mills (1906–2001), a New Zealander and unshakeable apologist for Stalin; he disbelieved the Soviets committed atrocities even after Khrushchev denounced Stalin in 1956. Expelled from the Labour Party, 1948.

10. Hugh Lester Hutchinson (1904–1950), journalist and author, studied in Switzerland and at Edinburgh University, and served in the Navy, 1942–44. He was elected Labour MP in 1945 but was expelled in 1949 for his criticism of the Labour government’s foreign policy.

11. Ian Mikardo (1908–1993), management consultant, author of Centralised Control of Industry (1942), and politician. He was a left-wing Labour MP, 1945–59 and 1964–87, and was a prominent follower of Aneurin Bevan and a rumbustious debater with a strong sense of comedy. He was often considered to be unduly sympathetic to Communism, but his passionate Zionism ensured that he never forgot or forgave Stalin for his treatment of Jews. He was much appreciated by fellow MPs of all parties in his role as ‘unofficial bookmaker’ to Parliament, offering odds on contentious issues and the fortunes of political figures.

To Dr Gwen O’Shaughnessy*

17 April 1949

The Cotswold Sanatorium

Cranham

Dear Gwen,

I have been meaning for ages to write to you. Among other things I owe you money for some things you got for Richard. I can’t remember what they were but I have an idea they included an overcoat. Please let me know and I’ll pay you.

I have been here since January and am getting a little better I think. I was really very ill in December, and again recently. I had a relapse and they decided to try another go of streptomycin, with dreadful results after only one dose. I suppose I had built up a resistance to it or something. However the last few days I have felt better and have even been sitting out in a deck chair a little. They can’t really do much for me except keep me quiet. They can’t do the ‘thora’ operation (somewhat to my relief I must say) because you need one reliable lung which I haven’t got. It looks as though I shall be here till well into the summer, and if I do get up to Jura this year it will only be for a week or two in August or September. [Must be surer about his health – shall have to spend the winter somewhere warmer; Richard’s schooling; Barnhill.]

I have remade my will,¹ or rather I have sent the will I made some years ago to a solicitor to be redrafted, as it occurred to me it might not be in proper legal order. I have made you my executor, which I don’t think will involve much nuisance, as Richard Rees is my literary executor and he will see to all the business of dealing with publishers etc. I have also requested— this is one of the things that I want the solicitor to put in good order—that you and Avril shall decide between you about Richard’s upbringing, but that if there is any dispute the decision shall lie with you. I don’t suppose any disagreement is likely to arise between you. Avril is very fond of him and I know will want to bring him up, but if anything should happen to her, or if she should wish to live in any place where he can’t go to school, I wish you would take charge of him. I don’t think you would be financially out of pocket. I have put aside enough to see him through his childhood in a modest way. If I should die in the near future, there are considerable income tax claims to be met, but there is also a good deal of money coming in and I think the ‘estate’ would be easily cleared without encroaching on my savings. There should also be at any rate a small income from royalties for some years to come. I trust that all this won’t become urgent yet awhile, but after these two illnesses I don’t imagine I can last very many years, and I do want to feel that Richard’s future is assured. When I am able to get up to London I shall go and see Morlock2 or somebody and get an expert opinion on how long I am likely to live. It is a thing doctors usually will not tell you, but it affects my plans, for future books as well as for Richard.

Richard was extremely well when I came away, and is evidently enjoying himself with the spring ploughing etc. He really seems quite fond of farm work. I have been trying to think what to give him for his birthday next month. I suppose he is almost old enough to have a pocket knife, but somehow I don’t fancy the idea. Avril says he has found out about money, ie. knows you can get sweets³ for it, so I have started him on regular pocket money, which I hope may teach him the days of the week. I am going to get her to bring him down here to see me, but it is no use till I am out of bed.

I am not doing any work at present. I have cancelled everything, but I hope to start again next month. My new book is coming out in June, here and in the USA. I had a line from Doreen and George [Kopp*] announcing their new baby, but otherwise haven’t heard from them. Please remember me to the kids.

Yours

George

[XX, 3601, pp. 90–2; typewritten]

1. Orwell made a new will on 18 January 1950, before the flight he hoped to make to Switzerland. At probate Orwell’s estate was valued at £9,908 14s 11d. He was owed £520 he had lent to friends. Of course his royalties proved to be – and continue to be – considerable. For his will and estate (see XX, 3730, pp. 235–7).

2. Dr H. V. Morlock, the specialist whom Orwell had consulted before the war.

3. Sweets and chocolate were still rationed when Orwell wrote, but just one week later restrictions were lifted. Unfortunately, this freedom did not last long. Confectionery was rationed again (4 ounces per week) on 14 July, the sugar ration was cut to 8 ounces, and tobacco imports were reduced.

To Sir Richard Rees*

25 April 1949

[The Cotswold Sanatorium]

Cranham

Dear Richard,

Thanks for your letter. I have been sort of up & down in health but on the whole am a little better, I think. I still can’t make any plans, but if I am up & about for the winter, I thought it might not be a bad idea to go abroad somewhere, & Orlando1 (I don’t know if you know him, he writes for the Observer sometimes) suggested Capri as a good place to stay. It sounds as if it would have good food & wine, & Silone,² who is a friend of mine & lives there, would no doubt be able to arrange somewhere for me to stay. Any way it’s worth thinking over. The Tawneys came in the other day. I think they’re going back to London almost immediately, so I’m afraid I may not see them again. For little Richard’s birthday, Inez [Holden] is going to try & get me one of those children’s typewriters you see advertised now, if not too impossibly expensive. I thought if he could be kept from smashing it, it would come in useful when he begins to learn his letters in earnest, & it would also keep him off my typewriter. The Tawneys took that book of yours³ I had & are going to send it to you. When Brenda [Salkeld] comes I am going to get her to make up some parcels for me & send home some of the books, which are piling up fearfully. I still can’t do any work. Some days I take pen & paper & try to write a few lines, but it’s impossible. When you are in this state you have the impression that your brain is working normally until you try to put words together, & then you find that you have acquired a sort of awful heaviness & clumsiness, as well as inability to concentrate for more than a few seconds. I am reading Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour, which I had never read before. I don’t think it’s as good as Handley Cross. I also recently re-read Little Dorrit⁴ for the first time in a good many years. It’s a dull book in a way, but it contains a really subtle character, William Dorrit, quite unlike most of Dickens’s people. Someone in the USA has managed to get me a copy of Gissing’s New Grub Street at last. Don’t lose The Odd Women, will you.

