A Life in Letters
Secondly, I think you overestimate the danger of a 'Brave New World'-- i.e. a completely materialistic vulgar civilisation based on hedonism. I would say that the danger of that kind of thing is past, and that we are in danger of quite a different kind of world, the centralised slave state, ruled over by a small clique who are in effect a new ruling class, though they might be adoptive rather than hereditary. Such a state would not be hedonistic, on the contrary its dynamic would come from some kind of rabid nationalism and leader-worship kept going by literally continuous war, and its average standard of living would probably be low. I don't expect to see mass unemployment again, except through temporary maladjustments; I believe that we are in much greater danger of forced labour and actual slavery. And at present I see no safeguard against this except (a) the war-weariness and distaste for authoritarianism which may follow the present war, and (b) the survival of democratic values among the intelligentsia.
I don't know whether these cursory comments are much use to you. They might be worth thinking over. I should say that Faber's or somebody like that might publish your Ms as a pamphlet--at any rate it would be worth trying. But I would brush up the English a bit (rather involved and foreign-sounding in places) and get the Ms retyped before submitting it.
Once again, please forgive the delay.
Yours sincerely,
Geo. Orwell
[XV, 2356, pp. 308-9]
Journalism and the
Death of Eileen
1943-1945
Orwell began work as Literary Editor of Tribune immediately on leaving the BBC at the end of November 1943. The first of his eighty causeries, 'As I Please', was published on 3 December 1943 and on Christmas Eve Tribune published an article by 'John Freeman' - Orwell under an assumed name - 'Can Socialists Be Happy?'. For the next two years he was remarkably busy writing articles, reviews, columns, and journalism of every kind. He was, as he told Dorothy Plowman on 19 February 1946, 'smothered under journalism' and desperate to get away - to Jura. Nevertheless, smothered or not, some of his outstanding essays were published in this period - 'Raffles and Miss Blandish', 'Benefit of Clergy', 'In Defence of P.G. Wodehouse', 'Funny but not Vulgar', 'Good Bad Books', and 'The Sporting Spirit'.
Relatively few letters by Orwell have survived from autumn 1944 to spring 1945 other than brief business notes. On 15 February 1945 he went to Paris to begin a three-month stint as a war correspondent for the Observer and Manchester Evening News, contributing nineteen reports. These articles tend to be dismissed too easily, partly, perhaps, because they were entirely overlooked for so many years. One result of this experience was another fine essay, 'Revenge is Sour', 9 November 1945. During this time his contributions to Tribune and the Manchester Evening News were taken over by Jennie Lee* for the former and the critic Daniel George for the latter.
It was a time of personal gain and loss for Orwell. In June 1944 he and Eileen adopted a son, Richard. On the 28th their flat was bombed and they had to move out, Orwell trundling his books four miles each lunchtime to the Tribune office in a wheelbarrow. Eileen had never fully come to terms with the death of her brother, Eric, during the retreat to Dunkirk. She was not well, was overworked, and depressed throughout the war (see her letter to Norah Myles, 5 December 1940, and her cryptic note - so unlike her - of March 1941). A medical examination arranged by Gwen O'Shaughnessy revealed tumours of the uterus. The operation was to take place in Newcastle upon Tyne. She awaited the operation at Greystone, the O'Shaughnessy family home near Stockton-on-Tees, where Gwen and her children had taken refuge when the flying-bomb raids started. Richard had also gone there when the Orwells were bombed out. He was cared for by the O'Shaughnessy nanny, Joyce Pritchard. Long and moving letters from Eileen to her husband have survived from this period, planning and looking forward to their future. Unfortunately she died under the anaesthetic on 29 March 1945. Orwell rushed back from Europe, settled Richard, and then returned to bury himself in work. VE-Day (8 May) followed shortly after. As a day it meant little to Orwell (the experience of many people). 'I was not in England for VE-Day, but I am told it was very decorous - huge crowds, but little enthusiasm and even less rowdiness - just as it was in France. No doubt in both cases this was partly due to the shortage of alcohol' ('London Letter', XVII, 2672, p. 163). For an excellent account of the day confirming this, see Chapter 1 of David Kynaston's, Austerity Britain, 1945-51 (Bloomsbury, 2007).
