George Orwell: A Life in Letters
Page 42
Richard now wears real shorts, which another child had grown out of, and braces, and I have got him some real farm labourer’s boots. He has to wear boots here when he goes far from the house, because if he has shoes he is liable to take them off, and there are snakes here. I think you would like this place. Do come any time if you want to. But if you do, try and let me know in advance (it means writing about a week in advance, because we only get letters twice a week here), so that I can arrange about hiring a car. Also, don’t bring more luggage than, say, a rucksack and a haversack, but on the other hand do bring a little flour if you can. We are nearly always short of bread and flour here since the rationing. You don’t want many clothes so long as you have a raincoat and stout boots or shoes. Remember the boats sail on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and you have to leave Glasgow about 8 am. I expect to be here till about the 10th of October.
With love
George
PS. You might ask Freddie5 from me, now that he has a chair in Mental Philosophy, who has the chair in non-mental philosophy.
[XVIII, 3051, pp. 375–7; typewritten]
1.‘Politics vs. Literature’, Polemic (for which Celia Kirwan worked as an editorial assistant).
2.Humphrey Slater,* then editor of Polemic.
3.Orwell had written a reader’s report for Fredric Warburg on Slater’s The Heretics. It was published in April 1946. The report does not appear to have survived.
4.For Norman Collins see 17.3.36, n. 4.
5.A. J. Ayer (1910–89), who had just been appointed Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic, University College London. (See also 13.4.46, n. 5.)
To George Woodcock*
2 September 1946
Barnhill
Isle of Jura
Dear George,
Thanks ever so for the tea—it came just at the right moment because this week the whole of the nearest village is being brought here in lorries to get in the field of corn in front of our house, and of course tea will have to flow like water while the job is on.1 We have been helping the crofter who is our only neighbour with his hay and corn, at least when rain hasn’t made it impossible to work. Everything is done here in an incredibly primitive way. Even when the field is ploughed with a tractor the corn is still sown broadcast, then scythed and bound up into sheaves by hand. They seem to broadcast corn, ie. oats, all over Scotland, and I must say they seem to get it almost as even as can be done by a machine. Owing to the wet they don’t get the hay in till about the end of September or even later, sometimes as late as November, and they can’t leave it in the open but have to store it all in lofts. A lot of the corn doesn’t quite ripen and is fed to the cattle in sheaves like hay. The crofters have to work very hard, but in many ways they are better off and more independent than a town labourer, and they would be quite comfortable if they could get a bit of help in the way of machinery, electrical power and roads, and could get the landlords off their backs and get rid of the deer. These animals are so common on this particular island that they are an absolute curse. They eat up the pastures where there ought to be sheep, and they make fencing immensely more expensive than it need be. The crofters aren’t allowed to shoot them, and are constantly having to waste their time dragging carcases of deer down from the hill during the stalking season. Everything is sacrificed to the brutes because they are an easy source of meat and therefore profitable to the people who own them. I suppose sooner or later these islands will be taken in hand, and then they could either be turned into a first-rate area for dairy produce and meat, or else they would support a large population of small peasants living off cattle and fishing. In the 18th century the population here was 10,000—now less than 300.
My love to Inge. I hope to be back in London about October 13th.
Yours
George
[XVIII, 3058, p. 385; typewritten]
1.In his study of Orwell, The Crystal Spirit, Woodcock explains this gift of tea and comments on Orwell’s description of life on Jura: ‘Knowing Orwell’s passion for tea, my wife and I, coffee drinkers, would save up our rations and every now and again send him a packet of Typhoo Tips, which produced the dark, strong brew he liked. One of these packets . . . evoked a letter in which Orwell described existence on Jura; it reflected the intense interest he always took in the concrete aspects of life—particularly rural life—and also in its social overtones’ (p. 36). The tea ration had been increased in July 1945 from 2 ounces a week to 2½, but it was still a meagre amount, especially for someone who drank as much strong tea as Orwell did. Although Orwell was desperate for tea, his first thought on receiving this gift was that he could share it with the harvesters.
