George Orwell: A Life in Letters
Page 52
7.Orwell had suggested to Gollancz that he publish Macdonald’s Henry Wallace: The Man and the Myth. Macdonald told Orwell that, though Gollancz was at first enthusiastic, he had written later saying he could not get the book out in time. Despite good reviews the book had sold only 3,500 copies in two months in the USA. However, Macdonald was having ‘a lot of fun’ speaking at colleges exposing Wallace’s ‘lies and demagogy, and the almost 100% Commie entourage which writes his speeches’.
8.The text of Macdonald’s letter that has survived is a carbon copy. It contains no reference to Owen, so that may well have been in a postscript added only to the top copy. Robert Owen (1771–1858), born and died in Wales, a successful Lancashire cotton manufacturer, established the model industrial town of New Lanark in Scotland, with good living conditions for the employees complete with non-profitmaking shops.
9.A leaflet issued in connection with a proposed series of meetings – the first had by then been held – ‘on the Russian culture purge. Speakers: Nicolas Nabokov, Meyer Schapiro, Lionel Trilling, and myself. It was a success—about 400 people, $300 profit, and solid speeches.’
To Julian Symons*
10 May 1948
Hairmyres Hospital
East Kilbride
Dear Julian,
Thanks ever so much to yourself and your wife for the chocolate and the tea and rice, which got here last week. I’d been meaning to write. You see I’ve organised a typewriter at last. It’s a bit awkward to use in bed, but it saves hideous misprints in reviews etc. caused by my handwriting. As you say, the ball-bearing pen is the last stage in the decay of handwriting, but I’ve given mine up years ago. At one time I used to spend hours with script pens and squared paper, trying to re-teach myself to write, but it was no use after being taught copperplate and on top of that encouraged to write a ‘scholarly’ hand. The writing of children nowadays is even worse than ours used to be, because they will teach them this disconnected script which is very slow to write. Evidently the first thing is to get a good simple cursive script, but on top of that you have to teach hand control, in fact learning to write involves learning to draw. Evidently it can be done, as in countries like China and Japan anyone who can write at all writes more or less gracefully.
I am glad E[yre] and S[pottiswoode] are pleased with the biography, but don’t let them get away with The Quest for AJA Symons as a title. It is true that if a book is going to sell no title can kill it, but I am sure that is a bad one. Of course I can’t make suggestions without seeing the book, but if they insist on having the name, something like A.J.A. Symons: a Memoir is always inoffensive.1
Coming Up for Air isn’t much, but I thought it worth reprinting because it was rather killed by the outbreak of war and then blitzed out of existence, so thoroughly that in order to get a copy from which to reset it we had to steal one from a public library.2 Of course you are perfectly right about my own character constantly intruding on that of the narrator. I am not a real novelist anyway, and that particular vice is inherent in writing a novel in the first person, which one should never do. One difficulty I have never solved is that one has masses of experience which one passionately wants to write about, eg. the part about fishing in that book, and no way of using them up except by disguising them as a novel. Of course the book was bound to suggest Wells watered down. I have a great admiration for Wells, ie. as a writer, and he was a very early influence on me. I think I was ten or eleven when Cyril Connolly* and I got hold of a copy of Wells’s The Country of the Blind (short stories) and were so fascinated by it that we kept stealing it from one another. I can still remember at 4 o’clock on a midsummer morning, with the school fast asleep and the sun slanting through the window, creeping down a passage to Connolly’s dormitory where I knew the book would be beside his bed. We also got into severe trouble (and I think a caning—I forget) for having a copy of Compton Mackenzie’s Sinister Street.3
They now tell me that I shall have to stay here till about August. [State of health; worries about Richard] I don’t know who put that par in the Standard4—someone who knew me, though there were the usual mistakes. I don’t think they ought to have given my real name.
Please remember me to your wife.
Yours
George
[XIX, 3397, pp. 335–7; typewritten]
1.Julian Symons’s biography of his brother was called A. J. A. Symons: His Life and Speculations (1950).
