George Orwell: A Life in Letters

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George Orwell: A Life in Letters Page 37

by Peter Davison


  2.Macdonald reprinted the section of Orwell’s letter from ‘A month or two back’ to ‘has no clothes on’ in Politics, March 1946, and then continued: ‘What struck me about Animal Farm, in addition to the literary tact with which it is done so that it never becomes either whimsical or boringly tendentious, was that I had rarely been made so aware of the pathos of the whole Russian experience. This fairy tale about animals, whose mood is reflective rather than indignant, conveys more of the terrible human meaning of Stalinism than any of the many serious books on the subject, with one or two exceptions.’

  3.‘An American Reverie’ was not published and no manuscript has been traced.

  4.David Martin (1914–) was a Canadian airman whom Orwell befriended.

  To Arthur Koestler*

  10 January 1946

  27B Canonbury Square

  Islington N 1

  Dear Arthur,

  I saw Barbara Ward1 and Tom Hopkinson2 today and told them about our project. They were both a little timid, chiefly I think because they realise that an organisation of this type would in practice be anti-Russian, or would be compelled to become anti-Russian, and they are going through an acute phase of anti-Americanism. However they are anxious to hear more and certainly are not hostile to the idea. I said the next step would be to show them copies of the draft manifesto, or whatever it is, when drawn up. I wonder if you have seen Bertrand Russell, and if so, what he said. I have no doubt these two would help to the extent of passing our ideas on to others, but at some stage it might be more useful to contact Hulton 3 personally, which I could do. I haven’t found out anything significant about the League for the Rights of Man. No one seems to have much about it in their files. All I can discover is that it is still in existence in France, and that it did exist in Germany up to Hitler, so it must have been an international organisation. There is something about it in Wells’s Crux Ansata 4 (which I can’t get hold of), so it is possible that it drew up the Declaration of the Rights of Man which Wells is always burbling about. But I am certain that some years before the war it had become a Stalinist organisation, as I distinctly remember that it refused to intervene in favour of the Trotskyists in Spain: nor so far as I remember did it do anything about the Moscow trials. But one ought to verify all this.

  I hope you are all well. I am very busy as usual. I had lunch with Negrín 5 the other day, but couldn’t get much information out of him. I never manage to see him quite alone. But I still feel fairly sure that he is not the Russians’ man, as he was credited with being during the civil war. However I don’t suppose it makes much difference, as I am afraid there is not much chance of Negrín’s lot getting back when Franco moves out. I am also having lunch with Beaverbrook next week. If I get a chance to speak to him on equal terms at all I shall ask him about Stalin, whom after all he has seen at close quarters a number of times.

  The French publisher who had signed a contract to translate Animal Farm has got cold feet and says it is impossible ‘for political reasons.’ It’s really sad to think a thing like that happening in France, of all countries in the world. However I dare say one of the others will risk it. Did I tell you I had fixed an American edition?

  The book of essays is printing and they say they can’t make alterations in the text, but we are going to put in an erratum slip, at any rate about the German-English business.6

  Please give my love to Mamaine.7 Richard is very well. Celia came to tea on Tuesday and saw him have his bath.

  Yours

  George

  P.S. I don’t think I ever thanked you for our stay. I have a sort of inhibition about that, because as a child I was taught to say ‘Thank you for having me’ after a party, and it seemed to me such an awful phrase.

  [XVIII, 2852, pp. 27–9; typewritten]

  1.Barbara Ward (1914–81; DBE, 1974; Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth, 1976, economist and writer on politics; assistant editor The Economist, 1939–57. A Governor of the BBC, 1946–50. She was known for her concerns for individual freedom and civil rights.

  2.Tom Hopkinson (1905–90; Kt. 1978), author, editor, and journalist. He was associated especially with Picture Post which he helped launch and edited 1940–50. He taught journalism at British and American universities, 1967–75 and wrote a British Council pamphlet on Orwell (1953). Of his two biographies, Of This Our Time (1982) is concerned with the period when Orwell was working.

  3.Edward Hulton (1906–1988; Kt., 1957), lawyer, magazine publisher of liberal views, proprietor of Picture Post at this time. His The New Age was published in 1943 and reviewed by Orwell in the Observer, 15 August 1943 (XV, 2237, 201–2).

