2.See 17.3.45 for the change to Animal Farm to reflect Stalin’s staying in Moscow.
3.Orwell and Koestler were unsuccessful. Despite the booklet’s having what Czapski called ‘une certaine actualité’ in the light of what was being presented in evidence at the Nuremberg Trial of War Criminals, Souvenirs de Starobielsk was not then translated into English and has never been published in Britain.
To Anne Popham*
15 March 1946
27B Canonbury Square
Islington N 1
Dear Andie,
I call you that because it is what I have heard other people call you—I don’t know what you like to be called, really. It must be nearly a fortnight since you left. I would have written earlier, but I have been ill all this week with something called gastritis. I think a word like that tells you a lot about the medical profession. If you have a pain in your belly it is called gastritis, if it is in your head I suppose it would be called cephalitis and so on. Any way it is quite an unpleasant thing to have, but I am somewhat better and got up for the first time today. Richard has been quite offensively well and prancing all over the place. I have at last got one of those pens that don’t have any ink in them,1 so I have been able to suppress the inkpot, which he had got hold of three times in the last week or two. He has got a new waterproof cape in which he looks quite dashing, and when we go away for the summer he is going to have his first pair of boots.
I wonder what sort of journey you had and how bearable it is in Germany now. I think in that sort of life a lot depends on having a vehicle of your own and being able to get away from the others a bit. Write and tell me what it is like and any bits of gossip you hear about what the Germans are saying about us now. I think you said you would be back in England in July. I’m not sure where we shall be by then—I intend to get out of London for the whole summer, but we haven’t yet fixed where. I have definitely arranged to drop all journalistic work for 6 months and am pining for that time to start. I’ve still got a few ghastly jobs, ie. outside my routine ones, hanging over my head, and being ill like this puts everything back. The rubbishy feature I was writing for the BBC got finished at last, but I now have to write a pamphlet for the British Council on English cookery. I don’t know why I was such a fool as to let myself in for it—however it will be quite short so I can probably knock it off in a week.2 After that I haven’t any actual tripe to write. When I get away I am going to start on a novel. It is 6 years or so since I wrote any such thing and it will probably be an awful job to start, but I think with six clear months I could break the back of it.
I wonder if you were angry or surprised when I sort of made advances to you that night before you went away. You don’t have to respond—what I mean is, I wouldn’t be angry if you didn’t respond. I didn’t know till you told me about your young man.3 I thought you looked lonely and unhappy, and I thought it just conceivable you might come to take an interest in me, partly because I imagined you were a little older than you are. But I fully realise that I’m not suited to someone like you who is young and pretty and can still expect to get something out of life. There isn’t really anything left in my life except my work and seeing that Richard gets a good start. It is only that I feel so desperately alone sometimes. I have hundreds of friends, but no woman who takes an interest in me and can encourage me. Write and tell me what you think about all this. Of course it’s absurd a person like me wanting to make love to someone of your age. I do want to, but, if you understand, I wouldn’t be offended or even hurt if you simply say no. Any way, write and tell me what you feel.
I wonder if there is anything I can do for you or send you. Are there any books you want? Or any papers? Would you like to be sent Tribune, for instance? I should think some of your brother officers wouldn’t approve of it much. Talking of books I have been able to get some of Henry Miller’s books again—they seem to be reprinting them in Paris and a few copies get into this country illegally. I don’t know what else of interest has appeared lately. Nearly all the books I get to review are such trash one doesn’t know what to say about them. Would you like to be sent Polemic? The third number is supposed to appear towards the end of April, but lord knows whether it will, as there is always some mess-up about the printing. They now have some wild scheme of printing it in Eire, but then one might bump up against the censorship. Write to me soon and tell me whether there is anything you would like, and how you are getting on, and what you feel about things.
Yours
Geo. Orwell
P.S. I am not sure how to stamp this letter, but I suppose threepence is right?
[XVIII, 2931, pp. 153–4; typewritten]
1.A Biro. Orwell had first tried to buy one in February 1946. They were then quite hard to obtain and very expensive – about £3 (over half-a-week’s wage for an unskilled worker). Orwell found them particularly useful because, when ill, he could write in bed. His use of a Biro can be a clue to when he wrote certain letters and documents.
2.The ‘rubbishy feature’ for the BBC was probably the dramatisation The Voyage of the ‘Beagle’, broadcast 29 March 1946 (XVIII, 2953, pp. 179–201). The text of the booklet, British Cookery, is reproduced in XVIII, 2954, pp. 201–13. Although it was considered to be excellent it was decided not to publish it to avoid offending continental readers at a time of such stringency (though the recipes are hardly exotic). Orwell was paid £31 10s for his script.
3.He had been killed when serving in the RAF (Crick, p. 485).