Yours

Eric

[XX, 3607, pp. 97–98; handwritten]

1. Ruggiero Orlando (1907–1994), journalist, broadcaster, poet, and critic. His passionate, slightly anarchic political views led to his fleeing Italy in 1939 for Britain. He was engaged by the BBC to broadcast in its external service and did so with great success, achieving a legendary status with colleagues and listeners. After the war he worked for RAI, the Italian state broadcasting service, and was its correspondent in the United States for eighteen years. He returned to Italy in 1972 and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies. He was, when in England, a frequent contributor to Poetry Today, and he translated Dylan Thomas into Italian.

2. Ignazio Silone (1900–1978), Italian novelist. In his essay on Arthur Koestler, Orwell claimed that there had been nothing in English writing to resemble Silone’s Fontamara (1933; English translation, 1934) or Koestler’s Darkness at Noon (1940): ‘there is almost no English writer to whom it has happened to see totalitarianism from the inside.’

3. Probably David Jones’s In Parenthesis. (See letter to Sir Richard Rees, 18.1.49, n. 2.)

4. Orwell’s list of his reading for April 1949 includes Dickens’s Little Dorrit and Surtees’s Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour.

To S. M. Levitas

2 May 1949

The Cotswold Sanatorium,

Cranham

Dear Mr Levitas,¹

Many thanks for your letter of the 21^st April. I will do something for you later when I can, but I really am most deadly ill & quite unable to work, & I don’t know how soon this state of affairs will change. I don’t want any payment & certainly not Care packages – the truth is I have no appetite & can’t eat the food I am given already. But next time I do something for you I’ll ask you to pay me by sending one of the books I see advertised in American papers & which one can’t get over here.

The above address will continue to find me, I’m afraid.

Yours sincerely

Geo. Orwell

[XX, 3616, p. 104; handwritten]

1. S. M. Levitas (1894–1961) was the editor of the long-running left-wing periodical, The New Leader, New York. It closed down in 2006. He replied to Orwell on 3 June saying how willing he was to get ‘any and every book which you would like’. However, he seemed oblivious to Orwell’s repeated protestations that he was very ill and continued to harass him. On this occasion, despite Orwell’s description of his sickness, he asked for ‘an original piece’ and also to write a ‘Guest Columnist Editorial’ of one thousand words ‘on any subject you desire’.

To Sir Richard Rees*

2 May 1949

[The Cotswold Sanatorium]

Cranham

Dear Richard,

I have to hand-write because there is a patient further down the row who is in articulo mortis,1 or thinks she is, & the typewriter worries her.

About this business of Barnhill etc. I cannot make any real plans until I know if & when I shall get out of bed, but the governing facts are:

1. I can’t in future spend the winters in Jura.

2. Richard must go to school next year, which means somebody being with him, as I don’t want him to go to a boarding school till he is at any rate 10.

3. I don’t want to disrupt the Barnhill ménage.

4. Avril will probably want to stay on at Barnhill, & Bill in any case couldn’t get on without her, or without some female helper.

All this being so, it seems to me that if I am in circulation again later this year, I had best go abroad or somewhere like Brighton for the winter, & then next spring set up a second establishment in London or Edinburgh where I can have Richard with me & where he can go to day-school. He can spend his holidays in Jura, & I hope I shall be able to spend my summers there as well. This will mean having another nurse-maid or housekeeper or something. However, provided I can work I can easily earn enough money for this; in any case it was agreed between Avril & me that if she stopped looking after R. I should reduce the amount I paid her. If I remain bedridden, or at any rate have to remain under medical care, which I suppose is a possibility, I shall move to a sanatorium somewhere near London, where it is easier for friends & business associates to come & see me, & set up an establishment for Richard near there, with a housekeeper or something. That is as much as I can plan at present.

Thanks so much for drying off all the books. I don’t agree with you about The Great Gatsby—I was rather disappointed by it. It seemed to me to lack point,² & Tender is the Night, which I read recently, even more so.³ I’ve just read Geoffrey Gorer’s book on the Americans—very amusing & shallow, as usual. I’ve at last got hold of May Sinclair’s The Combined Maze—a forgotten good bad novel which I’ve been trying to get a copy of for years. I must get some more books rebound before long. Re my unsuccessful efforts to get Gissing reprinted, it’s struck me that the Everyman Library might do one of them. They have no Gissing on their list. I wonder how one approaches them, & whether there is a string one can pull.

In spite of his chumminess with ‘Zilli’4 (who he of course thinks can help him in his political career), I don’t believe Mikardo is a crypto. Apart from other things, if he were a crypto, Michael Foot⁵ would probably know it & wouldn’t have him on Tribune. They got rid of Edelmann°⁶ for that reason. It’s of course true that ‘objectively’ people like Laski⁷ are a lot more useful to the Russians than the overt Communists, just as it is true that ‘objectively’ a pacifist is pro-war & pro-militarist. But it seems to me very important to attempt to gauge people’s subjective feelings, because otherwise one can’t predict their behaviour in situations where the results of certain actions are clear even to a self-deceiver. Suppose for example that Laski had possession of an important military secret. Would he betray it to the Russian military intelligence? I don’t imagine so, because he has not actually made up his mind to be a traitor, & the nature of what he was doing would in that case be quite clear. But a real Communist would, of course, hand the secret over without any sense of guilt, & so would a real crypto, such as Pritt. The whole difficulty is to decide where each person stands, & one has to treat each case individually.

The weather has rather gone off here. I sat outside in a deck chair one or two days, but latterly it’s been too cold. A man came from the E[vening]. Standard to ‘interview’ me,⁸ rather an intimidating experience, also Paul Potts,⁹ who has just got back from Palestine, together with the wife of A. J. P. Taylor,¹⁰ the chap who turned traitor at the Wroclaw conference. I gather from her that Taylor has since turned a good deal more anti-CP.

