Orwell in Spain

by George Orwell

  Dearest Mummy,

  I enclose a ‘letter’ I began to write to you in the trenches! It ends abruptly – I think I’ve lost a sheet – & is practically illegible but you may as well have a letter written from a real fighting line, & you’ll read enough to get the essential news. I thoroughly enjoyed being at the front. If the doctor had been a good doctor I should have moved heaven & earth to stay (indeed before seeing the doctor I had already pushed heaven & earth a little) as a nurse – the line is still so quiet that he could well have trained me in preparation for the activity that must come. But the doctor is quite ignorant & incredibly dirty. They have a tiny hospital at Monflorite in which he dresses the villagers’ cut fingers etc. & does emergency work on any war wounds that do occur. Used dressings are thrown out of the window unless the window happens to be shut when they rebound onto the floor – & the doctor’s hands have never been known to be washed. So I decided he must have a previously trained assistant (I have one in view – a man). Eric did go to him but he says there is nothing the matter except ‘cold, over-fatigue, etc.’ This of course is quite true. However, the weather is better now & of course the leave is overdue, but another section on the Huesca front made an attack the other day which had rather serious results & leave is stopped there for the moment. Bob Edwards2 who commands the I.L.P. contingent has to be away for a couple of weeks & Eric is commanding in his absence, which will be quite fun in a way. My visit to the front ended in a suitable way because Kopp3 decided I must have ‘a few more hours’ & arranged a car to leave Monflorite at 3:15 a.m. We went to bed at 10 or so & at 3 Kopp came & shouted & I got up & George4 (I can’t remember which half of the family I write to) went to sleep again I hope. In this way he got 2 nights proper rest & seems much better. The whole visit’s unreality was accentuated by the fact that there were no lights, not a candle or a torch; one got up & went to bed in black dark, & on the last night I emerged in black dark & waded knee deep in mud in & out of strange buildings until I saw the faint glow from the Comité Militar where Kopp was waiting with his car.

  On Tuesday we had the only bombardment of Barcelona since I came. It was quite interesting. Spanish people are normally incredibly noisy & pushing but in an emergency they appear to go quiet. Not that there was any real emergency but the bombs fell closer to the middle of the town than usual & did make enough noise to excite people fairly reasonably. There were very few casualties.

  I’m enjoying Barcelona again – I wanted a change. You might send this letter on to Eric & Gwen, whom I thank for tea. Three lbs of it has just come & will be much appreciated. The contingent is just running out, Bob Edwards tells me. The other message for Eric is that as usual I am writing this in the last moments before someone leaves for France & also as usual my cheque book is not here, but he will have the cheque for £10 within 2 weeks anyway & meanwhile I should be very grateful if he gave Fenner Brockway5 the pesetas. (In case anything funny happened to the last letter, I asked him to buy £10 worth of pesetas & give them to Fenner Brockway to be brought out by hand. Living is very cheap here, but I spend a lot on the I.L.P. contingent as none of them have had any pay & they all need things. Also I’ve lent John6 500 ps. because he ran out. I guard my five English pounds, which I could exchange at a fairly decent rate, because I must have something to use when we – whoever we may be – cross the frontier again.)

  I hope everyone is well – & I hope for a letter soon to say so. Gwen wrote a long letter which was exciting – even I fall into the universal habit of yearning over England. Perhaps the same thing happens in the colonies. When a waiter lit my cigarette the other day I said he had a nice lighter & he said ‘Si, si, es bien, es Inglés!’ Then he handed it to me, obviously thinking I should like to caress it a little. It was a Dunhill – bought in Barcelona I expect as a matter of fact because there are plenty of Dunhill & other lighters but a shortage of spirit for them. Kopp, Eric’s commander, longed for Lea & Perrins Worcester Sauce. I discovered this by accident & found some in Barcelona – they have Crosse & Blackwell’s pickles too but the good English marmalade is finished although the prices of these things are fantastic.

  After seeing George7 I am pretty confident that we shall be home before the winter – & possibly much sooner of course. You might write another letter to the aunt8 some time. I have never heard from her & neither has Eric,9 which worries me rather. I think she may be very sad about living in Wallington. By the way, George10 is positively urgent about the gas-stove – he wanted me to write & order it at once, but I still think it would be better to wait until just before our return, particularly as I have not yet heard from Moore about the advance on the book.11 Which reminds me that the reviews are better than I anticipated, as the interesting ones haven’t come through yet.

