George Orwell: A Life in Letters (34 page)

Yours sincerely

Eric Blair

[XII, 583, p. 5; typewritten]

To Geoffrey Gorer*

10 January 1
940

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 to 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 Finland
²
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 ton
⁴
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 3
5 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 Natural
²
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 incredible 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 time
³

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’.