Fifty Orwell Essays

by George Orwell

appreciation, or enjoyment, is a subjective condition which cannot be

  commanded. For a great deal of his waking life, even the most cultivated

  person has no aesthetic feelings whatever, and the power to have

  aesthetic feelings is very easily destroyed. When you are frightened, or

  hungry, or are suffering from toothache or sea-sickness, KING LEAR is no

  better from your point of view than PETER PAN. You may know in an

  intellectual sense that it is better, but that is simply a fact which you

  remember: you will not FEEL the merit of KING LEAR until you are normal

  again. And aesthetic judgement can be upset just as disastrously--more

  disastrously, because the cause is less readily recognized--by political

  or moral disagreement. If a book angers, wounds or alarms you, then you

  will not enjoy it, whatever its merits may be. If it seems to you a

  really pernicious book, likely to influence other people in some

  undesirable way, then you will probably construct an aesthetic theory to

  show that it HAS no merits. Current literary criticism consists quite

  largely of this kind of dodging to and fro between two sets of standards.

  And yet the opposite process can also happen: enjoyment can overwhelm

  disapproval, even though one clearly recognizes that one is enjoying

  something inimical. Swift, whose world-view is so peculiarly

  unacceptable, but who is nevertheless an extremely popular writer, is a

  good instance of this. Why is it that we don't mind being called Yahoos,

  although firmly convinced that we are NOT Yahoos?

  It is not enough to make the usual answer that of course Swift was wrong,

  in fact he was insane, but he was "a good writer". It is true that the

  literary quality of a book is to some small extent separable from its

  subject-matter. Some people have a native gift for using words, as some

  people have a naturally "good eye" at games. It is largely a question of

  timing and of instinctively knowing how much emphasis to use. As an

  example near at hand, look back at the passage I quoted earlier, starting

  "In the Kingdom of Tribnia, by the Natives called Langdon". It derives

  much of its force from the final sentence: "And this is the anagram-made

  Method." Strictly speaking this sentence is unnecessary, for we have

  already seen the anagram decyphered, but the mock-solemn repetition, in

  which one seems to hear Swift's own voice uttering the words, drives home

  the idiocy of the activities described, like the final tap to a nail. But

  not all the power and simplicity of Swift's prose, nor the imaginative

  effort that has been able to make not one but a whole series of

  impossible worlds more credible than the majority of history books--none

  of this would enable us to enjoy Swift if his world-view were truly

  wounding or shocking. Millions of people, in many countries, must have

  enjoyed GULLIVER'S TRAVELS while more or less seeing its anti-human

  implications: and even the child who accepts Parts i and ii as a simple

  story gets a sense of absurdity from thinking of human beings six inches

  high. The explanation must be that Swift's world-view is felt to be NOT

  altogether false--or it would probably be more accurate to say, not

  false all the time. Swift is a diseased writer. He remains permanently in

  a depressed mood which in most people is only intermittent, rather as

  though someone suffering from jaundice or the after-effects of influenza

  should have the energy to write books. But we all know that mood, and

  something in us responds to the expression of it. Take, for instance, one

  of his most characteristic works, The Lady's Dressing Room: one might add

  the kindred poem, Upon a Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed. Which is

  truer, the viewpoint expressed in these poems, or the viewpoint implied

  in Blake's phrase, "The naked female human form divine"? No doubt Blake

  is nearer the truth, and yet who can fail to feel a sort of pleasure in

  seeing that fraud, feminine delicacy, exploded for once? Swift falsifies

  his picture of the world by refusing to see anything in human life except

  dirt, folly and wickedness, but the part which he abstracts from the

  whole does exist, and it is something which we all know about while

  shrinking from mentioning it. Part of our minds--in any normal person it

  is the dominant part--believes that man is a noble animal and life is

  worth living: but there is also a sort of inner self which at least

  intermittently stands aghast at the horror of existence. In the queerest

  way, pleasure and disgust are linked together. The human body is

  beautiful: it is also repulsive and ridiculous, a fact which can be

  verified at any swimming pool. The sexual organs are objects of desire

  and also of loathing, so much so that in many languages, if not in all

  languages, their names are used as words of abuse. Meat is delicious, but

  a butcher's shop makes one feel sick: and indeed all our food springs

  ultimately from dung and dead bodies, the two things which of all others

  seem to us the most horrible. A child, when it is past the infantile

  stage but still looking at the world with fresh eyes, is moved by horror

  almost as often as by wonder--horror of snot and spittle, of the dogs'

