Fifty Orwell Essays

by George Orwell

after this lapse of time, all that is left of him is a comic song and a

  beautiful tree, which has rested the eyes of generation after generation

  and must surely have outweighed any bad effects which he produced by his

  political quislingism.

  Thibaw, the last King of Burma, was also far from being a good man. He

  was a drunkard, he had five hundred wives--he seems to have kept them

  chiefly for show, however--and when he came to the throne his first act

  was to decapitate seventy or eighty of his brothers. Yet he did posterity

  a good turn by planting the dusty streets of Mandalay with tamarind trees

  which cast a pleasant shade until the Japanese incendiary bombs burned

  them down in 1942.

  The poet, James Shirley, seems to have generalised too freely when he

  said that "Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in their

  dust". Sometimes the actions of the unjust make quite a good showing

  after the appropriate lapse of time. When I saw the Vicar of Bray's yew

  tree it reminded me of something, and afterwards I got hold of a book of

  selections from the writings of John Aubrey and reread a pastoral poem

  which must have been written some time in the first half of the

  seventeenth century, and which was inspired by a certain Mrs Overall.

  Mrs Overall was the wife of a Dean and was extensively unfaithful to him.

  According to Aubrey she "could scarcely denie any one", and she had "the

  loveliest Eies that were ever seen, but wondrous wanton". The poem (the

  "shepherd swaine" seems to have been somebody called Sir John Selby)

  starts off:

  Downe lay the Shepherd Swaine

  So sober and demure

  Wishing for his wench againe

  So bonny and so pure

  With his head on hillock lowe

  And his arms akimboe

  And all was for the losse of his

  Hye nonny nonny noe...

  Sweet she was, as kind a love

  As ever fetter'd Swaine;

  Never such a daynty one

  Shall man enjoy again.

  Sett a thousand on a rowe

  I forbid that any showe

  Ever the like of her

  Hye nonny nonny noe.

  As the poem proceeds through another six verses, the refrain "Hye nonny

  nonny noe" takes on an unmistakably obscene meaning, but it ends with the

  exquisite stanza:

  But gone she is the prettiest lasse

  That ever trod on plaine.

  What ever hath betide of her

  Blame not the Shepherd Swaine.

  For why? She was her owne Foe,

  And gave herself the overthrowe

  By being so franke of her

  Hye nonny nonny noe.

  Mrs Overall was no more an exemplary character than the Vicar of Bray,

  though a more attractive one. Yet in the end all that remains of her is a

  poem which still gives pleasure to many people, though for some reason it

  never gets into the anthologies. The suffering which she presumably

  caused, and the misery and futility in which her own life must have

  ended, have been transformed into a sort of lingering fragrance like the

  smell of tobacco-plants on a summer evening.

  But to come back to trees. The planting of a tree, especially one of the

  long-living hardwood trees, is a gift which you can make to posterity at

  almost no cost and with almost no trouble, and if the tree takes root it

  will far outlive the visible effect of any of your other actions, good or

  evil. A year or two ago I wrote a few paragraphs in TRIBUNE about some

  sixpenny rambler roses from Woolworth's which I had planted before the

  war. This brought me an indignant letter from a reader who said that

  roses are bourgeois, but I still think that my sixpence was better spent

  than if it had gone on cigarettes or even on one of the excellent Fabian

  Research Pamphlets.

  Recently, I spent a day at the cottage where I used to live, and noted

  with a pleased surprise--to be exact, it was a feeling of having done good

  unconsciously--the progress of the things I had planted nearly ten years

  ago. I think it is worth recording what some of them cost, just to show

  what you can do with a few shillings if you invest them in something that

  grows.