  I had a bath last night – a great excitement. And I’ve had 3 superb dinners in succession. I don’t know whether I shall miss this café life. I have coffee about three times a day & drinks oftener, & although theoretically I eat in a rather grim pension at least six times a week I get headed off into one of about four places where the food is really quite good by any standards though limited of course. Every night I mean to go home early & write letters or something & every night I get home the next morning. The cafés are open till 1.30 & one starts one’s after-dinner coffee about 10. But the sherry is undrinkable – & I meant to bring home some little casks of it!

  Give Maud12 my love & tell her I’ll write some time. And give anyone else my love but I shan’t be writing to them. (This letter is to the 3 O’Shaughnesseys,13 who are thus ‘you’ not ‘they’.) It is a dull letter again I think. I shall do this life better justice in conversation – or I hope so.

  Much love

  Eileen

  1. Offices of the POUM journal, The Spanish Revolution. See 360.

  2. Robert Edwards (1906–), unsuccessful ILP parliamentary candidate in 1935, was a Labour and Co-operative MP from 1955 to 1987. In January 1937 he was Captain of the ILP contingent in Spain, linked to the POUM. He left Spain at the end of March to attend the ILP conference at Glasgow, but was unable to return because of the government ban on British nationals’ participation in the Spanish Civil War. In 1926 and 1934 he led delegations to the Soviet Union; was General Secretary of the Chemical Workers’ Union, 1947–71; National Officer, Transport and General Workers’ Union, 1971–6; and Member of the European Parliament, 1977–9. See Orwell Remembered, 146–8, and especially Shelden, 264–5, which convincingly demolishes Edwards’s accusation that Orwell went to Spain solely to find material for a book.

  3. George(s) Kopp (1902–51), Russian by birth, Belgian by nationality, was Orwell’s commander in Spain. He was a civil engineer but also something of an impostor. After World War II he farmed in Scotland and in 1944 married Doreen Hunton, Eileen’s sister-in-law, Gwen O’Shaughnessy’s half-sister. He died in Marseilles. Although Orwell and Kopp remained friends, their relationship cooled in the late 1940s. Doreen Kopp wrote to Ian Angus, 29 April 1967, that when Orwell joined her husband’s company, ‘he was very intrigued to find one Englishman who described himself as a “grocer”. He was anxious to meet an English grocer wishing to fight in Spain! It was of course very typical of George as he always wanted to be taken for a working man.’

  4. Eileen started to write ‘Eric’ but overwrote ‘George’. Her brother, Dr Laurence Frederick O’Shaughnessy, a distinguished thoracic surgeon, was called Eric (a shortening of his second name). His wife, Gwen, was also a doctor.

  5. Fenner Brockway (1888–1988; Lord Brockway, 1964) was General Secretary of the ILP, 1928, 1933–9, and its representative in Spain for a time. A devoted worker for many causes, particularly peace, he resigned from the ILP in 1946 and rejoined the Labour Party, which he represented in Parliament, 1950–64.

  6. John McNair (1887–1968), a Tynesider, was an indefatigable worker for the cause of socialism all his life. He left school at twelve, and ran into trouble with employers because of his left-wing sympathies. In order to find w
ork, he went to France and stayed for twenty-five years, becoming a leather merchant, founding a French football club with eight teams, and lecturing on English poets at the Sorbonne. He returned to England in 1936, rejoined the ILP and was its General Secretary, 1939–55. The first British worker to go to Spain, where he remained from August 1936 to June 1937, he was the representative in Barcelona of the ILP. A constant contributor to the New Leader, the weekly organ of the ILP (later Socialist Leader). In a footnote to Homage to Catalonia, see p. 141 [VI/151], Orwell gives the purchasing value of the peseta as ‘about fourpence’; 500 pesetas would be about £86s 8d or $41.00. See also p. 16, n. 3.

