A Life in Letters

by George Orwell

  I hope Fred [Warburg]* will have a good long rest. I know how long it takes to get one's strength back. I am trying to arrange to go to Cologne for a few days, but there keep being delays. I shall be back in England at the end of April.

  Yours

  George

  [XVII, 2635, p. 90; typewritten]

  1.This change was made. The source of the correction is almost certainly Orwell's meeting in Paris with Joseph Czapski, a survivor of Starobielsk, and of the series of massacres of Polish prisoners carried out by the Russians and associated especially with that at Katyn. (See Orwell's letter to Arthur Koestler, 5.3.46.) Eileen Blair* to her husband

  Wednesday 21 March 1945

  Greystone1

  Carlton

  Dearest your letter came this morning--the one written on the 7th after you got my first one. I was rather worried because there had been an interval of nearly a fortnight, but this one took 14 days whereas the last one came in 10 so probably that explains it. Or one may have gone astray.

  I am typing in the garden. Isn't that wonderful? I've only got a rug for myself and typewriter and the wind keeps blowing the paper down over the machine which is not so good for the typing but very good for me. The wind is quite cold but the sun is hot. Richard is sitting up in his pram talking to a doll. He has the top half of a pram suit on but he took off the rest some time ago and has nothing between himself and the sky below his nappies. I want him to get aired before the sun gets strong so that he'll brown nicely. That's my idea anyway. And he is enjoying the preliminaries anyway. I bought him a high chair--the only kind I could get. It sort of breaks in half and turns up its tail like a beetle if you want it to, and then you have a low chair attached to a little table, the whole on wheels. As a high chair it has no wheels and the usual tray effect in front of the chair. He loves it dearly and stretches out his hands to it--partly I'm afraid because what normally happens in the chair is eating. When it is being a low chair Laurence2 takes him for rides round the nursery and down the passage--indeed Laurence wheeled the whole contraption home from the station and I found it very useful myself on the way up as a luggage trolley. I came by night in the end so that George Kopp * 3 could see me off at King's X which was very nice, but there were no porters at all at Thornaby or Stockton--and only one at Darlington but I got him. There is no real news about Richard. He is just very well. I was sorry to be away from him for a week because he always stops feeding himself when I don't act as waiter, but today he did pick up the spoon himself from the dish and put it in his mouth--upside down of course, but he was eating rather adhesive pudding so he got his food all right. I bought him a truck too for an appalling sum of money. I had to forget the price quickly but I think it's important he should have one.

  We're no longer in the garden now. In fact Richard is in bed and has been for some time. Blackburn 4 came and told me all about his other jobs and how Mr. Wilson fished and Sir John once had to go to his office on August 12th but the car went with him full of guns and sandwiches and they got to the moors by 1.30. And Blackburn's predecessor here shot himself. I think perhaps the general shooting standard was rather lower than at Sir John's, because this man shot a wood pigeon and tried to pull it out of the bush into which it had fallen with his gun (this might be better expressed but you can guess it). Naturally the bush pulled the trigger and there was another shot in the other barrel and the ass was actually holding the barrel to his belly, so he might as well have been an air raid casualty. This convinced me not that Richard must never have a gun but that he must have one very young so that he couldn't forget how to handle it.

  Gwen rang up Harvey Evers5 and they want me to go in for this operation at once. This is all a bit difficult. It is going to cost a terrible lot of money. A bed in a kind of ward costs seven guineas a week and Harvey Evers's operation fee is forty guineas. In London I would have to pay about five guineas a week in a hospital but Gwen says the surgeon's fee would be higher. The absurd thing is that we are too well off for really cheap rates-- you'd have to make less than PS500 a year. It comes as a shock to me in a way because while you were being ill I got used to paying doctors nothing. But of course it was only because Eric6 was making the arrangements. I suppose your bronchoscopy would have cost about forty guineas too-- and I must say it would have been cheap at the price, but what worries me is that I really don't think I'm worth the money. On the other hand of course this thing will take a longish time to kill me if left alone and it will be costing some money the whole time. The only thing is, I think perhaps it might be possible to sell the Harefield house7 if we found out how to do it. I do hope too that I can make some money when I am well--I could of course do a job but I mean really make some money from home as it were. Anyway I don't know what I can do except go ahead and get the thing done quickly. The idea is that I should go in next week and I gather he means to operate quickly--he thinks the indications are urgent enough to offset the disadvantages of operating on a bloodless patient; indeed he is quite clear that no treatment at all can prevent me from becoming considerably more bloodless every month. So I suppose they'll just do a blood transfusion and operate more or less at once.