Yours

Eric

[XX, 3617, pp. 104–6; handwritten]

1. ‘at the moment of death’.

2. Orwell’s letter has been annotated here, ‘NO!’

3. Orwell’s letter has been annotated here, ‘Yes.’

4. Konni Zilliacus (see 2.1.48, n. 5).

5. Michael Foot (see 31.3.46, n. 2).

6. Maurice Edelman (1911–1975), educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, entered the plywood business which led to visits to the USSR, about which he then wrote. He was a war correspondent in North Africa and in Normandy and a Labour MP in 1945, re-elected in 1950.

7. Harold Laski (see 20.9.47, n. 1).

8. Charles Curran, who ‘tired me so … arguing about polities’ (see 16.5.49).

9. Paul Potts (see letters to Humphrey Dakin of 1.7.46, n. 5 and to Sally McEwan of 5.7.46, n. 1).

10. A. J. P. Taylor (1906–1990), historian and journalist. At this time he was Tutor in Modern History, Magdalen College, Oxford (to 1963); Fellow, 1938–76. He wrote prolifically and authoritatively (if not always uncontroversially), especially on Germany and World Wars I and II. The Wroclaw Conference was a Communist-front Conference of Intellectuals, August 1948, attended by scientists, writers, and cultural leaders from forty countries. It passed a resolution condemning the revival of Fascism. The conference backfired on the organisers; some participants saw through the proceedings, Taylor among them, and walked out.

To Fredric Warburg*

16 May 1949

Cranham

Dear Fred,

Thanks so much for your letter. As she may have told you, I had to put Sonia Brownell* off. I am in most ghastly health, & have been for some weeks. I am due for another X-ray picture, but for some days I have been too feverish to go over to the X-ray room & stand up against the screen. When the picture is taken, I am afraid there is not much doubt it will show that both lungs have deteriorated badly. I asked the doctor recently whether she¹ thought I would survive, & she wouldn’t go further than saying she didn’t know. If the ‘prognosis’ after this photo is bad, I shall get a second opinion. Can you give me the name of that specialist you mentioned? Then I will suggest either him or Dr. Morlock, another specialist whom I consulted before the war. They can’t do anything, as I am not a case for operation, but I would like an expert opinion on how long I am likely to stay alive. I do hope people won’t now start chasing me to go to Switzerland, which is supposed to have magical qualities. I don’t believe it makes any difference where you are, & a journey would be the death of me. The one chance of surviving, I imagine, is to keep quiet. Don’t think I am making up my mind to peg out. On the contrary, I have the strongest reasons for wanting to stay alive. But I want to get a clear idea of how long I am likely to last, & not just be jollied along the way doctors usually do.

Yes, do come & see me. I hope & trust by the beginning of June I may be a bit better, at any rate less feverish. I am glad 1984 has done so well before publication. The World Review published a most stupid extract, abridged in such a way as to make nonsense of it.² I wouldn’t have let Moore arrange this if I’d known they meant to hack it about. However I suppose it’s advertisement. That Evening Standard man, Mr. Curran, came to interview me, & had arranged to come again, but I’m thinking of putting him off, because he tired me so last time, arguing about politics. Please give everyone my love.

Yours

George

[XX, 3626, pp. 116–17; handwritten]

1. Dr Margaret Kirkman, one of the two resident physicians at Cranham.

2. ‘A Look into the Future: 1984 and Newspeak’, an insensitive abridgement of the Appendix to Nineteen Eighty-Four, World Review, May 1949.

To David Astor*

20 May 1949

Cranham Lodge¹

Cranham

Gloucester

Dear David,

Thanks so much for your letter. Do come on Sunday the 29th. I’ll look forward to seeing you both. If you can, let me know beforehand time of arrival, so that I can arrange for the car. Better have lunch here, if you arrive in time (it’s quite eatable.)

I have been absolutely ghastly. I am getting a second opinion, a London specialist, supposed to be very good. Of course they can’t actually do anything but I don’t want to feel I’m letting my case go by default, also a specialist called in for one consultation might be willing to give an expert opinion on whether I’m likely to stay alive, the thing most doctors will only hum & haw about.

I’m arranging for Richard to come & stay near here, near Stroud. I suppose it will take weeks to fix up, but it’s quite a good arrangement, the people he is going to stay with have 2 children, & he can go to kindergarten with them & come over & see me in the afternoons sometimes.

Yours

George

[XX, 3628, p. 118; handwritten]

1. Orwell was writing on headed notepaper that referred to the sanatorium as Cranham Lodge.

To Jacintha Buddicom*

22 May 1949

Cranham Lodge

Cranham

Dear Jacintha,

Thanks so much for your letter, I’d have written before, but I’ve been most horribly ill & am not very grand now. I can’t write much of a letter because it tires me to sit up. Thanks awfully for the offer, but I am generally pretty well supplied with books & things. It looks as if I am going to be in bed for months yet. I have sent for my little boy to come & stay with friends near by. I think he’ll like it, & as he is now 5 he can perhaps start going to day school. I hope to see you when I am in Town if I ever am.

Yours

Eric

[XX, 3631, pp. 119–20; handwritten]

This is the last of Orwell’s letters to Jacintha Buddicom to survive. She replied on 2 June, and he wrote again on the 8th. Both letters have been lost, but she describes Orwell’s letter in Eric & Us: ‘My diary records: “Letter from Eric about Nothing Ever Dies.” As I remember … it defined his faith in some sort of after-life. Not necessarily, or even probably, a conventional Heaven-or-Hell, but the firm belief that “nothing ever dies”, and that we must go on somewhere. And it ended with our old ending, Farewell and Hail. He probably wrote it because I had told him that my mother was ill: though I had not stressed this unduly, since he was in such poor health himself’ (p. 157).