  4.Crux Ansata: An Indictment of the Roman Catholic Church (Penguin Special, 1943). Orwell had got the wrong Penguin Special, however. In May 1940 Penguin Books published H.G. Wells’s The Rights of Man, Or, What Are We Fighting For? Chapter X discussed a Complément à la Déclaration des Droits de l’homme, which had been passed by a congress of the Ligue des Droits de l’homme at Dijon in July 1936. Wells said this document was ‘more plainly feminist and less simply equalitarian in sexual matters’ than what was proposed in his book, and it made ‘a distinction between “travail” and “loisirs” which we do not recognise’. He then gave the text.

  5.Dr Juan Negrín (1889–1956), Socialist Prime Minister of Spain from September 1936 for much of the civil war. He went to France in 1939 and set up a Spanish government in exile; he resigned from its premiership in 1945 in the hope of uniting all exiles. (See Thomas, pp. 949–50.)

  6.To Orwell’s essay on Koestler.

  7.Mamaine Koestler (née Paget, 1916–54), Koestler’s wife and twin sister of Celia Kirwan.*

  To Geoffrey Gorer*

  22 January 1946

  27B Canonbury Square

  Islington N 1

  Dear Geoffrey,

  It was too good of you to send all those things. They were greatly appreciated here, especially by Richard, who had a big whack of the plum pudding and seemed none the worse afterwards. I was amused by the ‘this is an unsolicited gift’ on the outside, which I suppose is a formula necessitated by people over here writing cadging letters. I had quite a good Christmas. I went to Wales to stay with Arthur Koestler for a few days while the nurse went away with her own kid.1 Richard went out to a lot of parties where he was the only child, and except for occasionally dirtying his trousers (I still can’t get him house-trained) behaved with great aplomb and sat up to table in an ordinary chair. But of course the travelling just before and just after Xmas was fearful. To leave London you had to queue up 2 hours before the train left, and coming back the train was 4 hours late and landed one in town about half an hour after the undergrounds had stopped. However, fortunately Richard enjoys travelling, and I think when you are carrying a child you have a slightly better chance with porters.

  It is foully cold here and the fuel shortage is just at its worst. We only got a ton of coal for the whole winter and it’s almost impossible to get logs. Meanwhile the gas pressure is so low that one can hardly get a gas fire to light, and one can only get about 1½ gallons of lamp oil a week. What I do is to light the fires with a little of the coal I have left and keep them damped down all day with blocks of wet peat of which I happen to have a few. It’s so much easier in the country where if you’re absolutely forced to you can go out and scrounge firewood. Otherwise things aren’t bad here. Food is about the same as ever. Yesterday I took Sillone°2 and his wife out to dinner. They were only here for a few days and were still in a state of being astonished at the food, all the English in Rome having told them we were starving over here. I am always ashamed when people come to England for the first time like that, and say to them ‘Don’t think England is like this in peacetime,’ but the S.s. said that for cleanness and state of repair London was a dream compared with Rome. They said that in Rome you could get anything if you had enough money, but an overcoat, for instance, cost the equivalent of £120.

  Didn’t you tell me you met Dennis Collings* in Mal
aya? He was an anthropologist, and I think latterly was curator of the museum in Singapore. I used to know him very well. He got home recently and I heard from him the other day. He had been captured in Java and appeared not to have had absolutely too bad a time, having been a camp interpreter.

  I forget if I’d started doing weekly articles for the Evening Standard before you left. In spite of—by my standards—enormous fees it doesn’t do me much good financially, because one extra article a week just turns the scale and makes it necessary for me to have a secretary.3 However, even with the extra article she takes a certain amount of drudgery off me, and I am using her to arrange and catalogue my collection of pamphlets.4 I find that up to date I have about 1200, but of course they keep on accumulating. I have definitely arranged I am going to stop doing the Evening Standard stuff and most other journalism in May, and take six months off to write another novel. If the Jura place can be put in order this year I shall go there, otherwise I shall take a furnished house somewhere in the country, preferably by the sea, but anyway somewhere I can’t be telephoned to. My book of reprints ought to be out soon and the American title is Dickens, Dali and others. Scribners5 are doing that one, and Harcourt Brace (I think that is the name) are doing Animal Farm. I don’t fancy that one will sell in the USA, though of course it might sell heavily, as with most books in America it seems you either sell 100,000 copies or nothing. I have arranged a lot of translations of A.F., but the French publishers who signed the first contract have already got cold feet and say it’s impossible at present ‘for political reasons.’ I think it’s sad to think of a thing like that happening, in France of all countries.