To Arthur Koestler*
22 March 1946
27B Canonbury Square
Islington N 1
Dear Arthur,
The Manchester Evening News want to know whether, when I stop my reviewing for them (ie. end of April), you would like to take over my job for 6 months. I told them I didn’t think it was awfully likely you would, but that I would ask you. It’s rather hackwork, but it’s a regular 8 guineas a week (that is what they pay me—I expect you could get a bit more out of them) for about 900 words, in which one can say more or less what one likes. The chief bore is reading the books; on the other hand one gets out of this from time to time by doing general articles or dealing with reprints which one knows already. One retains the second rights. You might let me know as soon as possible if this idea has any attraction for you, as otherwise they will have to scout round for someone else.
Love to Mamaine.
Yours
George
P.S. [handwritten] I’ve contacted Malory° Brown 1 who thinks he will probably be able to come up at Easter. I’m going to have lunch with him on April 3rd & talk it over. Meanwhile could you let me know exactly what date he should come up to your place?
[XVIII, 2941, pp. 164–5; typewritten with handwritten postscript]
Koestler replied on 23 March. He decided not to take on the work for the Manchester Evening News— ‘for once I shall let puritanism get the upper hand over hedonism (dig)’, a reference to Orwell’s statement that there is ‘a well-marked hedonistic strain in his writings’ in the penultimate paragraph of Orwell’s essay on Koestler.
1.Mallory Browne was then the London editor of the Christian Science Monitor. On 22 October 1944 he contributed ‘The New Order in France’ to the Observer.
To Arthur Koestler*
31 March 1946
27B Canonbury Square
Islington N 1
Dear Arthur,
I enclose a letter from the IRRC 1 people, about whom I wrote to you before, and a copy of their bulletin. The part of [it] about Jennie Lee* and Michael Foot 2 is rather vague and I am not sure what it is he wants me to do, but I hope to see Jennie Lee* tomorrow and will speak to her about it. Michael is in Teheran, I think.
I am seeing Malory° Brown on Wednesday and will tell him the Easter conference is off. Has anyone told Michael?
I think my Jura cottage is going to be ready by May and I am arranging to send my furniture up about the end of April and then, if all is well, go up there early in M
ay. If anything falls through I shall go somewhere else, but in any case I shall leave London and do no writing or anything of the kind for two months. I feel desperately tired and jaded. Richard is very well and active but still not talking.
I have at last got hold of a book by that scientist I spoke to you of, John Baker.3 He is evidently one of the people we should circularise when we have a draft proposal ready. He could probably also be useful in telling us about other scientists who are not totalitarian-minded, which is important, because as a body they are much more subject to totalitarian habits of thought than writers, and have more popular prestige. Humphrey [Slater]* got Waddington,4 who is a borderline case, to do an article for Polemic, which I think was a good move, as it will appear in the same number as our opening volley against the Modern Quarterly.5 Unfortunately it was a very bad article.
Love to Mamaine. It is beautiful spring weather at last and daffodils out all over the place. Each winter I find it harder and harder to believe that spring will actually come.
Yours
George
[XVIII, 2955, pp.213–4; typewritten]
1.International Rescue and Relief Committee.
2.Michael Foot (1913–2010), politician, writer, and journalist, for much of his life on the extreme left of the Labour Party, was MP for Devonport, 1945–55; for Ebbw Vale, 1960–92 and Leader of the Labour Party (in Opposition), 1980–83. For Tribune he was assistant editor, 1937–38; Managing Director, 1945–74; editor, 1948–52, 1955–60. His many books include Guilty Men (with Frank Owen and Peter Howard, 1940), The Pen and the Sword (1957), The Politics of Paradise (1988).
3.John Randal Baker (1900–1984), Reader in Cytology, Oxford University, 1955–67; joint editor of the Journal of Microscopical Science, 1946–64; Professorial Fellow, New College Oxford, 1964–67. He received the Oliver Bird Medal for researches into chemical contraception in 1958. Baker was an important influence on Orwell (see 19.3.47).
4.Conrad Hal Waddington (1905–1975) was Buchanan Professor of Animal Genetics, University of Edinburgh. His publications include The Scientific Attitude (1941), and The Ethical Animal (1960). Orwell, while at the BBC, engaged him to broadcast talks to India.
5.The Modern Quarterly, founded 1938, aimed at contributing to a realistic, social revaluation of the arts and sciences, devoting special attention to studies based upon the materialistic interpretation of the universe. It lapsed during the war and was revived in December 1945, with Dr John Lewis as editor. Marxist in outlook, with many eminent scientists as contributors, it attacked, among other things, what it called ‘persistent attempts to confuse moral issues’, for example, Orwell’s ‘sophistries’ in ‘Notes on Nationalism’ in Polemic (XVII, 2668, pp. 141–57), which was translated and published in French, Dutch, Italian, and Finnish journals.
