George Orwell: A Life in Letters

by Peter Davison

  Yours faithfully.

  [XII, 778, pp. 453–4; typewritten]

  1.Orwell was proved correct; the bayonet was relatively rarely used for the purpose for which it was designed.

  Eileen* to Norah Myles*

  [March 1941?]

  [no salutation]

  The semi crest means that the paper was waste before it Flowered. The same is true of my time as a government servant. There is not much paper, so to sum up:

  Physical condition – much improved by air raids, possibly because I now sleep several hours a night longer than ever in my life;

  Mental condition – temporarily improved by air raids which were a change, degenerating again now that air raids threaten to become monotonous;

  Events since the war – daily work of inconceivable dullness; weekly efforts to leave Greenwich always frustrated; monthly visits to the cottage which is still as it was only dirtier;

  Future plans – imaginings of the possibility of leaving a furnished flat (‘chambers’) that we have at Baker Street1 & taking an unfurnished flat north of Baker Street to remain in George’s Home Guard district, with the idea that we might both live in this flat – probably to be frustrated by continued lack of five shillings to spend & increasing scarcity of undemolished flats & perhaps by our ceasing to live anywhere. But the last is unlikely because a shorter & no less accurate summing up would be

  NOTHING EVER HAPPENS TO

  Pig.

  Please write a letter. The difficulty is that I am too profoundly depressed2 to write a letter. I have many times half thought I could come to Bristol but it is literally years since a weekend belonged to me & George would have a haemorrhage. I suppose London is not a place to come to really but if you do ring NATIONAL 3318. My departmental head is almost as frightened of me as he is of taking any decision on his own & I can get Time off. Meanwhile give my love to everyone. E.3

  [LO, pp. 81–2; CW, XII, 771A, p. 443; handwritten]

  1.Although Orwell was still spending some time at Wallington, which Eileen visited monthly, and Eileen was also sometimes at her late brother’s house at Greenwich with his widow, Gwen O’Shaughnessy* (also a G.P.), they moved from Dorset Chambers (hence ‘chambers’ in this letter) to 111 Langford Court, Abbey Road, NW8 on 1 April 1941. This block is north of Baker Street. The date of this letter is not known but in Orwell’s War-time Diary for 3 March 1941 he writes that he went with Gwen to see an air-raid shelter in the crypt under Greenwich church. Orwell records in his War-time Diary for 29 May 1940 that Eileen was working in the Censorship Department in Whitehall (hence the NATIONAL exchange for the telephone number and work of ‘inconceivable dullness’). She later worked for the Ministry of Food where her environment was much friendlier, one of those also employed there becoming a good friend, Lettice Cooper*.

  2.There were many reasons why Eileen should have felt depressed – the unsettled nature of where she should live, shortage of money, the war and the bombing, her own ill-health, but especially the serious effect upon her of the death of her brother Laurence during the retreat to Dunkirk. She never fully recovered from his loss.

  3.E: This is the only occasion in her six letters to Norah that Eileen indicates her name.

  To the Reverend Iorwerth Jones*

  8 April 1941

  111 Langford Court

  Abbey Road

  London NW 8

  Dear Mr Jones,

  Many thanks for your letter. Perhaps in one or two cases I expressed myself rather ambiguously [in The Lion and the Unicorn] and can make things clearer by answering some of your queries.

  1. ‘The U.S.A. will need a year to mobilise its resources even if Big Business can be brought to heel.’ You comment that it is the strikers who are holding up production. That is so, of course, but I was trying to look deeper than the immediate obstruction. The sort of effort that a nation at war now needs can only be made if both labour and capital are conscripted. Ultimately what is needed is that labour should be as much under discipline as the armed forces. This condition practically obtains in the USSR and the totalitarian countries. But it is only practicable if all classes are disciplined alike, otherwise there is constant resentment and social friction, showing itself in strikes and sabotage. In the long run I think the hardest people to bring to heel will be the business men, who have most to lose by the passing of the present system and in some cases are consciously pro-Hitler. Beyond a certain point they will struggle against the loss of their economic freedom, and as long as they do so the causes for labour unrest will exist.

  2. War aims. Of course I am in favour of declaring our war aims, though there is a danger in proclaiming any very detailed scheme for post-war reconstruction, in that Hitler, who is not troubled by any intention of keeping his promises, will make a higher bid as soon as our war-aims are declared. All I protested against in the book was the idea that propaganda without a display of military strength can achieve anything. Acland’s book Unser Kampf, which I referred to, seemed to assume that if we told the Germans we wanted a just peace they would stop fighting. The same idea is being put about, though in this case not in good faith, by the People’s Convention1 crowd (Pritt 2 and Co.)

  3. A pro-Fascist rebellion in India. I wasn’t thinking of a rebellion primarily by Indians, I was thinking of the British community in India. A British general attempting a Fascist coup d’état would probably use India as his jumping-off place, as Franco used Morocco. Of course it isn’t a likelihood at this stage of the war, but one has got to think of the future. If an attempt to impose open naked Fascism upon Britain is ever made, I think coloured troops are almost certain to be used.