  excrement on the pavement, the dying toad full of maggots, the sweaty

  smell of grown-ups, the hideousness of old men, with their bald heads and

  bulbous noses. In his endless harping on disease, dirt and deformity,

  Swift is not actually inventing anything, he is merely leaving something

  out. Human behaviour, too, especially in politics, is as he describes it,

  although it contains other more important factors which he refuses to

  admit. So far as we can see, both horror and pain are necessary to the

  continuance of life on this planet, and it is therefore open to

  pessimists like Swift to say: "If horror and pain must always be with

  us, how can life be significantly improved?" His attitude is in effect

  the Christian attitude, minus the bribe of a "next world"--which,

  however, probably has less hold upon the minds of believers than the

  conviction that this world is a vale of tears and the grave is a place of

  rest. It is, I am certain, a wrong attitude, and one which could have

  harmful effects upon behaviour; but something in us responds to it, as it

  responds to the gloomy words of the burial service and the sweetish smell

  of corpses in a country church.

  It is often argued, at least by people who admit the importance of

  subject-matter, that a book cannot be "good" if it expresses a palpably

  false view of life. We are told that in our own age, for instance, any

  book that has genuine literary merit will also be more or less

  "progressive" in tendency. This ignores the fact that throughout history

  a similar struggle between progress and reaction has been raging, and

  that the best books of any one age have always been written from several

  different viewpoints, some of them palpably more false than others. In so

  far as a writer is a propagandist, the most one can ask of him is that he

  shall genuinely believe in what he is saying, and that it shall not be

  something blazingly silly. To-day, for example, one can imagine a good


  book being written by a Catholic, a Communist, a Fascist, pacifist, an

  anarchist, perhaps by an old-style Liberal or an ordinary Conservative:

  one cannot imagine a good book being written by a spiritualist, a

  Buchmanite or a member of the Ku-Klux-Klan. The views that a writer holds

  must be compatible with sanity, in the medical sense, and with the power

  of continuous thought: beyond that what we ask of him is talent, which is

  probably another name for conviction. Swift did not possess ordinary

  wisdom, but he did possess a terrible intensity of vision, capable of

  picking out a single hidden truth and then magnifying it and distorting

  it. The durability of GULLIVER'S TRAVELS goes to show that, if the force

  of belief is behind it, a world-view which only just passes the test of

  sanity is sufficient to produce a great work of art.

  RIDING DOWN FROM BANGOR

  The reappearance of HELEN'S BABIES, in its day one of the most popular

  books in the world--within the British Empire alone it was pirated by

  twenty different publishing firms, the author receiving a total profit of

  �40 from a sale of some hundreds of thousands or millions of copies--will

  ring a bell in any literate person over thirty-five. Not that the present

  edition is an altogether satisfactory one. It is a cheap little book with

  rather unsuitable illustrations, various American dialect words appear to

  have been cut out of it, and the sequel, OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN, which

  was often bound up with it in earlier editions, is missing. Still, it is

  pleasant to see HELEN'S BABIES in print again. It had become almost a

  rarity in recent years, and it is one of the best of the little library

  of American books on which people born at about the turn of the century

  were brought up.

  The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and

  good bad books, create in one's mind a sort of false map of the world, a

  series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments

  throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can even survive a

  visit to the real countries which they are supposed to represent. The

  pampas, the Amazon, the coral islands of the Pacific, Russia, land of

  birch-tree and samovar, Transylvania with its boyars and vampires, the

  China of Guy Boothby, the Paris of du Maurier--one could continue the list

  for a long time. But one other imaginary country that I acquired early in

  life was called America. If I pause on the word "America", and,

  deliberately putting aside the existing reality, call up my childhood

  vision of it, I see two pictures--composite pictures, of course, from

  which I am omitting a good deal of the detail.

