George Orwell: A Life in Letters Read online

  When I get back I’ll write or ring up and try and arrange to meet. If you’re going to be in town about the beginning of April, or on the other hand going to be away or something, could you let me know? But better not write to the above as the letter might miss me. Write to: at: 24 Croom’s Hill, Greenwich SE.10.

  Yours

  Eric Blair

  [XI, 536, pp. 340–1; typewritten]

  1.Revolt!, jointly edited by Vernon Richards* in London, ran for six issues, from 11 February to 3 June 1939. It aimed at presenting the Spanish civil war from an anti-Stalinist point of view.

  2.John Squire (1884–1958; Kt.1933) literary editor New Statesman and Nation, 1913–19; founded the London Mercury, and edited it, 1919–34. He stood for Parliament for Labour in 1918 and for the Liberals in 1924, unsuccessfully both times. Among the many books he wrote and edited were A Book of Women’s Verse (1921) and The Comic Muse (1925).

  3.John Drinkwater (1882–1937), poet, playwright, and essayist, was evidently an object of particular scorn to Orwell; Gordon Comstock sneeringly refers to him as Sir John Drinkwater in Keep the Aspidistra Flying (CW, IV, p. 287), though he was not knighted.

  4.See letter to Read, 4.1.39.

  5.Roland Penrose (1900–1984; Kt., 1966) was a painter and writer who used his independent means to support many painters and artistic and left-wing projects.

  6.Bertrand Russell, 3rd Earl Russell (1872–1970), philosopher and Nobel Prize winner, was a prominent advocate for peace, and wrote and campaigned vigorously for it. Supported World War II and advocated threatening USSR with Atomic Bomb at start of Cold War. See also Orwell’s review of his Power: A New Social Analysis (XI, 520, pp. 311–2).

  To Jack Common*

  19 March 1939

  Marrakech

  Dear Jack,

  Thanks so much for your good offices re. George Kopp.* He wrote telling us you had invited him to go to Wallington & that he wasn’t going, at which I dare say you were not unrelieved, though you’d have liked him, I think. It’s all rather awkward, Gwen O’Shaughnessy, Eileen’s sister in law, has been putting him up for about 2 months now & we can’t ask her to do so indefinitely. Meanwhile I don’t know if it is going to make difficulties about our moving in—there being no one there, I mean. If so be you wanted to move out before we could get back, ie. that some opportunity of another house arose, or something, I suppose it would be quite simple to arrange with old Hatchett to look after the creatures till we arrive. He knows we’ll make it up to him, & anyway, he’s very good & kind about undertaking anything like that. I don’t think we’ll reach London before April 2nd, & then I must go straight down & see my father, who I am afraid is dying, poor old man. It’s wonderful how he’s lasted through this winter, which must have been beastly cold in Suffolk, & he was too frail to be moved. He’s 81, so he’s had a pretty good innings, but what a hole it seems to leave when someone you have known since childhood goes. We can’t get back earlier because the boat we were to have sailed on on the 23rd has been delayed at sea in some way. Of course if something like that didn’t happen on any journey I take this wouldn’t be my life. However there’s a Japanese boat a few days later which has got to stop off at Casablanca to drop a cargo of tea & we are going to take that instead. I’ve never been on a Japanese boat before but I’m told they’re very good. We could go the way we came, across Spanish Morocco to Tangier, but it is intolerable if one has much luggage. Coming down we lost most of our luggage & didn’t get it back for weeks because at every station there is an enormous horde of Arabs all literally fighting for the job of porter, & whenever the train stops they invade it, grab all luggage they can see, carry it off & stow it away in any other trains that happen to be in the station, after which it steams away into various parts of Africa while you try to explain what has happened to people who don’t speak anything but arabic. I like to go as far as possible by sea, because on a ship at any rate there’s no question of getting out at the wrong station.

  My novel’s finished, which is why I’m writing in pen, as it is being typed. I’ve heard from Richard [Rees], who’s at Perpignan & sounds pretty exhausted, as well he may be. I wonder if we can possibly get 5 years of respite before the next war. It doesn’t look like it. Anyway, thank God for a roof over one’s head & a patch of potatoes when the fun begins. I hope Muriel’s mating went through. It is a most unedifying spectacle, by the way, if you happened to watch it. Love to Mary & Peter. Eileen sends love. Don’t write because it would cross us. If any occasion to write, write to the Greenwich address.

  Yours

  Eric

  P.S. Did my rhubarb come up, I wonder? I had a lot, & then last year the frost buggered it up. I don’t know whether it survives that or not.

