George Orwell: A Life in Letters

by Peter Davison

  It’s my birthday to day—45, isn’t it awful. I’ve also got some more false teeth, and, since being here, a lot more grey in my hair. Please remember me to Violet.

  Yours

  George

  [XIX, 3416, pp. 393–4; typewritten]

  1.Cecil A. (“Bobby”) Roberts, sometime manager of Sadler’s Wells Theatre, had recently been demobilised from the Royal Air Force.

  2.Accommodation was hard to find in the years immediately after the war. Most leases included a clause forbidding the lessee to sub-let or ‘part with possession’ in whole or in part, whether or not money changed hands, for example as a ‘premium’.

  3.The Heart of the Matter, see 17 July 1948 (XIX, 3424, pp. 404–7).

  4.The Dawn’s Delay; see 18 July 1948 (XIX, 3425, pp. 407–8).

  5.Probably Mr. Attlee: An Interim Biography; see 4 July 1948 (XIX, 3419, pp. 398–9).

  6.A weekly paper for boys published from 1933 to 1959. In a letter to Ian Angus, 17.9.96, Professor Williamson said this man shared a room with Orwell for a while and that Professor Dick was interested to see how they got on. ‘In the event they got on well together (as I think almost anyone would have . . .).’

  To Julian Symons*

  10 July 1948

  Hairmyres Hospital

  East Kilbride

  Dear Julian,

  I must thank you for a very kind review in the M[anchester] E[vening] News 1 which I have just had a cutting of. I hope your wife is well and that everything is going all right. I thought you would like to hear that I am leaving here on the 25th. They seem to think I am pretty well all right now, though I shall have to take things very quietly for a long time, perhaps a year or so. I am only to get up for six hours a day, but I don’t know that it makes much difference as I have got quite used to working in bed. My sister brought Richard over to see me this week, the first time I had seen him since Christmas. He is tremendously well and almost frighteningly energetic. His talking still seems backward, but in other ways I should say he was forward. Farm life seems to suit him, though I am pretty sure he is one for machines rather than animals. [References to Hotspur and Gissing] I also wasn’t so up in the air as most people about Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One, though of course it was amusing. Unlike a lot of people I thought Brideshead Revisited was very good, in spite of hideous faults on the surface. I have been trying to read a book of extracts from Leon Bloy,° 2 whose novels I have never succeeded in getting hold of. He irritates me rather, and Peguy,° 3 whom I also tried recently, made me feel unwell. I think it’s about time to do a new counterattack against these Catholic writers. I also recently read Farrell’s Studs Lonigan 4 for the first time, and was very disappointed by it. I don’t know that I’ve read much else.

  The weather here was filthy all June but now it’s turned at last and they are getting the hay in with great speed. I am longing to go fishing, but I suppose I shan’t be able to this year, not because fishing in itself is much of an exertion, but because you always have to walk five or ten miles and end up by getting soaked to the skin. Please remember me to your wife. After the 25th my address will be as before, ie. Barnhill, Isle of Jura, Argyllshire.

  Yours

  George

  [XIX, 3420, pp. 400–1; handwritten]

  1.Symons had reviewed the reprint of Coming Up for Air in the Manchester Evening News, 19 May 1948.

  2.Leon Marie Bloy (1846–1917), French novelist whose work attacks the bourgeois conformism of his time. He expected the collapse of that society and became increasingly influenced by Roman Catholic mysticism, expressed particularly in his Journal, 1892–1917.

  3.Republican and socialist, he founded Cahiers de la Quinzaine (1900–14). This set out ‘To tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, to tell flat truth flatly, dull truth dully, sad truth sadly’—that was its doctrine and method, and, above all, its action (Péguy, quoted by Daniel Halevy, Peguy and ‘Les Cahiers de la Quinzaine’, 1946, 52). In the course of his editing, his Roman Catholicism and his patriotism were intensified. A favourite story of Orwell’s, which he dramatised for the BBC, was Anatole France’s L’Affaire Crainquebille (11 August 1943, XV, 2230, pp. 186-97), first published by Péguy in Les Cahiers.

