George Orwell: A Life in Letters

by Peter Davison

  Yours,

  Eileen.

  [XI, 510, pp. 248–50; typewritten]

  1.Son of Mary and Jack Common.

  2.The Orwells’ servant, Mahdjoub Mahommed. For Orwell and Mahdjoub milking a goat see plate 10.

  3.Postmaster-General.

  To Cyril Connolly*

  14 December 1938

  Boîte Postale 48

  Marrakech

  Dear Cyril,

  I see your book 1 is out. Send me a copy, won’t you? I can’t get English books here. The New English [Weekly] were going to send it to me to review, but they haven’t done so, perhaps haven’t had a copy. I have been in this place about three months, as it is supposed to do my lungs good to spend the winter here. I have less than no belief in theories about certain climates being ‘good for’ you, on enquiry they always turn out to be a racket run by tourist agencies and local doctors, but now I am here I suppose I shall stay till about April. Morocco seems to me a beastly dull country, no forests and literally no wild animals, and the people anywhere near a big town utterly debauched by the tourist racket and their poverty combined, which turn them into a race of beggars and curio-sellers. Some time next month we are going into the Atlas for a bit, which may be more interesting. I am getting on with my novel which was listed to come out in the autumn but, owing to this bloody illness, didn’t get started till two or three months ago. Of course I shall have to rush it as I must get it done in time for the spring. It’s a pity, really, as it’s a good idea, though I don’t think you’ll like it if you see it. Everything one writes now is overshadowed by this ghastly feeling that we are rushing towards a precipice and, though we shan’t actually prevent ourselves or anyone else from going over, must put up some sort of fight. I suppose actually we have about two years before the guns begin to shoot. I am looking forward to seeing your book, I gather from the reviews that a lot of it is about Eton, and it will interest me very much to see whether the impressions you retain are anything like my own. Of course you were in every way much more of a success at school than I, and my own position was complicated and in fact dominated by the fact that I had much less money than most of the people about me, but as far as externals go we had very much the same experiences from 1912 to 1921. And our literary development impinged at certain points, too. Do you remember one or other of us getting hold of H. G. Wells’s Country of the Blind about 1914, at St. Cyprian’s, and being so enthralled with it that we were constantly pinching it off each other? It’s a very vivid memory of mine, stealing along the corridor at about four o’clock on a midsummer morning into the dormitory where you slept and pinching the book from beside your bed. And do you remember at about the same time my bringing back to school a copy of Compton Mackenzie’s Sinister Street, which you began to read, and then that filthy old sow Mrs Wilkes found out and there was a fearful row about bringing ‘a book of that kind’ (though at the time I didn’t even know what ‘sinister’ meant) into the school. I’m always meaning one of those days to write a book about St. Cyprian’s. I’ve always held that the public schools aren’t so bad, but people are wrecked by those filthy private schools long before they get to public school age.

  Please give all the best to your wife. I hope I’ll see you when I get back.

  Yours

  Eric Blair

  P.S. [handwritten] I suppose the Quintin Hogg 2 who won the Oxford election was the little squirt who was a fag when I left school.

  [XI, 512, pp. 253–4; typewritten]

  1.Enemies of Promise. Although primarily concerned with aspects of life that work against the creative writer, it also describes life at St Cyprian’s (called St Wulfric’s) and Eton. Connolly was at both schools with Orwell, who is quite frequently mentioned. Orwell and Christopher Isherwood are described ‘as the ablest exponents of the colloquial style among the young writers’. Mrs Wilkes was the headmaster’s wife.

  2.Quintin Hogg (1907–2001; 2nd Viscount Hailsham; peerage disclaimed for life, 1963; created life peer, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone, 1970; PC, 1956; KG, 1988; CH, 1974), lawyer, Conservative Party politician, and writer, had entered Eton shortly after Orwell. He was elected to the House of Commons for Oxford City in 1938. Edward Hulton’s Picture Post reported that Hogg’s platform was ‘Unity: solid behind Chamberlain.’

