George Orwell: A Life in Letters
Page 51
To Sally McEwan*
27 March 1948
Hairmyres Hospital
East Kilbride
Dear Sally,
It seems literally years since I have heard from you, or of you? How are things going? I am going to send this to the Nature Clinic, hoping they’ll forward it if you aren’t still there. How is your young man? Are you married? And how is little Sally? Excuse this filthy pen. It is all I have, as my other one is being refilled.
I dare say you heard I am suffering from T.B. [Details of illness; progress of novel; Richard]
We have got more furniture at Barnhill now, & the place is running quite well. Transport is still the chief difficulty. We have got a car now, but the headache is tyres, apart from the everlasting petrol difficulty. However, we also have a horse which can be used in moments of emergency. A friend now lives with us & farms the croft, which is a good arrangement, because we don’t then feel guilty about occupying land & not using it, & also when we like we can go away, because there is someone to look after our animals. We have got a cow now, also of course hens, & am thinking of pigs. We’ve also got more of a garden now, & have made an end of all those awful rushes. I have planted a lot of fruit trees & bushes, but I am not sure yet whether trees will do much good in such a windy place.
Write some time & let me know how everything is going. The above address will find me for some time, I am afraid.
Yours
George
[XIX, 3373, pp. 305–6; handwritten]
To Mrs David Astor
5 April 1948
Hairmyres Hospital
East Kilbride
Dear Mrs Astor,
I believe it was you who sent me a 7 lb. bag of sugar from Jamaica, also a tin of pears & some guava jelly. It was extremely kind of you to think of it. I was especially delighted to get the sugar, which my sister will use for making jam. I have been getting on pretty well, but just this last week have been feeling rather bad with a sore throat & various other minor ailments which are probably secondary effects of the streptomycin I am having. I think they are probably going to stop the injections for a few days & then go on again when these effects have worn off. 1
I haven’t seen Richard, my little boy, since before Christmas, as I can’t see him while I am infectious. However I have had him photographed & can see that he is growing fast & is in good health. My sister says he is learning to talk better. I had been rather worried about that, though he is not backward in any other way.
Please forgive bad handwriting. My writing is bad enough at the best of times, but whatever is wrong with me has affected my fingernails & it is difficult to hold on to the pen. With many thanks again.
Yours sincerely
Geo. Orwell
[XIX, 3376, p.309; handwritten]
1.Professor James Williamson, who was a junior doctor at Hairmyres Hospital when Orwell was a patient, remembers the arrival of the streptomycin and its adverse effect on Orwell (Remembering Orwell, p. 200). In a note for Professor Crick, written many years later, Dr Williamson said that Orwell’s TB was ‘pretty “chronic”… It was not the type that would have largely cleared with effective drug treatment and he would always have been breathless and incapacitated’ (Crick, p. 602).
To David Astor*
[14 April 1948]
Dear David,
I thought you’d like to hear that Bobbie is making himself useful. Part of the field behind the house was too steep a slope for the small tractor, so they harnessed Bobbie into the harrow & he behaved ‘like a lamb,’ Bill says. So perhaps now they can use him in the trap, which is as well, as the car needs new wheels as well as tyres.
They’ve stopped the streptomycin for a few days & the unpleasant symptoms have practically disappeared. Shortly they will continue with the strepto, which has about 3 weeks to go. It’s evidently doing its stuff as my last 3 tests were ‘negative,’ ie no TB germs. Of course that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re all dead, but at any rate they must have taken a pretty good beating. I have felt better the last day or two & have nearly finished the article I promised for the Observer 1 The weather has at last improved, & I’m longing to go out, which I think they may soon let me do, in a chair, of course.
Yours
George
[XIX, 3379, p. 311; handwritten]
1.Probably his review of Wilde’s The Soul of Man under Socialism (XIX, 3395, pp. 333–4).
