George Orwell: A Life in Letters (12 page)

Once again, all my sympathies for you in your sad loss. And my best wishes for Christmas and the New Year.

Yours

Eric A Blair

P.S. If you have occasion to write any time, would you write to 36 High Street, Southwold, Suffolk? I shall be changing my address shortly, but my parents will always forward letters.

[
LO,
pp. 60–1; X, 2
63A, p. 406; typewritten in English]

1
.
Mr Jean Pons, head of the Strand Palace Hotel Kitchens, The Strand, London, WC 2, had written to the French publishers to say that if Orwell would like ‘supporting information’ regarding his account of life in the kitchens of a large hotel, he would be happy to provide it (see
LO¸
p. 56). No letter to or from M. Pons has survived.

2
.
La Vache Enragée
was the French title of
Down and Out in Paris and London
. M. Raimbault explained to Orwell on 15 October 1934 that ‘manger de la vache enragée . . . nearly enough corresponds to your expression “to go to the dogs”.’ It implies suffering great hardship. It was, though Orwell certainly did not know it, the title of a satirical journal published in Paris in 1896 for which Toulouse-Lautrec designed a fine poster. The contemporary French translation has changed the title to
Dans la dèche
, an expression Arnold Bennett uses to describe destitution in the Paris scenes of
The Old Wives’ Tale
(1908): ‘Is he also in the ditch?’ (III, 6, iii).

3
.
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
was published by Gollancz on
20 April 1936. No French edition appeared until 1960 when Gallimard published a translation by Yvonne Davet* as
Et Vive l’Aspidistra!

To Leonard Moore*

24 February 1936

22 Darlington Street

Wigan

Lancs
¹

Dear Mr Moore,

Many thanks for your letter. I have made the alterations Gollancz asked for and sent back the proof and I trust it will now be all right. It seems to me to have utterly ruined the book, but if they think it worth publishing in that state, well and good. Why I was annoyed was because they had not demanded these alterations earlier. The book was looked over and O.K.’d by the solicitor as usual, and had they
then
told me that no reminiscence (it was in most cases only a reminiscence, not a quotation) of actual advertisements was allowable, I would have entirely rewritten the first chapter and modified several others. But they asked me to make the alterations when the book was in type and asked me to equalise the letters, which of course could not be done without spoiling whole passages and in one case a whole chapter. On the other hand to rewrite the whole first chapter when it was in type would have meant an immense addition to expenses, which obviously I could not ask Gollancz to bear. I would like to get this point clear because I imagine the same trouble is likely to occur again. In general a passage of prose or even a whole chapter revolves round one or two key phrases, and to remove these, as was done in this case, knocks the whole thing to pieces. So perhaps another time we could arrange with Gollancz that all alterations are to be made while the book is in typescript.
²

If you manage to get an American publisher to accept the book, I wonder whether you could see to it that what he prints is the version first printed, without these subsequent alterations? I should like there to be one unmutilated version of it in existence.

The above address will find me till Saturday.

Yours sincerely

Eric A Blair

[X, 284, pp. 434–5; handwritten]

1
.
Orwell was in Lancashire studying conditions. One result would be
The Road to Wigan Pier
. (See
Orwell: Diaries
(2009).)

2
.
Orwell had been rightly exasperated by the many changes required for fear of actions for libel and defamation despite the text having been approved by the libel lawyer. These had to be made to the printed text and changes were restricted to the same number of letters as the original. (See IV, Textual Note, pp. 279–86.)
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
was not published in the United States until 1956 and it followed the corrupt text. Further details of these changes are included here in the appendix New Textual Discoveries.

To Jack Common*

17 March 1936

4 Agnes Terrace

Barnsley, Yorks

Dear Common,

Would you like a short review of Alec Browne’s° book
The Fate of the Middle Classes
? Or is someone else doing it for you? I have scrounged a free copy and it seems not an uninteresting book, at any rate it is on an important subject and I thought I might, eg., do a few lines for the
Adelphi Forum
¹
on it.

I have been in these barbarous regions for about two months and have had a very interesting time and picked up a lot of ideas for my next book
²
but I admit I am beginning to pine to be back in the languorous South and also to start doing some work again, which of course is impossible in the surroundings I have been in. My next novel
³
ought to be out shortly. It would have been out a month ago only there was one of those fearful last-minute scares about libel and I was made to alter it to the point of ruining it utterly. What particularly stuck in my gizzard was that the person who dictated the alterations to me was that squirt Norman Collins.
⁴
Do you want a copy sent to the
Adelphi
? If you think you could get it reviewed I will have them send a copy, but not if you haven’t space to spare. I went to the
Adelphi
offices
⁵
in Manchester and saw Higginbottom°
⁶
several times, also Meade
⁷
with whom I stayed several days. I may tell you in case you don’t know that there are fearful feuds and intrigues going on among the followers of the
Adelphi
and I will tell you about these when I see you. I didn’t say anything of this to Rees* when I wrote, because I thought his feelings might be hurt.

What about the international situation? Is it war? I think not, because if the government have any sense at all they must realise that they haven’t got the country behind them. I think things will remain uneasily
in statu quo
and the war will break out later, possibly this autumn. If you notice wars tend to break out in the autumn, perhaps because continental governments don’t care to mobilise until they have got the harvest in.

