A Life in Letters Read online

  Best love to Mary and Peter. Eileen sends love.

  Yours

  Eric

  [XI, 533, pp. 330-1; typewritten]

  1.Those ordained as priests of the Church of England must assent to the Thirty-nine Articles. These encapsulate the doctrinal position of the church following the Reformation.

  2.Peace Pledge Union, founded 1934. Max Plowman* was its General Secretary, 1937-38. It published Peace News, for which Orwell wrote a review of F.J. Shead's Communism and Man, 27 January 1939 (XI, 529, pp. 322-4). .

  3.Officers' Training Corps, formed by Lord Haldane, Lord Chancellor, 1912-15, before World War I as a means of training a pool of officers; it is chiefly to be found in public schools.

  To Lydia Jackson*

  Lydia Jackson had visited Orwell at Aylesford Sanatorium in 1938 and she gave this account of her visit:

  I found George fully dressed sitting in a deck chair outside; on my arrival, he got up and suggested we should go for a walk in the park. We did not go very far. When we were out of sight of the buildings, we sat on the grass and he put his arms around me. It was an awkward situation. He did not attract me as a man and his ill health even aroused in me a slight feeling of revulsion. At the same time, the fact that he was a sick man, starved of intimacy with his wife, made it difficult for me to repulse him. I did not want to behave like a prude or to treat the incident as a serious matter. Why should I push him away if kissing me gave him a few minutes of pleasure? I was convinced that he was very fond of Eileen and I was in no sense a rival to her (A Russian's England, 1976, p. 419).

  1 March 1939

  Boite Postale 48

  Marrakech

  Dear Lydia,

  I am afraid it is a very long time since I have written to you & I don't think you have written to me either, have you? I hope all is going well with you. We are in all probability leaving this country on the 23rd March, in which case we should get back about the 30th. I suppose I shall be in London for a bit before going down to see my people etc. So looking forward to seeing you! So try & keep a date or two open a few days after the 1st of April. How is your work getting on? I hope to get my novel finished before we sail, though it will hardly be typed before then. Parts of it I am quite pleased with, others not. Eileen is well though she has had one or two spells of being a little off colour. I was recently quite ill & in bed for a fortnight with what was evidently flu, however I'm all right again now. I don't believe in the alleged marvellous qualities of this climate which I think is neither better nor worse than any other. All our spending the winter here has really meant is that we have spent immense quantities of borrowed money, however, we were out of England for the war-crisis & that was a blessed relief. Let's hope we aren't going to bump into another just when we get back.

  I wonder who your young man is now? 1 I have thought of you so often--have you thought about me, I wonder? I know it's indiscreet to write such things in letters, but you'll be clever & burn this, won't you? I am so looking forward to seeing you & having a good talk with you. Eileen too is longing to get back to England. We'll have to give up the Wallington cottage, I suppose, but if possible we're going to get one in Dorset or somewhere. Take care of yourself. Hoping to see you early in April.2

  With love

  Eric

  [XI, 534A, pp. 335-7; handwritten]

  1.This was Karl Schnetzler, but Lydia says although they were friends neither was in love with the other. She thought, however, he was in love with Eileen (A Russian's England, p. 417). (See 9.4.46 to Inez Holden, n. 2.) 2.In A Russian's England, which reproduces a few lines of this letter, Lydia Jackson says she read this letter with mixed feelings: 'I was looking forward to seeing Eileen again, but not George, especially as the tone of his letter suggested a renewal of the amorous behaviour I had been too soft-hearted to repel at the Maidenhead hospital' (that is, Aylesford Sanatorium, near Maidstone). Further, 'I had several men friends at the time whom I found more attractive than George, and his masculine conceit annoyed me. Least of all did I want to disturb his relationship with Eileen, or have anything to conceal from her' (p. 430).