From November 1943 to February 1944 he wrote Animal Farm and after many difficulties, some posed by a KGB agent working in the Ministry of Information, it was published by Fredric Warburg on 17 August 1945, two days after VJ-Day. Then, in September, when he stayed in a fisherman's cottage his love affair with Jura - his 'Golden Country' - began.
Dwight Macdonald wrote to Orwell on 22 October 1943 telling him he had resigned from Partisan Review. His letter of resignation, with, he said, 'a rather hot reply from my ex-colleagues', appeared in the July-August issue. He was starting a new journal and asked Orwell whether he had done any writing lately on 'popular culture' (Macdonald gives it quotations marks). He suggested something on British advertising since the war and also asked whether Orwell had ever written anything on the Spanish civil war.
To Dwight Macdonald*
11 December 1943
10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6
Dear Macdonald,
Many thanks for your letter dated October 22nd (only just arrived!) I hope your new magazine will be a success. I'd like to write something for it, but I think I can't write anything of a strictly political nature while I have my arrangement with P[artisan] R[eview]. Apart from anything else, my periodical 'London Letters' so to speak use up anything I have to say about the current situation in this country. That article about the Spanish war that I spoke to you of I did finally write, but I sent it to New Road 1943, edited by Alex Comfort and Co, who somewhat to my annoyance printed it in a mutilated form.1 Recently I did a short thing for a French magazine on the English detective story,2 and it struck me that something interesting could be done on the change in ethical outlook in the crime story during the last 50 years or so. This subject is so vast that one can only attack corners of it, but how would you like an article on Raffles ('The Amateur Cracksman'), comparing him with some modern crime story, eg. something from one of the pulp mags? (I could only do this in a rather sketchy way as one can't buy the pulp mags in this country since the war, but I was a reader of them for years and know their moral atmosphere). Raffles, about contemporary with Sherlock Holmes, was a great favourite in England and I fancy in the USA too, as I remember he is mentioned in the O. Henry stories. And into the essay I could bring some mention of Edgar Wallace, who in my opinion is a significant writer and marks a sort of moral turning-point. Tell me whether you would like this, and if so, how many words about. I dare say I could turn the stuff in fairly soon after hearing from you, but how soon it would get to you I can't say. 3 You see what the posts are like nowadays.
I have left the BBC after wasting 2 years in it, and have become editor 4 of the Tribune, a leftwing weekly I dare say you know. The job leaves me a little spare time, so I am at last getting on with a book again, not having written one for nearly 3 years.
Yours sincerely
Geo. Orwell
[XVI, 2392, pp. 24-5; typewritten]
1.'Looking Back on the Spanish War'; the headnote to which lists the cuts. (See XIII, 1421, pp. 497-511.) 2.'Grandeur et decadence du roman policier anglais', Fontaine, 17 November 1943 [XV, 2357, pp. 309-20].
3.Orwell wrote 'Raffles and Miss Blandish', which appeared in Horizon, October 1944 (XVI, 2538, pp. 345-7); it was reprinted in Macdonald's new journal, Politics, the following month with a slightly extended title: 'The Ethics of the Detective story: from Raffles to Miss Blandish'.
4.Actually as literary editor.
To Leonard Moore*
9 January 1944
10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6
Dear Mr Moore,
Thanks for your letter.
I think there might be the basis for a book of reprinted critical pieces when I have done one or two more which at present are only projected.1 I don't think it is worth reprinting anything which has already been in print twice, but the other possible ones are: Charles Dickens. (about 12,000?)
Wells, Hitler and the World State. (about 2000).
Rudyard Kipling. (about 4000).
W. B. Yeats. (about 2000).
Gandhi in Mayfair. (about 3000).
The last 4 are all in Horizon. In addition, when I can get the books for it, I am going to do for an American magazine an essay on 'Raffles', probably about 3-4000. I also did one of about 2000 on Sherlock Holmes for the Free French2 magazine Fontaine. This I think could be put in but could do with some expansion. I would also like to put in an 'imaginary conversation' I did on the wireless with Jonathan Swift, and perhaps the substance of another talk I did on Gerrarddeg Manley Hopkins, if I can get hold of the script of the latter. In all this might make a book of about 30,000 words or more.