I heard Mosley
⁸
speak here on Sunday. It sickens one to see how easily a man of that type can win over and bamboozle a working class audience. There was some violence by the Blackshirts, as usual, and I am going to write to the
Times
about it, but what hope of their printing my letter?
⁹

I shall be at the above address till about the 25
^th
, after that returning to London, by sea if I can manage it. Hoping to see you some time after that,

Yours

Eric A. Blair

[X, 295, pp. 458–9; typewritten]

1
.
The Adelphi Forum
was described by its editor as being ‘open for short topical comments and for the expression of opinion which may be entirely different from our own.’

2
.
The Road to Wigan Pier
.

3
.
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
.

4
.
Norman Collins (1907–82), writer, journalist and broadcaster. He was deputy chairman of Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1934–41, and then he joined the BBC Overseas Service. Orwell was to cross swords with him in each of his manifestations. Orwell reviewed his best-known novel,
London Belongs to Me
on 29 November
1945 (XVII, 2805, pp. 399–41). He became Controller of the BBC Light Programme in 1946 and was later a leading figure in commercial television.

5
.
On the initiative of some of Middleton Murry’s northern admirers, the printing and publishing organisation of
The Adelphi
was taken over by the Workers’ Northern Publishing Society in Manchester. In the early 1930s Murry* found himself at the head of a breakaway segment of the Independent Labour Party known as the Independent Socialist Party—a short-lived phenomenon. It was from these
Adelphi
supporters that Richard Rees gave Orwell contacts in the north.

6
.
Sam Higenbottam (1872–?) was a contributor to
The Adelphi
, a socialist, and author of
Our Society’s History
(1939), an account of the Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers.

7
.
Frank Meade was an official of the Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers and ran the Manchester office of
The Adelphi
; he was also business manager
of
Labour’s Northern Voice
, an organ of the Independent Socialist Party.

8
.
Sir Oswald Mosley, Bt. (1896–1980), was successively a Conservative, Independent, and Labour MP In 1931 he broke away from the Labour Party to form the ‘New Party’. Later he became fanatically pro-Hitler and turned his party into the British Union of Fascists. His followers were known as Blackshirts. He was interned early in the war.

9
.
He also wrote to the
Manchester Guardian
.
His diary for 20.3.36 concludes, ‘I hardly expected the
Times
to print it, but I think the
M.G.
might, considering their reputation.’ Neither did.

Writing to Sir Richard Rees* from Wigan on 22 February 1936 Orwell said, ‘I am arranging to take a cottage at Wallington near Baldock in Hertfordshire, rather a pig in a poke because I have never seen it, but have trusted the friends who have chosen it for me, and it is very cheap, only 7s
6d a week’ (
CW
, X, 288, p. 442). The friend (there was only one) was his aunt, Nellie Limouzin, who had, until very recently, lived in ‘The Stores’ as the cottage was called. The reasons for choosing this cottage were that its rent was low, it was a congenial place in which to write, the shop which was part of the cottage would earn him enough from the village’s one hundred or so inhabitants to cover the rent without too many distractions, and that it had enough land for him to grow vegetables and keep hens and goats. However, it also came with disadvantages that might have put off anyone less hardy than Orwell. It dated from the sixteenth century and had seen very little modernisation. It was pokey; there were four small rooms, two up and two down, one doubling as the shop area taking up valuable space; the ceilings were very low and Orwell was very tall; there was no inside w.c.; it had a sink but poor drainage; no proper cooking facilities; no electricity – lighting was by oil lamps (see Eileen’s letter to Norah,
New Year’s Day, 1938
); and a corrugated-iron roof. One might say, without being facetious, it suited Orwell down to the ground.

To Jack Common*

Thursday [16? April 1936]

The Stores

Wallington, Nr. Baldock
¹

[Herts]

Dear Common,

Thanks for yours. I have now seen my landlord and it is O.K. about the rent, so I have definitely decided to open the shop and have spread the news among the villagers to some extent. I should certainly be very obliged if you would find out about the wholesalers. I didn’t know you had your shop still. I believe there are some wholesalers of the kind at Watford, Kingford or Kingston or some such name. I don’t know whether, seeing that I shall only want tiny amounts at a time (apart from the smallness of the village I haven’t much storage room), they will make any trouble about delivery. I intend, at first at any rate, to stock nothing perishable except children’s sweets. Later on I might start butter and marg. but it would mean getting a cooler. I am not going to stock tobacco because the pubs here (two to about 75 inhabitants!) stock it and I don’t want to make enemies, especially as one pub is next door to me. I am beginning to make out lists, though whether any one wholesaler will cover the lot I am not certain. I suppose what I shall start off° will be about twenty quids’ worth of stuff. Are these people good about giving credit? What I would like to do would be to give a deposit of about £5 and then pay quarterly. I suppose my bank would give me a reference. It is a pity in view of this that I have just changed my branch because the Hampstead branch were getting quite trustful and told me I could overdraw, though I never asked them. I shall want besides stock one or two articles of shop equipment, such as scales, a bell etc. There are some that go with this place but my landlord has them and he is the sort of person who takes a year before he hands anything over. I have got to tidy up the shop premises and repaint, but if I can click with the wholesalers I should be ready to open up in about 3 weeks.