I must stop now, as I don’t think I have any more news. As to your presentiment, or ‘curious feeling’ about me, you don’t say when exactly you had it. But I don’t know that I have been particularly unhappy lately—at least, not more than usual.
With much love and many kisses
Eric
P.S. [at top of first page] Near Brighton I passed Roedean School. It seemed to me that even in holiday time I could feel waves of snobbishness pouring out of it, & also aerial music to the tune of the female version of ‘Forty Years On’ & the Eton ‘Boating Song.’6 Do you play them at hockey, or did they write to you ‘St Felix, who are you?’
[X, 245, p. 385–7; typewritten; handwritten postscript]
1.St Felix School for Girls, Southwold, where Salkeld was the gym mistress.
2.The Silver Jubilee of King George V.
3.Orwell must mean Monday.
4.Although not a direct autobiographical contrast, compare Gordon refusing to borrow £10 from Ravelston, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, pp. 106–7, but sponging on him and taking his money, pp. 212–3.
5.Presumably a portion of Keep the Aspidistra Flying. In his letter to Moore of 14 May 1935 Orwell says he intended to write what became a novel as a book of essays; the ‘piece’ referred to was perhaps one of these essays in process of transformation into a different genre.
6.See 20.7.33, n. 3.
To Rayner Heppenstall*
Tuesday night [24 September 1935]
50 Lawford Rd
Kentish Town NW1
Dear Rayner,
Many thanks for letter. I hope the enclosed MS. is what you wanted. I infer from what you would no doubt call your handwriting that you were taught script at school; the result is that I can’t read a single word of the manuscript part of your letter, so I may not have followed your instructions exactly.
I am suffering unspeakable torments with my serial, having already been at it four days and being still at the second page. This is because I sat down and wrote what was not a bad first instalment, and then upon counting it up found it was 3500 words instead of 2000. Of course this means rewriting it entirely. I don’t think I am cut out for a serial-writer. I shall be glad to get back to my good old novel where one has plenty of elbow room. I have three more chapters and an epilogue to do, and then I shall spend about two months putting on the twiddly bits.
Even if my serial doesn’t come to anything, and I don’t expect it to, I intend taking a week or so off next month. My people have asked me to come down and stay with them, and if I can get my sister to drive me over, as I don’t think I can drive her present car, I will come over and see you. I don’t know that part of the country, but if it is like ours it must be nice this time of year.
I forwarded a letter this evening which had urgent proofs on it. I hope it gets to you in time, but it had already been to your old address. You ought to let editors and people know that you have changed your address.
You are right about Eileen.2 She is the nicest person I have met for a long time. However, at present alas! I can’t afford a ring, except perhaps a Woolworth’s one. Michael was here last night with Edna3 and we all had dinner together. He told me he has a story in the anthology of stories that is coming out, but he seemed rather down in the mouth about something. I was over at the Fierz’4 place on Sunday and met Brenda5 and Maurice6 whom no doubt you remember, and they were full of a story apparently current among Communists to the effect that Col. Lawrence7 is not really dead but staged a fake death and is now in Abyssinia. I did not like Lawrence, but I would like this story to be true.
Au revoir. Please remember me to the Murrys.8
Yours
Eric A. Blair
[X, 253, pp. 393–5; typewritten]
1.Orwell moved to this address from Booklovers’ Corner. The flat is illustrated by Thompson, p. 47. It was rented in Orwell’s name but he shared it with Rayner Heppenstall and Michael Sayers (1911–2010) who contributed short stories and reviews to The Adelphi. The relationship was not wholly satisfactory. On one occasion Orwell and Heppenstall came to blows (see Orwell Remembered, pp. 106–15). Orwell remained there until the end of January 1936 when he stopped working at Booklovers’ Corner.
2.Eileen O’Shaughnessy (1905–1945) was to marry Orwell on 9 June 1936. According to Lettice Cooper they met at a party given by Mrs Rosalind Obermeyer at 77 Parliament Hill in March 1935. Before George left the house he said to a friend, ‘The girl I want to marry is Eileen O’Shaughnessy.’ At the time she met Orwell she was reading for a master’s degree in psychology at University College London. For Lydia Jackson’s reminiscences see Orwell Remembered, pp. 66–68. See also Eileen Blair*.
3.Edna Cohen, Michael’s cousin, with whom he was then having an affair.
4.Francis and Mabel Fierz, at whose home in Golders Green Orwell often found refuge when he first came to London. Mabel Fierz introduced Orwell’s writing to Leonard Moore, who, as a result, became his literary agent.