To Sonia Brownell*

24 May 1949

Cranham Lodge

Cranham

Dear Sonia,

I was so very sorry to put you off, but at the time I was in a ghastly state. Now I seem to be somewhat better. I do hope you’ll come & see me soon. Any day would suit me except the day you think Cyril [Connolly*] might be coming, on the 29th, when I think someone else is coming. But any way when & if you can come let me know in advance because of ordering a car.

I’ve just had what is called a ‘second opinion’, incidentally the doctor who attended D. H. Lawrence in his last illness.1 He says I’m not so bad & have a good chance of surviving, but it means keeping quiet & doing no work for a long time, possibly a year or more. I don’t mind very much if I could then get well enough to do say another 5 years° work. Richard is coming down soon to stay near here. He will start going to kindergarten school in the mornings, & can sometimes come over & see me in the afternoons.

Please give everyone my love. By the way I cut the enclosed out of the N. Y. Times. If you see Stephen [Spender*] tell him to get another photo taken, for the honour of English letters. Looking forward to seeing you.

With love

George

[XX, 3633, p. 120; handwritten]

1. Dr Andrew Morland.

To Sir Richard Rees*

1 June 1949

Cranham Lodge

Cranham

Dear Richard,

Thanks so much for your letter. Avril & R[ichard] arrived on Saturday & I think he’s settling in all right. I hope to see him once or twice this week. He seemed to me to have grown (his weight is now 3st 5lb.) & to be extremely fit.¹ I think Avril returns to Jura on today’s boat, but I am not certain.

I have been a good bit better this last week, & after seeing my last plate they decided I am not so bad as they thought. Dr. Morland said the same, but he said I shall have to keep still for a long time, possibly as long as a year (I trust it won’t be so long as that) & not attempt to work till I am definitely better. Another doctor² whom David Astor brought along, although a psychologist, said much the same as the others.

I enclose a copy of that article I wanted you to read.³ The magazine itself seemed quite unprocurable, but someone managed to get it typed out. Actually some of what I said in it I also said appropos^o of Gandhi. I’ve just read the 4th vol. of Osbert Sitwell’s memoirs—not so good as some of the others, I think. I know nothing about Goethe, nor indeed about any German writer. I’m trying to read Henry James’s The Spoils of Poynton, but it bores me unbearably. Also read a short book by Rex Warner Why was I killed?—very silly, I thought.

So looking forward to seeing you.

Yours

G

[XX, 3638, pp. 124–5; handwritten]

1. Richard stayed at Whiteway (see letter to Sir Richard Rees of 17.4.49, n. 2). In Remembering Orwell, Richard Blair recalls: ‘When I saw my father at Cranham I used to say, “Where does it hurt, Daddy?” because I couldn’t understand why he said it didn’t hurt, but he was in bed. I couldn’t relate to that at all’ (here).

2. Unidentified.

3. ‘Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool’, Polemic, March 1947 (XIX, 3181, pp. 54–67).

To Anthony Powell*

6 June 1949

Cranham Lodge

Cranham

Dear Tony,

Thanks ever so for sending me the ‘Aubrey’ book. I’m so glad you did put in my favourite Mrs Overall after all, also the story about Sir W. Raleigh & his son. I was so sorry about Hugh Kingsmill.2 If they are trying to get a pension for his widow, if my signature would be useful in any way, of course include me. I’m a good deal better, & trust this will continue. I had a specialist from London, who said much the same as the people here, ie. that if I get round this corner I could be good for quite a few years, but that I have got to keep quiet & not try to work for a long time, possibly as long as a year or two years—I trust it won’t be as long as that. It’s a great bore, but worth while if it means I can work again later. Richard is staying nearby for the summer, & comes over & sees me once or twice a week. Please remember me to everybody. I hope you & Malcolm [Muggeridge] will come & see me some time—but of course don’t put yourselves out. I know what a tiresome journey it must be.

Yours

George

P.S. I’m reading Dante! (with a crib of course.)

[XX, 3641, p. 126; handwritten]

1. Brief Lives and Other Selected Writings of John Aubrey, edited by Anthony Powell (1949).

2. Hugh Kingsmill (= Hugh Kingsmill Lunn, 1889–1949), critic, editor and anthologist. In his Progress of a Biographer (1949), Kingsmill wrote that Animal Farm ‘revealed the poetry, humour and tenderness’ of Orwell.

To William Phillips

8 June 1949

Cranham Lodge

Cranham

Dear Mr Phillips,1

I received your letter of the 2nd today. I need hardly tell you that I am delighted as well as very much astonished at your picking me out for the Partisan Review Award. It is the kind of honour I am quite unused to. Perhaps you will convey my thanks to the rest of the Advisory Board. I will not tell anyone about it until you make the announcement.

I will send you something when I can, but I have done no work since December & may not be able to work for a long time to come. The doctors tell me the best chance of recovery is to lie in bed & do nothing, possibly for as long as another year—I hope it won’t be as long as that, of course.

With very many thanks again, & best wishes to everybody.

Yours sincerely

Geo. Orwell

[XX, 3644, p. 130; handwritten]

1. Co-editor with Philip Rahv* of Partisan Review.

To Julian Symons*

16 June 1949

Cranham Lodge

Cranham

Dear Julian,

I think it was you who reviewed 1984 in the T.L.S.¹ I must thank you for such a brilliant as well as generous review. I don’t think you could have brought out the sense of the book better in so short a space. You are of course right about the vulgarity of the ‘Room 101’ business. I was aware of this while writing it, but I didn’t know another way of getting somewhere near the effect I wanted.

I have been horribly ill since last seeing you, but a lot better in the last few weeks, & I hope perhaps now I have turned the corner. The various doctors I have seen are all quite encouraging but say I must remain quiet & not work for a long time, possibly as much as a year—I hope it won’t be so long, of course. It’s a bore, but worth while if it means recovering. Richard is staying nearby for the summer & comes & sees me every week. He has started kindergarten school & this winter is going to the village school in Jura, I don’t know for how long. I have been thinking about Westminster for him when he is older. They have abandoned their top hats, I learn. It is a day school, which I prefer, & I think has other good points. Any way I’m going to make enquiries & put his name down if it seems suitable. Of course god^o knows what will have happened by then, say 1956, but one has to plan as though nothing would change drastically.