  First of all there were the two ramblers from Woolworth's, and three

  polyantha roses, all at sixpence each. Then there were two bush roses

  which were part of a job lot from a nursery garden. This job lot

  consisted of six fruit trees, three rose bushes and two gooseberry

  bushes, all for ten shillings. One of the fruit trees and one of the rose

  bushes died, but the rest are all flourishing. The sum total is five

  fruit trees, seven roses and two gooseberry bushes, all for twelve and

  sixpence. These plants have not entailed much work, and have had nothing

  spent on them beyond the original amount. They never even received any

  manure, except what I occasionally collected in a bucket when one of the

  farm horses happened to have halted outside the gate.

  Between them, in nine years, those seven rose bushes will have given what

  would add up to a hundred or a hundred and fifty months of bloom. The

  fruit trees, which were mere saplings when I put them in, are now just

  about getting in their stride. Last week one them, a plum, was a mass of

  blossom, and the apples looked as if they were going to do fairly well.

  What had originally been the weakling of the family, a Cox's Orange

  Pippin--it would hardly have been included in the job lot if it had been a

  good plant--had grown into a sturdy tree with plenty of fruit spurs on it.

  I maintain that it was a public-spirited action to plant that Cox, for

  these trees do not fruit quickly and I did not expect to stay there long.

  I never had an apple off it myself, but it looks as if someone else will

  have quite a lot. By their fruits ye shall know them, and the Cox's

  Orange Pippin is a good fruit to be known by. Yet I did not plant it with

  the conscious intention of doing anybody a good turn. I just saw the job

  lot going cheap and stuck the things into the ground without much

  preparation.

  A thing which I regret, and which I will try to remedy some time, is that

  I have never in my life planted a walnut. Nobody does plant them

  nowadays--when you see a walnut it is almost invariably an old tree. If

  you plant a walnut you are planting it for your grandchildren, and who

  cares a damn for his grandchildren? Nor does anybody plant a quince, a

  mulberry or a medlar. But these are garden trees which you can only be

  expected to plant if you have a patch of ground of your own. On the other

  hand, in any hedge or in any piece of waste ground you happen to be

  walking through, you can do something to remedy the appalling massacre of

  trees, especially oaks, ashes, elms and beeches, which has happened

  during the war years.

  Even an apple tree is liable to live for about 100 years, so that the Cox

  I planted in 1936 may still be bearing fruit well into the twenty-first

  century. An oak or a beech may live for hundreds of years and be a

  pleasure to thousands or tens of thousands of people before it is finally

  sawn up into timber. I am not suggesting that one can discharge all
one's

  obligations towards society by means of a private re-afforestation

  scheme. Still, it might not be a bad idea, every time you commit an

  antisocial act, to make a note of it in your diary, and then, at the

  appropriate season, push an acorn into the ground.

  And, if even one in twenty of them came to maturity, you might do quite a

  lot of harm in your lifetime, and still, like the Vicar of Bray, end up

  as a public benefactor after all.

  A NICE CUP OF TEA (1946)

  If you look up 'tea' in the first cookery book that comes to hand you

  will probably find that it is unmentioned; or at most you will find a few

  lines of sketchy instructions which give no ruling on several of the most

  important points.

  This is curious, not only because tea is one of the main stays

  of civilization in this country, as well as in Eire, Australia and New

  Zealand, but because the best manner of making it is the subject

  of violent disputes.

  When I look through my own recipe for the perfect cup of tea, I find no

  fewer than eleven outstanding points. On perhaps two of them there would

  be pretty general agreement, but at least four others are acutely

  controversial. Here are my own eleven rules, every one of which I regard

  as golden:

  First of all, one should use Indian or Ceylonese tea. China tea has

  virtues which are not to be despised nowadays--it is economical, and one

  can drink it without milk--but there is not much stimulation in it. One

  does not feel wiser, braver or more optimistic after drinking it. Anyone

  who has used that comforting phrase 'a nice cup of tea' invariably means

  Indian tea. Secondly, tea should be made in small quantities--that is,

  in a teapot. Tea out of an urn is always tasteless, while army tea, made

  in a cauldron, tastes of grease and whitewash. The teapot should be made of

  china or earthenware. Silver or Britanniaware teapots produce inferior tea

  and enamel pots are worse; though curiously enough a pewter teapot (a

  rarity nowadays) is not so bad. Thirdly, the pot should be warmed

  beforehand. This is better done by placing it on the hob than by the

  usual method of swilling it out with hot water. Fourthly, the tea should

  be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly

  to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right. In a time of

  rationing, this is not an idea that can be realized on every day of the

  week, but I maintain that one strong cup of tea is better than twenty weak

  ones. All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong, but like it a

  little stronger with each year that passes--a fact which is recognized in

  the extra ration issued to old-age pensioners. Fifthly, the tea should be

  put straight into the pot. No strainers, muslin bags or other devices to

  imprison the tea. In some countries teapots are fitted with little

  dangling baskets under the spout to catch the stray leaves, which are

  supposed to be harmful. Actually one can swallow tea-leaves in

  considerable quantities without ill effect, and if the tea is not loose

  in the pot it never infuses properly. Sixthly, one should take the teapot

  to the kettle and not the other way about. The water should be actually

  boiling at the moment of impact, which means that one should keep it on

  the flame while one pours. Some people add that one should only use water

  that has been freshly brought to the boil, but I have never noticed that

  it makes any difference. Seventhly, after making the tea, one should stir

  it, or better, give the pot a good shake, afterwards allowing the leaves

  to settle. Eighthly, one should drink out of a good breakfast cup--that

  is, the cylindrical type of cup, not the flat, shallow type. The

  breakfast cup holds more, and with the other kind one's tea is always half

  cold--before one has well started on it. Ninthly, one should pour the

  cream off the milk before using it for tea. Milk that is too creamy always

  gives tea a sickly taste. Tenthly, one should pour tea into the cup first.

  This is one of the most controversial points of all; indeed in every family

  in Britain there are probably two schools of thought on the subject. The

  milk-first school can bring forward some fairly strong arguments, but I

  maintain that my own argument is unanswerable. This is that, by putting

  the tea in first and stirring as one pours, one can exactly regulate the

  amount of milk whereas one is liable to put in too much milk if one does

  it the other way round.

  Lastly, tea--unless one is drinking it in the Russian style--should be

  drunk WITHOUT SUGAR. I know very well that I am in a minority here.

  But still, how can you call yourself a true tea-lover if you destroy

  the flavour of your tea by putting sugar in it? It would be equally

  reasonable to put in pepper or salt. Tea is meant to be bitter,

  just as beer is meant to be bitter. If you sweeten it, you are no longer

  tasting the tea, you are merely tasting the sugar; you could make a very

  similar drink by dissolving sugar in plain hot water.

  Some people would answer that they don't like tea in itself, that they

  only drink it in order to be warmed and stimulated, and they need sugar

  to take the taste away. To those misguided people I would say: Try

  drinking tea without sugar for, say, a fortnight and it is very unlikely

  that you will ever want to ruin your tea by sweetening it again.

  These are not the only controversial points to arise in connexion with

  tea drinking, but they are sufficient to show how subtilized the whole

  business has become. There is also the mysterious social etiquette

  surrounding the teapot (why is it considered vulgar to drink out of your

  saucer, for instance?) and much might be written about the subsidiary

  uses of tea leaves, such as telling fortunes, predicting the arrival of

  visitors, feeding rabbits, healing burns and sweeping the carpet. It is

  worth paying attention to such details as warming the pot and using water

  that is really boiling, so as to make quite sure of wringing out of one's

  ration the twenty good, strong cups of that two ounces, properly handled,

  ought to represent.