To Rayner Heppenstall*
19 September 1946
Barnhill
Isle of Jura
Dear Rayner,
The version of Boule de Suif I was projecting would be a featurisation of the story, with a narrator but no critical talk or biographical material, so I suppose it would be ‘drama.’ If you can interest the relevant person, you might say that the way I would want to do it would be the way in which we did various stories for the Eastern Service in 1943, and also that version of Little Red Riding Hood which you kindly placed for me. In my experience the BBC, although making a minimum of 6 copies of everything, can never find a back number of a script, but the stories I would like to draw attention to are Crainquebille (Anatole France,) The Fox (Silone,) and A Slip Under the Microscope (H.G. Wells.) We did all these in featurised form sticking to the text of the story as closely as possible and not mucking it up with meaningless patches of music, but dramatising all the dialogue and using a number of different voices. If anyone is interested enough to look up these scripts, you might tell him I had to write them in desperate haste, as I was overwhelmed with administrative work, and in each case could give only a day to the job. I could do it better if I were doing it for the Home Service and had a bit more time.1
As to Pontius Pilate, I am not pining to write a script about him, but I have always felt he has had a raw deal and thought one might make a good dialogue out of it somehow.2 Boule de Suif is a test of whether the C programme 3 is really nothing barred. Incidentally I don’t believe it has ever been well translated into English (at least the only translation I have seen was damnable).
I expect to be back in London on October 13th. The weather here has been shocking for about a fortnight past and they are having a fearful job to get the harvest in. We stove in the bottom of our boat in the recent stormy weather. However we had had a good season’s fun out of it and a lot of fish and lobsters, and next year I shall get a bigger one with a motor on it, which will help solve our transport problem. Transport is really the only big problem here, and wouldn’t be a problem in normal times when one could lay in several months’ stores at one go. Even as it is we have done better in food and fuel than one can in London, but at the expense of a good deal of labour and some terrifying journeys. Hoping to see you in town. My love to Margaret.
Yours
Eric
[XVIII, 3074, pp. 400–1; typewritten]
1.On Rayner Heppenstall’s behalf, June Seligmann sent Orwell’s suggestion to Laurance Gilliam, Director of Features, on 24 September 1946 who passed it on to the Drama Department. His memorandum is annotated, ‘Sorry—no can do!’ and the answer is marked for Heppenstall’s attention. Except for Little Red Riding Hood, broadcast in BBC Children’s Hour, the scripts to which Orwell refers were written when he was broadcasting to India.
2.In a letter to Heppenstall on 5 September 1946 (XVIII, 3059, p. 386–7), Orwell had in mind an imaginary conversation between Pontius Pilate and Lenin – for ‘one could hardly make it J.C.’!
3.What was to become the Third Programme of the BBC, now Radio 3. Laurence Brander, the BBC’s Intelligence Officer for India when Orwell worked for the BBC, wrote in 1954 that Orwell ‘was the inspiration of that rudimentary Third Programme which was sent out to the Indian student’ (George Orwell, pp.
8–9).
To Humphrey Slater*
26 September 1946
Barnhill
Isle of Jura
Dear Humphrey,
Can you come to lunch at the flat on Sunday October 13th, and if possible bring one of our mutual friends with you? I am getting back to town that morning, but my sister is arriving with Richard a day or two earlier. I think there’ll be a goose for lunch, unless it somehow goes astray on the journey. We shall have one goose left when we leave, which we shall take with us or send on ahead, and if so we’ll need someone to help eat it.
I sent the documents to Cyril 1 as requested in your wire, and hope he got them in time, but I couldn’t send them very promptly because of the difficulty of there only being two posts a week here and a telegram not moving any faster than a letter once it gets on to the island. I hope he makes good use of them. It is all pretty tough but only what you would expect. I thought the most interesting feature was what you too pointed out—the ambivalence all the way through, the writers constantly complaining that literature is dull and unimaginative and then wanting to cure this by clipping the artist’s wings a little shorter.
I haven’t really done any work this summer—actually I have at last started my novel about the future, but I’ve only done about 50 pages and God knows when it will be finished. However it’s something that it is started, which it wouldn’t have been if I hadn’t got away from regular journalism for a while. Soon I suppose I shall be back at it, but I am dropping some of it and am going to try and do mostly highly-paid stuff which I needn’t do so much of. I have arranged to do some book reviewing for the New Yorker which of course pays well. Please give everyone my love. Looking forward to seeing you. If you can’t come please reply to the flat, as it’s possible a letter might miss me here.
Yours
George
[XVIII, 3084, p. 408; typewritten]
1.Possibly Cyril Connolly in connection with the ‘Cost of Letters’, published in Horizon, September 1946 (XVIII, 3057, pp. 382–4).
To George Woodcock*
28 September 1946
Barnhill
Isle of Jura
Dear George,
I was quite stunned on hearing from you about Colletts° 1 taking over the S.B.C.2 How could it have happened? I thought they were doing quite well. And what happens about their publications, for instance the pamphlets they were issuing from time to time? There was one of mine they published a few months back,3 and I don’t even know how many copies it sold. It is simply calamitous if there isn’t one large leftwing bookshop not under C[ommunist] P[arty] control. However, I shouldn’t say it would be impossible to set up a successful rival, because any CP bookshop must be hampered as a shop by being unable to stock ‘the wrong’ kind of literature. We must talk it over when I get back. I have no idea what capital you need to set up a well-stocked bookshop, but I fancy it is several thousand pounds. It is not inconceivable that one might dig the money out of some well-intentioned person like Hulton, 4 if he saw his way to not making a loss on it. The thing is to have a shop which apart from selling all the leftwing stuff is a good bookshop, has a lending library and is managed by someone who knows something about books. Having worked in a bookshop I have got ideas on the subject, which I’ll tell you about when I get back.