Have you any news of the Empsons,2 who were in Pekin°? I don’t know whether you knew them. There have been various rumours, & I am trying to get some news from Empson’s American publishers.

Did you read Ruth Fischer’s book Stalin & German Communism? She’s coming to see me tomorrow, I think.

Hope all is well & baby flourishing. Please remember me to your wife.

Yours

George

[XX, 3647, p. 137; handwritten]

1. The review had appeared in The Times Literary Supplement on 10 June 1949.

2. William Empson (see 11.7.43, n. 7).

To Jordi Arquer*

22 June 1949

Cranham Lodge

Cranham

Dear Comrade,

Please forgive me for writing in English. Very many thanks for sending the press-cuttings.

I am & have been for a long time seriously ill with tuberculosis, & the doctors forbid me to do any work for a time to come, possibly as long as a year. In connection with the Federacion Española de Internados y Deportados, therefore, I cannot give more than my nominal support. If you wish merely to use my name, you are at liberty to do so, & I could manage a small subscription, say £10,¹ if you can indicate someone in England where I can pay it to. But I cannot do any work such as writing letters, organising, speaking, etc. I am sorry, but I must try to recover from this disease, & the only way of doing so is to rest. I imagine that I shall not even be allowed to leave my bed for some months to come.

I am instructing my agent to send you copies of the Italian translation of Homage to Catalonia & of the Observer of the 27^th February. Please let me know if they do not arrive, & forgive me for not being more helpful. Please forgive also the bad handwriting, but I am writing this in bed.

Yours fraternally

Geo. Orwell.

[LO, p. 121; XX, 3650A, p. 140; handwritten]

1. £10 may not sound very much but its present-day value is roughly twenty-five times greater than in 1949. In that year I was paid just under £5 a week for editing a magazine about railways.

To David Astor*

18 July 1949

Cranham Lodge

Cranham

Dear David,

I wonder how you are getting on. I was slightly dismayed to hear from Charoux¹ that you were getting along ‘as well as can be expected.’ I had thought the operation you were having was something very minor.² Let me know how you are when you get a chance to write.

Richard went back to Jura yesterday, as he is going to the village school at Ardlussa for the Xmas term & it starts at the end of this month. He enjoyed himself at the kindergarten & had a good report, I am glad to say, though I didn’t notice that he learned very much.

I have been so-so, up & down. I get what they call flare-ups, ie. periods with high temperatures & so on, but on the whole I am better I think. I have got Morland, the specialist, coming to see me again next week. When I am well & about again, some time next year perhaps, I intend getting married again. I suppose everyone will be horrified, but it seems to me a good idea. Apart from other considerations, I think I should stay alive longer if I were married & had someone to look after me. It is to Sonia Brownell, the sub-editor of Horizon, I can’t remember whether you know her, but you probably do.

It is evident that I shall be under medical care for a long time yet, & I shan’t even be able to get out of bed until I stop being feverish. Later on I might move to a sanatorium nearer London, & Morland may have some ideas about that, but at present I don’t think I could face a journey.

Have you read The Naked & the Dead?3 It’s awfully good, the best war book of the last war yet.

Write when you can.

Yours

George

[XX, 3661, pp. 147–8; handwritten]

1. Charoux was a picture-framer and restorer (see 19.11.48).

2. Astor’s operation was relatively minor but very painful.

3. By Norman Mailer (1948).

To Leonard Moore*

20 July 1949

Cranham Lodge

Cranham

Dear Moore,

Recently some Russian DPs who run a Russian-language paper called POSSEV in Frankfurt sent me a file of the papers containing a Russian translation of Animal Farm.¹ They want to issue it as a booklet and say, what is no doubt true, that it would be quite easy for them to get a few thousand copies of it through the Iron Curtain, I suppose via Berlin and Vienna. Of course I am willing enough for them to do this, but it will cost money, ie. for the printing and binding. They want 2000 deutsch° marks, which represents about £155. This is more than I can pay out of my own pocket, but I wouldn’t mind contributing something. As a start it occurs to me that the American army magazine Der Monat must owe me something.² There was their serialisation of A.F., but in addition there was a mix-up about a previous article (reprinted from Commentary) which I believe has never been paid for. They sent some kind of official form which I thought was the cheque, and I believe I incorrectly told Melvyn Lasky, the editor, that I had received the cheque. Their bank account would show whether the money has actually been paid over. But any way, if Der Monat do owe me something which they have not yet paid to you, it would be a convenient way of financing the Russian translation of A.F. if they paid the money over in marks which wouldn’t have to leave Germany. I can’t remember whether there is anything else of mine appearing in Germany, but at any rate, could you let me know how many marks you think I could realise there? In the case of our carrying through any transaction of this kind, naturally you will draw your commission as usual.³

I am also trying to pull a wire at the Foreign Office to see if they will subscribe a bit. I’m afraid it’s not likely. They will throw millions down the drain on useless radio propaganda,4 but not finance books.

If all this comes to anything we shall have to make sure that these Possev people are O.K. and not just working a swindle. Their notepaper etc. looks all right, and I know the translation must be a good one as it was made by Gleb Struve whom I know well. They gave me as the address of their English agent Mr Lew Rahr, 18 Downs Road, Beckenham, Kent, and suggested he should come and see me. I don’t think I want to see him at this stage, but do you think you could write to him, say tentatively that we are trying to get this scheme financed and see from his answer whether he seems O.K. I have also asked a friend who is I think in Frankfurt⁵ to contact the Possev people.

Yours sincerely

Eric Blair

[XX, 3662, pp. 148–9; typewritten]

1. Vladimir Gorachek, who described himself as the ‘Authorized DP-Publisher’ of Possev (the subtitle of which was ‘Social and Political Review in Russian Language. Germany’), wrote to Orwell on 16 July 1949 with proposals for publishing Animal Farm in Russian for distribution gratis among Russian readers behind the Iron Curtain. It was planned to distribute the books through Berlin and Vienna ‘and other channels further E[a]st’. The cost of distribution was to be met from selling 1,000 to 1,200 copies in West Germany. Gorachek apologised for the fact that an earlier letter had been written in Russian: ‘We thought that such a perfect understanding of all events occurred° in our country after the revolution and of the very substance of the regime now established there could not be acquired without the knowledge of Russian language.’