  While I was in London I arranged to take Evelyn's 8 manuscript in to Tribune. I set off with it all right, broke the journey to go to the bank and was taken with a pain just like the one I had the day before coming North, only rather worse. I tried to have a drink in Selfridges' but couldn't and all sorts of extraordinary things then happened but after a bit I got myself into the Ministry. I simply could not do any more travelling, so Miss Sparrow9 rang up Evelyn for me and they arranged between them about the transfer of the manuscript. People from Tribune then rang up in the most friendly way, offering to come and look after me, to bring me things and to get you home. I was horrified. But yesterday I had a phase of thinking that it was really outrageous to spend all your money on an operation of which I know you disapprove, so Gwen rang Tribune to know whether they had means of communicating with you quickly and could get your ruling. They hadn't but suggested she should ring the Observer, which she did and talked to Ivor Brown*. He said you were in Cologne now he thought and that letters would reach you very slowly if at all. He suggested that they would send you a message about me by cable and wireless, like their own. Gwen says he couldn't have been nicer. But I'm not having this done. It's quite impossible to give you the facts in this way and the whole thing is bound to sound urgent and even critical. I have arranged with Gwen however that when the thing is over she'll ask the Observer to send you a message to that effect. One very good thing is that by the time you get home I'll be convalescent, really convalescent at last and you won't have the hospital nightmare you would so much dislike. You'd more or less have to visit me and visiting someone in a ward really is a nightmare even to me with my fancy for hospitals--particularly if they're badly ill as I shall be at first of course. I only wish I could have had your approval as it were, but I think it's just hysterical. Obviously I can't just go on having a tumour or rather several rapidly growing tumours. I have got an uneasy feeling that after all the job might have been more cheaply done somewhere else but if you remember Miss Kenny's fee for a cautery, which is a small job, was fifteen guineas so she'd certainly charge at least fifty for this. Gwen's man might have done cheaper work for old sake's sake, but he's so very bad at the work and apparently he would have wanted me in hospital for weeks beforehand--and I'm morally sure I'd be there for weeks afterwards. Harvey Evers has a very high reputation, and George Mason10 thinks very well of him and says Eric did the same, and I am sure that he will finish me off as quickly as anyone in England as well as doing the job properly--so he may well come cheaper in the end. I rather wish I'd talked it over with you before you went. I knew I had a 'growth'. But I wanted you to go away peacefully anyway, and I did not want to see Harvey Evers before the adoption was through in case it was cancer. I thought it just possible that the judge might make some enquiry about our health as we're old for parenthood and
anyway it would have been an uneasy sort of thing to be producing oneself as an ideal parent a fortnight after being told that one couldn't live more than six months or something.