5.Brenda Eason Verstone (1911– ) studied art at the Chelsea School of Art and then worked as a journalist for trade publications concerned with paper and packaging.
6.Maurice Oughton was a leading aircraftman in the Royal Air Force in 1942, when he published a slim volume of poems, Out of the Oblivion, which includes his picture.
7.T. E. Lawrence (‘Lawrence of Arabia’), who had died as a result of a motor-cycle accident on 19 May 1935.
8.Heppenstall was staying with John Middleton Murry* in Norfolk.
On 9 November 1935, writing on black-bordered paper, M. Raimbault told Orwell that ‘a terrible misfortune’ had befallen his family. They had taken their summer holiday at Batz-sur-Mer: ‘one of my twin daughters fell from a rock, hurt herself, near fatally, on her head, and rolled unconscious into the sea. The weather was bad, all the efforts to save her proved in vain. When it was possible to recover her two hours later nothing could be done to revive her. She was approaching seventeen years of age and was life and joy itself. I was in despair. I am still. I have great difficulty finding the courage to live.’
To R. N. Raimbault*
22 December 1935
50 Lawford Road
Kentish Town NW 5
Dear Raimbault,
I am sorry I have not written for so long. It is mainly because I have been so busy, first with struggling to get my novel finished, then with the extra Christmas work at the shop, that I have had very little time for letters.
I am writing in English this time because I am not certain of expressing myself adequately in French. I just want to tell you how terribly sorry I was to hear the sad news about the death of your daughter. There is not much one can say on these occasions, and the more so as I did not know your daughter myself, but I can imagine something of what your feelings must be, and I would like you to know that, for what they are worth, you have all my sympathies.
I am sorry that I have been rather discourteous to M. Jean Pons, because I have not done anything about his letter.1 I am, however, writing to explain to him that it is on account of press[ure] of work that I have neglected him. I am sorry to hear that La Vache Enragée2 didn’t sell. For myself I hardly expected a large sale for it, as the interest is rather specialised, but it is disappointing for you after all the trouble you have had. You ask me whether I have any short stories which might be translateable°. I have made various attempts to write short stories and have always failed. For some reason or another it is a form I cannot manage. It occurs to me, however, that a descriptive sketch I wrote a few years ago might be worth looking at – it is a description of an execution in a jail in Burma and at the time I wrote it I was rather pleased with it. I will look out the copy of the magazine it was in, and send it to you. My novel is almost finished. I had promised to get it done by the end of the year, but I am behind time, as usual. I suppose it will come out some time in the spring.3 I am afraid it is not the kind of thing that would be of any use to you for translation purposes, but I will send you a copy for yo
urself if you would like one. I forget whether I told you that a Frenchman wrote to me asking whether I would like La Vache Enragée translated into English! He had heard bits of it over the wireless but did not know it was already a translation.
Once again, all my sympathies for you in your sad loss. And my best wishes for Christmas and the New Year.
Yours
Eric A Blair
P.S. If you have occasion to write any time, would you write to 36 High Street, Southwold, Suffolk? I shall be changing my address shortly, but my parents will always forward letters.
[LO, pp. 60–1; X, 263A, p. 406; typewritten in English]
1.Mr Jean Pons, head of the Strand Palace Hotel Kitchens, The Strand, London, WC 2, had written to the French publishers to say that if Orwell would like ‘supporting information’ regarding his account of life in the kitchens of a large hotel, he would be happy to provide it (see LO¸ p. 56). No letter to or from M. Pons has survived.
2.La Vache Enragée was the French title of Down and Out in Paris and London. M. Raimbault explained to Orwell on 15 October 1934 that ‘manger de la vache enragée . . . nearly enough corresponds to your expression “to go to the dogs”.’ It implies suffering great hardship. It was, though Orwell certainly did not know it, the title of a satirical journal published in Paris in 1896 for which Toulouse-Lautrec designed a fine poster. The contemporary French translation has changed the title to Dans la dèche, an expression Arnold Bennett uses to describe destitution in the Paris scenes of The Old Wives’ Tale (1908): ‘Is he also in the ditch?’ (III, 6, iii).
3.Keep the Aspidistra Flying was published by Gollancz on 20 April 1936. No French edition appeared until 1960 when Gallimard published a translation by Yvonne Davet* as Et Vive l’Aspidistra!