  One is of a boy sitting in a whitewashed stone schoolroom. He wears

  braces and has patches on his shirt, and if it is summer he is

  barefooted. In the corner of the school room there is a bucket of

  drinking water with a dipper. The boy lives in a farm-house, also of

  stone and also whitewashed, which has a mortgage on it. He aspires to be

  President, and is expected to keep the woodpile full. Somewhere in the

  background of the picture, but completely dominating it, is a huge black

  Bible. The other picture is of a tall, angular man, with a shapeless hat

  pulled down over his eyes, leaning against a wooden paling and whittling

  at a stick. His lower jaw moves slowly but ceaselessly. At very long

  intervals he emits some piece of wisdom such as "A woman is the orneriest

  critter there is, 'ceptin' a mule", or "When you don't know a thing to

  do, don't do a thing"; but more often it is a jet of tobacco juice that

  issues from the gap in his front teeth. Between them those two pictures

  summed up my earliest impression of America. And of the two, the

  first--which, I suppose, represented New England, the other representing

  the South--had the stronger hold upon me.

  The books from which these pictures were derived included, of course,

  books which it is still possible to take seriously, such as TOM SAWYER

  and UNCLE TOM'S CABIN, but the most richly American flavour was to be

  found in minor works which are now almost forgotten. I wonder, for

  instance, if anyone still reads REBECCA OF SUNNYBROOK FARM, which

  remained a popular favourite long enough to be filmed with Mary Pickford

  in the leading part. Or how about the "Katy" books by Susan Coolidge

  (WHAT KATY DID AT SCHOOL, etc), which, although girls' books and

  therefore "soppy", had the fascination of foreignness? Louisa M. Alcott's

  LITTLE WOMEN and GOOD WIVES are, I suppose, still flickeringly in print,

  and certainly they still have their devotees. As a child I loved both of

  them, though I was less pleased by the third of the trilogy, LITTLE MEN.

  That model school where the worst punishment was to have to whack the

  schoolmaster, on "this hurts me more than it hurts you" principles, was

  rather difficult to swallow.

  HELEN'S BABIES belonged in much the same world as LITTLE WOMEN, and must

  have been published round about the same date. Then there were Artemus

  Ward, Bret Harte, and various songs, hymns and ballads, besides poems

  dealing with the civil war, such as "Barbara Fritchie" ("Shoot if you

  must this old grey head, But spare your country's flag,' she said") and

  "Little Gifford of Tennessee". There were other books so obscure that it

  hardly seems worth mentioning them, and magazine stories of which I

  remember nothing except that the old homestead always seemed to have a

  mortgage on it. There was also BEAUTIFUL JOE, the American reply to BLACK

  BEAUTY, of which you might just possibly pick up a copy in a sixpenny

  box. All the books I have mentioned were written well before 1900, but

  something of the special American flavour lingered on into this century

  in, for instance, the Buster Brown coloured supplements, and even in

  Booth Tarkington's "Penrod" stories, which will have been written round

  about 1910. Perhaps there was even a tinge of it in Ernest Thompson

  Seton's animal books (WILD ANIMALS I HAVE KNOWN, etc), which have now

  fallen from favour but which drew tears from the pre-1914 child as surely

  as MISUNDERSTOOD had done from the children of a generation earlier.

  Somewhat later my picture of nineteenth-century America was given greater

  precision by a song which is still fairly well known and which can be

  found (I think) in the SCOTTISH STUDENTS' SONG BOOK. As usual in these

  bookless days I cannot get hold of a copy, and I must quote fragments

  from memory. It begins:

  Riding down from Bangor

  On an Eastern train,

  Bronzed with weeks of hunting

  In the woods of Maine

  Quite extensive whiskers,

  Beard, moustache as well

  Sat a student fellow,

  Tall and slim and swell.