To Yvonne Davet*
8 April 1946
27B Canonbury Square,
Islington, N 1
Chère Madame Davet,
I have just received your letter of the 6th. Two or three days ago I met Mademoiselle Odile Pathé, the publisher who is going to bring out Animal Farm. I didn’t know she was in London, but she rang me up. I told her you had translated Homage to Catalonia, and that you had sent her the translation, but I suppose she won’t be back in France until next week. She seemed to me to have a lot more courage than most publishers, and she explained that because she is in Monaco, she has less to fear1 than the others, except for the paper. In any case Homage to Catalonia is a much less dangerous book than Animal Farm. It seems that the Communists now exert direct censorship on French publishers (I have heard they have ‘prohibited’ Gallimard publishing Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls), and it’s quite clear that they wouldn’t let Animal Farm get through if they could find a way of suppressing it. If Mademoiselle Pathé has the courage to publish one book, she would have the courage to publish the other, if it seemed worth her while financially.
As for the essays, let me explain how things stand. In 1940 I published a book, Inside the Whale, which didn’t sell very well, and shortly afterwards nearly all the copies were destroyed in the blitz. The book I’ve just published contains two of the original essays (there were only three), and eight others that I’d published in magazines in the last five years. One, or perhaps two, have a purely English interest. (One is on boys’ weeklies, the other on comic postcards—which are after all pretty similar in France.) At the moment Nagel Paris have a copy of Inside the Whale—they asked for it before the publication of Critical Essays. I can’t quite remember whether a copy of Critical Essays was sent to a French publisher,2 but I’ll ask my agent. If there was a question of translating one or the other, naturally it would be better to choose Critical Essays. Anyway, I’ll send you a copy as soon as possible, but I haven’t got one at the moment. The first edition is out of print, and the second edition hasn’t come out. One could easily publish the book without the essays of purely local interest. I certainly think the essay on Dickens is worth translating.
Recently I had a letter from Victor Serge,3 who is in Mexico, and who is going to send me the manuscript of his memoirs. I hope my publisher, Warburg, will publish them.
At the end of April I’m going to leave London to spend six months in Scotland, but I’m not sure precisely when I’m going, as there will certainly be problems in sending on the furniture. My house is in the Hebrides, and I hope to be fairly quiet so that I can start a new novel. In the last few years I’ve been writing three articles a week, and I’m dreadfully tired. My little boy is very well. I’m sending a photograph of the two of us. It looks as if I’m giving him a good spanking, but really I’m changing his trousers.4 Before I go I’ll send you my new address.
Très amicalement
George Orwell
[XVIII, 2963, pp. 226–8; typewritten; original in French]
1.From Communist pressure.
2.Three publishers were tried.
3.Victor Serge (pseudonym of Viktor Kibal’chiche, 1890–1947), edited L’Anarchie, Paris; imprisoned 1912–17 because of his political activities. He attempted to return to Russia in 1917 but was interned and only got to Russia in 1919. He worked with the International Secretariat until disillusioned following the Krondstadt incident, 1921 (see 15.12.46, n. 3). He then worked in Berlin and Vienna for the Comintern. In 1926 returned to Russia and allied himself with Trotsky but was expelled from the Party and in 1933 internally exiled to Orenburg. He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1936. He became Paris correspondent of the POUM during the Spanish civil war. He settled in Mexico in 1941 where he died impoverished. His Case of Comrade Tulayev was published by Penguin (2004).
4.Presumably the photograph reproduced as plate 69 in The World of George Orwell, edited by Miriam Gross (1971).
To Inez Holden*
9 April 1946
27B Canonbury Square
Islington N 1
Dear Inez,
I’m sorry I didn’t answer your earlier letter. I’ve been smothered under work as usual. Your second one, dated March 31st, reached me yesterday. You seem to be having quite an eventful time. I’m glad you got over your illness—I always say that being ill is part of the itinerary in a trip like that. It’s due to draughts or the change of diet or something. I have wondered several times whether I detected some of your stuff in the Observer—or are you only collecting stuff to write when you come back? I thought you’d probably notice more about what people were eating and so on than the average observer, and I thought perhaps you had done part of ‘Peregrine’ 1 one week.
Not a great deal has happened here. I expect to go away about the end of the month, but there’s still a lot of nightmares about repairs to the house and sending furniture. It’s unfortunate that Susan has been ill and may have to go into hospital. If she does I shall have to park Richard at a nursery school for a couple of months, because I can’t manage him singlehanded for that length of time and anyway I want to go up and get the Jura house livable as soon as the repairs a
re done. I’m going down to Wallington tomorrow to sort out the furniture and books, and then I hope Pickford’s man will come along and tell me when he can remove the stuff. I’ve also got to buy a lot of stuff. This kind of thing is a complete nightmare to me, but I’ve no one I can shove it on to.
It’s been quite nice spring weather here, on and off. Richard is extremely well, but is still not talking. He learned to blow a whistle lately, which was rather an affliction for a few days, however luckily he got tired of it. Animal Farm is being translated into 9 languages altogether and one or two of the translations have arrived. It is due to come out in the USA soon. I met the person who is publishing it in France, who turns out to be a woman who has her establishment in Monte Carlo, where she is a little safer than she would be in France. It seems the unofficial censorship in France itself is awful now.
George Orwell: A Life in Letters Page 38