  [XI, 539, pp. 344–5; handwritten]

  To Lydia Jackson*

  [30 March 1939]

  postcard1

  Dear Lydia,

  I knocked at the door of your flat & was very disappointed not to find you at home. I gathered from the hall porter that you weren’t actually away from London. I’ve got tomorrow to go down & see my parents for the week-end, but hope to see you when I get back, about Tuesday. Meanwhile if clever I may be able to look in for an hour tomorrow morning, so try & stay at home in the morning will you?

  Love

  Eric

  [XI, 542A, p. 348; handwritten]

  1.The postcard was of ‘A Café in the Faubourg Montmartre’ by Edgar Degas. It, and the next item, have been dated by reference to adjacent letters. This, and the other letters, are not quite accurately reproduced in her A Russian’s England, pp. 430–31.

  To Lydia Jackson*

  Friday [31 March 1939]

  36 High Street

  Southwold

  Dear Lydia,

  You were mean not to stay at home this morning like I asked you. But perhaps you couldn’t. I rang up 3 times. Are you angry with me? I did write to you twice from Morocco & I don’t think you wrote to me. But listen. I am coming back to town Monday or Tuesday, & Eileen is going to stay down here a bit longer. I shall have to be in town several days to see to various things, so we can arrange to meet—unless you don’t want to. I’ll ring up.

  Yours ever.

  Eric.

  [XI, 542B, p. 348; handwritten]

  To Leonard Moore*

  25 April 1939

  The Stores

  Wallington

  Dear Mr Moore,

  Many thanks for your letter. I am afraid you must be very overworked, with Miss Perriam away1 and having been unwell yourself, and I am sorry to trouble you with all this stuff.

  I thought Gollancz might show fight. The book is, of course, only a novel and more or less unpolitical, so far as it is possible for a book to be that nowadays, but its general tendency is pacifist, and there is one chapter (Chapter i. of Part III—I suppose you haven’t seen the manuscript) which describes a Left Book Club meeting and which Gollancz no doubt objects to. I also think it perfectly conceivable that some of Gollancz’s Communist friends have been at him to drop me and any other politically doubtful writers who are on his list. You know how this political racket works, and of course it is a bit difficult for Gollancz, or at any rate Lawrence and Wishart, to be publishing books proving that persons like myself are German spies and at the same time to be publishing my own books. Meanwhile how does our contract stand? I didn’t see our last contract, which you may remember was drawn up while I was in Spain, but I understood from my wife that Gollancz undertook to publish my next three works of fiction and pay £100 in advance on each. He has also had this book in his advance lists three times, owing to the delay caused by my illness. But at the same time I think it would be much better not to pin him down to his contract if he is really reluctant to publish the book. To begin with he has treated me very well and I don’t want to make unpleasantness for him, and secondly if he really objects to the book he could hardly be expected to push it once published. It might be better to have a quite frank explanatio
n with him. If we are to go to another publisher, whom do you recommend? I suppose it would be better to go to one of the big ones if they will have me, but meanwhile there will I suppose be considerable delays. It is all a great nuisance. I have earned little or no money since last spring and am infernally hard up and in debt, and I was looking to this book to see me through the summer while I get on with my next. I am also not completely decided about my next book, I have ideas for two books which I had thought of writing simultaneously, and if we are going to change publishers it might be necessary to talk that over too. So perhaps the sooner this business is settled the better. I am sorry to be such a nuisance.

  I hope you are quite over your flu. I am very well again and have been putting in some strenuous gardening to make up for lost time. My wife sends all the best.

  Yours sincerely

  Eric Blair

  P.S. [at top of letter] If G. wants alterations in the book, I am willing to make the usual minor changes to avoid libel actions, but not structural alterations.

  [XI, 546, pp. 352–3; handwritten]

  1.Miss Periam was Moore’s secretary and had been ill for some months (see 28.11.38, n. 7).

  To Leonard Moore*

  [4 July 1939?]1

  The Stores

  Wallington

  Dear Mr. Moore,

  Many thanks for your letter. I called at your office yesterday and was sorry not to find you there. I am terribly behind with my book of essays2 which I had hoped to finish by September at latest. These infernal illnesses have of course wasted months of time. Also I am sorry to tell you my father has just died. I was with the poor old man for the last week of his life, and then there was the funeral etc., etc., all terribly upsetting and depressing. However, he was 82 and had been very active till he was over 80, so he had had a good life, and I am very glad that latterly he had not been so disappointed in me as before. Curiously enough his last moment of consciousness was hearing that review I had in the Sunday Times. He heard about it and wanted to see it, and my sister took it in and read it to him, and a little later he lost consciousness for the last time.