  Presently an aged couple and a "village maiden", described as "beautiful,

  petite", get into the carriage. Quantities of cinders are flying about,

  and before long the student fellow gets one in his eye: the village

  maiden extracts it for him, to the scandal of the aged couple. Soon after

  this the train shoots into a long tunnel, "black as Egypt's night".
When

  it emerges into the daylight again the maiden is covered with blushes,

  and the cause of her confusion is revealed when:

  There suddenly appeared

  A tiny little ear-ring

  In that horrid student's beard!

  I do not know the date of the song, but the primitiveness of the train

  (no lights in the carriage, and a cinder in one's eye a normal accident)

  suggests that it belongs well back in the nineteenth century.

  What connects this song with books like HELEN'S BABIES is first of all a

  sort of sweet innocence--the climax, the thing you are supposed to be

  slightly shocked at, is an episode with which any modern piece of

  naughty-naughty would START--and, secondly, a faint vulgarity of language

  mixed up with a certain cultural pretentiousness. HELEN'S BABIES is

  intended as a humorous, even a farcical book, but it is haunted all the

  way through by words like "tasteful" and "ladylike", and it is funny

  chiefly because its tiny disasters happen against a background of

  conscious gentility. "Handsome, intelligent, composed, tastefully

  dressed, without a suspicion of the flirt or the languid woman of fashion

  about her, she awakened to the utmost my every admiring sentiment"--thus

  is the heroine described, figuring elsewhere as "erect, fresh, neat,

  composed, bright-eyed, fair-faced, smiling and observant". One gets

  beautiful glimpses of a now-vanished world in such remarks as: "I believe

  you arranged the floral decorations at St Zephaniah's Fair last winter,

  Mr Burton? 'Twas the most tasteful display of the season." But in spite

  of the occasional use of "'twas" and other archaisms--"parlour" for

  sitting-room, "chamber" for bedroom, "real" as an adverb, and so

  forth--the book does not "date" very markedly, and many of its admirers

  imagine it to have been written round about 1900. Actually it was written

  in 1875, a fact which one might infer from internal evidence, since the

  hero, aged twenty-eight, is a veteran of the civil war.

  The book is very short and the story is a simple one. A young bachelor is

  prevailed on by his sister to look after her house and her two sons, aged

  five and three, while she and her husband go on a fortnight's holiday.

  The children drive him almost mad by an endless succession of such acts

  as falling into ponds, swallowing poison, throwing keys down wells,

  cutting themselves with razors, and the like, but also facilitate his

  engagement to "a charming girl, whom, for about a year, I had been

  adoring from afar". These events take place in an outer suburb of New

  York, in a society which now seems astonishingly sedate, formal,

  domesticated and, according to current conceptions, un-American. Every

  action is governed by etiquette. To pass a carriage full of ladies when

  your hat is crooked is an ordeal; to recognise an acquaintance in church

  is ill-bred; to become engaged after a ten days' courtship is a severe

  social lapse. We are accustomed to thinking of American society as more

  crude, adventurous and, in a cultural sense, democratic than our own, and

  from writers like Mark Twain, Whitman and Bret Harte, not to mention the

  cowboy and Red Indian stories of the weekly papers, one draws a picture

  of a wild anarchic world peopled by eccentrics and desperadoes who have

  no traditions and no attachment to one place. That aspect of

  nineteenth-century America did of course exist, but in the more populous

  eastern States a society similar to Jane Austen's seems to have survived

  longer than it did in England. And it is hard not to feel that it was a

  better kind of society than that which arose from the sudden

  industrialisation of the later part of the century. The people in HELEN'S

  BABIES or LITTLE WOMEN may be mildly ridiculous, but they are

  uncorrupted. They have something that is perhaps best described as

  integrity, or good morale, founded partly on an unthinking piety. It is a

  matter of course that everyone attends church on Sunday morning and says