George Orwell: A Life in Letters Read online

  1.In January 1938 the government decreed that children be issued gas masks and in April 1938 the rest of the population be measured for them, many months before the Munich crisis. A.R.P. = Air Raid Precautions (which were more effective than Marjorie feared).

  2.It was not correct: there was generally adequate time to seek shelter. Bristol would be severely bombed.

  3.This was a reasonable approximation of the position.

  4.In the 1930s this meant the brief time necessary to add dabs of rouge and powder to each cheek before dashing out. In the nineteenth century it referred to an overrouged overpowdered street woman.

  5.Marjorie and Humphrey Dakin had three children: Jane, born 1923; Henry, 1925; and Lucy, 1930.

  6.Bloody.

  7.Humphrey’s father. Both he and Humphrey served in World War I, and were on the Somme together. Humphrey was wounded and lost an eye. His father, who was a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps, patched him up.

  8.Ray Coryton Hutchinson (1907–1975). Shining Scabbard was published in 1936 and Testament had just appeared.

  9.In his Wigan Pier Diary for 9 March 1936 Orwell writes that he had gone to stay there with Marjorie and Humphrey.

  Eileen Blair* to Geoffrey Gorer*

  4 October 1938

  Chez Mme Vellat

  Marrakech

  Dear Geoffrey,

  Your letter has just arrived. Of course we are blameworthy. I thought Eric had written to you & now I see he can’t have done so. For myself I don’t remember the last few weeks in England except that they were spent almost entirely in trains. People had to be said good-bye to & things (including Eric) collected from all over the country & the cottage had to be handed over furnished but nakedly to the Commons who are spending the winter there & mustering the goats etc. We were thrust out of England very hurriedly partly in case war broke out & partly because Eric was getting rebellious & I had rebelled. As it turns out this was rather a pity. Marrakech is the dernier cri of fashionable medicine. Certainly it is dry. They’ve had three years’ drought, including 17 months entirely without rain. But the climate doesn’t get tolerable in any year until the end of September & this year the hot weather still persists. We are both choosing our shrouds (the Arabs favour bright green & don’t have coffins which is nice on funeral days for the flies who leave even a restaurant for a few minutes to sample a passing corpse 1), but have now chosen instead a villa. It’s in the middle of an orange-grove in the palm-tree country at the foot of the Atlas from which the good air comes. I think Eric really will benefit when we get there but it isn’t available until the 15th. We’ve bought the furniture—for about £10. I’ve only seen the place once for five minutes & I wasn’t allowed to open the shutters & there was no artificial light, but I believe it could be very attractive. Garnished with us & our ten pounds’ worth it may be odd to the eye but will be comforting to the spirit. We shall even have goats who will be physically as well as emotionally important because fresh milk is otherwise unobtainable. It’s five kilometres from Marrakech.

  Do you know Morocco? We found it a most desolate country—miles & miles of ground that is not technically desert, i.e. it could be cultivated if it were irrigated but without water is simply earth & stones in about equal proportions with not even a weed growing. We got all excited the other day because we found a dock. The villa is in one of the more fertile bits. Marrakech itself is beautiful in bits. It has ramparts & a lot of buildings made of earth dug up about five feet below ground level. This dries a soft reddish colour so the French call Marrakech ‘la rouge’ & paint everything that isn’t earth a dreadful salmon-beige. The best thing is the native pottery. Unfortunately it generally isn’t glazed (except some bits painted in frightful designs for the tourist trade) but we’re trying to get some things made watertight. There are exquisite white clay mugs with a very simple black design inside. They cost a franc & it seems to us that people here generally earn about a franc to two francs an hour.

  Eric is going to write to you & I shall leave him the crisis. I am determined to be pleased with Chamberlain because I want a rest. Anyway Czecho-Slovakia ought to be pleased with him; it seems geographically certain that that country would be ravaged at the beginning of any war fought in its defence. But of course the English Left is always Spartan; they’re fighting Franco to the last Spaniard too.

  I hope the old book & the new go well.2 Are you going to America? If you happen to come to the south of Europe, call on us. It isn’t very difficult—indeed there’s an air service from Tangier—& we have a spare room (quite spare I should say, not even furniture in it) & we could go & look at the country on donkeys & possibly at the desert on camels, & we should enjoy it very much.