  To Jack Common*

  5 March 1939

  Boite Postale 48

  Marrakech

  Dear Jack,

  Hope all goes well with you. About our arrangements. If the bank sends us the money in time we're going to take a boat which sails from Casablanca on the 22nd or 23rd and ought to get to London about the end of March. After that I've got to go down to Southwold and see my people and there will be other odds and ends to see to. After much thought we've decided to go on living in the cottage for the rest of the summer and not move till the autumn. Apart from anything else we shall have no money at any rate till my book comes out, which would make it very awkward to move, and in any case one can find a better place if one takes one's time looking for it. Barring war we shall no doubt move, as they say I oughtn't to spend the winter there and by going further afield one could get a much more sanitary cottage at not much more rent, but we might as well spend the summer there as anywhere else. Also if we go in the autumn we can take certain fruit bushes etc. which we have put in. So, any work you've done or had old Hatchett to do won't have been wasted, rather a barren consideration for you, I'm afraid.

  Meanwhile can you do us a great favour, which might, however, ease things up if there happened to be an interval between your finding somewhere else to go to and our coming in. You may remember reading in my book on the Spanish war about Georges Kopp,1 who was commander of my brigade for a while. He's been for some time staying with Eileen's brother at Greenwich, but we can't ask them to have him stay there indefinitely, because they've got the house full already and it's awkward for them. So if necessary could you put him up at Wallington? I don't mean in the cottage, he can stay at Mrs Anderson's, but could you see about his meals? Gwen O'Shaughnessy, Eileen's sister in law, will see about the money for his grub etc., so that you shan't be out of pocket, and perhaps it wouldn't be so much trouble for Mary to have one extra person at meals? You'll find him very easily satisfied. I think you'll like him also. Of course this might turn out not to be necessary, some job might turn up for him in the mean while, but I doubt whether he's fit to work yet after being 18 months in jail and starved and so forth. Then if it so happened that you wanted to clear out before we could move in, he could keep the place warm for us. But in any case he'd be there till we come and could then stay for a while until he can get a job, which I expect he can ultimately. If this should turn out to be necessary, I hope it won't put you out too much.

  I'm longing to see England again. It's starting to get hot here. This is the only time of the year when there's a bit of greenness, and all the camels, donkeys etc. are gorging themselves while the going's good. Quite a lot of the wildflowers are the same as in England. The cherry trees are in flower and the apple trees just coming into leaf. It's nice that we shall see this over again in England. I wonder if there were any snowdrops and crocuses in the garden. I think I shall just finish my novel before we board the boat, but it will probably have to be typed on the sea. There's about 100 pages I'm pleased with, the rest is a failure. I haven't heard any more about the Penguin business2 and hope it hasn't fallen through.

  Did you drop a card to Miss Woods about Muriel? 3 I haven't heard a word about Richard [Rees]* but I wrote to his mother to ask about him. If writing, don't send any letter later than the 15th, as it might miss us. Love to Mary and Peter, Yours

  Eric

  P.S.4 Eileen sends love--& the postscript, really to Mary. I think you might find George Kopp* quite an asset, especially if you can bear to be separated from the gas oven. He is quite handy in the house & adores cooking. But the thing is this: if you can have him will you write & ask him to come? Without of course mentioning that anyone is going to pay for his food. We feel Gwen may be getting a bit down as she's just had a baby & the house is full of it & its nurse & the locum it necessitates (Gwen is a doctor). On the other hand she can't s
uggest that George should go somewhere else; but she could let him accept our invitation. It could be given on the grounds that he'd be staying with us if we were in England & he might like to see our village (he would). He's the sort of man who's happy anywhere if people are pleased to see him & you'd find him interesting to talk to--he speaks English quite fluently. If you don't want to write to George but don't mind having him, write to Gwen & she can pass on the invitation. The only important thing is that he should be allowed to think that you're inviting him spontaneously.

  [Eileen wrote at the top of the letter:] Gwen's address: Dr. Gwen O'Shaughnessy, 24 Crooms Hill, Greenwich, London S.E.10

  [XI, 535, pp. 337-8; typewritten]

  1.Among Orwell's papers were three issues of Independent News: a special number of, probably, late November or early December 1938 devoted to 'The P.O.U.M. Trial in Barcelona'; No. 59, 16 December 1938, with an article titled 'After the P.O.U.M. Trial'; and No. 60, 23 December 1938, which included a report on George Kopp's imprisonment and release. Orwell and Eileen visited him in prison. (For full details, see XI, 359, pp. 338-9 and VI, pp. 171-78.) 2.See letter to Leonard Moore, 28.11.38.