2.Whether or not the copy was ‘permanently stolen’ is not known.
3.Cyril Connolly recalls the incident less painfully. He and Orwell alternately won a prize given by Mrs Wilkes, the headmaster’s wife, for the best list of books borrowed from the school library. However, ‘we were both caught at last with two volumes of Sinister Street and our favour sank to zero’ (Enemies of Promise, 1948, chapter 19).
4.On 5 May 1948, in the ‘Londoner’s Diary’, a gossip column in the Evening Standard, there was a paragraph about Orwell which referred to Eileen’s death.
To Leonard Moore*
12 May 1948
Hairmyres Hospital
East Kilbride
Dear Moore,
On going through my books I see that I wrote an introduction for a book of collected pamphlets for Allan Wingate more than a year ago. I don’t know why the book hasn’t come out,1 but I think it is time they paid me for the introduction. If I remember rightly, I was promised £50 and was paid £10 in advance: or it may have been that I was promised £40—anyway, I think £40 is the sum involved. Perhaps you could communicate with them about it.
I am a lot better and the infection has evidently been quelled, but the doctors think I should remain here till about August. However, I feel so much better that I think I can get back to a little serious work and am starting on the second draft of my novel. I don’t know how far I shall [get] as it is awkward working in bed, but if I can get well started before leaving hospital I should get the book done before the end of the year.
Yours sincerely
Eric Blair
[XIX, 3398, p. 336; typewritten]
1.British Pamphleteers, edited with Reginald Reynolds. Volume 1 was published 15 November 1948. The second volume, in which Orwell was not involved, appeared in 1951.
To Mrs Jessica Marshall*
19 May 1948
Hairmyres Hospital
East Kilbride
Dear Mrs Marshall,
Many thanks for your letter. It has been on my conscience for a long time that you once sent me a pot of jam for which I never thanked you. I was rather distraught all through the war years and left a lot of letters unanswered. My wife I am sorry to say died three years ago, leaving me with a little adopted son who was not then a year old. He has just had his fourth birthday and is now of enormous size and full of vigour and mischief, though I haven’t seen him since Christmas because of the danger of infection. Of course all these events have put back my work a great deal, and, as you say, I have not published a full-length book since before the war. I was about half way through a novel when I was taken ill, and if I had not been ill I should have finished it by the spring. As it is I hope to finish it before the end of the year, which I suppose means it would not come out before the autumn of 1949. It takes about a year to get a book through the press now.1
I have been here since before Christmas, but I was ill at home for some months before that. However I am now much better, thanks largely to the streptomycin, and hope to get out of hospital some time during the summer. They have evidently succeeded in killing the infection, but of course it takes a long time for the damaged lung to heal up. I imagine that I shall have to take things very easily for about a year, so far as physical effort goes. But I am now able to do a little work, though I find it very tiresome to write in bed. When I get out I may have to attend for out-patient treatment, in which case I shall have to make my headquarters in Edinburgh, otherwise I can go back to Jura where we have been installed for the last two years. It is a completely wild place and
a bit un-getatable, but it is quite easy to live there if you have a cow and hens, and you are better off for food and fuel than in England. Also, contrary to what people think, that side of Scotland is not at all cold. It is damp, but the winter is mild and you get beautiful weather in the summer. The only thing that worries me is that my little boy only sees other children about once a week, except when people are staying with us, and I think this has made him a bit backward in his talking. However I shall have to arrange for him to go to school in about a year’s time, and Jura will be a good place for him to spend his holidays. He is tremendously healthy and didn’t seem much affected even when he had measles and whooping cough. I am terrified of his getting this disease that I have, but actually I don’t think he is the type that would get it, and we now have tuberculin-tested cows, so the likeliest source of infection is shut off. I think it is good for him to grow up among farm animals and boats, in a place where there are no ‘trespassers will be prosecuted’ boards.
