George Orwell: A Life in Letters (11 page)

2
.
Mrs Myfanwy Westrope, wife of the owner of Booklovers’ Corner.

3
.
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
.

To Brenda Salkeld*

7 May [1935]

77 Parliament Hill

Hampstead NW 3

Dearest Brenda,

I am afraid this will not reach St Felix
¹
before you do, as I only got your letter this evening—I suppose the posts were late owing to the jubilee.
²
I went down to Brighton, for the first time in my life, for Sunday and Monday. I went there with disagreeable apprehensions, but consoling myself by thinking that sooner or later I was sure to want to mention a trip to Brighton in a novel. However, I was rather agreeably surprised, and I didn’t, in any case, spend much time by the sea shore, but went inland and picked bluebells etc. I found a number of nests, including a bullfinch’s with four eggs, and by the way about a week ago I found a tit’s nest, but I couldn’t get at it, though I saw the bird go off the nest, as it was in the middle of a thorn bush. The crowds in Brighton weren’t so bad, but of course it was an awful business getting back on Sunday,
³
the train being so packed that people were hanging out of the windows. On Saturday night I was down in Chelsea, and it took me two hours to get back to Hampstead, the whole centre of London was so blocked with taxis full of drunken people careering round, singing and bellowing ‘Long live the King!’ What surprised me was that most of them were very young—the last people whom you would expect to find full of patriotic emotion; but I suppose they just welcomed the excuse for making a noise. That night I had been to see Rees,* really to borrow some money off him,
⁴
as I had forgotten Monday was a bank holiday and had not got any money out of the bank, but he was at some sort of Socialist meeting and they asked me in and I spent three hours with seven or eight Socialists harrying me, including a South Wales miner who told me— quite good-naturedly, however—that if he were dictator he would have me shot immediately. I have done quite a lot of work, but oh! what mountains there are to do yet. I don’t know that I shall be able to let you have that piece
⁵
to see in June after all, but I will some time—when it is fit to be seen, I mean. I am now getting to the stage where you feel as though you were crawling about inside some dreadful labyrinth. I don’t know that I have read much. I read D. H. Lawrence’s
Women in Love
, which is certainly not one of his best. I remember reading it before in 1924—the unexpurgated version that time—and how very queer it seemed to me at that age. I see now that what he was trying to do was to create characters who were at once symbolical figures and recognizable human beings, which was certainly a mistake. The queer thing is that when he concentrates on producing ordinary human characters, as in
Sons and Lovers
and most of the short stories, he gets his meaning across much better as well as being much more readable. I have also been glancing into some numbers of
The Enemy
, the occasional paper Wyndham Lewis used to run, which we have in the shop. The man is certainly insane. I have hit on a wonderful recipe for a stew, which is the following: half a pound of ox-kidney, chopped up small, half a pound of mushrooms, sliced; one onion chopped very fine, two cloves of garlic, four skinned tomatoes, a slice of lean bacon chopped up, and salt, the whole stewed very gently for about two and a half hours in a very little beef stock. You eat it with sphagetti° or rather coquillettes. It is a good dish to make, as it cooks itself while you are working. I have been deriving a lot of pleasure from some numbers of the
Girls’
°
Own Paper
of 1884 and 1885. In the answers to correspondents two questions crop up over and over again. One, whether it is ladylike to ride a tricycle. The other, whether Adam’s immediate descendents°
did not have to commit incest in order to carry on the human species. The question of whether Adam had a navel does not seem to have been agitated, however.

I must stop now, as I don’t think I have any more news. As to your presentiment, or ‘curious feeling’ about me, you don’t say when exactly you had it. But I don’t know that I have been particularly unhappy lately—at least, not more than usual.

With much love and many kisses

Eric

P.S. [
at top of first page
] Near Brighton I passed Roedean School. It seemed to me that even in holiday time I could feel waves of snobbishness pouring out of it, & also aerial music to the tune of the female version of ‘Forty Years On’ & the Eton ‘Boating Song.’
⁶
Do you play them at hockey, or did they write to you ‘St Felix, who are you?’

[X, 245, p. 3
85–7; typewritten; handwritten postscript]

1
.
St Felix School for Girls, Southwold, where Salkeld was the gym mistress.

2
.
The Silver Jubilee of King George V.

3
.
Orwell must mean Monday.

4
.
Although not a direct autobiographical contrast, compare Gordon refusing to borrow £10 from Ravelston,
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
, pp. 106–7, but sponging on him and taking his money, pp. 21
2–3.

5
.
Presumably a portion of
Keep
the Aspidistra Flying
.
In his letter to Moore of 14 May 1935 Orwell says he intended to write what became a novel as a book of essays; the ‘piece’ referred to was perhaps one of these essays in process of transformation into a different genre.

6
.
See
20.7.33
, n. 3.

To Rayner Heppenstall*

Tuesday night [24 September 1935]

50 Lawford Rd

Kentish Town NW
¹

Dear Rayner,

Many thanks for letter. I hope the enclosed MS. is what you wanted. I infer from what you would no doubt call your handwriting that you were taught script at school; the result is that I can’t read a single word of the manuscript part of your letter, so I may not have followed your instructions exactly.

I am suffering unspeakable torments with my serial, having already been at it four days and being still at the second page. This is because I sat down and wrote what was not a bad first instalment, and then upon counting it up found it was 3500 words instead of 2000. Of course this means rewriting it entirely. I don’t think I am cut out for a serial-writer. I shall be glad to get back to my good old novel where one has plenty of elbow room. I have three more chapters and an epilogue to do, and then I shall spend about two months putting on the twiddly bits.

