George Orwell: A Life in Letters Read online

  To Leonard Moore*

  Friday [8 December 1939]

  The Stores

  Wallington

  Dear Mr Moore,

  I have finished my book (the book of essays—the title is Inside the Whale) and have typed most of it but my wife is typing another portion in London. Meanwhile Cyril Connolly* and Stephen Spender*, who as perhaps you know are starting a new monthly called Horizon want to see the Ms. in case they would like to print one of the essays in their paper.1 I don’t know if any of them are really suitable for this, but if they do wish to use one of them, would that be all right with the publisher? Could one arrange things? As you may remember Gollancz wanted to see the book but whether he’ll publish it I don’t know, as there is at any rate one passage which politically won’t appeal to him.2 If Gollancz refuses it, what about trying Warburg again? I met him a little while back and he was very anxious to have my next non-fiction book, so perhaps we might get a good offer out of him for this, though no doubt it would be better to get the money in advance if possible. I am arranging with Connolly to keep the Ms. only a few days. I should think it would be best not to say anything to any publisher about this beforehand, because if Connolly and Co. don’t want any of it, which they well may not, it might prejudice him against the book.

  Do you know what has happened to the Albatross people? 3 You may remember we signed up a contract with them for Coming Up for Air just before war broke out. Have they gone west, I wonder?

  Yours sincerely

  Eric Blair

  [XI, 581, pp. 422–3; typewritten]

  1.Inside the Whale consisted of the essay with that title, ‘Charles Dickens,’ and ‘Boys’ Weeklies’. An abridged version of the last was published in Horizon the same month as the book’s publication, March 1940.

  2.In fact, Inside the Whale appealed greatly to Victor Gollancz, who did publish it. He wrote to Orwell on 1 January 1940 (misdated 1939) to express his delight: ‘It is, if I may say so, first rate.’ He was in complete sympathy with Orwell’s general political point of view, ‘though I fight against pessimism’. He suggested that the only thing worth doing was ‘to try to find some way of reconciling the inevitable totalitarian economics with individual freedom’. Finally, he asked Orwell whether he could lend him a copy of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, of which he had not heard. Exactly four weeks after Gollancz wrote, Orwell returned to him the page proofs of Inside the Whale. The collection of essays was published on 11 March 1940.

  3.Although Albatross and Tauchnitz were German firms, the contract Orwell signed was from their Paris office. (See 4.8.39.) William B. Todd and Ann Bowden in their Tauchnitz International Editions in English record a document in the Albatross archive that notes that the publisher still hoped in 1940 to publish Coming Up for Air. After Paris was occupied by the Germans, 14 June 1940, a decree was issued forbidding the sale of British books first published after 1870 (Todd and Bowden, item 5365), and that finally ended Orwell’s hopes for an Albatross edition.

  To Victor Gollancz*

  8 January 1940

  The Stores

  Wallington

  Dear Mr Gollancz,

  I cannot at this moment lend you Tropic of Cancer, because my copy has been seized. While I was writing my last book two detectives suddenly arrived at my house with orders from the public prosecutor to seize all books which I had ‘received through the post’. A letter of mine addressed to the Obelisk Press had been seized and opened in the post. The police were only carrying out orders and were very nice about it, and even the public prosecutor wrote and said that he understood that as a writer I might have a need for books which it was illegal to possess. On these grounds he sent me back certain books, eg. Lady Chatterley’s Lover, but it appears that Miller’s books have not been in print long enough to have become respectable. However, I know that Cyril Connolly has a copy of Tropic of Cancer. He is down with flu at present, but when I can get in touch with him again I will borrow the book and pass it on to you.

  As to your remarks on my book. I am glad you liked it. You are perhaps right in thinking I am over-pessimistic. It is quite possible that freedom of thought etc. may survive in an economically totalitarian society. We can’t tell until a collectivised economy has been tried out in a western country. What worries me at present is the uncertainty as to whether the ordinary people in countries like England grasp the difference between democracy and despotism well enough to want to defend their liberties. One can’t tell until they see themselves menaced in some quite unmistakeable manner. The intellectuals who are at present pointing out that democracy and fascism are the same thing etc. depress me horribly. However, perhaps when the pinch comes the common people will turn out to be more intelligent than the clever ones. I certainly hope so.