2. Annotated in Moore’s office: ‘Paid £50 for A.F.’

3. Annotated in Moore’s office: ‘£250 owing from U.S. Army 1984.’ This was money due for the serialisation of Nineteen Eighty-Four in Der Monat, November 1949 to March 1950.

4. The Foreign Office made no contribution; ‘useless radio propaganda’ is doubtless based on Orwell’s experience during his ‘two wasted years’ at the BBC.

5. Ruth Fischer.

To Leonard Moore*

21 July 1949¹

Cranham Lodge,

Cranham

Dear Moore,

Thank you for two letters date the 19th, with various enclosures.

I enclose the photostats of the McGill article. I don’t object to its being published in this form provided it is stated that this is an abridgement (they needn’t of course say why it has been abridged.)2 Could you please make this clear to Harcourt Brace?

I am of course very pleased about the NBC broadcast of 1984,³ & the serialisation in Der Monat. This last would at need solve the difficulty I wrote to you about yesterday, of getting some marks to pay for the Russian translation of Animal Farm. Of course I’m not going to pay this myself if I can help it, but I haven’t very great hopes of the government coming to my aid. Meanwhile, could you ask the editor of Der Monat to hold over the necessary sum (2000 deutsch° marks) in case we want to disburse it in Germany. The editor, Melvyn Lasky, would be sympathetic to this idea & can no doubt make the necessary arrangements. As I said before, your commission will not be affected by this.

Yours sincerely

Eric Blair⁴

[XX, 3663, pp. 149–50; handwritten]

1. This letter was dated 20.9.49 but is date-stamped as having been received in Moore’s office on 22 July 1949. The month is clearly incorrect, and Orwell seems also to have misdated the day of the month, since he refers to ‘the difficulty I wrote to you about yesterday’.

2. ‘The Art of Donald McGill’, Horizon, September 1941 (XX, 850, pp. 23-31), was published in an abridged form in A Writer’s Reader, edited by P. W. Souers and others (New York, 1950).

3. Broadcast 27 August 1949 in NBC University Theatre with David Niven as Winston Smith. The excellent dramatisation was by Milton Wayne. The novelist, James Hilton (1900–54), provided an interval commentary. The presenter described it as the ‘current and widely discussed novel’. A CD of the broadcast was made available by the Old Time Radio Club, 2007.

4. A postscript refers to two slight proof corrections.

To Jack Common*

27 July 1949

Cranham Lodge

Cranham

Dear Jack,

Herewith cheque for £50—reply if when° you can, no hurry.

This place is a sanatorium. I’ve been under treatment for TB for the better part of 2 years, all of this year here, & half of last year in a hospital near Glasgow. Of course I’ve had it coming to me all my life. The only real treatment, it seems, is rest, so I’ve got to do damn-all, including not trying to work for a long time, possibly as long as a year or two, though I trust it won’t be quite as bad as that. It’s an awful bore, but I am obeying orders, as I do want to stay alive at least 10 years, I’ve got such a lot of work to do besides Richard to look after.

Richard is now 5 & very big & strong. He’s been spending the summer here, so that I can see him every week, & going to kindergarten school, but shortly he’s going back home so that he can start attending the village school in the winter term. We’ve lived since 1946 in Jura,1 but I’m afraid I personally shall only be able to spend the summers there from now on, because it’s too remote & inconvenient in the winter for a semi-invalid. I suppose Richard, too, will have to start going to school on the mainland before long, as you can imagine what a village school in the Hebrides is like. So I shall probably have to have some sort of establishment in London or Edinburgh or somewhere— however, I can’t make plans till I know when I shall be on my feet again. I’m glad to hear you’ve been so philoprogenitive, or at any rate, progenitive.

I haven’t ever remarried, though I sometimes think I would if I could get some of my health back.² Richard Rees spends part of each year with us in Jura as he is sort of partner with the chap who farms the croft our house is on. Otherwise he is more & more wrapped up in painting.³

All the best

Eric

[XX, 3666, pp. 151–2; handwritten]

1. Common had evidently not been in contact with Orwell for some time. The amount lent to Common remained unpaid at Orwell’s death.

2. Orwell suggests, contrary to what happened, that he might remarry if his health improved.

3. One of Rees’s paintings of Barnhill is held in the Orwell Archive.

To Sir Richard Rees*

27 July 1949

Cranham Lodge

Cranham

Dear Richard,

Thanks so much for your letter, with cutting. Do you think you could get your Mr Roberts to make me a bookcase, same dimensions as yours but 5' feet° wide, if he can manage it. If, as I assume, it will be of white wood, I suppose it should be stained or painted, I don’t much mind which, except that if painted I think off-white is the best colour. I’d be much obliged if you could get him to do this & send it up to Barnhill.

I think you’ll find at Barnhill one novel by Charles Williams, called The Place of the Lion1 or something like that (published by Gollancz.) He’s quite unreadable, one of those writers who just go on & on & have no idea of selecting. I think Eliot’s approval of him must be purely sectarian (Anglo-Catholic). It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Eliot approves of C.S. Lewis as well. The more I see the more I doubt whether people ever really make aesthetic judgements at all. Everything is judged on political grounds which are then given an aesthetic disguise. When, for instance, Eliot can’t see anything good in Shelley or anything bad in Kipling, the real underlying reason must be that the one is a radical & the other a conservative, of sorts. Yet evidently one does have aesthetic reactions, especially as a lot of art & even literature is politically neutral, & also certain unmistakeable° standards do exist, e.g. Homer is better than Edgar Wallace. Perhaps the way we should put it is: the more one is aware of political bias the more one can be independent of it, & the more one claims to be impartial the more one is biassed.

1984 has had good reviews in the USA, such as I have seen of them, but of course also some very shame-making publicity. You’ll be glad to hear Animal Farm has been translated into Russian at last, in a D.P. paper in Frankfurt. I’m trying to arrange for it to be done in book form.

