George Orwell: A Life in Letters (41 page)

1
.
See Orwell’s verse-letter, ‘As One Non-Combatant to Another (A Letter to “Obadiah Hornbrooke”)’, XV, 2138, pp. 142–5 (and Comfort’s initial verse-letter, pp. 138–141).

2
.
When George III died, Robert Southey, the poet laureate, wrote a conventional elegy,
Vision of Judgement
(1821). To this, Byron wrote a devastating rejoinder,
The Vision of Judgement
.
Its satire was so biting that John Murray refused to take the risk of publishing it, and when Leigh Hunt, editor of
The Liberal
, printed it in 1822, he was fined £100.

3
.
Louis Aragon came to the fore after the collapse of France, through his patriotic poems –
Le Crève-coeur
(1941) and
Les Yeux d’Elsa
(1942) among them. (See also
9.4.46
to Philip Rahv. n. 3.)

4
.
Lionel Fielden (1896–1974), after serving in World War I (including Gallipoli) and working for the League of Nations and the High Commission for Refugees in Greece and the Levant, joined the BBC in 1927.
He served as a staff officer in Italy in 1943 and was Director of Public Relations for the Allied Control Commission in Italy, 1944–45. Orwell contributed a long review article to
Horizon
, September 1
943 (XV, 2257, pp. 209–16), on Fielden’s ‘ironical attack on British imperialism in India’,
Beggar My Neighbour
. Fielden responded with ‘Toothpaste in Bloomsbury’ (XV, 2258, pp. 216–21).

5
.
Orwell was as good as his word and Forster discussed
New Road
on 7 August 1943.

6
.
Ahmed Ali (1908– ), author and academic, was at this time the BBC’s Listener and Research Director in India.

7
.
William Empson (1906–84; Kt., 1979), poet and critic. He had been Professor of English Literature in Tokyo and Peking before the war and after at Sheffield University (1
953–71). He achieved scholarly recognition with
Seven Types of Ambiguity
(1930). His
Times
obituary described him as ‘the most famously over-sophisticated man of his time’ who ‘revolutionized our ways of reading a poem’.

On 28 August, Ivor Brown, on behalf of the
Observer
, wrote to Orwell saying he had heard he was leaving the BBC and he wondered whether he would like to go to Algiers and Sicily, ‘accredited’ by the War Office, though not as ‘a regular war correspondent’. It might mean writing for other newspapers as well as the
Observer
, in order to share costs, ‘but primarily you would be
The Observer
man’.

To Ivor Brown*

31 August 1943

10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6

Dear Mr Brown,

Many thanks for your letter. I would, of course, like very greatly to go to North Africa for you if it can be arranged. If it
can
, however, I wonder if it would be possible to have some idea of the date. I have not put in my formal resignation to the BBC but have informed my immediate chiefs that I intend to leave them, and when resigning formally I am supposed to give 2 months’ notice. This however would not be insisted on so long as I could give at any rate a few weeks’ notice. Meanwhile I have arranged to go on my annual holiday (for a fortnight) at the end of this week. Of course I would throw this up if the opportunity of going to North Africa occurred immediately, but otherwise I am not anxious to miss my holiday as I have not had one for 14 months and am rather in need of one. So I should be greatly obliged if you could give me some idea of when this scheme is likely to materialise, supposing that it does so.

Yours sincerely

Geo. Orwell

[XV, 2255, p. 208; typewritten]

To L. F. Rushbrook Williams*

24 September 1943

B.B.C.

Dear Mr Rushbrooke-Williams,
¹

In confirmation of what I said to you earlier in private, I want to tender my resignation from the
BBC
, and should be much obliged if you would forward this to the proper quarter.

I believe that in speaking to you I made my reasons clear, but I should like to put them on paper lest there should be any mistake. I am not leaving because of any disagreement with
BBC
policy and still less on account of any kind of grievance. On the contrary I feel that throughout my association with the
BBC
I have been treated with the greatest generosity and allowed very great latitude. On no occasion have I been compelled to say on the air anything that I would not have said as a private individual. And I should like to take this opportunity of thanking you personally for the very understanding and generous attitude you have always shown towards my work.

I am tendering my resignation because for some time past I have been conscious that I was wasting my own time and the public money on doing work that produces no result. I believe that in the present political situation the broadcasting of British propaganda to India is an almost hopeless task. Whether these broadcasts should be continued at all is for others to judge, but I myself prefer not to spend my time on them when I could be occupying myself with journalism which does produce some measurable effect. I feel that by going back to my normal work of writing and journalism I could be more useful than I am at present.

I do not know how much notice of resignation I am supposed to give.
²
The
Observer
have again raised the project of my going to North Africa. This has to be approved by the War Office and may well fall through again, but I mention it in case I should have to leave at shorter notice than would otherwise be the case. I will in any case see to it that the programmes are arranged for some time ahead.

Yours sincerely

Eric Blair

[XV, 2283, pp. 250–1; typewritten]

1
.
Rushbrook Williams signed his name over this misspelling of his name, without hyphen and ‘e’; both errors were Orwell’s.

2
.
On 29 September, Sir Guy Williams, Overseas Services Establishment Officer, wrote to Orwell, accepting his resignation ‘with much regret’. Whilst recognising that he should normally work his two months’ notice, Sir Guy wrote: ‘if, as you say, you may have to leave at shorter notice, the Corporation would be prepared to allow you to do so’; Orwell’s resignation would take effect from 24 November 1943 ‘unless you inform me that you wish to leave at an earlier date’. On 7 October 1943, Brown wrote to Orwell saying he had heard he would be free at the end of November and he would be glad if he could come over to see him at
The Observer
to discuss the amount of reviewing and other writing he could do for that paper. He mentioned also that he much appreciated Orwell’s review ‘of Laski’ (of
Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time
), 10 October 1943 (XV, 2309, pp. 270–2).

To S. Moos

16 November 1943

10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6

Dear Mr. Moos,

I hope you will forgive my long delay in commenting on and returning the enclosed manuscript, but I have been in poor health in recent weeks, and I am also very busy, as you can perhaps imagine.

I find what you say very interesting, but I have two criticisms of a general nature to make. The first is that I think you are concerned with ‘what’ a little too much to the exclusion of ‘how’. It is comparatively easy to see the evils of modern industrialised society, and it is only one more step beyond that to see the inadequacy of the solutions put forward by Socialists etc. The real trouble begins when one wants to communicate these ideas to a large enough number of people to make some actual change in the trend of society. We certainly have to decide what kind of world we want, but I suggest that the greatest problem before intellectuals now is the conquest of power. You speak of forming a ‘new elite’ (which I think there probably must be, though I am inclined to shrink from the idea). But how to start forming that elite, how one can do such things
inside
the powerful modern state which is controlled by people whose interest is to prevent any such thing—that is another question. If you have seen anything of the innumerable attempts during the past 20 years to start new political parties, you will know what I mean.

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 1
945 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 28
^th
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).