  Yours sincerely

  Eric Blair

  [XII, 583, p. 5; typewritten]

  To Geoffrey Gorer*

  10 January 1940

  The Stores

  Wallington

  Dear Geoffrey,

  It seems an age since I saw you or heard from you. I wonder what hemisphere you are in at this moment, but anyway I’ll send this to Highgate trusting it’ll be forwarded. I rang you up at about the beginning of the war & your brother answered & said you were in America.

  We got back from Morocco in the Spring & I began on another book, then I’m sorry to say my father died, all very painful & upsetting but I was glad when the poor old man went because he was 82 & had suffered a lot his last few months. Then I got going on the book again & then the war threw me out of my stride, so in the end a very short book that was meant to take 4 months took me 6 or 7. It ought to come out in March & I think parts of it might interest you. I have so far completely failed to serve HM. government in any capacity, though I want to, because it seems to me that now we are in this bloody war we have got to win it & I would like to lend a hand. They won’t have me in the army, at any rate at present, because of my lungs. Eileen has got a job in a government department, which as usual she got by knowing somebody who knew somebody, etc., etc. I also want a job because I want to lay off writing for a bit, I feel I have written myself out & ought to lie fallow. I am sort of incubating an enormous novel, the family saga sort of thing, only I don’t want to begin it before I’m all set. It is frightfully bad for one, this feeling of the publisher’s wingèd chariot hurrying near 1 all the time. Have you seen the new monthly magazine, Horizon, that Cyril Connolly & Stephen Spender are running? They are trying to get away from the bloody political squirrel-cage, & about time too. I saw Gollancz recently & he is furious with his Communist late-friends, owing to their lies etc., so perhaps the Left Book Club may become quite a power for good again, if it manages to survive. I believe there is going to be a bad paper-shortage some time next year & the number of books published will be curtailed. At the moment however the publishers are rather chirpy because the war makes people read more. Let me know how you are getting on, whether you’re in England or when you’re likely to be, & if you can indicate any wire I could pull to get a job, of course I’d be obliged. Eileen would send love if she were here.

  Yours

  Eric

  [XII, 585, pp. 6–7; handwritten]

  1.Orwell adapts line 22 of Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’, where the chariot is Time’s.

  To Geoffrey Gorer*

  3 April 1940

  The Stores

  Wallington

  Dear Geoffrey,

  I was very glad to get your letter & know you are at any rate fairly comfortable & congenially employed. All is very quiet on the Wallington front. Like nearly everyone else I have completely failed to get any kind of ‘war work’. But I am trying very hard to join a Gov.t training centre & learn machine draughtsmanship, partly because I want a job, partly because I think it would interest me & as I fancy we are all going to be conscripted in one form or another within about a year I’d rather do something more or less skilled, & partly because I think it might be well t
o come out of the war having learned a trade. However I don’t know whether it will go through yet. Eileen is still working in a Gov.t department but if we can possibly afford it when our affairs are settled I want to get her out of it, as they are simply working her to death besides its making it impossible for us to be together. I dare say we could get by if I stuck simply to writing, but at present I am very anxious to slow off & not hurry on with my next book, as I have now published 8 in 8 years which is too much. You didn’t I suppose see my last (Inside the Whale) which came out a few weeks back. There is one essay in it that might interest you, on boys’ weekly papers, as it rather overlaps with your own researches. You remember perhaps my saying to you some years back that very popular fiction ought to be looked into & instancing Edgar Wallace. This essay was published first in a slightly abridged form in Cyril Connolly’s monthly paper Horizon, & now the editor of the Magnet, which you no doubt remember from your boyhood, has asked for space in which to answer my ‘charges’. I look forward to this with some uneasiness, as I’ve no doubt made many mistakes, but what he’ll probably pick on is my suggestion that these papers try to inculcate snobbishness.1 I haven’t a copy left to send you but you might be able to get it from the library. There is an essay on Dickens that might interest you too. I find this kind of semi-sociological literary criticism very interesting & I’d like to do a lot of other writers, but unfortunately there’s no money in it. All Gollancz would give me in advance on the book was £20! With novels it’s easier to be sure of a sale, but I’ve now got an idea for a really big novel, I mean big in bulk, & I want to lie fallow before doing it. Of course God knows what hope there is of making a living out of writing in the future or where we’ll all be a few years hence. If the war really gets going one may get a chance of a scrap after all. Up to date I haven’t felt greatly moved to join the army because even if one can get past the doctors they make all the older men into pioneers etc. It’s ghastly how soon one becomes ‘older’.