  4.James Thomas Farrell (1904–1979), prolific and successful US novelist and a forthright social and literary critic (for example, The League of Frightened Philistines, 1945).

  Fredric Warburg* to Orwell

  19 and 22 July 1948

  On 19 July 1948, Warburg wrote to Orwell saying he had heard that Orwell was looking very much better and he mentioned Orwell’s interest in getting more of Gissing’s novels back into print. The main burden of the letter concerned Nineteen Eighty-Four:

  I was of course specially pleased to know that you have done quite a substantial amount of revision on the new novel. From our point of view, and I should say also from your point of view, a revision of this is far and away the most important single undertaking to which you could apply yourself when the vitality is there. It should not be put aside for reviews or miscellaneous work, however tempting, and will I am certain sooner rather than later bring in more money than you could expect from any other activity. If you do succeed in finishing the revision by the end of the year this would be pretty satisfactory, and we should publish in the autumn of 1949, but it really is rather important from the point of view of your literary career to get it done by the end of the year, and indeed earlier if at all possible.

  On 22 July, he told Orwell of the great interest aroused in Japan by Animal Farm. The Americans had submitted 50–75 titles of Western books to Japanese publishers and invited them to bid for them. Animal Farm received the most bids; forty-eight Japanese publishers were anxious to publish it. It was ‘finally knocked down to an Osaka firm who are paying 20 cents or 20 yens° per copy, I am not sure which’. It would not make Orwell wealthy and the yen could be spent only in Japan: ‘Perhaps a trip one Spring in cherry time might be practicable for you, if and when the world clears up a bit.’

  [XIX, 3426, pp. 408–9]

  Avril Blair* to Michael Kennard 1

  29 July 1948

  Barnhill

  Isle of Jura

  …2 Eric returned yesterday & looks much better. He has got to take it very easy but is interested in how things are going & has been going round the estate today; practically everything is new or different since he was last at home. Richard Rees is also here for a day or two & we all (not E) bravely went down & had a bathe this afternoon. The water was icy despite the fact that we are in the midst of a terrific heat wave…

  We have just been erecting a large tent in the garden for the overflow of visitors who start arriving tomorrow…

  So glad you enjoyed your holiday. Do come up again if you ever have any more time off.

  Yours

  Avril

  [XIX, 3429, pp. 410–11; handwritten]

  1.Michael Kennard (= Koessler) a Jewish refugee who came to England in 1938; the Warburgs looked after him. He visited Jura two or three times and visited Orwell in hospital. Orwell left him his fishing rods. Kennard designed several dust-jackets for Secker & Warburg including those for Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four (see also XIX, p. 304–5).

  2.The ellipses in this passage indicate the editor’s cuts and are not original to Avril’s letter.

  To David Astor*

  9 October 1948

  Barnhill

  Isle of Jura

  Dear David,

  Thanks so much for your letter. A little before getting it I had written to Mr Rose,1 sending him a short review of one book and making suggestions for some others. I think I had put on the list of books I should like to have one called Boys will be Boys 2 (about thrillers etc.), of which the publishers have now sent me a copy: so even if he would like to have me review it, there is no need to send it to me.

  You were right about my being not very well. I am a bit better now but felt very poorly for about a fortnight. It started funnily eno
ugh with my going back to Hairmyres to be examined, which they had told me to do in September. Mr Dick seemed to be quite pleased with the results of his examination, but the journey upset me. Any kind of journey seems to do this. He told me to go on as at present, ie. spending half the day in bed, which I quite gladly do as I simply can’t manage any kind of exertion. To walk a mile or pick up anything in the least heavy, or above all to get cold, promptly upsets me. Even if I go out in the evening to fetch the cows in it gives me a temperature. On the other hand so long as I live a senile sort of life I feel all right, and I seem to be able to work much as usual. I have got so used to writing in bed that I think I prefer it, though of course it’s awkward to type there. I am just struggling with the last stages of this bloody book, which is supposed to be done by early December, and will be if I don’t get ill again. It would have been done by the spring if it had not been for this illness.