  BOOKS VS. CIGARETTES

  A couple of years ago a friend of mine, a newspaper editor, was

  fire watching with some factory workers. They fell to talking about his

  newspaper, which most of them read and approved of, but when he asked

  them what they thought of the literary section, the answer he got was:

  "You don't suppose we read that stuff, do you? Why, half the time you're

  talking about books that cost twelve and sixpence! Chaps like us couldn't

  spend twelve and sixpence on a book." These, he said, were men who thought

  nothing of spending several pounds on a day trip to Blackpool.

  This idea that the buying, or even the reading, of books is an expensive

  hobby and beyond the reach of the average person is so widespread that

  it deserves some detailed examination. Exactly what reading costs,

  reckoned in terms of pence per hour, is difficult to estimate, but I have

  made a start by inventorying my own books and adding up their total price.

  After allowing for variou
s other expenses, I can make a fairly good guess

  at my expenditure over the last fifteen years.

  The books that I have counted and priced are the ones I have here,

  in my flat. I have about an equal number stored in another place, so that

  I shall double the final figure in order to arrive at the complete amount.

  I have not counted oddments such as proof copies, defaced volumes, cheap

  paper-covered editions, pamphlets, or magazines, unless bound up into

  book form. Nor have I counted the kind of junky books-old school

  text-books and so forth--that accumulate in the bottoms of cupboards.

  I have counted only those books which I have acquired voluntarily,

  or else would have acquired voluntarily, and which I intend to keep.

  In this category I find that I have 442 books, acquired in the

  following ways:

  Bought (mostly second-hand) 251

  Given to me or bought with book tokens 33

  Review copies and complimentary copies 143

  Borrowed and not returned 10

  Temporarily on loan 5

  Total 442

  Now as to the method of pricing. Those books that I have bought I have

  listed at their full price, as closely as I can determine it.

  I have also listed at their full price the books that have been given

  to me, and those that I have temporarily borrowed, or borrowed and kept.

  This is because book-giving, book-borrowing and book stealing more or

  less even out. I possess books that do not strictly speaking belong

  to me, but many other people also have books of mine: so that the books

  I have not paid for can be taken as balancing others which I have paid

  for but no longer possess. On the other hand I have listed the review and

  complimentary copies at half-price. That is about what I would have paid

  for them second-hand, and they are mostly books that I would only have

  bought second-hand, if at all. For the prices I have sometimes had to

  rely on guesswork, but my figures will not be far out. The costs were

  as follows:

  � s. d.

  Bought 36 9 0

  Gifts 10 10 0

  Review copies, etc 25 11 9

  Borrowed and not returned 4 16 9

  On loan 3 10 0

  Shelves 2 0 0

  Total 82 17 6

  Adding the other batch of books that I have elsewhere, it seems that I

  possess altogether nearly 900 books, at a cost of �165 15s. This is the

  accumulation of about fifteen years--actually more, since some of these

  books date from my childhood: but call it fifteen years. This works out

  at �11 1s. a year, but there are other charges that must be added in

  order to estimate my full reading expenses. The biggest will be for

  newspapers and periodicals, and for this I think �8 a year would be

  a reasonable figure. Eight pounds a year covers the cost of two daily

  papers, one evening paper, two Sunday papers, one weekly review and

  one or two monthly magazines. This brings the figure up to �19 1s., but

  to arrive at the grand total one has to make a guess. Obviously one often

  spends money on books without afterwards having anything to show for it.

  There are library subscriptions, and there are also the books, chiefly

  Penguins and other cheap editions, which one buys and then loses or

  throws away. However, on the basis of my other figures, it looks as

  though �6 a year would be quite enough to add for expenditure of this

  kind. So my total reading expenses over the past fifteen years have been

  in the neighbourhood of �25 a year.

  Twenty-five pounds a year sounds quite a lot until you begin to measure

  it against other kinds of expenditure. It is nearly 9s. 9d. a week, and

  at present 9s. 9d. is the equivalent of about 83 cigarettes (Players):

  even before the war it would have bought you less than 200 cigarettes.

  With prices as they now are, I am spending far more on tobacco than I do