  I must knock off now as this is Susan’s day off and I have to go out and do the shopping. Richard has been trying to help me with the typing of this letter. He is now 20 months old and weighs about 32 lbs. He still doesn’t talk but is very alert in other ways and extremely active, in fact you can’t keep him still for a moment. Three times in the last month he got all the radiants out of the gas fire and smashed them to bits, which is a nuisance because they’re very difficult to buy. I think he could talk if he wanted to, but he hardly needs to as he can usually get what he wants by making an inarticulate noise and pointing—at least he does not exactly point but throws both arms out in the general direction of the thing he wants.

  Let me hear how you are getting on and how things are in the USA. I hear they hate us more than ever now.

  Yours

  George

  [XVIII, 2870, pp. 52–4; typewritten]

  1.Susan Watson (1918–2001), was Orwell’s housekeeper from early summer 1945 to autumn 1946 caring also for Richard. She had married a Cambridge University mathematician but they were in the process of being divorced. She had a seven-year-old daughter, Sally, who was at boarding school. (See her memoir in Orwell Remembered, pp. 217–25 and Remembering Orwell, pp. 156–62 and 175–78.)

  2.Ignazio Silone (Secondo Tranquilli) (1900–1978), author and politician, was one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party but by the time of his exile in Switzerland after Mussolini’s rise to power he had distanced himself from its aims but remained strongly anti-Fascist. He was at this time editor of Avanti, the organ of the Italian Socialist Party, but he resigned in July 1946. Orwell dramatised his story, ‘The Fox’, for the BBC, broadcast 9 September 1943 (XV, 2270, pp. 230–42).

  3.Siriol Hugh-Jones.

  4.From 1935 onwards, Orwell had collected pamphlets representing minority views. These he left to the British Museum, and they are now in the British Library.

  5.A curious error: Critical Essays was published in New York by Reynal & Hitchcock.

  To Dorothy Plowman*

  19 February 1946

  27B Canonbury Square

  Islington N1

  Dear Dorothy,

  I enclose cheque for £150 as a first instalment of repayment of that £300 anonymously lent to me in 19381—it’s a terribly long time afterwards to start repaying, but until this year I was really unable to. Just latterly I have started making money. I got your address from Richard Rees.* It’s a long time since I heard from you, and I do not think I even wrote to you when Max died. One does not know what to say when these things happen. I reviewed Max’s book of letters for the Manchester Evening News, which you may have seen.2 My book Animal Farm has sold quite well, and the new one, which is merely a book of reprints,3 also seems to be doing well. It was a terrible shame that Eileen didn’t live to see the publication of Animal Farm, which she was particularly fond of and even helped in the planning of. I suppose you know I was in France when she died. It was a terribly cruel and stupid thing to happen. No doubt you know I have a little boy named Richard whom we adopted in 1944 when he was 3 weeks old. He was ten months old when Eileen died and is 21 months old now. Her last letter to me was to tell me he was beginning to crawl. Now he has grown into a big strong child and is very active and intelligent, although he doesn’t talk yet. I have a nurse-housekeeper who looks after him and me, and luckily we are able to get a char as well. He is so full of beans that it is getting difficult to keep him in the flat, and I am looking forward to getting him out of London for the whole summer. I am not quite certain where we are going. I am supposed to be the tenant of a cottage in the Hebrides, but it’s possible they won’t have it in living order this year, in which case I shall probably take him to the east coast somewhere. I want a place where he can run in and out of the house all day with no fear of traffic. I am anxious to get out of London for my own sake as well, because I am constantly smothered under journalism—at present I am doing 4 articles every week—and I want to write another book which is impossible unless I can get 6 months quiet. I have been in London almost the whole of the war. Eileen was working for 4 or 5 years in government offices, generally for 10 hours a day or more, and it was partly overwork that killed her. I shall probably go back to the country in 1947, but at present it’s impossible to get hold of unfurnished houses and so I daren’t let go of my flat.

  Richard Rees* is living in Chelsea and has kept his beard, although demobilised. Rayner Heppenstall* has a job in the BBC and seems to be quite liking it. It’s funny that you should be at Royston, so near where we used to live.4 I have got to go down some time to the cottage I still have there, to sort out the furniture and books, but I have been putting it off because last time I was there it was with Eileen and it upsets me to go there. What has become of Piers?5 I hope all goes well with you both.