  Richard is tremendously well and is out of doors in all weathers. I am sorry to say he took to smoking recently, but he made himself horribly sick and that has put him off it. He also swears. I don’t stop him of course, but I am trying to improve my own language a bit. The weather has been absolutely filthy, except for three or four days just recently. Bill Dunn managed to get all his hay and corn in early, but a lot must have been spoiled elsewhere. The farm is building up. He has now got about 50 sheep and about 10 head of cattle, some of which are my property. We have also got a pig which will go to be baconed shortly. I had never kept one before and shan’t be sorry to see the last of this one. They are most annoying destructive animals, and hard to keep out of anywhere because they are so strong and cunning. We have built up a bit of a garden here now. Of course a lot of it has gone back owing to my not being able to do anything, but I hope to get an Irish labourer 3 to do some digging this winter and even this year we had quite a few flowers and lashings of strawberries. Richard seems interested in farm and garden operations, and he helps me in the garden and is sometimes quite useful. I would like him to be a farmer when he grows up, in fact I shouldn’t wonder if anyone who survives will have to be that, but of course I’m not going to force him.

  I don’t know when I’m coming up to London. First I must finish this book, and I’m not keen on London just before Xmas. I had thought of coming in January, but I must wait till I feel up to travelling. I’m a bit out of touch with the news, partly because the battery of my wireless is getting weak, but everything looks pretty black. I don’t personally believe an all-out shooting war could happen now, only perhaps ‘incidents’ such as used to occur all the time between Russia and Japan, but I suppose the atomic war is now a certainty within not very many years. This book I am writing is about the possible state of affairs if the atomic war isn’t conclusive. I think you were right after all about de Gaulle being a serious figure. I suppose at need we shall have to back the swine up rather than have a Communist France, but I must say I think this backing-up of Franco, which now appears to be the policy is a mistake. In France there doesn’t seem to be an alternative between de Gaulle and the Communists, because apart from the CP there has never been a mass working-class movement and everyone appears to be either pro-CP or bien pensant. But I shouldn’t have said from what little knowledge I have that things were the same in Spain. No doubt it is the American Catholics who saved Franco from being turfed out in 1945. I am still worried about our policies in Africa and South Asia. Is Crankshaw 4 still going to Africa for you, I wonder? It’s all most depressing. I keep thinking, shall I get such and such a book done before the rockets begin to fly and we go back to clay tablets.

  There is an eagle flying over the field in front. They always come here in windy weather.

  Yours

  George

  P.S. [handwritten] Do you happen to know anyone who restores pictures. A picture of mine has been damaged (a slit in the canvas) & though it isn’t worth anything I should like to have it repaired.

  [XIX, 3467, pp. 450–2; typed with handwritten postscript]

  1.Jim Rose, a member of the literary editor’s staff of the Observer.

  2.Boys Will be Boys: The Story of Sweeney Todd, Deadwood Dick, Sexton Blake, et al., by E. S. Turner (1948; revised, 1957). Orwell did not review it.

  3.Francis (Francey) Boyle, a road-worker (see Crick, p. 525).

  4.Edward Crankshaw (1909–1984), novelist and critic, member of diplomatic staff on the Observer from 1947; British Military Mission to Moscow, 1941–43. In David Astor and ‘The Observer’, Richard Cockett states: ‘Orwell was instrumental in making David aware of the post-war problem of decolonization in Africa. The Observer was thus the first, and for a long time the only, British paper to focus on the problems of decolonization in Africa and in particular the plight of Africans on their own continent’ (p. 126).

  To Fredric Warburg*

  22 October 1948

  Barnhill

  Isle of Jura

  Dear Fred,

  You will have had my wire by now, and if anything crossed your mind I dare say I shall have had a return wire from you by the time this goes off. I shall finish the book, D.V. 1, early in November, and I am rather flinching from the job of typing it, because it is a very awkward thing to do in bed, where I still have to spend half the time. Also there will have to be carbon copies, a thing which always fidgets me, and the book is fearfully long, I should think well over 100,000 words, possibly 125,000. I can’t send it away because it is an unbelievably bad MS and no one could make head or tail of it without explanation. On the other hand a skilled typist under my eye could do it easily enough. If you can think of anybody who would be willing to come, I will send money for the journey and full instructions. I think we could make her quite comfortable. There is always plenty to eat and I will see that she has a comfortable warm place to work in.