  3.See 23.2.39 and 19.3.39 to Jack Common.

  4.The postscript, apart from the first three words, is in Eileen's hand.

  To Herbert Read*

  5 March 1939

  Boite Postale 48

  Marrakech

  Dear Read,

  Thanks so much for your letter. I am probably leaving this country about the 22nd or 23rd of March and should be in England by the end of the month. I shall probably be in London a few days and I'll try and arrange to come and see you. If I could help with Revolt1 I'd like to, though till I've seen what kind of paper it is to be I don't know whether I could be any use. The trouble is that if I am writing a book as I generally am I find it almost impossible to do any other creative work, but on the other hand I like doing reviews, if they would want anything in that line. If we could keep a leftwing but non-Stalinist review in existence (it's all a question of money, really) I believe a lot of people would be pleased. People aren't all fools, they must begin soon to see through this 'antifascist' racket. A thought that cheers me a lot is that each generation, which in literature means about ten years, is in revolt against the last, and just as the Audens etc. rose in revolt against the Squires2 and Drinkwaters,3 there must be another gang about due to rise against the Audens.

  About the press business. I quite agree that it's in a way absurd to start preparing for an underground campaign4 unless you know who is going to campaign and what for, but the point is that if you don't make some preparations beforehand you will be helpless when you want to start, as you are sure to sooner or later. I cannot believe that the time when one can buy a printing press with no questions asked will last forever. To take an analogous case. When I was a kid you could walk into a bicycle-shop or ironmonger's and buy any firearm you pleased, short of a field gun, and it did not occur to most people that the Russian revolution and the Irish civil war would bring this state of affairs to an end. It will be the same with printing presses etc. As for the sort of thing we shall find ourselves doing, the way I see the situation is like this. The chances of Labour or any left combination winning the election are in my opinion nil, and in any case if they did get in I doubt whether they'd be better than or much different from the Chamberlain lot. We are therefore in either for war in the next two years, or for prolonged war-preparation, or possibly only for sham war-preparations designed to cover up other objects, but in any of these cases for a fascisingdeg process leading to an authoritarian regime, ie. some kind of austro-fascism. So long as the objective, real or pretended, is war against Germany, the greater part of the Left will associate themselves with the fascisingdeg process, which will ultimately mean associating themselves with wage-reductions, suppression of free speech, brutalities in the colonies etc. Therefore the revolt against these things will have to be against the Left as well as the Right. The revolt will form itself into two sections, that of the dissident lefts like ourselves, and that of the fascists, this time the idealistic Hitler-fascists, in England more or less represented by Mosley. I don't know whether Mosley will have the sense and guts to stick out against war with Germany, he might decide to cash in on the patriotism business, but in that case someone else will take his place. If war leads to disaster and revolution, the official Left having already sold out and been identified in the public mind with the war-party, the fascists will have it all their own way unless there is in being some body of people who are both anti-war and antifascist. Actually there will be such people, probably very great numbers of them, but their being able to do anything will depend largely on their having some means of expression during the time when discontent is growing. I doubt whether there is much hope of saving England from fascism of one kind or another, but clearly one must put up a fight, and it seems silly to be silenced when one might be making a row merely because one had failed to take a few precautions beforehand. If we laid in printing presses etc. in some discreet place we could then cautiously go to work to get together a distributing agency, and we could then feel 'Well, if trouble does come we are ready.' On the other hand if it doesn't come I should be so pleased that I would not grudge a little wasted effort. As to money, I shall probably be completely penniless for the rest of this year unless something unexpected happens. Perhaps if we definitely decided on a course of action your friend Penrose5 might put up something, and I think there are others who could be got to see the necessity. What about Bertrand Russell,6 for instance? I suppose he has some money, and he would fall in with the idea fast enough if he could be persuaded that free speech is menaced.

  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 leftwing 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.