I can't see to this now because I am overwhelmed with work. I am getting on with my book and unless I get ill or something hope to finish it by the end of March.3 After that I have contracted to do one for the 'Britain in Pictures' series, but that shouldn't take long.4
This thing I am doing now will be very short, about 20,000 to 25,000 words. It is a fairy story but also a political allegory, and I think we may have some difficulties about finding a publisher. It won't be any use trying it on Gollancz nor probably Warburg, but it might be worth dropping a hint elsewhere that I have a book coming along. I suppose you know which publishers have paper and which haven't?
Yours sincerely
Eric Blair
[XVI, 2403, p. 59; typewritten]
1.The collection was published in England by Secker & Warburg on 14 February 1946 as Critical Essays, and in the United States by Reynal & Hitchcock, New York, on 29 April 1946 as Dickens, Dali & Others: Studies in Popular Culture. Of the essays mentioned, 'Gandhi in Mayfair' and those on Sherlock Holmes, Swift, and Hopkins are not included; not mentioned here, but included are 'Boys' Weeklies', 'The Art of Donald McGill', and those on Dali, Koestler, and P.G. Wodehouse.
2.Free French: those fighting with the Allies under General de Gaulle. Of some 100,000 French soldiers who were rescued from the beaches of Dunkirk with about a quarter of a million British, some 10,000 joined de Gaulle and about 90,000 returned to France.
3.Animal Farm.
4.The English People, belatedly published, with unauthorised changes, by Collins in 1947.
To Gleb Struve*
17 February 1944
10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6
Dear Mr Struve,
Please forgive me for not writing earlier to thank you for the very kind gift of 25 Years of Soviet Russian Literature with its still more kind inscription. I am afraid I know very little about Russian literature and I hope your book will fill up some of the many gaps in my knowledge. It has already roused my interest in Zamyatin's We, which I had not heard of before. I am interested in that kind of book, and even keep making notes for one myself that may get written sooner or later.1 I wonder whether you can tell if there is an adequate translation of Blok?2 I saw some translated fragments about ten years ago in Life and Letters, but whether they were any good as a translation I do not know.
I am writing a little squib which might amuse you when it comes out, but it is so not O.K. politically that I don't feel certain in advance that anyone will publish it. Perhaps that gives you a hint of its subject.3
Yours sincerely
Geo. Orwell
[XVI, 2421, p. 99; typewritten]
1.This would become Nineteen Eighty-Four.
2.Alexander Blok (1880-1921), lyric poet much influenced by Symbolism. Although he welcomed the 1917 Revolution he quite quickly became disillusioned.
3.Animal Farm.
To C. K. Ogden*
1 March 1944
Tribune
Dear Mr. Ogden
Very many thanks for the booklet. I was aware, of course, that you have much to put up with from the Esperanto people, and that that was why you drew attention to their very unfortunate choice for the verb 'to be' or whatever it is. We have had them on to us since mentioning Basic, but I have choked them off. Also the Ido 1 people.
As I told you when I was in the B.B.C. (I have left there now) there was great resistance against doing anything over the air about Basic, at any rate for India. I rather gathered that its chief enemies were the writers of English textbooks, but that all Indians whose English is good are hostile to the idea, for obvious reasons. At any rate it was with great difficulty that I got Miss Lockhart on to the air.2
I don't know a great deal about G. M. Young.3 He is the ordinary silly-clever 'intelligent' conservative whose habitual manoeuvre is to deal with any new idea by pointing out that it has been said before. The only time I met him he struck me as ordinarily snobbish, talking about the terrible sacrifices the upper classes had made on account of the war etc. He was also trying to chase our little Indian Section of the B.B.C. for broadcasting 'unsound' ideas. I think he was a supporter of appeasement. That's about all I know about him.
Hope to see you some time.