  4. Gandhi and pacifism. Perhaps I ought not to have implied that pacifists are always people who as individuals have led sheltered lives, though it is a fact that ‘pure’ pacifists usually belong to the middle classes and have grown up in somewhat exceptional circumstances. But it is a fact that pacifism as a movement barely exists except in communities where people don’t feel foreign invasion and conquest to be likely. That is why pacifist movements are always found in maritime countries (there is even I believe a fairly considerable pacifist movement in Japan). Government cannot be conducted on ‘pure’ pacifist lines, because any government which refused in all circumstances to use force could be overthrown by anyone, even any individual, who was willing to use force. Pacifism refuses to face the problem of government and pacifists think always as people who will never be in a position of control, which is why I call them irresponsible.

  Gandhi has been regarded for twenty years by the Government of India as one of its right-hand men. I know what I am talking about—I used to be an officer in the Indian police. It was always admitted in the most cynical way that Gandhi made it easier for the British to rule India, because his influence was always against taking any action that would make any difference. The reason why Gandhi when in prison is always treated with such lenience,° and small concessions sometimes made when he has prolonged one of his fasts to a dangerous extent, is that the British officials are in terror that he may die and be replaced by someone who believes less in ‘soul force’ and more in bombs. Gandhi is of course personally quite honest and unaware of the way in which he is made use of, and his personal integrity makes him all the more useful. I won’t undertake to say that his methods will not succeed in the long run. One can at any rate say that by preventing violence and therefore preventing relations being embittered beyond a certain point, he has made it more likely that the problem of India will ultimately be settled in a peaceful way. But it is hard to believe that the British will ever be got out of India by those means, and certainly the British on the spot don’t think so. As to the conquest of England, Gandhi would certainly advise us to let the Germans rule here rather than fight against them—in fact he did advocate just that. And if Hitler conquered England he would, I imagine, try to bring into being a nationwide pacifist movement, which would prevent serious resistance and therefore make it easier for him to ru
le.

  Thank you for writing.

  Yours sincerely

  George Orwell

  [XII, 785, pp. 465–7; typewritten]

  1.The People’s Convention was organised in January 1941 by the Communists, ostensibly to fight for public rights, higher wages, better air-raid precautions, and friendship with the USSR. Some historians maintain that its true purpose was to agitate against the war effort. In July 1941, after the Soviet Union’s entry into the war, it immediately called for a second front. By 1942 its active work had ceased.

  2.D. N. Pritt (1887–1972) was a Labour MP, 1935–40, then, on expulsion from the party for policy disagreements, Independent Socialist MP until 1950. Well known as a barrister, he was a fervent supporter of left-wing causes and the Soviet Union.

  To Dorothy Plowman*

  20 June 1941

  111 Langford Court

  Abbey Road NW 8

  Dear Dorothy,

  I can’t say much about Max’s death. You know how it is, the seeming uselessness of trying to offer any consolation when somebody is dead. My chief sorrow is that he should have died while this beastly war is still going on. I had not seen him for nearly two years, I deeply disagreed with him over the issue of pacifism, but though I am sorry about that you will perhaps understand when I say that I feel that at bottom it didn’t matter. I always felt that with Max the most fundamental disagreement didn’t alter one’s personal relationship in any way, not only because he was incapable of any pettiness but also because one never seems able to feel any resentment against an opinion which is sincerely held. I felt that though Max and I held different opinions on nearly all specific subjects, there was a sense in which I could agree with his vision of life. I was very fond of him, and he was always very good to me. If I remember rightly, he was the first English editor to print any writing of mine, twelve years ago or more.1

  There is still the £300 which I borrowed through you from my anonymous benefactor.2 I hope this doesn’t embarrass you personally in any way. I can’t possibly repay it at this moment, though I hope you understand that I haven’t abandoned the intention of doing so. It is hard to make much more than a living nowadays. One can’t write books with this nightmare going on, and though I can get plenty of journalistic and broadcasting work, it is rather a hand-to-mouth existence. We have been in London almost from the outbreak of the war. We have kept on our cottage, but we let it furnished and only manage to go down there very occasionally. For more than a year Eileen was working in the Censorship Department, but I have induced her to drop it for a while, as it was upsetting her health. She is going to have a good rest and then perhaps get some less futile and exasperating work to do. I can’t join the army because I am medically graded as class D, but I am in the Home Guard (a sergeant!) I haven’t heard from Richard Rees* for some time, but last time I heard from him he was a gunner on a coal boat.

  Eileen sends her best love. Please remember me also to Piers3 and everyone. I gather from your card that Piers is now in England. I hope you succeed in keeping him out of danger. This is a rotten time to be alive, but I think anyone of Piers’s age has a chance of seeing something better.

  Yours

  Eric Blair

  [XII, 817, pp. 514–5; typewritten]

  1.G. K.’s Weekly published his first article in English, ‘A Farthing Newspaper’, 29 December 1928 (X, 80, pp.119–21). Max Plowman did much to further Orwell’s writing in The Adelphi.

  2.L. H. Myers.*

  3.The Plowmans’ son.