I agree with you about Priestley – he is awful, and it is astonishing that he has actually had a sort of come-back in reputation during the last year or two. What you say of Wells is of course true, but that has never stopped me enjoying at any rate his early work. I have just read the third volume of Osbert Sitwell’s autobiography, in fact I reviewed it for the last number of the Adelphi, which is now packing up after 25 years of moribund existence. Evidently there will be more volumes, as this one only goes up to 1914. I am a great admirer of his novel Before the Bombardment, and the only time I met him I liked him very much. I have also been re-reading some books of George Gissing, on whom I am going to write a long essay for a magazine. I always say he is one of the best English novelists, though he has never had his due, and they always seem to reprint the wrong books. His two best ones, New Grub Street and The Odd Women, can’t now be got, even secondhand. I also re-read recently George Moore’s Esther Waters, which is a marvellous straightforward story in spite of being very clumsily written. While in bed I have been making one of my periodical attacks2 on Henry James, but I never can really get to care for him.
Half way through writing this letter I have been out for my usual half-hour walk in the grounds. It leaves me very out of breath, in fact I can’t go more than about 100 yards without stopping for a rest. However, they are now going to let the lung which they have collapsed return to its normal shape, so I suppose breathing will become easier. This is a nice hospital and everyone has been very good to me. Thanks so much for writing.
Yours sincerely
Geo. Orwell
[LO, pp. 113–5; XIX, 3401A, p. 339; typewritten]
1.Orwell was contrasting pre-war practice. Thus, he posted the ms of The Road to Wigan Pier to his agent on 15 December 1936. On the 19th he saw Victor Gollancz and it was decided to illustrate the book. It was published twelve weeks later on 8 March 1937 with 32 pages of plates.
2.attacks = attempts to read
To George Woodcock*
24 May 1948
Dear George,
I received another letter from Charles Davey, drawing my attention to the fact that E. M. Forster has resigned from the NCCL. I then sat down, or sat up rather, with the idea of writing that article on the F.D.C., but on second thoughts I really don’t think I can do it. To begin with I have two long articles on hand and I can’t do much yet, but what is more to the point, I don’t know enough factually about the F.D.C. for the purpose. Do you think you could do the article? I think you said Davey had written to you. Perhaps you could ring him up. I don’t know if you know him—he is a very nice chap. I don’t know exactly what they want, but I assume they would want an account of the Committee and its activities, in general terms, with some remarks on the threat to individual liberty contained in the modern centralised state. I don’t like shoving this off on to you, on the other hand if they are willing for you to write the article they’ll pay you quite well for it.
I hadn’t yet thanked you for the copy of the book of essays. Of course I was delighted to see the one on myself appearing in book form. I liked the one on Bates whose book I read years ago.1 All nineteenth-century books about S. America have a wonderful Arcadian atmosphere, though I think I was always more attracted by the pampas than by the forest. I suppose you’ve read The Purple Land. And the one on hymns, which I’d always been meaning to write something about myself. I think you’re wrong in saying that people respond to a hymn like ‘Abide with me’ (by the way shouldn’t it be ‘the darkness deepens,’ not ‘gathers’)2 chiefly because of wars, unemployment etc. There is a great deal of inherent sadness and loneliness in human life that would be the same whatever the external circumstances. You don’t mention two of the best hymns, ‘praise° to the holiest’ and ‘Jerusalem my happy home’—this one, I think, however, must be a great deal earlier than the other groups you were studying. In Ancient and Modern 3 if I remember rightly it’s heavily expurgated to get the Catholic imagery out. [Paragraph on health, Richard.]
Please give all the best to Inge. I’ve gone and lost your new address, but I will think of someone to send this care of. I will write to Charles Davey about the article.
Yours
George
[XIX, 3403, pp. 341–3; typewritten]
1.Henry Walter Bates (1825-92), visited South America in 1848. He wrote The Naturalist on the River Amazons o (1863).
2.Orwell is correct.
3.The first edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern was published in 1861. Ironically in the light of his comments about Roman Catholicism ‘Praise to the Holiest in the height’ was by Cardinal John Henry Newman.
