A Life in Letters

by George Orwell

  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 PS2000 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 PS2.50.

  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 PS3. 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 feelingbad 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 godawfuldeg 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 Europe 5 (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 Deeping 6 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 novels 9 and am looking at them rather unenthusiastically.

  Yours

  Eric

  [XX, 3540, pp. 33-5; typewritten]

  1.Rees had invested PS1,000 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 Twice 2--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 decadence 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).

  Wiadomosci, a Polish emigre 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], Wiadomosci

  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.