  The BBC and the War

  1941 – 1943

  Orwell worked incredibly hard at the BBC. He wrote 105 English-language newsletters for India, and for occupied Malaya and Indonesia. He also wrote the originals for 115 newsletters for translation into Indian languages. We know some were heard in Japanese-occupied territories. A nun in Malaya, Sister Margaret, described to a WRAC officer, Barbara Rigby, how she and the Sisters risked their lives to listen in and walked many miles to give others the news. The nuns, she said, had been cheered by Orwell: ‘we used to bless that good man’. Orwell’s idea of propaganda was to broadcast educational and cultural programmes. Long before the Open University he organised courses based on Calcutta and Bombay University syllabuses on literature, science, medicine, agriculture and psychology, engaging speakers of outstanding distinction as varied as T.S. Eliot* and Joseph Needham. He arranged programmes on The Koran and Das Kapital, on music and poetry. There was a curious programme in which five distinguished writers, including E.M. Forster completed, independently, a story that Orwell had begun. And he made dramatic adaptations.

  How effective was all this? Orwell thought he had wasted his time and listener research was not encouraging. Two documents might suggest otherwise. On 20 November 1945, Balraj Sahni* wrote to Orwell from Bombay sympathising on Eileen’s death. Balraj and his wife, Damyanti, had worked with Orwell in a series on the mechanics of presenting drama, Let’s Act It Ourselves. Balraj Sahni wrote, ‘We saw little of you two but you endeared yourselves to us greatly, through your work and your sincerity.’ They were working in the Indian People’s Theatre, ‘work which doesn’t bring us money but a lot of happiness’. They had had nearly fifty new plays written which they had performed to audiences totalling more than a million people. Damyanti died very young in 1947. Balraj became a very famous film actor. Orwell also presented a series of Indian plays in abbreviated format such as the Sanscrit Mrocchakatika (‘The Little Clay Cart’). When this was presented in London forty years later it was described as ‘a first’.

  Secondly, on 7 August 1943, the Director of the Indian Services, Rushbrook-Williams* wrote this in his confidential annual report on Orwell (reproduced by kind permission of the BBC Written Archives Centre): ‘He has a great facility in writing and a literary flair which makes his work distinguished… He supports uncomplainingly a considerable burden of poor health. This never affects his work, but occasionally strains his nerves. I have the highest opinion of his moral, as well as of his intellectual capacity. He is transparently honest, incapable of subterfuge, and, in early days, would have either been canonised – or burnt at the stake! Either fate he would have sustained with stoical courage. An unusual colleague – but a mind, and a spirit, of real and distinguished worth.’ His achievement was no less than to provide an inspiration for the Third Programme (now Radio 3) (see 19.9.46, n.3).

  In the midst of this, Orwell’s mother, Ida, died on 19 March 1943 of bronchitis complicated by emphysema. Orwell was at her bedside, but, as Gordon Bowker points out, it failed to stop her son smoking his pungent roll-up cigarettes (p. 297).

  From Orwell’s letter to Mrs Laura Buddicom, 27 June 1920

  This is an abstract from the sole surviving copy of a memorandum establishing the BBC Eastern Services Committee. It was written by R.A. Rendall, Director of the Empire Service at the time, and is the copy sent to R.W. Brock of the India Section of the Ministry of Information (situated in the University of London’s Senate House, which would be the model for the Ministry of Truth in Nineteen Eighty-Four).

  16 October 1941

  [no address: BBC internal memo]

  I think you are aware that in our endeavour to integrate and expand the Eastern Services of the B.B.C., we have decided to constitute an Eastern Services Committee, which will hold regular fortnightly sessions. On this Committee, which will be an internal organism of the Corporation, the India Office and the Ministry of Information will be represented. . . . The Committee will be presided over by Professor Rushbrook Williams,* our recently appointed Eastern Services Director. . . .

  It is intended to hold the first meeting of the Committee at 2.30 p.m. in Room 101 at 55 Portland Place on Wednesday, October 22nd.

  [XIII, 870, pp. 57–8]

  An agenda was enclosed. Orwell was not invited to the first meeting (though his superior, Zulfaqar Ali Bokhari* attended). 55 Portland Place was a block of flats close to Broadcasting House which the Indian Section used until it moved to 200
Oxford Street. When it was returned to the BBC it was completely refashioned and the surviving plans do not show the layout of rooms at the time the BBC used them, so Room 101 cannot be identified. It was probably on the ground floor. It was certainly not in Broadcasting House itself. Orwell is known to have attended at least twelve meetings and on 14 October 1942 was listed as convenor of a sub-committee to explore the possibilities of organising drama and poetry competitions in India. By this time the BBC had moved to 200 Oxford Street and the meeting was held in Room 314.

  In Nineteen Eighty-Four O’Brien tells Orwell that the thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world (p. 296). The understandable impression is that this is something like drowning, death by fire, or impalement, but Orwell is more subtle: for many, and for him, the worst thing in the world is that which is the bureaucrat’s life-blood: attendance at meetings.

  To E. Rowan Davies*

  16 May 1942

  Information Re Burma Campaign

  The questions which I think could usefully be asked of the Burma government are: —