Yours sincerely,
Geo. Orwell,
Literary Editor
[XVI, 2427, pp. 108-9; typewritten]
1.An artificial language based on Esperanto.
2.Leonora Lockhart was an assistant to C.K. Ogden. Orwell arranged for her to speak to India on Basic English. Basic was developed in the 1920s and attempted to provide a readily learned 'English' based on a strictly limited number of words.
3.George Malcolm Young (1882-1959), historian and essayist specialising in Victorian England. His Charles I and Cromwell was published in 1936, and he contributed The Government of Britain to the Britain in Pictures series in 1941.
To Roy Fuller*
7 March 1944
10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6
Dear Mr Fuller,
Since receiving your letter I have procured a copy of the Little Reviews Anthology1 and read your story, 'Fletcher'. I must say that I myself cannot see anything anti-semitic in it. I imagine that what Cedric Dover 2 meant was that the central character was a Jew and also a not very admirable character, and perhaps that counts as anti-semitism nowadays. I am sorry about this, but you will understand that as Literary Editor I cannot read all the books sent out for review and have to take the reviewers' judgement for granted. Of course if he had made a bald-headed attack on you as an anti-semite I should have checked up on it before printing, but I think he only said 'subtly anti-semitic' or words to that effect.3 I am sorry that you should have had this annoyance. I must add, however, that by my own experience it is almost impossible to mention Jews in print, either favourably or unfavourably, without getting into trouble.
Yours truly
Geo. Orwell
[XVI, 2431, pp. 116-7; typewritten]
1.Little Reviews Anthology was edited by Denys Val Baker (1917-1984), novelist, short-story writer, and editor. Five numbers appeared, in 1943, 1945, 1946, 1947-48, and 1949. Cedric Dover reviewed Baker's Little Reviews, 1914-1943 at the same time ('a useful but pedestrian record'), Tribune, 18 February 1944. Orwell's review of three of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets, which had first appeared in Poetry (London), October-November 1942, was included in the Anthology.
2.Cedric Dover (1904-51), born in Calcutta and educated there and at the University of Edinburgh. He wrote books and articles and listed his special subjects as 'Race, Colour & Social Problems, India, Hybrids & Negro America'. He worked with Orwell at the BBC and it was he who had suggested to Orwell that it was racialist to print 'Negro' without a capital 'N' in Talking to India. See his 'As I Please,' 2, 10 December 1943 [XVI, 2391, pp. 23-24].
3.Dover had written: 'Roy Fuller's "Fletcher" is subtle and subtly anti-Semitic: a good example, in fact, of the growing anti-Semitism of which Alecdeg Comfort complains'--a reference to Al
ex 'Comfort's biting analysis of the "Social Conventions of the Anglo-American Film,"' which Dover had just mentioned. It is very difficult to understand how the story can be regarded as anti-Semitic. The only reference to Fletcher direct or indirect as Jewish is the statement, 'Fletcher, a middle-aged bachelor of Jewish ancestry and intellectual tastes. . . .' He is shown as sensitive and alone. Fuller's story is entirely from the point of view of those who attack the vulnerable, whether they be Jewish or women. (For further details see XVI, 2431, n. 4.) To Leonard Moore*
19 March 1944
10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6
Dear Mr Moore,
I have finished my book 1 and will be sending you the Ms in a few days' time. It is being typed now. I make it about 30,000 words. To avoid wasting time I think we ought to decide in advance what to do about showing it to Gollancz. According to our contract he has the first refusal of my fiction books, and this would come under the heading of fiction, as it is a sort of fairy story, really a fable with a political meaning. I think, however, Gollancz wouldn't publish it, as it is strongly anti-Stalin in tendency. Nor is it any use wasting time on Warburg, who probably wouldn't touch anything of this tendency and to my knowledge is very short of paper. I suggest therefore that we ought to tell Gollancz but let him know that the book is not likely to suit him, and say that we will only send it along if he very definitely wants to see it. I am going to write to him in this sense now. The point is that if Gollancz and his readers get hold of it, even if they end by not taking it, they will probably hang onto the Ms for weeks. So I will write to him, and then he will know about it before you get the Ms.