  I’d better send love from us both in case Eric’s letter gets delayed. He has begun his novel 3 & is also carpentering—there is a box for the goats to eat out of & a hutch for the chickens though we have no goat yet & no chickens.

  Yours ever

  Eileen.

  The villa is not in any postal district & I think we have to have a ‘box’. We’ll let you know the proper address when we discover it.

  [XI, 493, pp. 217–8; handwritten]

  1.Compare the first paragraph of Orwell’s essay, ‘Marrakech’(published Christmas 1939; XI, p. 416); ‘As the corpse went past the flies left the restaurant table in a cloud and rushed after it, but they came back a few minutes later.’ (See also 14–17.12.38, n. 6.)

  2.Probably Hot Strip Tease and Other Notes on American Culture (1937) and Himalayan Village: An Account of the Lepchas of Sikkim (1938; US, 1967).

  3.Coming Up for Air.

  To Jack Common*

  12 October 1938

  Chez Madame Vellat

  Marrakech

  Dear Jack,

  Thanks for yours. There were several important items I wanted to talk to you about but they were chased out of my mind by the European situation. The first is, I think we forgot to warn you not to use thick paper in the WC. It sometimes chokes the cesspool up, with disastrous results. The best to use is Jeyes paper which is 6d a packet. The difference of price is negligible, and on the other hand a choked cesspool is a misery. Secondly, if you find the sitting room fire smokes intolerably, I think you can get a piece of tin put in the chimney, which is what it needs, for a very small sum. Brookers in Hitchin would tell you all about it. Or you could probably do it yourself. I was always meaning to but put it off. Thirdly, I enclose cheque for £3. Could you some time get this cashed and pay £2 to Field, the postmaster at Sandon, for the rent of the field. It’s a lot overdue as a matter of fact but F. never remembers about it. Field goes past in his grey car, which he uses to carry cattle in, every Tuesday on his way to Hitchin Market, and one can sometimes stop him if one jumps into the middle of the road and waves. As to the remaining £1, could you some time in the winter get some or, if possible, all of the ground in the vegetable garden dug over? Old H[atchett] is getting so old that I don’t really like asking him to do that kind of work, but he’s always glad of it and, of course, willing to work for very low rates. There’s no hurry, it’s just a question of getting the vacant ground turned over some time in the winter and preferably some manure (the goat’s stuff is quite good if there isn’t too much straw in it) dug in. The official theory is that we are to give up the cottage next spring, so I suppose on good business principles one ought to exhaust the soil by taking an enormous crop of Brussels off it and then let it go to hell. But I hate starving soil and in addition I’m not so certain of giving up the cottage. As I expect you’ve discovered by this time it’s truly a case of be it never so humble, but the fact is that it’s a roof and moving is so damned expensive besides being a misery. I think I would rather feel I had the cottage there to move into next April, even if when the time comes we don’t actually do it, because I don’t know what my financial situation will be next year. I don’t believe my book on Spain sold at all, and if I have to come back to England and start on yet another book with about £
50 in the world I would rather have a roof over my head from the start. It’s a great thing to have a roof over your head even if it’s a leaky one. When Eileen and I were first married, when I was writing Wigan Pier, we had so little money that sometimes we hardly knew where the next meal was coming from, but we found we could rub along in a remarkable manner with spuds and so forth. I hope the hens have begun laying. Some of them have by this time, I expect, at any rate they ought to. We’ve just bought the hens for our house, which we’re moving into on Saturday. The hens in this country are miserable little things like the Indian ones, about the size of bantams, and what is regarded as a good laying hen, ie. it lays once a fortnight, costs less than a shilling. They ought only to cost about 6d, but at this time of year the price goes up because after Yom Kippur every Jew, of whom there are 13,000 in this town, eats a whole fowl to recompense him for the strain of fasting 12 hours.