  There is not much happening in England. As far as I can gather people are fed up with the war but not acutely so. Except for small sections such as Pacifists etc. people want to get it settled & I fancy they’d be willing to go on fighting for 10 years if they thought the sacrifices were falling equally on everybody, which alas isn’t likely with the present Government in office. The Government seem to have done all their propaganda with the maximum of stupidity & there’ll probably be hell to pay when people begin to grasp that fighting the war means a 12-hour day etc., etc. The new paper Horizon is going very well, sells about 6,000 or 7,000 already. Gollancz has grown a beard & fallen out with his Communist pals, partly over Finland2 etc., partly because of their general dishonesty which he’s just become alive to. When I saw him recently, the first time in 3 years, he asked me whether it was really true that the G.P.U. had been active in Spain during the civil war, & told me that when he tied up with the Communists in 1936 he had not known that they had ever had any other policy than the Popular Front one. It’s frightful that people who are so ignorant should have so much influence. The food situation is quite O.K., & I think what rationing there is (meat, sugar, butter)3 is actually unnecessary & done just to teach people a lesson. They’ve recently had to double the butter ration as they found the stocks going bad on them. I am busy getting our garden dug & am going to try & raise ½ ton4 of potatoes this year, as it wouldn’t surprise me to see a food shortage next winter. If I thought I was going to be here all the time I’d breed a lot more hens & also go in for rabbits.

  Eileen would send love if she was here.

  Yours

  Eric

  [XII, 607, pp. 137–8; handwritten]

  1.‘Frank Richards’ (= Charles Hamilton, 1876–1961), author of many of the stories (although not unaidedly as he claimed), responded in Horizon, May 1940 (see XII, 599, pp. 79–85). He did take up the matter of snobbishness among other things.

  2.The Soviet Union invaded Finland on 30 November 1939. A peace treaty was signed on 13 March 1940, after a bitterly fought winter campaign.

  3.Rationing of food started on 8 January 1940. Adults were allowed four ounces of butter a week; twelve of sugar; four of bacon or ham uncooked, and three and a half cooked. Meat was rationed from 11 March 1940 and clothes from 3 June 1941. As the war progressed, rationing became much more severe, and, indeed, worsened still more during the first years of peace.

  4.An ambitious quantity (1,120 lbs.) which Orwell later reduced to 6 cwt (672 lbs.).

  To Rayner Heppenstall*

  16 April 1940

  The Stores

  Wallington

  Dear Rayner,

  Thousands of congratulations on the kid. I hope and trust both are doing well. Please give Margaret all the best and my congratulations. What a wonderful thing to have a kid of one’s own, I’ve always wanted one so. But, Rayner, don’t afflict the poor little brat with a Celtic sort of name that nobody knows how to spell. She’ll grow up psychic or something. People always grow up like their names. It took me nearly thirty years to work off the effects of being called Eric. If I wanted a girl to grow up beautiful I’d call her Elizabeth, and if I wanted her to be honest and a good cook I’d choose something like Mary or Jane. The trouble is that if you called her Elizabeth everyone would think you’d done it after the queen, as she presumably will be some day.