To Leonard Moore*
24 February 1936
22 Darlington Street
Wigan
Lancs1
Dear Mr Moore,
Many thanks for your letter. I have made the alterations Gollancz asked for and sent back the proof and I trust it will now be all right. It seems to me to have utterly ruined the book, but if they think it worth publishing in that state, well and good. Why I was annoyed was because they had not demanded these alterations earlier. The book was looked over and O.K.’d by the solicitor as usual, and had they then told me that no reminiscence (it was in most cases only a reminiscence, not a quotation) of actual advertisements was allowable, I would have entirely rewritten the first chapter and modified several others. But they asked me to make the alterations when the book was in type and asked me to equalise the letters, which of course could not be done without spoiling whole passages and in one case a whole chapter. On the other hand to rewrite the whole first chapter when it was in type would have meant an immense addition to expenses, which obviously I could not ask Gollancz to bear. I would like to get this point clear because I imagine the same trouble is likely to occur again. In general a passage of prose or even a whole chapter revolves round one or two key phrases, and to remove these, as was done in this case, knocks the whole thing to pieces. So perhaps another time we could arrange with Gollancz that all alterations are to be made while the book is in typescript.2
If you manage to get an American publisher to accept the book, I wonder whether you could see to it that what he prints is the version first printed, without these subsequent alterations? I should like there to be one unmutilated version of it in existence.
The above address will find me till Saturday.
Yours sincerely
Eric A Blair
[X, 284, pp. 434–5; handwritten]
1.Orwell was in Lancashire studying conditions. One result would be The Road to Wigan Pier. (See Orwell: Diaries (2009).)
2.Orwell had been rightly exasperated by the many changes required for fear of actions for libel and defamation despite the text having been approved by the libel lawyer. These had to be made to the printed text and changes were restricted to the same number of letters as the original. (See IV, Textual Note, pp. 279–86.) Keep the Aspidistra Flying was not published in the United States until 1956 and it followed the corrupt text. Further details of these changes are included here in the appendix New Textual Discoveries.
To Jack Common*
17 March 1936
4 Agnes Terrace
Barnsley, Yorks
Dear Common,
Would you like a short review of Alec Browne’s° book The Fate of the Middle Classes? Or is someone else doing it for you? I have scrounged a free copy and it seems not an uninteresting book, at any rate it is on an important subject and I thought I might, eg., do a few lines for the Adelphi Forum1 on it.
I have been in these barbarous regions for about two months and have had a very interesting time and picked up a lot of ideas for my next book2 but I admit I am beginning to pine to be back in the languorous South and also to start doing some work again, which of course is impossible in the surroundings I have been in. My next novel 3 ought to be out shortly. It would have been out a month ago only there was one of those fearful last-minute scares about libel and I was made to alter it to the point of ruining it utterly. What particularly stuck in my gizzard was that the person who dictated the alterations to me was that squirt Norman Collins.4 Do you want a copy sent to the Adelphi? If you think you could get it reviewed I will have them send a copy, but not if you haven’t space to spare. I went to the Adelphi offices5 in Manchester and saw Higginbottom° 6 several times, also Meade7 with whom I stayed several days. I may tell you in case you don’t know that there are fearful feuds and intrigues going on among the followers of the Adelphi and I will tell you about these when I see you. I didn’t say anything of this to Rees* when I wrote, because I thought his feelings might be hurt.
What about the international situation? Is it war? I think not, because if the government have any sense at all they must realise that they haven’t got the country behind them. I think things will remain uneasily in statu quo and the war will break out later, possibly this autumn. If you notice wars tend to break out in the autumn, perhaps because continental governments don’t care to mobilise until they have got the harvest in.
I heard Mosley 8 speak here on Sunday. It sickens one to see how easily a man of that type can win over and bamboozle a working class audience. There was some violence by the Blackshirts, as usual, and I am going to write to the Times about it, but what hope of their printing my letter? 9
I shall be at the above address till about the 25th, after that returning to London, by sea if I can manage it. Hoping to see you some time after that,
Yours
Eric A. Blair
[X, 295, pp. 458–9; typewritten]
1.The Adelphi Forum was described by its editor as being ‘open for short topical comments and for the expression of opinion which may be entirely different from our own.’
2.The Road to Wigan Pier.
3.Keep the Aspidistra Flying.
4.Norman Collins (1907–82), writer, journalist and broadcaster. He was deputy chairman of Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1934–41, and then he joined the BBC Overseas Service. Orwell was to cross swords with him in each of his manifestations. Orwell reviewed his best-known novel, London Belongs to Me on 29 November 1945 (XVII, 2805, pp. 399–41). He became Controller of the BBC Light Programme in 1946 and was later a leading figure in commercial television.
George Orwell: A Life in Letters Page 8