  You may never get this letter but of course it's urgent about the house in the country. Inez [Holden]* thinks we might do something together with her cottage near Andover. It's quite big (6 rooms and kitchen) but it has disadvantages. The 25/- a week rent which she considers nominal I think big considering there is no sanitation whatever and only one tap, no electricity or gas, and expensive travelling to London. She and Hugh [Slater]* (incidentally they are more or less parting company at present but they might join up again I think) hire furniture for another 25/- a week which wouldn't be necessary if we were there, and it might be possible a) to get a long lease for a lower rent and b) to have modern conveniences installed. I am now so confident of being strong in a few months that I'm not actually frightened as I should have been of living a primitive life again (after all when you were ill soon after we were married I did clean out the whole of Wallington's sanitation and that was worse than emptying a bucket) but it does waste a lot of time. So we can consider that. Then George Kopp* has a clever idea. Apparently people constantly advertise in the Times wanting to exchange a house in the country for a flat in London. Most of these, probably all, would want something grander than N.1, but we might advertise ourselves--asking for correspondingly humble country accommodation. In the next few months people who have been living in the country for the war will be wanting somewhere in London and we might do well like that. Meanwhile there is a letter from the Ardlussa factor enclosing the contractor's estimate for repairing Barnhill11--which is PS200. I found to my distress that George was not forwarding letters to you, although I gave him the address by telephone the day I got it, because he had not heard from you. I opened one from the Borough and found it was to say that the electricity supply would be cut off as soon as the man could get in to do it. I paid that bill and decided I'd better look at the rest of the mail. There was nothing else quite so urgent except perhaps a letter from the BBC Schools about your two broadcasts for them. They want the scripts as soon as possible! There's also a contract. I didn't send anything on at once because I thought you might be moving and in view of Ivor Brown's news of you I'm not sending them now, but I've written to say that you are abroad but expected home next month. The broadcasts aren't till June after all. If you don't come next month I'll have to think again, but there may be a firmer address to write to. I can do nothing with this except send it to the Hotel Scribe and hope they'll forward it. To get back to Barnhill. I'm going to write to the factor to say that you're away and I'm ill and will he wait till you get back. He's very apologetic about having kept us waiting and I'm sure they won't let the house to anyone else. I think this PS200 can be very much reduced, but the house is quite grand--5 bedrooms, bathroom, W.C., H & C and all, large sitting room, kitchen, various pantries, dairies etc. and a whole village of 'buildings'--in fact just what we want to live in twelve months of the year. But we needn't have all this papered and painted. I put my hopes on Mrs. Fletcher.12 The only thing that bothers me is that if it's thought worth while to spend PS200 on repairs the kind of rent they have in mind must be much higher than our PS25-PS30, let alone David's PS5. Incidentally I had a letter from David [Astor]* who just missed you in Paris.

  It's odd--we have had nothing to discuss for months but the moment you leave the country there are dozens of things. But they can all be settled, or at least settled down, if you take this week's leave when you get back. I don't know about Garrigill.13 It depends when you come. But at worst you could come here couldn't you? If you were here we should stay mainly in my room, indeed I suppose I'll be there for some time after I get back in any case, and Richard will be available. Mary 14 and Laurence both spend a lot of time with me now but they could be disposed of. Laurence by the way has improved out of recognition. He has three passions: farms, fairy tales, Richard. Not in that order--Richard probably comes first. So you ought to get on nicely. He has begun to invent fairy tales now, with magic cats and things in them, which is really a great advance. The pity is that the country isn't better but almost any country is good round about May and if I'm still at the picturesque stage of convalescence you could go out with Blackburn who knows every inch of the countryside or perhaps amuse yourself with Mr. Swinbank the farmer who would enjoy it I think. Or you could go over to Garrigill for a weekend's fishing on your own.

  I liked hearing about Wodehouse.15 And I'm very glad you're going to Cologne. Perhaps you may get East of the Rhine before you come home. I have innumerable questions.