  Well, the mortal moon hath her eclipse endured1 till 1941, I suppose. I don’t think one need be surprised at Chamberlain’s stock slumping a bit after the danger is over. Judging from the letters I get from home I should say people feel as you feel when you are just going to dive off the springboard and then think better of it. The real point is what will happen at the election, and unless the Conservative Party splits right up I prophecy they will win hands down. Because the other bloody fools can’t produce any policy except ‘We want war’, and however ashamed people may feel after we’ve let down Czechoslovakia, or whoever it may be, they’ll shy away from war when it comes to a show-down. The only hope of Labour getting in is for some downright disaster to happen, or alternatively, for the elections to be held a year hence with another million unemployed. I think now we’re in for a period of slow fascisation°, the sort of Dollfuss-Schussnig Fascism2 which is what Chamberlain and Co would presumably introduce, but I would sooner have that than have the Left parties identified in the public mind as the war party. The only hope is that if Chamberlain wins and then begins seriously to prepare for war with Germany, as of course he will, the L[abour] P[arty] will be driven back to an anti-war policy in which they will be able to exploit the discontent with conscription etc. The policy of simultaneously shouting for a war policy and pretending to denounce conscription, rearmament etc. is utter nonsense and the general public aren’t such bloody fools as not to see it. As to the results if war comes, although some kind of revolutionary situation will no doubt arise, I do not see how it can lead to anything except Fascism unless the Left has been anti-war from the outset. I have nothing but contempt for the fools who think that they can first drive the nation into a war for democracy and then when people are a bit fed up suddenly turn round and say ‘Now we’ll have the revolution.’ What sickens me about left-wing people, especially the intellectuals, is their utter ignorance of the way things actually happen. I was always struck by this when I was in Burma and used to read anti-imperialist stuff. Did you see Kingsley Martin’s (‘Critic’) article in last week’s N[ew] S[tatesman] about the conditions on which the L.P. should support the Government in war? As though the Government would allow any conditions. The bloody fool seems to think war is a cricket match. I wish someone would print my anti-war pamphlet I wrote earlier this year,3 but of course no one will.

  All the best. Love to Mary and Peter. E. sends love.

  Yours

  Eric

  P.S. [handwritten at top of first page] This address will find us.

  [XI, 496, pp. 221–2; typewritten]

  1.‘The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur’d, / And the sad augurs mock their own presage’, Shakespeare, Sonnet 107.

  2.Engelbert Dollfuss (1892–1934) was Chancellor of Austria, 1932–34. He was largely responsible for the establishment of a quasi-fascist regime on the Italian pattern, which brought to an end parliamentary government in Austria, but not without bloodshed. He was assassinated by members of the Nazi Party. Kurt von Schuschnigg (1897–1977), Austrian Minister of Justice and later of Education, then became chancellor and attempted to maintain Austria’s independence. After annexation by Germany in 1938, he was imprisoned until the end of World War II. (See his The Brutal Takeover (1969).)

  3.‘Socialism and War’. Orwell told Leonard Moore on 28 June that he was in the process of writing this 5,000–6,000-word article (XI, 458, p. 169). It was not published.

  To John Sceats*

  26 October 1938

  Boite1 Postale 48

  Guéliz

  Marrakech

  French Morocco

  Dear Sceats,2

  I hope all goes well with you. I had meant to look you up before leaving England, but as it turned out I went almost straight from the sanatorium to the boat and only had one day in London, which of course was pretty full. I’m writing to you now for some expert advice. The chap in the novel I’m writing 3 is supposed to be an insurance agent. His job isn’t in the least important to the story, I merely wanted him to be a typical middle-aged bloke with about £5 a week and a house in the suburbs, and he’s also rather thoughtful and fairly well-educated, even slightly bookish, which is more plausible with an insurance agent than, say, a commercial traveller. But I want any mention that is made of his job to be correct. And meanwhile I have only very vague ideas as to what an insurance agent does. I want him to be a chap who travels round and gets part of his income from commissions, not merely an office employee. Does such a chap have a ‘district’ and a regular round like a commercial traveller? Does he have to go touting round for orders, or just go round and sign the people up when they want to be insured? Would he spend all his time in travelling or part of it in the office? Would he have an office of his own? Do the big insurance companies have branch offices all over the place (this chap lives in a suburb which might be Hayes or Southall) or do they only have the head office and send all the agents out from there? And would such a man do valuations of property, and would the same man do life insurance and property insurance? I’d be very glad of some elucidation on these points. My picture of this chap is this. He spends about two days a week in the branch office in his suburb and the rest of the time in travelling round in a car over a district of about half a county, interviewing people who’ve written in to say that they want to be insured, making valuations of houses, stock and so forth, and also touting for orders on which he gets an extra commission, and that by this he is earning round about £5 a week after being with the firm 18 years (having started very much at the bottom). I want to know if this is plausible.