  7. Eileen again began writing ‘Eric’, over which she wrote ‘George’.

  8. Almost certainly Orwell’s aunt Nellie Limouzin, then living at The Stores, Wallington, the Orwells’ cottage.

  9. Eileen must here mean her husband.

  10. Before writing ‘George’, Eileen wrote ‘Eric’, but crossed it out.

  11. The Road to Wigan Pier.

  12. Possibly an aunt of Eileen’s whose second name was Maud.

  13. Eileen’s mother, her brother, ‘Eric’, and his wife, Gwen.

  [364]

  To Eileen Blair

  [5? April 1937] Handwritten; undated

  [Hospital, Monflorite]

  Dearest,

  You really are a wonderful wife. When I saw the cigars my heart melted away. They will solve all tobacco problems for a long time to come. McNair tells me you are all right for money, as you can borrow & then repay when B.E.1 brings some pesetas, but don’t go beggaring yourself, & above all don’t go short of food, tobacco etc. I hate to hear of your having a cold & feeling run down. Don’t let them overwork you either, & don’t worry about me, as I am much better & expect to go back to the lines tomorrow or the day after. Mercifully the poisoning in my hand didn’t spread, & it is now almost well, tho’ of course the wound is still open.2 I can use it fairly well & intend to have a shave today, for the first time in about 5 days. The weather is much better, real spring most of the time, & the look of the earth makes me think of our garden at home & wonder whether the wallflowers are coming out & whether old Hatchett is sowing the potatoes. Yes, Pollitt’s review3 was pretty bad, tho’ of course good as publicity. I suppose he must have heard I was serving in the Poum militia. I don’t pay much attention to the Sunday Times reviews4 as G5 advertises so much there that they daren’t down his books, but the Observer was an improvement on last time. I told McNair that when I came on leave I would do the New Leader an article, as they wanted one, but it will be such a come-down after B.E’s that I don’t expect they’ll print it. I’m afraid it is not much use expecting leave before about the 20th April. This is rather annoying in my own case as it comes about through my having exchanged from one unit to another – a lot of the men I came to the front with are now going on leave. If they suggested that I should go on leave earlier I don’t think I would say no, but they are not likely to & I am not going to press them. There are also some indications – I don’t know how much one can rely on these – that they expect an action hereabouts, & I am not going on leave just before that comes off if I can help it. Everyone has been very good to me while I have been in hospital, visiting me every day etc. I think now that the weather is getting better I can stick out another month without getting ill, & then what a rest we will have, & go fishing too if it is in any way possible.

  As I write this Michael, Parker & Buttonshaw6 have just come in, & you should have seen their faces when they saw the margarine. As to the photos, of course there are lots of people who want copies, & I have written the numbers wanted on the backs, & perhaps you can get reproductions. I suppose it doesn’t cost too much – I shouldn’t like to disappoint the Spanish machine-gunners etc. Of course some of the photos were a mess. The one which has Buttonshaw looking very blurred in the foreground is a photo of a shell-burst, which you can see rather faintly on the left, just beyond the house.

  I shall have to stop in a moment, as I am not certain when McNair is going back & I want to have this letter ready for him. Thanks ever so much for sending the things, dear, & do keep well & happy. I told McNair I would have a talk with him about the situation when I came on leave, & you might at some opportune moment say something to him about my wanting to go to Madrid etc. Goodbye, love. I’ll write again soon.

  With all my love

  Eric

  1. Bob (Robert) Edwards.

  2. See Homage to Catalonia, p. 68 [VI/52–3].

  3. Harry Pollitt (1890–1960), a Lancashire boiler-maker and founder-member of the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1920, became its general secretary in 1929. With Rajani Palme Dutt, he led the party until his death. He was, however, removed from leadership in the autumn of 1939 until Germany’s invasion of Russia in July 1941, for his temporary advocacy of a war of democracy against Fascism. His review of The Road to Wigan Pier appeared in the Daily Worker, 17 March 1937.

  4. The Road to Wigan Pier was reviewed by Edward Shanks in the Sunday Times and by Hugh Massingham in the Observer, 14 March 1937.