  Eileen* to Norah Myles*

  14–17 Dec 1938

  Boîte Postale 48

  Marrakech

  [no salutation]

  I know my dear girl will receive a New Year Gift just as gladly as she would have done a Xmas Present. Whether she will guess what to do with it afterwards I do not know. They say it’s to put money in & indeed if one does that it sits erect in an appealing way. But that’s just as you like dear. Only I would like to hope that it will be full of money all through 1939 & that you will have other riches too, the better kind.

  The news is that I feel very happy now. So far as I can judge the happiness is the direct result of yesterday’s news, which was a) that Mr Blair is dying of cancer, b) that Gwen’s baby Laurence 1 had to be taken to Great Ormond Street (he is 4½ weeks old, or 5), c) that George Kopp* proposes to come & stay with us in Morocco (he has no money & we had heard the day before by cable that he was out of jail & Spain;2 Eric’s reaction to the cable was that George must stay with us & his reaction to George’s letter announcing his arrival is that he must not stay with us, but I think the solution may be that George won’t find anyone to lend him the necessary money). Eric however is better. I protested a lot about coming here at the beginning of September & I like to be right but I did feel too right. The weather was practically intolerable. I had a temperature of 102 before I’d been in the place twenty-four hours & Eric, without any actual crisis, lost 9lbs in the first month & coughed all day & particularly all night so that we didn’t get thirty minutes’ consecutive rest until November. He has put on about five of the pounds again now & doesn’t cough much (though still more than in England) so I think he may not be much worse at the end of the winter abroad than he was at the beginning. I expect his life has been shortened by another year or two but all the totalitarians make that irrelevant. One reason for my unwillingness to come when we did was that I’d made all the arrangements to come to Bristol, bringing Marx the poodle (who is wintering with Eric’s sister there) but staying with you. Of course you hadn’t heard but you know how pleased you would have been. We were hurled out of the country largely because Eric defied brother Eric to the extent of going to see his father who was already ill though cancer hadn’t been thought of. Brother Eric was unable to think of any more lies about the disease (they’d kept him in Preston Hall on a firm and constantly repeated diagnosis of phthisis for two months after they knew he hadn’t got it & I discovered in the end that on the very first X-rays the best opinions were against even a provisional diagnosis of phthisis) so turned his attention to Morocco. Of course we were silly to come but I found it impossible to refuse & Eric felt that he was under an obligation though he constantly & justly complains that by a quite deliberate campaign of lying he is in debt for the first time in his life3 & has wasted practically a year out of the very few in which he can expect to function. However, now that we’re hardened to the general frightfulness of the country we’re quite enjoying it & Eric is writing a book that pleases both of us very much.4 And in a way I have forgiven Brother Eric who can’t help being a Nature’s Fascist & indeed is upset by this fact which he realises.5

  If you would like some news about Morocco I’ll send you a picture postcard. The markets are fascinating if you smoke (preferably a cigar) all the time & never look down. At first we lived in Marrakech itself, en pension (after the first night which we spent in a brothel owing to Cooks’ lists being a bit out of date). Marrakech crawls with disease of every kind, the ringworm group, the tuberculosis group, the dysentery group; & if you lunch in a restaurant the flies only show themselves as flies as distinct from black masses when they hurry out for a moment to taste a corpse on its way to the ce
metery.6 Now we live in a villa several kilometres out. It is furnished with grass & willow chairs made to order for six francs (armchairs they are, rather comfortable), two rugs & a praying mat, several copper trays, a bed & several camel-hair ‘couvertures’, three whitewood tables, two charcoal braziers for cooking, about a third of the absolutely essential crockery & some chessmen. It looks rather attractive. The house stands in an orange grove & everything belongs to a butcher who cultivates the orange-grove but prefers to live with his meat. The only neighbours are the Arabs who look after the oranges. We have an Arab too, called Mahjroub7 His life history is ‘Moy dix ans et dooje ans avec Francais – soldat.’ He says a lot of good things, sort of biblical. ‘Dire gaz’ means ‘If you put oil in the methylated spirits cup of a Primus it make fumes’ – which you could hardly tell apart from Mizpah.8 He has been worried lately because he never can remember the French for fish but this week he’s really learnt it – it’s oiseau9. We understand each other very nicely now (he often calls me Mon vieux Madame) though I seldom know whether he is talking French or Arabic & myself often speak English. He does the shopping & pumps the water & washes the floors (Moy porty sack chitton) & I do the cooking & curiously enough the washing. The laundries are very expensive (10 francs for a sheet, 11 francs for a shirt, 14 francs for a dress) & generally take two or three weeks. I think probably no one uses them except me so they have to engage a staff every time I send anything. We have two goats who used to give half a pint a day between them at two milkings (the milking being done by Eric while Mahjroub holds head & hind leg) but now their yield has fallen off. Our hens however lay very well. We bought 12, 4 died immediately & the remainder have laid 10 eggs in three days; the answer is a Record for a Moroccan Hen. We have people at the back door wanting to buy them. We also have two doves. They don’t lay eggs but if they think of it will doubtless nest in our pillows as they spend most of the day walking about the house – one behind the other.