  I think it's quite essential that you should write some book again. As you know, I thought Tribune better than the BBC and I still do. Indeed I should think a municipal dustman's work more dignified and better for your future as a writer. But as I said before I left London, I think you ought to stop the editing soon, as soon as possible, whether or not you think it worth while to stay on the editorial board or whatever it's called. And of course you must do much less reviewing and nothing but specialised reviewing if any. From my point of view I would infinitely rather live in the country on PS200 than in London on any money at all. I don't think you understand what a nightmare the London life is to me. I know it is to you, but you often talk as though I liked it. I don't like even the things that you do. I can't stand having people all over the place, every meal makes me feel sick because every food has been handled by twenty dirty hands and I practically can't bear to eat anything that hasn't been boiled to clean it. I can't breathe the air, I can't think any more clearly thatdeg one would expect to in the moment of being smothered, everything that bores me happens all the time in London and the things that interest me most don't happen at all and I can't read poetry. I never could. When I lived in London before I was married I used to go away certainly once a month with a suitcase full of poetry and that consoled me until the next time--or I used to go up to Oxford and read in the Bodleian and take a punt up the Cher if it was summer or walk in Port Meadow or to Godstow if it was winter. But all these years I have felt as though I were in a mild kind of concentration camp. The place has its points of course and I could enjoy it for a week. I like going to theatres for instance. But the fact of living in London destroys any pleasure I might have in its amenities and in fact as you know I never go to a theatre. As for eating in restaurants, it's the most barbarous habit and only tolerable very occasionally when one drinks enough to enjoy barbarity. And I can't drink enough beer. (George Mason took me out to dinner the night after I got to London and gave me to drink just what I would have drunk in peacetime--four glasses of sherry, half a bottle of claret and some brandy--and it did cheer me up I admit.) I like the Canonbury flat but I am suicidal every time I walk as far as the bread shop, and it would be very bad for Richard once he is mobile. Indeed if the worst comes to the worst I think he'd better go to Wallington for the summer, but it would be better to find somewhere with more space because you and Richard would be too much for the cottage very soon and I don't know where his sister 16 could go. And I think the cottage makes you ill--it's the damp and the smoke I think.

  While this has been in progress I have read several stories to Laurence, dealt with Richard who woke up (he has just stopped his 10 o'clock feed), dealt with Mary who always cries in the evening, had my supper and listened to Mrs. Blackburn's distresses about Raymond 17 who has just got a motor bike. That's why it's so long. And partly why it's so involved. But I should like to see you stop living a literary life and start writing again and it would be much better for Richard too, so you need have no conflicts about it. Richard sends you this message. He has no conflicts. If he gets a black eye he cries while it hurts but with the tears wet on his cheeks he laughs heartily at a new blue cat who says miaow to him and embraces it with loving words. Faced with any new situation he is sure that it will be an exciting and desirable situation for him, and he knows so well that everyone in the world is his good friend t
hat even if someone hurts him he understands that it was by accident and loses none of his confidence. He will fight for his rights (he actually drove Mary off the blue cat today, brandishing a stick at her and shouting) but without malice. Whether he can keep his certainties over the difficult second year I don't know of course but he's much more likely to if he has the country and you have the kind of life that satisfies you--and me. I think Richard really has a natural tendency to be sort of satisfied, balanced in fact. He demands but he demands something specific, he knows what he wants and if he gets it or some reasonable substitute he is satisfied; he isn't just demanding like Mary. I'm not protecting him. That is, he takes the troubles I think proper to his age. He gets no sympathy when his face is washed and very little when he topples over and knocks his head and I expect him to take in good part the slight sort of bumps he gets when the children play with him. But he can be tough only if he knows that it's all right really.

  Now I'm going to bed. Before you get this you'll probably have the message about this operation and you may well be in England again if you keep what Ivor Brown calls on the move. What a waste that would be.

  All my love, and Richard's.

  E.

  Mary calls Richard Which or Whicher or Which-Which. I suppose he'll call himself something like that too. Whicher I find rather attractive. She is better with him now and I must say I am proud to see that she is more apt to be frightened of him than he of her, sad though it is. I actually heard her say to him yesterday 'No no Whicher, no hurt Mamie.' She takes things from him but she runs away from him, relying on her mobility; once he can move himself I don't believe she'll dare to--she never stays within his reach once she has the thing in her hand. She tries to gain confidence for herself by saying Baby wet all the time--generally with truth because he has now got to the stage of rejecting his pot (this is the usual preliminary to being 'trained' and I hope we'll reach that stage soon though at present I see not the slightest indication of it), but when she dirtied her pants for the second time today I heard this conversation with Nurse: 'No cross with Mamie Nurse?' 'Yes I am cross this time' 'Iodine no cross?' '"Yes, Iodine's cross too.' 'Whicher cross?' 'Whicher says he'll have to lend you some nappies.' 'No. . . . Baby's.' And she began to cry--so she's not sure of her superiority even in this. She isn't so superior either. This has been a bad day, but she never gets through one with dry pants poor little wretch.