  About the book. I shan’t be starting my novel till after I have done the book of essays, and unless something upsets my plans I intend doing next a long novel, really the first part of an enormous novel, a sort of saga(!) which will have to be published in three parts. I think I ought to finish the book of essays in October, but the novel will take a long time and even barring wars, illnesses etc. isn’t likely to be finished before the late summer of 1940. Those at any rate are my plans. As to the book of essays, I don’t know whether Gollancz will want them. They may be a bit off his track, and as they are sort of literary-sociological essays they touch at places on politics, on which I am certain to say things he wouldn’t approve of. The subjects are Charles Dickens, boys’ weekly papers (the Gem, Magnet etc.), and Henry Miller, the American novelist. I am finishing the rough draft of the Dickens one now, but the others probably won’t take so long. I should say it will be a short book, 50–60 thousand words. I don’t know whether this is at all the kind of thing to interest Gollancz, but if he wants to have the first refusal that is up to him and you. If he wants to take a chance on the book and put it in his lists I will think of a title, but I can’t send a specimen, as it is all rather in a mess as yet.

  I see Coming up for Air has gone into a second edition, so I suppose it’s doing fairly well. It had some wonderful reviews, especially from James Agate. The Frenchwoman3 who was translating Homage to Catalonia has finished it and is hawking it round various publishers, always unsuccessfully, as people are fed up with books on the Spanish war, which well they may be. She has an idea however that she may be able to induce someone to publish it or part of it unpaid. But she is afraid Warburg will kick against this, as he apparently did over some book of Freda Utley’s.4 In case of this coming to anything, I suppose we can get Warburg to agree.5 It’s always a bit of an advert., and in any case one never gets much out of a French publisher. Appropos° of this, can you tell me what if anything ever came of that Burmese translation of Burmese Days which those people wrote to me about? It was sometime last year.6

  I hope all goes well. My wife sends all the best.

  Yours sincerely

  Eric Blair

  [XI, 555, pp. 365–6; typewritten]

  1.This letter is dated from its receipt in Moore’s office; Orwell incorrectly dated it the 14th.

  2.Inside the Whale.

  3.Yvonne Davet*.

  4.Presumably Japan’s Gamble in China, mentioned in Orwell’s letter to Yvonne Davet 19 June 1939.

  5.From an annotation to this letter made in Moore’s office, it appears that Warburg agreed to permit this for a ‘Nominal fee of £1.’

  6.Nothing came of the proposal, however it was ‘published’ in a pirated photocopied version of the Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics edition in the late 1990s. It could be bought on the approach to the Kuthodaw Pagoda for 600 Kyats (about US $2) in 1999.

  To Leonard Moore*

  4 August 1939

  The Stores

  Wallington

  Dear Mr Moore,

  Naturally I’m delighted about the Albatross business.1 It was very clever of you to work it. I’ve always wanted to crash one of those continental editions. English people abroad always read the few English books they can get hold of with such attention that I’m sure it’s the best kind of publicity.

  Of course I’ve no objection to the alterations they want to make, but in two of the four cases I’ve suggested substituting another phrase instead of just leaving a blank. Of course they can do as they prefer, but in these two cases I felt that simply to cut the phrase out without inserting another would upset the balance of the paragraph. Also as they’re going to set up the type anew they might correct two misprints which I let through. I’ve made notes on all this on the attached, and perhaps you could explain to them.

  Yours

  Eric Blair

  [XI, 561, pp. 384–5; typewritten]

  1.The Albatross Modern Continental Library was a paperback series of books in English put out by John Holroyd-Reece (born Johann Herman Riess) for distribution on the Continent. Most were sold in Germany. Holroyd-Reece also later took over the Tauchnitz series. The entry records that the contract was between Orwell and The Albatross Verlag G.m.b.H. and was dated 31 August 1939. It stipulated that the book was to be issued no later than August 1940. Although the publishing house was German, the contract was issued from 12 rue Chanoinesse, Paris.

  To Leonard Moore*

  6 October 1939

  The Stores

  Wallington

  Dear Mr Moore,

  Can you tell me whether there is any channel through which one can find out the circulations of weekly papers? As I think I told you, one of the essays in the book I am doing deals with the boys’ twopenny weeklies of the type of the Gem, Wizard etc, and I should like to know their circulations, but don’t quite know how to find them out. I suppose if you write and ask the editor he won’t necessarily tell you? I have a dozen papers on my list, and should be greatly obliged if you could help me to find this out.

  My wife has already got a job in a government office.1 I have so far failed to do so. I shall try again later, but for the time being I am staying here to finish the book 2 and get our garden into trim for the winter, as I dare say we shall be glad of all the spuds we can lay hands on next year. The book should be finished some time in November. It ought to have been done already, but of course this war put me right off my stride for some weeks.

  Yours

  Eric A Blair

  [XI, 572, pp. 410–1; typewritten]

  1.Eileen was working in the Censorship Department, War Office, Whitehall; see Crick, p. 382.

  2.Inside the Whale, the book of essays described in a letter to Leonard Moore, 4.7.39.