  Yours

  Eric Blair

  [XVIII, 2903, pp. 115–6; typewritten]

  1.L.H. Myers had, unknown to Orwell, financed his and Eileen’s stay in Morocco. The Plowmans acted as intermediaries.

  2.He did write at the time of Max’s death (see 20.6.41). Orwell reviewed Bridge into the Future: Letters of Max Plowman in the Manchester Evening News, 7 December 1944, (XVI, 2589, pp. 492–4).

  3.Critical Essays.

  4.Wallington (where Orwell rented a cottage).

  5.The Plowmans’ son.

  To Arthur Koestler*

  This letter lacks a strip torn off down its right-hand side. The missing words, conjecturally reconstructed, are given here in square brackets.

  5 March 1946

  27B Canonbury Square

  Islington N 1

  Dear Arthur,

  It’s funny you should send me Czapsky’s° 1 pamphlet, which I have been trying for some time [to get] someone to translate and publish. Warburg wouldn’t do it b[ecause] he said it was an awkward length, and latterly I gave it t[o the] Anarchist (Freedom Press) group. I don’t know what decisi[on they’ve] come to. I met Czapsky° in Paris and had lunch with him. T[here is] no doubt that he is not only authentic but a rather exce[ptional] person, though whether he is any good as a painter I do[n’t know. He] is the person who made to me a remark which I may or ma[y not have] retailed to you—I forget. After telling me something [of the priv-]ation and his sufferings in the concentration camp, he [said some-]thing like this: ‘For a
while in 1941 and 1942 there w[as much] defeatism in Russia, and in fact it was touch and go [whether the] Germans won the war. Do you know what saved Russia at [that time? In] my opinion it was the personal character of Stalin—I [put it down to] the greatness of Stalin. He stayed in Moscow when the [Germans nearly] took it, and his courage was what saved the situation.2 [Considering] what he had been through, this seemed to me sufficie[nt proof of] Czapsky’s reliability. I told him I would do what I [could about the] pamphlet here. If the Freedom Press people fall thro[ugh, what about] Arthur Ballard, who is now beginning to publish pamp[hlets? He might] take it.3 Do you want this copy back? The Anarchists [have mine] and it’s a rather treasured item of my collection.

  The Observer say, will you write for them some [reviews. I am] scouting round for people to do the main review, wh[ich must be done] by the same person every week—I do it every other [week and will] be stopping at the end of April. Apart from the mai[n review I] intend quite soon to start having essays of about 8[00 words on the] middle page under the main article. You would get a [good fee, I] think, for either of these jobs.

  I’d love to come up to your place, but I dou[bt whether I can] get away. I have such a lot to do winding everythi[ng up, arranging for] the furniture to be sent and all sorts of things t[o do, almost like] stocking up a ship for an arctic voyage. Love to Ma[maine.]

  Yours

  George

  [XVIII, 2919, pp. 136–8; typewritten]

  1.Joseph Czapski (1896–1993), wrote to Orwell on 11 December 1945 at the suggestion of ‘mon ami Poznanski’ because he thought Orwell could find an English publisher for his pamphlet (a quite sizeable booklet) Souvenirs de Starobielsk. This had originally been published in Polish as Wspomnienia Starobielskia in 1944; Italian and French translations followed in 1945. Czapski, a Polish painter and author, but born in Prague, studied in St Petersburg, 1912–17, and witnessed the Russian Revolution; in 1920 he returned to Poland and from 1924 to 1931 he studied and worked as a painter in Paris, being shown there and in Geneva. He fought with the 8th Polish Lancers against the Germans and then the Russians in 1939, and was taken prisoner by the Soviets. He was one of 78 of nearly 4,000 prisoners at Starobielsk prison camp transferred to a prison camp at Gryazovets. He spent twenty-three months in these camps. When the Germans invaded Russia, he was allowed to join other Polish prisoners, many of whom had suffered terrible privations, in a Polish Army under General Anders to fight the Germans. It is known that some 15,700 Poles were murdered by the Russians at Katyn and other camps (Czapski’s figures, Souvenirs de Starobielsk, 1945, p. 18). A further 7,000 from camps in the Komi Republic were packed into barges which were deliberately sunk in the White Sea, causing their deaths by drowning (The Inhuman Land, pp. 35–36). Czapski remained in Paris after the war and was one of the founders of the influential Polish cultural monthly journal, Kultura.

 

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