  Thanks for the photos but you didn’t tell me what the negative etc. cost. I chose the ones marked 3 and 5 to send to the people. I thought the one marked 3 the best likeness, but naturally I know my own face best from the front. Let’s hope the photo will have the desired effect. Seeing that it’s for people at the other end of the world I don’t know why one shouldn’t send a photo of some nice-looking boy in the Air Force or something. I am afraid I definitely lack glamour, because I get quite a lot of letters from readers nowadays, but it’s always from people snootily pointing out some mistake I’ve made and never from young women telling me I’m a sheik. I had some wonderful letters once from a midwife, and I wrote back not telling her I was married, but in the end to Eileen’s great glee she turned out to be 35 and have 4 children.

  I don’t know when I’ll be in town. I am buried under books I keep reviewing and not getting on with my own book. God knows whether it will ever get written or whether such things as publishing novels will still be happening two years hence. All the best.

  Yours

  Eric

  [XII, 612, pp.146–7; typewritten]

  To Geoffrey Trease*

  1 May 1940

  As from The Stores

  Wallington

  Dear Mr Trease,

  Please excuse this paper, which is far from being my own,1 but I am on a sort of hurried visit to London. I was very glad to get your letter. From what you say I dare say you saw either my last book Inside the Whale or else the essay from it that was printed in Horizon, & in connection with that two people had written to me telling me of your Bows against the Barons etc. I’m going to get hold of them, not only because I greatly enjoyed It’s Only Natural2 but because there is no question that this matter of intelligent fiction for kids is very important for I believe the time is approaching when it might be possible to do something about it. I don’t think it’s unimaginable that some paper like the News Chronicle might start a line of kids’ papers or I suppose it’s even conceivable that the T.U.C. might. Of course such a thing would be quite hopeless if done by the ultra-left political parties. Boys of the Ogpu, or, The Young Liquidators etc, etc., but nobody would read them & it would be all the worse if they did. But I do think there is a chance for papers just a little more ‘left’ & also a little less out of date than the present ones. The immediate success of papers like Picture Post & the News Review, which would certainly have been considered ‘Bolshevik’ 20 years ago shows how opinion is swinging. Did you by the way see in Horizon Frank Richards’s reply to my article? I can’t make up my mind to what extent it was a fake, but it certainly wasn’t altogether a fake, & it’s well-nigh incredib
le that such people are still walking about, let alone editing boys’ papers.

  It makes me laugh to see you referring to me as ‘famous’ & ‘successful’. I wonder if you know what my books sell—usually about 2000. My best book, the one about the Spanish war, sold less than 1000, but by that time people were fed up with Spanish war books, as well they might be.

  I’d like to meet some time3

  Yours sincerely

  George Orwell

  [XII, 618, pp. 156–7; handwritten]

  1.Orwell used Dr Laurence O’Shaughnessy’s paper, headed 49 Harley Street, London, W.1.

  2.The correct title is Only Natural. Orwell reviewed it on 26 April 1940 (XI, 616,

  p. 154).

  3.Trease replied at some length on 5 May 1940 from Gosforth, Cumberland. He said that if Orwell did have time and inclination to take further any scheme of publications for children—‘good vivid writing with the right slant’—he could count on Trease for anything he could do to help. He did not think the Trades Union Congress ‘could ever assimilate such a new and interesting idea’ but the Co-operative Movement was ‘a more promising field’. He also suggested W. B. Curry, head of Dartington Hall (an experimental, independent school in Devon that placed great emphasis on the arts); he might tap some of the ‘millions which lie behind that experiment’.

  To the Editor, Time and Tide

  22 June 1940

  Sir: It is almost certain that England will be invaded within the next few days or weeks, and a large-scale invasion by sea-borne troops is quite likely. At such a time our slogan should be ARM THE PEOPLE. I am not competent to deal with the wider questions of repelling the invasion, but I submit that the campaign in France and the recent civil war in Spain have made two facts clear. One is that when the civil population is unarmed, parachutists, motor cyclists and stray tanks can not only work fearful havoc but draw off large bodies of regular troops who should be opposing the main enemy. The other fact (demonstrated by the Spanish war) is that the advantages of arming the population outweigh the danger of putting weapons into the wrong hands. By-elections since the war started have shown that only a tiny minority among the common people of England are disaffected, and most of these are already marked down.