To Julian Symons*
20 April 1948
Hairmyres Hospital
East Kilbride
Dear Julian,
Thanks so much for sending the pen, & prospectively for some chocolate you mentioned. I am so glad to hear you are going to have a baby. They’re awful fun in spite of the nuisance, & as they develop one has one’s own childhood over again. I suppose one thing one has to guard against is imposing one’s own childhood on the child, but I do think it is relatively easy to give a child a decent time nowadays & allow it to escape the quite unnecessary torments that I for instance went through. I’m not sure either that one ought to trouble too much about bringing a child into a world of atomic bombs, because those born now will never have known anything except wars, rationing etc., & can probably be quite happy against that background if they’ve had a good psychological start.
I am a lot better, but I had a bad fortnight with the secondary effects of the streptomycin. I suppose with all these drugs it’s rather a case of sinking the ship to get rid of the rats. [Passage regarding progress of illness and Richard.]
It’s funny you should have mentioned Gissing. I am a great fan of his (though I’ve never read Born in Exile, which some say is his masterpiece, because I can’t get hold of a copy), & was just in the act of re-reading two reprints, which I promised to review for Politics & Letters. I think I shall do a long article on him, for them or someone else.1 I think The Odd Women is one of the best novels in English. You asked about my uniform edition. They’re starting with a novel called Coming Up for Air, which was published in 1939 & rather killed by the war, & doing Burmese Days later in the year. I just° corrected the proofs of the latter, which I wrote more than 15 years ago & probably hadn’t looked at for 10 years. It was a queer experience—almost like reading a book by somebody else. I’m also going to try & get Harcourt Brace to reprint these two books in the USA but even if they do so they’ll probably only take ‘sheets’, which never does one much good. It’s funny what BFs American publishers are about re-prints. Harcourt Brace have been nagging me for 2 years for a manuscript, any kind of manuscript, & are now havering with the idea of doing a series of reprints, but when I urged them to reprint Burmese Days immediately after they had cleaned up on Animal Farm, they wouldn’t do so. Nor would the original publishers of B.D, though they too were trying to get something out of me. Apparently reprints in the USA are done mostly by special firms which only take them on if they are safe for an enormous sale.
Yes, I thought the last number of Politics quite good, but I must say that in spite of all their elegies I retain dark suspicions about Gandhi,2 based only on gossip, but such a lot of gossip that I think there must be something in it. Please remember me to your wife.
Yours
George
[XIX, 3386, pp. 321–3; handwritten]
1.The typescript of Orwell’s article on George Gissing only surfaced in the summer of 1959. It was published in the London Magazine, June 1960. (See XIX, 3406, pp. 346–52.)
2.Mahatma (Mohandas Karamchand) Gandhi (1869–1948), a major figure in the struggle for Indian independence and a continuing force in Indian life after his death. He was fatally shot on 30 January 1948 by a Hindu fanatic. See Orwell’s ‘Reflections on Gandhi’, Partisan Review, January 1949, (XX, 3516, pp. 5–12).
To Gleb Struve*
21 April 1948
Hairmyres Hospital
East Kilbride
Dear Struve,
I’m awfully sorry to have to send this1 back, after such a long delay, having fin
ally failed to find a home for it. But as you see by the above, I am in hospital (tuberculosis), & at the time of receiving your letter I wasn’t able to do very much. I am better now, & hope to get out of here some time during the summer, but of course the treatment of this disease is always a slow job.
I have arranged to review We for the Times Lit. Supp., when the English translation comes out.2 Did you tell me that Zamyatin’s widow is still alive & in Paris? If so, & she can be contacted, it might be worth doing so, as there may be others of his books which some English publisher might be induced to take, if We is a success. You told me that his satire on England, The Islanders, had never been translated, & perhaps it might be suitable.3
I hope you will forgive me for my failure to find an editor for Mandelstam’s sketches. There are so few magazines in England now. Polemic died of the usual disease, & the other possible one Politics & Letters, was no good.