  A thing I must remember is Eric’s sister. I was going to Put you in Touch during that weekend. They only came to Bristol about July. Their name is Dacombe: 10 Marjorie aetat 40, Humphrey rather older I suppose, Jane 15, Henry 10, Lucy 7. They live in St. Michael’s Hill – 166 I think. Deep in my heart I dislike Marjorie who isn’t honest but I always enjoy seeing her. We all spent Christmas together & Humphrey wanted to tell me a story that wasn’t fit for the children. It was a very long story, lasting through every passage & always converging on the larder which was colder than any place I remember. I never knew what the story was about, though the children explained several bits to me, but it was a good story. The children are nice children. If you were to call on them it would be kind & you might like them. Humph rather reminds me of Frank Gardner11 but it’s libellous because he hasn’t the same habits. I’m really fond of him. If you don’t call the meeting shall take place when I fetch Marx in the spring but the call would be better for my reputation. The whole family by the way is generally in a state of absolute penury. Of course the nicest Blair is Mr Blair who’s dying but the poor old man is 82 & he doesn’t have any pain which is something.

  Choosing your mother’s Christmas card is always one of my treats but this year I’ve missed it. Partly because of the Christmas cards. Partly because a fortnight ago I suddenly got violent neuralgia & a fever. Normally I go into Marrakech on a red bicycle made in Japan for someone with very short legs & the biggest hands in the world, but for this occasion I had a taxi to go for an X-ray. It seemed obvious that I had another cyst – indeed I even packed a bag in case I had to go into hospital again. There was nothing whatever the matter with my jaws & the fever just went away two or three days ago & today I went out for the first time with a handkerchief round my head. I sent off two parcels & filled in 12 forms & paid more for the postage than I had for the contents. But it’s too late for Christmas cards so give your mother my love instead for the moment, & your father, & Ruth, Jean, Billy, Maurice, June, Norman, John, Elizabeth. Even Quartus, & yet uniquely Norah is loved by

  Pig.

  [LO, pp. 75–9; XI, 512A, p. 254; handwritten]

  1.Laurence O’Shaughnessy Jnr was born on 13 November 1938; 4½ weeks thereafter would be about 14 December and five weeks thereafter about the 17 December.

  2.Writing to Frank Jellinek on 20 December 1938 (CW, XI, 513, p. 257), Orwell says ‘I have heard today from George Kopp,* who was my commandant at the front, and who has just got out of Spain . . .’ but Orwell initially typed ‘jail’ before ‘Spain’ and then crossed it through. There may have been slight confusion between Orwell’s and Eileen’s understanding of precisely when Kopp left jail and Spain.

  3.Orwell thought he was in debt because he considered he had financed the stay in French Morocco by £300 borrowed from the novelist, L. H. Myers*. In fact, it was a gift from Myers, but that was kept concealed from Orwell; indeed, he did not even know the name of his benefactor because the money was transferred via Max Plowman, whom he had known from his time writing for The Adelphi. When Orwell had sufficient money (from the sales of Animal Farm) he repaid the gift via Max Plowman’s widow, Dorothy (see 19.2.46).

  4.Coming Up for Air, published by Gollancz on 12 June 1939.

  5.Eileen’s description of her dearly-loved brother as ‘a Nature’s Fascist’ suggests that, doubtless for the best of reasons, Laurence attempted to deceive Orwell as to his condition.