Even if my serial doesn’t come to anything, and I don’t expect it to, I intend taking a week or so off next month. My people have asked me to come down and stay with them, and if I can get my sister to drive me over, as I don’t think I can drive her present car, I will come over and see you. I don’t know that part of the country, but if it is like ours it must be nice this time of year.

I forwarded a letter this evening which had urgent proofs on it. I hope it gets to you in time, but it had already been to your old address. You ought to let editors and people know that you have changed your address.

You are right about Eileen.
²
She is the nicest person I have met for a long time. However, at present alas! I can’t afford a ring, except perhaps a Woolworth’s one. Michael was here last night with Edna
³
and we all had dinner together. He told me he has a story in the anthology of stories that is coming out, but he seemed rather down in the mouth about something. I was over at the Fierz’
⁴
place on Sunday and met Brenda
⁵
and Maurice
⁶
whom no doubt you remember, and they were full of a story apparently current among Communists to the effect that Col. Lawrence
⁷
is not really dead but staged a fake death and is now in Abyssinia. I did not like Lawrence, but I would like this story to be true.

Au revoir.
Please remember me to the Murrys.
⁸

Yours

Eric A. Blair

[X, 253, pp. 393–5; typewritten]

1
.
Orwell moved to this address from Booklovers’ Corner. The flat is illustrated by Thompson, p. 47. It was rented in Orwell’s name but he shared it with Rayner Heppenstall and Michael Sayers (1911–2010) who contributed short stories and reviews to
The
Adelphi
. The relationship was not wholly satisfactory. On one occasion Orwell and Heppenstall came to blows (see
Orwell Remembered,
pp. 106–15). Orwell remained there until the end of January 1936 when he stopped working at Booklovers’ Corner.

2
.
Eileen O’Shaughnessy (1905–1945) was to marry Orwell on 9 June 1936. According to Lettice Cooper they met at a party given by Mrs Rosalind Obermeyer at 77 Parliament Hill in March 1935. Before George left the house he said to a friend, ‘The girl I want to marry is Eileen O’Shaughnessy.’ At the time she met Orwell she was reading for a master’s degree in psychology at University College London. For Lydia Jackson’s reminiscences see
Orwell Remembered
, pp. 66–68. See also Eileen Blair*.

3
.
Edna Cohen, Michael’s cousin, with whom he was then having an affair.

4
.
Francis and Mabel Fierz, at whose home in Golders Green Orwell often found refuge when he first came to London. Mabel Fierz introduced Orwell’s writing to Leonard Moore, who, as a result, became his literary agent.

5
.
Brenda Eason Verstone (1911
– ) studied art at the Chelsea School of Art and then worked as a journalist for trade publications concerned with paper and packaging.

6
.
Maurice Oughton was a leading aircraftman in the Royal Air Force in 1942, when he published a slim volume of poems,
Out of the Oblivion
, which includes his picture.

7
.
T. E. Lawrence (‘Lawrence of Arabia’), who had died as a result of a motor-cycle accident on 19 May 1935.

8
.
Heppenstall was staying with John Middleton Murry* in Norfolk.

On 9 November 19
35, writing on black-bordered paper, M. Raimbault told Orwell that ‘a terrible misfortune’ had befallen his family. They had taken their summer holiday at Batz-sur-Mer: ‘one of my twin daughters fell from a rock, hurt herself, near fatally, on her head, and rolled unconscious into the sea. The weather was bad, all the efforts to save her proved in vain. When it was possible to recover her two hours later nothing could be done to revive her. She was approaching seventeen years of age and was life and joy itself. I was in despair. I am still. I have great difficulty finding the courage to live.’

To R. N. Raimbault*

22 December 1935

50 Lawford Road

Kentish Town NW 5

Dear Raimbault,

I am sorry I have not written for so long. It is mainly because I have been so busy, first with struggling to get my novel finished, then with the extra Christmas work at the shop, that I have had very little time for letters.

I am writing in English this time because I am not certain of expressing myself adequately in French. I just want to tell you how terribly sorry I was to hear the sad news about the death of your daughter. There is not much one can say on these occasions, and the more so as I did not know your daughter myself, but I can imagine something of what your feelings must be, and I would like you to know that, for what they are worth, you have all my sympathies.

I am sorry that I have been rather discourteous to M. Jean Pons, because I have not done anything about his letter.
¹
I am, however, writing to explain to him that it is on account of press[ure] of work that I have neglected him. I am sorry to hear that
La Vache Enragé
e
²
didn’t sell. For myself I hardly expected a large sale for it, as the interest is rather specialised, but it is disappointing for you after all the trouble you have had. You ask me whether I have any short stories which might be translateable°. I have made various attempts to write short stories and have always failed. For some reason or another it is a form I cannot manage. It occurs to me, however, that a descriptive sketch I wrote a few years ago might be worth looking at – it is a description of an execution in a jail in Burma and at the time I wrote it I was rather pleased with it. I will look out the copy of the magazine it was in, and send it to you.
My novel is almost finished. I had promised to get it done by the end of the year, but I am behind time, as usual.
I suppose it will come out some time in the spring.
³
I am afraid it is not the kind of thing that would be of any use to you for translation purposes, but I will send you a copy for yourself if you would like one. I forget whether I told you that a Frenchman wrote to me asking whether I would like
La Vache Enragée
translated into English! He had heard bits of it over the wireless but did not know it was already a translation.