You asked about my novel, Burmese Days. I think it is still in print as a Penguin, but there won’t be many copies left. It is being reprinted about the end of this year, as I am beginning a uniform edition, & that is second on the list. I may succeed in getting some of these books reprinted in the USA as well.
Yours sincerely
Geo. Orwell
P.S. This address will find me for some months, I’m afraid.
[XIX, 3387, pp. 323–4; handwritten]
1.Presumably the Mandelstam sketches mentioned later in the letter.
2.An English translation, by Gregory Zilboorg, was, in fact, published in New York by E. P. Dutton in 1924 and reprinted the following year. Although Orwell knew of the US edition, he had not seen it. The French translation, Nous autres, which Orwell reviewed in Tribune, 4 January 1946 (see XVIII, 2841, pp. 13–17), was published in Paris in 1929.
3.Yevgeny Zamyatin came to England in 1916 to supervise the building of Russian icebreakers in the northeast of England and Scotland. He wrote two amusing satires on English life, The Islanders, written in England in 1917, and The Fisher of Men, written in 1918 on his return to Russia. The first is set in Jesmond, near Newcastle upon Tyne and the second in Chiswick. A translation by Sophie Fuller and Julian Sacchi was published in 1984.
To John Middleton Murry*
28 April 1948
Hairmyres Hospital
East Kilbride
Dear Murry,
Thank you for your letter. I’m very sorry to hear the Adelphi is coming to an end.1 At any rate it’s had a long run for its money, longer than most magazines. I could do you a review, but I’m not keen on doing the Joad book. I looked at it recently, & it didn’t seem to me to be about anything. How about the third volume of Osbert Sitwell’s autobiography, 2 which has come out recently & which I think is very good in a way? You wouldn’t need to send a copy, as I have one already. It would be better to do more than 1000 words if you have the space. I note that you want the copy by May 15, but perhaps you could let me know whether you think this a suitable book.
[Brief account of illness and Barnhill] I would like to see what is going on [at Barnhill], also to see my little boy, whom I haven’t seen since Christmas for fear of infection. I get photographs of him, & he is evidently growing enormous.
Yours
Geo. Orwell
[XIX, 3390, pp. 326–7; handwritten]
1.It survived until 1955.
2.Orwell reviewed Sitwell’s Great Morning in the July–September 1948 issue of The Adelphi (see XIX, 3418, pp. 395–8).
To Dwight Macdonald*
2 May 1948
Hairmyres Hosp
East Kilbride
Dear Dwight,
Thanks so much for your letter, and prospectively for sending the books.1 Yes, I got Politics, as a matter of fact 2 copies, as you sent one to me direct here. It set me thinking again about Gandhi, whom I never met but whom I know a certain amount about. The funny thing is that though he was almost certainly used by the British for their own ends over a long period, I’m not certain that in the long run he failed. He was not able to stop the fight[ing] between Moslems and Hindus, but his major aim of getting the British out of India peacefully did finally come off. I personally would never have predicted this even five years ago, and I am not sure that a good deal of the credit should not go to Gandhi. Of course a Conservative government would never have got out without a fight, but the fact that a Labour government did so might indirectly be due to Gandhi’s influence. One might say that they only agreed to dominion status because they knew they couldn’t hold on to India much longer, but this doesn’t apply for instance to Burma, a country which was extremely profitable to us and easy enough to hold down. I think, pace tua, that Gandhi behaved abominably, or at any rate stupidly, in 1942 when he thought the Axis had won the war, but I think also that his prolonged effort to keep the Indian struggle on a decent plane may have gradually modified the British attitude.
Incidentally, this business of assassinating important individuals2 is something one has to take account of. In the same number I see you note regretfully that Walter Reuther3 has a bodyguard, but I also see that he has just been seriously wounded—the second attempt, I believe. I notice also that you speak more or less approvingly of the Esprit4 crowd. I don’t know if you know that some at any rate of these people are fellow travellers of a peculiarly slimy religious brand, like Macmurray 5 in England. Their line is that Communism and Christianity are compatible, and latterly that there is no choice except Communism or Fascism and one must therefore regretfully choose the former. But this is all right, because Communism will presently shed certain unfortunate characteristics such as bumping off its opponents, and if Socialists join up with the CP they can persuade it into better ways. It’s funny that when I met Mounier6 for only about 10 minutes in 1945 I thought to myself, that man’s a fellow traveller. I can smell them. I believe Sartre has been latterly taking the same line.