Of course it’s very flattering to have that article in Politics.5 I haven’t a copy of Keep the Aspidistra Flying. I picked up a copy in a secondhand shop some months back, but I gave it away. There are two or three books which I am ashamed of and have not allowed to be reprinted or translated, and that is one of them. There is an even worse one called A Clergyman’s Daughter. This was written simply as an exercise and I oughtn’t to have published it, but I was desperate for money, ditto when I wrote Keep the A. At that time I simply hadn’t a book in me, but I was half starved and had to turn out something to bring in £100 or so.
I’m leaving here on the 9th and shall reach London on the 13th. I’ll ring you up then. Love to Inge. Richard is blooming.
Yours
George
[XVIII, 3087, pp. 410–11; typewritten]
1.Collet’s bookshop specialised in Communist publications. It was still active in the early nineties with an ‘International Bookshop’, a ‘Chinese Bookshop and Gallery’, and a Penguin Bookshop, but was no longer listed in the London telephone directory in 1995.
2.Socialist Book Centre.
3.James Burnham and the Managerial Revolution.
4.Edward Hulton (1906–1988; Kt., 1957), magazine publisher of liberal views, at the time proprietor of Picture Post.
5.‘George Orwell, Nineteenth Century Liberal’, by George Woodcock, Politics, December 1946. The essay forms chapter 7 of Woodcock’s The Writer and Politics (1948).
To Dwight Macdonald*
15 October 1946
27B Canonbury Square
Islington N 1
Dear Dwight,
Thanks for your letter,1 which I got just before leaving Jura (I’m at the above again until about April of next year.) I’m awfully sorry about not sending you anything as promised, but part of the reason is that I have written almost nothing for 5 months. I went to Scotland largely with that end in view, because I was most desperately tired and felt that I had written myself out.
While there I did write one article 2 and just started a new book (lord knows when it will be finished—perhaps by the end of 1947), but that was all. Now I’m starting up again, but I am going to do my best to keep out of ordinary daily and weekly journalism, except for Tribune. As to the New Republic, I gave them the reprint of that article because they cabled and asked for it. I would have gladly given it to you, but it didn’t occur to me as a thing that would particularly interest you. Shortly after that the New Republic wrote asking whether they could take their pick of any articles I write for Tribune, with which they have a reciprocal arrangement for the exchange of articles. I told them they could, but I expect they won’t often avail themselves of it, because when I start writing for Tribune again I shall probably take over the ‘As I Please’ column, which is mostly topical English stuff. I am well aware that the N.R. people are Stalino-Liberals, but so long as they have no control over what I write, as they wouldn’t under this arrangement, I rather like to have a foot in that camp. Their opposite numbers over here, the New Statesman, won’t touch me with a stick, in fact my last contact with them was their trying to blackmail me into withdrawing something I had written in Tribune by threats of a libel action.3 Meanwhile I think I am going to write rather more for American papers when I start writing at all. I am going, I think, to do occasional book reviews for the New Yorker, and some agents called Mcintosh and Otis are very anxious for me to send copies of all my articles, a number of which they say they could market in the U.S. I have already arranged with Polemic that when I send them anything I shall simultaneously send a copy to the USA. Of course the agents’ idea is to sell them to big-circulation magazines, but when there is anything that seems up your street I’ll see that it gets to you first.
I suppose these letters aren’t now opened by snoopers, and I want to ask you to do me a favour which I believe involves illegality (on my part, not yours.) Do you think you could get me some shoes? Or is it the same about clothes in the US as well? Even if you have the clothes coupons, which I never have, you simply can’t get shoes in my size (twelves!) here. The last new pair I had were bought in 1941 and you can imagine what they are like now. I don’t care what they cost, but I like stout heavy walking shoes and I would like two pairs if it’s at all possible. I believe the American sizes are the same as the English.4 Could you let me know whether you think you can do this and what it will cost? I can get the money to you because I have or shall have some dollars in the USA. Even if you can manage to get them it will need strategy to send them because things like that get pinched in the docks. I’ll tell you about that later. I suppose this black-market business seems very sordid to you, but I have been almost ragged for y
ears, and in the end it becomes irritating and even depressing, so I am doing my best to get hold of a few clothes by one route and another.