  5. Victor Gollancz.

  6. Michael Wilton (English), also given as Milton, Buck Parker (South African) and Buttonshaw (American) were members of Orwell’s unit. Douglas Moyle, another member, told Ian Angus, 18 February 1970, that Buttonshaw was very sympathetic to the European left and regarded Orwell as ‘the typical Englishman – tall, carried himself well, well educated and well spoken’.

  [365]

  Extract from letter from Eileen Blair to Leonard Moore

  12 April 1937

  I saw my husband a month ago at the front, where, as this is a revolutionary war, I was allowed to stay in the front line dug-outs all day. The Fascists threw in a small bombardment and quite a lot of machine-gun fire, which was then comparatively rare on the Huesca front, so it was quite an interesting visit – indeed I never enjoyed anything more. Eric was then fairly well, though very tired; since then he has had a rest two miles behind the line as he got a poisoned arm, but I think he is now back in the line and the front has been active for the last week. He is keeping quite a good diary1 and I have great hopes for the book. Unfortunately the activity on his part of the front has interfered with his leave, which is now long overdue, but I hope he will be down here in a week or two.

  1. Orwell’s diary was taken from Eileen’s hotel room in Barcelona by the police (see p. 151 [VI/164]). It is possibly now in the NKVD Archive in Moscow with the dossier on Orwell compiled by the NKVD. Miklos Kun, grandson of the Hungarian Communist leader, Bela Kun (purged on Stalin’s orders about 1939), told the editor that he had seen the dossier but he could not confirm that the diary was with it.

  [367]

  Eileen Blair to Dr Laurence (‘Eric’) O’Shaughnessy

  1 May 1937 Handwritten

  10 Rambla de los Estudios, Barcelona

  Dear Eric,

  You have a hard life. I mean to write to Mother with the news, but there are some business matters. Now I think of these, they’re inextricably connected with the news so Mother must share this letter.

  George is here on leave. He arrived completely ragged, almost barefoot, a little lousy, dark brown, & looking really very well. For the previous 12 hours he had been in trains consuming anis, muscatel out of anis bottles, sardines & chocolate. In Barcelona food is plentiful at the moment but there is nothing plain. So it is not surprising that he ceased to be well. Now after two days in bed he is really cured but still persuadable so having a ‘quiet day’. This is the day to have on May 1st. They were asked to report at the barracks, but he isn’t well enough & has already applied for his discharge papers so he hasn’t gone. The rest of the contingent never thought of going. When the discharge is through he will probably join the International Brigade. Of course we – perhaps particularly I – are politically suspect1 but we told all the truth to the I.B. man here & he was so shattered that he was practically offering me executive jobs by the end of half an hour, &
I gather that they will take George. Of course I must leave Barcelona but I should do that in any case as to stay would be pointless. Madrid is probably closed to me, so it means Valencia for the moment with Madrid & Albacete in view but at long distance. To join the I.B. with George’s history is strange but it is what he thought he was doing in the first place & it’s the only way of getting to Madrid. So there it is. Out of this arises a further money crisis because when I leave Barcelona I shall leave all my affiliations – & my address & even my credit at the bank; & it will take a little time to get connected again perhaps. Meanwhile we spend immense sums of money for Spain on new equipment etc. I did write to you about getting money through banks – i.e. your bank buys pesetas2 with your pounds & instructs a bank in Barcelona to pay me the number of pesetas you bought. If this can be done will you do it (about another 2000 pesetas3 I should think), & will you ask the bank to cable. Probably I shall be here for a couple of weeks but I’m not sure where I shall go next & I want if possible to have some money in hand before leaving. If the bank business can’t be done I frankly don’t know what can – i.e. I must use the credit at 60 to the £. before leaving here & find some method of getting money through my new friends, whoever they may be (I have met the Times correspondent at Valencia).

  1. Association with the ILP, which was associated with the POUM, made both Eileen and her husband politically suspect. Eileen was working in the ILP office in Barcelona as McNair’s secretary (Crick, 327). Both would later be called ‘confirmed Trotskyists’ in the document prepared for the Tribunal for Espionage and High Treason, Valencia, reproduced under ‘Escape from Spain’, below.

  2. A line has been drawn in the margin by ‘bank; & it will take a little time… your bank buys pesetas’, presumably by Eileen’s brother. In January 1937 the US dollar stood at 4.91 to the pound.