I’m sorry Gollancz fell through.7 I don’t know if it’s any use trying Warburg. He read the book and was impressed by it, but of course he is chronically short of paper and takes years to get a book out. The binding is the real trouble here. I must say I feel envious when I see American books now, their solidity and so on. The way British books are printed now makes one ashamed to be associated with them. I asked them to send you a copy of the first book in my uniform edition, coming out in a fortnight or so. I must say I wish I could have started this edition at a time when one could get hold of decent bindings. I feel that a uniform edition which in any case is a sign of approaching senility ought to be very chaste-looking in buckram covers. Have you got an agent over here, or an agent with connections here? It’s worth while I think.
Yes, I think Lanarkshire was where Owen 8 flourished. It’s rather an unpleasant industrial county with a lot of coal mines, and its chief ornament is Glasgow. Out here it’s quite pleasant though. I am longing to go out of doors, having barely done so for six months. They now let me up an hour a day and I think they would let me out a little if it were warmer. It’s been a horrible spring, however not so bad as last year.
I’m in sympathy with the Europe-America leaflet you sent,9 but I don’t know if there’s anything I personally can do about it. Thanks for your query, but there is honestly not anything I want. We are well cared for here and people have been very kind about sending me food etc.
Yours
George
[XIX, 3392, pp. 328–90; typewritten]
1.Macdonald had written on 23 April 1948 and he sent a parcel of books by separate mail. He mentions two of these in his letter: Joseph Wood Krutch, Samuel Johnson (1944) and T. Polner, Tolstoy and His Wife, translated by N. Wreden (1945). These, he wrote, ‘are two of the best modern biographies I know’, especially the first. He asked Orwell if he shared his ‘private enthusiasm for Dr. Johnson’. Orwell did not respond to this in his reply. Krutch (1893–1970) was drama critic to The Nation, 1924–51.
2.Gandhi had been assassinated on 30 January 1948.
3.Walter Philip Reuther (1
907–1970), President of the United Automobile Workers of America, 1946–70; President of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, 1952–55. He was one of those instrumental in the merger of the CIO with the American Federation of Labor in 1955 and served as Vice-President of the AFL-CIO until, in disagreement with the President of the organisation, he took out the UAW. He had worked in a Soviet car factory for two years in the 1930s, but later was critical of the Soviets. He was killed when his plane crashed in fog.
4.Esprit was a periodical launched in 1932 by Emmanuel Mounier (see n. 6) ‘to close the gap between communist and non-communist Frenchmen’. At the same time, Mounier inaugurated ‘the Personalist movement, a non-party philosophy between Marxism and Existentialism’ (J. F. Falvey, The Penguin Companion to Literature (1969), II, p. 553).
5.John Macmurray (1891–1976), Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic, University of London, 1929–44; Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of Edinburgh, 1944–58. His many books include The Philosophy of Communism (1933) and Constructive Democracy (1943). In Orwell’s pamphlet collection is a copy of his Peace Aims Pamphlet, Foundations of Economic Reconstruction (1942).
6.Emmanuel Mounier (1905–1950), writer, literary critic, intellectual leader in the French Resistance, was a Roman Catholic and Marxist sympathiser and the founder of the journal Esprit. He was influenced by Bergson and Péguy, and, with others, published La Pensée de Charles Péguy (1931), several books on Personalism, and some 170 articles. He advocated economic revolution, a new socialist system, respect for the individual, and an active Roman Catholic Church in order to implement ethical values appropriate to the age. He particularly addressed the needs of apathetic and disorientated post-war youth (J. F. Falvey, see n. 4).