Yours

Eric

[XX, 3669, p. 154; handwritten]

1. Charles Williams (1886–1945), poet, novelist, dramatist, and writer on theological subjects. He worked for the Oxford University Press for much of his life.

To Fredric Warburg*

22 August 1949

Cranham Lodge

Cranham

Dear Fred,

Could you please send one copy each of Burmese Days & Coming Up for Air to Sonia Brownell, care of Horizon.

I have Morland coming to see me again this evening. On & off I have been feeling absolutely ghastly. It comes & goes, but I have periodical bouts of high temperatures etc. I will tell you what Morland says. Richard has just gone back to Jura & is going to the village school for the winter term. Beyond that I can’t make plans for the moment. I have put him down for Westminster, but he wouldn’t be going there till 1957, heaven knows what may have happened by then. As I warned you I might do, I intend getting married again (to Sonia) when I am once again in the land of the living, if I ever am. I suppose everyone will be horrified, but apart from other considerations I really think I should stay alive longer if I were married.

I have sketched out the book of essays I would like to publish next year, but I want it to include two long new essays, on Joseph Conrad and George Gissing, & of course I can’t touch those till I am definitively better.

Love to all

George

[XX, 3678, p.159–60; handwritten]

To Sir Richard Rees*

30 August 1949

Cranham Lodge

Cranham

Dear Richard,

I am removing to a London hospital on September 3rd, and my address will be: Private Wing, University College Hospital, Gower Street, London, W.C.1. This is Morland’s own hospital and the idea is that I shall go there probably for about two months. I don’t think you need fear my having too many visitors—in fact it may be easier to keep them off in London where people don’t have to come for the whole day.

Of course its° perfectly O.K. about the old Austin. Anything you can get for her should go towards the jeep. As to the motor boat it seems to me that it would be a good idea to leave her in the boat-yard at Ardrishaig for the winter unless they need her at Barnhill. I suppose you can do that with boats like leaving a car in a garage, and then next year it would be in good order when we picked it up.

I am going to send on the remaining books I have here. Could you be kind enough to see that the magazines etc., go in the right place. There are various bundles of papers which I have asked Avril to put in my desk upstairs.

I hope the harvest is going O.K. Avril told me she had started, or was starting another pig. If nothing has been decided yet you might suggest to Avril to think seriously about a sow which I am very in favour of, and would willingly pay the initial costs of. The only difficulty is about getting her to a hog once a year. I suppose one would buy a gravid sow in the Autumn to litter about March, but one would have to make very sure that she really was in pig the first time.

Do make Bill go to the dentist. It is nonsense to put it off when they can come across in the boat and go to Lochgilphead. He was already having trouble with that tooth when I came away in January, and at the last moment refused to go to Glasgow.

Love to all,

Eric

[XX, 3684, pp. 163–4; typewritten]

To David Astor*

5 September 1949

U.C.H.1

Dear David,

Thanks ever so for sending those beautiful crysanths° & the box of peaches that actually met me on my arrival here. I feel ghastly & can’t write much, but we had a wonderful journey down yesterday in the most ritzy ambulance you can imagine. This beastly fever never seems to go away but is better some days than others, & I really quite enjoyed the drive down.

What a bastard that doctor² must have been. It seems that there’s a regular tradition of withholding anaesthetics & analgesics & that it is particularly bad in England. I know Americans are often astonished by the tortures people are made to go through here.

I hope you’re feeling better & that soon you will be able to meet Sonia. Morland says I mustn’t see people much, but here in London it’s easier for people to just look in for half an hour, which they hardly can at Cranham. Sonia lives only a few minutes away from here. She thinks we might as well get married while I am still an invalid, because it would give her a better status to look after me especially if, eg., I went somewhere abroad after leaving here. It’s an idea, but I think I should have to feel a little less ghastly than at present before I could even face a registrar for 10 minutes. I am much encouraged by none of my friends or relatives seeming to disapprove of my remarrying, in spite of this disease. I had had an uneasy feeling that ‘they’ would converge from all directions & stop me, but it hasn’t happened. Morland, the doctor, is very much in favour of it.

I remember visiting you when you had the sinus but I didn’t know it was this hospital. It seems very comfortable & easy-going here. Can’t write more.

Yours

George

[XX, 3686, p. 165; handwritten]

1. University College Hospital, a major teaching hospital in London, WC1.

2. The doctor attending Astor.

To Sir Richard Rees*

17 September 1949

Room 65 Private Wing

U.C. Hospital

Gower St WC 1

Dear Richard,

Thanks so much for seeing about the boat & for re-arranging my books. I suppose by the way they’ll send on the bill for the bookcases to you—if so, forward it to me, won’t you.°

It’s all right about the literary executorship. You & Sonia wouldn’t quarrel about anything. Some time I’ll have to make another will, & then I’ll regularise it.

I am getting on quite well & have felt distinctly better since being here. The only new treatment they have done to me is to make me lie all night & part of the day with my feet higher than my head. Sonia comes & sees me for an hour every day & otherwise I am allowed one visitor for 20 minutes. Sonia thinks that when I am a little better it would be a good idea for us to get married while I am still in hospital, which would make it easier for her to accompany me wherever I have to go afterwards. Someone, I think Fred Warburg, told the press about this & there was some rather nasty publicity.¹

I’m afraid I haven’t a copy of Trilling’s review of 1984.² The only copy I had was among some press cuttings I sent up to Barnhill. I’ve just had back that picture that went to be restored.3 He’s made a beautiful job of it, & it is almost like a new picture. Apparently they can lift a picture right off & stick it onto a new piece of canvas. I have another old picture which I thought was past praying for, as the canvas is sort of moth eaten, but perhaps this chap could do something with it. He also put the picture in a quite nice new frame, & only charged 12 guineas for the whole job.

Things seem to be going O.K. at Barnhill. R[ichard] evidently hasn’t started going to school yet, as Mrs Angus⁴ was ill. He sent me a ‘letter’ which showed that he knows at any rate 12 letters of the alphabet. Unless I am out of England by then, I will have him down for the Xmas holidays, & then he can start getting to know Sonia a bit better. I do not think there need be any complications about his upbringing. We have agreed that if I should die in the near future, even if I were already married, Avril shall be his guardian. Beyond that I can’t make plans at present.