  Well, ‘The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured and the sad augurs mock their own presage’4 and some of them are very sad indeed to judge by the New Statesman. However, I suppose they’ll get the war they’re longing for in about two years. The real attitude of the governing class to this business is summed up in the remark I overheard from one of the Gibraltar garrison the moment I set foot there: ‘It’s pretty clear Hitler’s going to have Czechoslovakia. Much better let him have it. We shall be ready in 1941.’ Meanwhile the net result will be a sweeping win for the Conservatives at the General Election. I judge from letters from more or less conservative relatives at home that now that it is all over people are a bit fed up and saying ‘What a pity we didn’t hold on a bit longer and Hitler would have backed down’ And from this the bloody fools of the L[abour] P[arty] infer that after all the English people do want another war to make the world safe for democracy and that their best line is to exploit the anti-fascist stuff. They don’t seem to see that the election will revive the spirit of the crisis, the word will be Chamberlain and Peace, and if the L.P. go round saying ‘We want war’, which is how ordinary people, quite rightly, interpret the firm line with Hitler stuff, they will just be eaten up. I think a lot of people in the last two years have been misled by phenomena like the Left Book Club. Here you have about 50,000 people who are willing to make a noise about Spain, China etc., and because the majority of people are normally silent this gives the impression that the Left Bookmongers are the voice of the nation instead of being a
tiny minority. No one seems to reflect that what matters is not what a few people say when all is quiet but what the majority do in moments of crisis. The only hope is that if the L.P. gets a knock at the election, as it’s almost certain to do, this will gradually force them back to their proper policy. But I am afraid it may be a year or two years before this happens.

  I’ve got to go down to a meal that’s getting cold, so au revoir. I’d be enormously obliged if you’d let me know about those points some time, but there’s no immediate hurry.

  Yours

  Eric Blair

  [XI, 498, pp. 226–8; typewritten]

  1.Orwell had no accents on his typewriter and always spells ‘Boîte’ as ‘Boite’. His French was very good so he would have been well aware of the correct spelling. It is silently corrected hereafter.

  2.John Sceats only met Orwell once, at Preston Hall Sanatorium probably in May or June 1938: ‘We talked chiefly of politics and philosophy. I remember he said he thought Burmese Days his best book (excluding, sans dire, the latest). At the time he was reading Kafka. Despite his recent association with POUM, he had already decided he was not a Marxist, and he was more than interested in the philosophy of Anarchism. […] He was of course anti-Nazi, but could not (at the time) stomach the idea of an anti-German war: in fact, talking to Max Plowman* (who called in the afternoon) he implied that he would join him in opposition to such a war with whatever underground measures might be appropriate.’ Sceats marked the last sentence with an asterisk and added a footnote: ‘Indeed, it was Max who put the views of common sense.’

  3.Coming Up for Air.

  4.Shakespeare, Sonnet 107; also quoted in part in Orwell’s letter to Jack Common, 12.10.38 (and see its n. 1).

  To John Sceats*

  24 November 1938

  Boîte Postale 48

  Marrakech

  Dear Sceats,

  Thanks so much for your letter with the very useful information about insurance offices. I see that my chap will have to be a Representative and that I underrated his income a little. I’ve done quite a lot of work, but unfortunately after wasting no less than a fortnight doing articles for various papers fell slightly ill so that properly speaking I’ve done no work for 3 weeks. It’s awful how the time flies by. What with all this illness I’ve decided to count 1938 as a blank year and sort of cross it off the calendar. But meanwhile the concentration camp looms ahead and there is so much one wants to do. I’ve got to the point now when I feel I could write a good novel if I had five years peace and quiet, but at present one might as well ask for five years in the moon.