  I am not pleased with the book but I am not absolutely dissatisfied. I first thought of it in 1943. I think it is a good idea but the execution would have been better if I had not written it under the influence of TB. I haven’t definitely fixed on the title but I am hesitating between Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Last Man in Europe.

  I have just had Sartre’s book on antisemitism, which you published, to review. I think Sartre is a bag of wind and I am going to give him a good boot.2

  Please give everyone my love.

  Yours

  George

  [XIX, 3477, pp. 456–7; typewritten]

  1.D.V.: Deo volente = God willing.

  2.Portrait of the Anti-Semite,Observer, 7 November 1948, XIX, 3485, pp. 464–5.

  To Julian Symons*

  29 October 1948

  Barnhill

  Isle of Jura

  Dear Julian,

  I can’t thank you enough for the tea, which I do hope you could spare. My sister, who keeps house for me, was enchanted to see it and asked me to say she will pack up a little butter for you next churning day. I am so glad to hear that all is well with your wife and daughter and that you enjoy having a baby. They’re really great fun, so much so that I find myself wishing at each stage that they could stay like that. I suppose you are on the steady grind of 5 bottles and 15 nappies a day. It’s funny that they are so insatiably greedy when they are small babies and then between about 2 and 6 it is such a fight to get them to eat, except between meals. I wonder which milk you are using. We brought up Richard on Ostermilk, which seemed to be better than National Dried.1 His cousin was brought up on Cow and Gate and became grossly fat on it. You’ve got a big battle ahead when it comes to weaning time.

  I was very well for some time after leaving hospital but have been very poorly again for the last month. [Effect of visit to Hairmyres Hospital.] Even to walk half a mile is upsetting. I was going to come down to London in January, but I am consulting with my doctor and if he thinks it best I shall go into a private sanatorium, if I can find one, for the worst of the winter, ie. Jan–Feb. I could go abroad perhaps, but the journey might be the death of me, so perhaps a sanatorium would be best. I thi
nk I am going to give up my London flat, as I never use it at present and it costs me about £100 a year and a lot of nuisance. Of course I shall have to get another London place later. I shall finish my book, D.V., in a week or ten days, but I am rather flinching from typing it, which is a tiring job and in any case can’t be done in bed where I have to be half the day. [Attempting to get a typist to come to Jura.]

  I am rather surprised to hear of John Davenport associating himself with a CP or near-CP paper.2 He used not to be that way inclined, that I knew of. Politics & Letters I am sorry to say has disappeared and is supposed to be reappearing next year as a monthly, rather to my annoyance as they had an article of mine. It is nonsense what Fyvel said about Eliot being antisemitic. Of course you can find what would now be called antisemitic remarks in his early work, but who didn’t say such things at that time? One has to draw a distinction between what was said before and what after 1934. Of course all these nationalistic prejudices are ridiculous, but disliking Jews isn’t intrinsically worse than disliking Negroes or Americans or any other block of people. In the early twenties, Eliot’s antisemitic remarks were about on a par with the automatic sneer one casts at Anglo-Indian colonels in boarding houses. On the other hand if they had been written after the persecutions began they would have meant something quite different. Look for instance at the Anglophobia in the USA, which is shared even by people like Edmund Wilson. It doesn’t matter, because we are not being persecuted. But if 6 million Englishmen had recently been killed in gas vans, I imagine I should feel insecure if I even saw a joke in a French comic paper about Englishwomen’s teeth sticking out. Some people go round smelling after antisemitism all the time. I have no doubt Fyvel* thinks I am antisemitic.3 More rubbish is written about this subject than any other I can think of. I have just had Sartre’s book on the subject for review, and I doubt whether it would be possible to pack more nonsense into so short a space. I have maintained from the start that Sartre is a bag of wind, though possibly when it comes to Existentialism, which I don’t profess to understand, it may not be so.