To Celia Kirwan*
27 May 1948
Hairmyres Hospital
East Kilbride
Dearest Celia,
Thanks ever so much for your letter. I must say, anything to do with unesco sounds pretty discouraging. Any way, I should knock all the money you can out of them, as I don’t suppose they’ll last much longer. [Paragraph on health; Richard, now aged four.]
How I wish I were with you in Paris, now that spring is there. Do you ever go to the Jardin des Plantes? I used to love it, though there was really nothing of interest except the rats, which at one time overran it & were so tame that they would almost eat out of your hand. In the end they got to be such a nuisance that they introduced cats & more or less wiped them out. The plane trees are so beautiful in Paris, because the bark isn’t blackened by smoke the way it is in London. I suppose the food & so on is still pretty grisly, but that will improve if the Marshall plan1 gets working. I see you have to put a 10 franc2 stamp on your letter, which gives one an idea of what meals must cost now.
I can’t help feeling that it’s a bit treacherous on Arthur’s part if he does settle down in the USA.3 He was talking about doing it before. I suppose he is furious about what is happening in Palestine, though what else was to be expected I don’t know. His lecture tour seems to have been quite a success. I wonder if he has got back yet, & what he will do about his place in Wales. It seems a pity to start sending roots down somewhere & then tear them up again, & I can imagine Mamaine not liking it.
[His book put back ‘frightfully’] – now it can’t be finished before the end of the year, which means not coming out till the end of 1949. However it’s something to be capable of working again. Last year before they brought me here I really felt as though I were finished. Thank Heaven Richard looks as if he is going to have good health. We have got 2 tested cows now, so at any rate he won’t get this disease through milk, which is the usual way with children. Take care of yourself & write to me again some time.
With love
George
[XIX, 3405, pp. 344–5; handwritten]
1.The Marshall Plan, properly the European Recovery Program, was the outcome of the Paris Economic Conference, July 1947, to aid post-war recovery in a number of European countries. It was financed by the United States ($17 billion in grants and loans over four years) and was named after US Secretary of State Geo
rge C. Marshall (1880–1959), whose advocacy of such aid was instrumental in bringing the scheme to fruition. In 1953 General Marshall was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his work in this field.
2.Ten francs was about one old penny in mid-1948.
3.Arthur Koestler, who had been living with his wife, Mamaine, in Wales, decided he would like to move to the United States, and they lived there for a short time.
To Anthony Powell*
25 June 1948
Hairmyres Hospital
East Kilbride
Dear Tony,
I received a letter from your friend Cecil Roberts1 asking me if he could have my flat. I had to write and tell him it was impossible. I am awfully sorry about this, but they have already been riding me like the nightmare for lending it to Mrs Christen, and threatening to let the Borough take it away from me. I don’t want this to happen because I must have a pied à terre in London, and also I have a little furniture still there and a lot of papers which it’s awkward to store elsewhere. Even if I gave up the flat they won’t let you transfer the lease and of course they have their own candidates ready many deep, with bribes in their hands.2
If you happen to see Graham Greene, could you break the news to him that I have written a very bad review of his novel 3 for the New Yorker. I couldn’t do otherwise—I thought the book awful, though of course don’t put it as crudely as that. I am going to review Kingsmill’s book 4 for the Obs. as soon as possible, but I still have another book to get out of the way first.5 I seem to be getting quite back into the journalistic mill, however I do tinker a little at my novel and no doubt shall get it done by the end of the year.
I am a lot better and now get up for three hours a day. I have been playing a lot of croquet, which seems quite a tough game when you’ve been on your back for 6 months. In the ward below me the editor of the Hotspur6 is a patient. He tells me their circulation is 300,000. He says they don’t pay very good rates per thou, but they can give people regular work and also give them the plots so that they only have to do the actual writing. In this way a man can turn out 40,000 words a week. They had one man who used to do 70,000, but his stuff was ‘rather stereotyped.’ I hope to get out in August, but the date isn’t fixed because it depends on when my lung resumes its normal shape after the collapse therapy has worn off. Richard is coming to see me early in July. He couldn’t before because of infection. I suppose I shall hardly know him after six months.