Yours

Eric

[XX, 3692, pp. 168–9; handwritten]

1. In The Star (one of the then three London evening papers) and Daily Mail, 17 September 1949.

2. The review by Lionel Trilling (1905–1975) appeared in The New Yorker, 18 June 1949. He praised the ‘intensity and passion’ of this ‘momentous book’ (Crick, p. 564).

3. Mr Charoux, the picture-restorer recommended by Rees. (See 19.11.48.)

4. Presumably the teacher on Jura.

Arthur Koestler* to Orwell

24 September 1949

My dear George,

I thought that Mamaine had written to you and Mamaine thought that I had written to you, hence the delay. I was extremely happy to hear that you are going to marry Sonia. I have been saying for years that she is the nicest, most intelligent and decent girl that I met during my whole stay in England. She is precisely for this reason also very lonely in that crowd in which she moves and she will become a changed person when you take her out of it. I think I had a closer view of the Connolly set-up than you did; it has a steady stultifying effect which left its mark even on a tough guy like me. If a fairy had granted me three wishes for Sonia, the first would have been that she should be married to you, the second some dough for her, and the third a child – adopted or not makes little difference.

If you don’t resent the advice of a chronically meddlesome friend, get through with it, the sooner the better, without waiting until your health is entirely restored. Delay is always a bore and as an amateur psychologist I have a feeling that having this settled will to a surprising extent speed up your recovery.

I hardly dare to hope of having you both down here in the near future, but whenever it is feasible it will be a great treat for me to see you both again and pop champagne corks into the Seine.

[No valediction or signature]

[XX, 3695A, p. 329; typewritten carbon copy]

Nancy Heather Parratt, Orwell’s secretary at the BBC, wrote from Geneva. As she says in her letter, she had telephoned Orwell early in November, and he apparently asked her for a photograph, which she was now enclosing. This shows her rowing and is dated August 1949. Her description of life in the United States has been omitted here. Despite many inquiries, and the help of the Ministry of Defence and Navy News, it was not possible to trace her.

Nancy Parratt* to Orwell

8 December 1949

Dear George,

Just a line to send you the enclosed [photograph]. I wonder which will amuse you most. It must be a pretty strange sensation to be quoted so approvingly by men who, a couple of years ago, would have been on very different ground from you. I must say I at least find it strange to see you turning up so often in such respectable places! You presumably know that the Philadelphia Inquirer is serializing 1984 in its Sunday supplement starting 4 December. I wonder if it is the only one or if a whole gang of them are doing it.

Bill1 told me after I talked to you at the beginning of Nov. that he had sat next to a very pretty girl at a Hallow’en° party who told him she was reading a v.g. book—1984, but it was too strong meat for her. She couldn’t remember the name of the author but Bill happened to know it, and she said—Yes, he just got married recently. So Bill knew you were married before I did! And he forgot to tell me….

You see I have one of these new fangled ball point pens—I only just succumbed to the fashion last week—it seems quite good, only cost $1² but sometimes I get carried away by it and it writes funny things!

I hope you are getting on well and not finding the time goes too slowly. If you are allowed visitors being in London must have its compensations I should think. Next time we come we hope to stay at least twice as long. By that time I am sure you will be moved on to the country or to some mountains or other.

All the best

Nancy

I don’t really talk American but it was such a lousy line I had to talk loudly & then I do sound a bit peculiar! If I can mutter I can usually get away with it!

[XX, 3713, pp. 183–4]

1. Nancy’s husband.

2. Orwell had started using a Biro early in 1946. He found it particularly useful when writing in bed where liquid ink was not allowed. Even by the end of 1947 he was paying £3 for a new pen.

Sonia Orwell* to Yvonne Davet*

6 January 1950

18 Percy Street

London W1

Chère Madame Davet,

I’m writing to you on behalf of my husband, George Orwell, who is rather ill at the moment and so isn’t strong enough to write himself. He has asked me to apologise for his long delay in replying to your letter, but it only reached him two days ago.

I think you will have heard about my husband from our friends Alexei and John Russell¹—he is still ill etc. We hope to go to Switzerland soon, as it really isn’t possible to get over this disease in England.

My husband asks me to thank you most sincerely for all the trouble you have taken on his behalf. He hopes as much for your sake as for his own that the translation of Homage to Catalonia will finally appear.² As for your article, he has absolutely nothing interesting to say about his life, but in any case this letter will probably arrive too late to be of much help.

He asks me to send you his best wishes for the New Year, and hopes very much to be able to come and see you when he is in Paris again.

Je vous prie de croire, chère Madame, a l’expression de mes sentiments les meilleurs.

Sonia Orwell

[XX, 3716, pp. 185-6; handwritten; translation of French original]

1. John Russell (1919–2008; CBE, 1975), art critic, then married to Alexandrine Apponyi (dissolved 1950), worked at the Ministry of Information, 1941–43, and for Naval Intelligence, 1943–46. He was art critic of the Sunday Times, 1949–74, and later for the New York Times. In 1958, he was a witness at Sonia’s marriage to Michael Pitt-Rivers.

2. Madame Davet’s translation of Homage to Catalonia was published in 1955. It included Orwell’s corrections and the re-arrangement of chapters as he had requested. The changes were only made in the English text in 1986 (see VI, pp. 251–61).

Orwell’s Death

Having married Sonia Brownell on 13 October 1949, Orwell hoped to be well enough to recuperate in Switzerland, and friends (especially booksellers) raised funds to enable him to make the journey. However, early on Saturday 21 January 1950 he died, his beloved fishing rods standing in the corner of his hospital room. His funeral service was arranged by Malcolm Muggeridge at Christ Church, Albany Street, London, NW1. He had asked to be buried, not cremated, and David Astor arranged for that to take place at All Saints, Sutton Courtney, Berkshire. His headstone is inscribed simply: ‘Here Lies Eric Arthur Blair’ with his dates of birth and death.