George Orwell: A Life in Letters (43 page)

[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 Alec° Comfort complains’—a reference to Alex ‘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.

As to what publisher to approach, I think Nicholson and Watson might be the best.
²
I told one of their men I had a book coming along and he seemed anxious to get hold of it. Or else Hutchinson, where I have a contact in Robert Neumann. Or anyone else who (a) has got some paper and (b) isn’t in the arms of Stalin. The latter is important. This book is murder from the Communist point of view, though no names are mentioned. Provided we can get over these difficulties I fancy the book should find a publisher, judging by the stuff they do print nowadays.

I am going to send two copies. I think we might have a try at an American publication as well. About a year ago the Dial Press wrote asking me to send them the next book I did, and I think they might like this one.
³

I am contracted now to do a ‘Britain in Pictures’ book, which I suppose will take me 6–8 weeks. After that I am arranging to do two longish literary essays, one on
No Orchids for Miss Blandish
, and one on Salvador Dali, for two magazines. When I have done those two we shall have enough stuff for the book of reprinted essays.

Yours sincerely

Eric Blair

[XVI, 2436, pp. 126–7; typewritten]

1
.
Animal Farm
. Paper was in desperately short supply (except, of course, for government bureaucracy).

2
.
At the top of this letter to Moore someone has written the names of two more publishers: Eyre & Spottiswoode and Hollis & Carter.

3
.
In
Partisan Review
, 63 (1996), William Phillips claimed he was the first person in America to read
Animal Farm
;
he then recommended it to the Dial Press.

To Leonard Moore*

23
March 1944

10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6

Dear Mr Moore,

Thanks for your letter. I sent off two copies of the Ms of the book yesterday and hope they reached you safely. I haven’t heard from Gollancz and I dare say he will write direct to you.

We must
on no account
take this book to either Eyre & Spottiswoode or Hollis & Carter. They are both Catholic publishers and Hollis, in particular, has published some most poisonous stuff since he set up in business. It would do me permanent harm to be published by either of these. I don’t know what the objections to Hutchinson’s and N. & W.
¹
are, but perhaps you could let me know. I should think Cape is another possibility. Or Fabers°. I have a contact in Faber’s and a slight one at Cape’s.
²
But let me know whom you are going to take it to. I should like it settled as early as possible.

Yours sincerely

Eric Blair

[XVI, 2440, pp. 130–1; typewritten]

1
.
Nicholson & Watson.

2
.
T.S. Eliot at Faber & Faber and Miss C. V. Wedgwood at Cape. Daniel George (who reviewed novels for
Tribune
)
was chief reader at Cape.

To Leonard Moore*

15 April 1944

10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6

Dear Mr Moore,

Nicholson & Watson refuse to print
Animal Farm
, giving much the same reason as Gollancz, ie. that it is bad taste to attack the head of an allied government in that manner etc.
¹
I knew we should have a lot of trouble with this book, at any rate in this country. Meanwhile I have taken the copy I had round to Cape’s, as Miss Wedgwood
²
there had often asked me to let them see something, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they made the same answer. I think Faber’s is
just
possible, and Routledges rather more so if they have the paper. While Cape’s have it I’ll sound both Eliot and Herbert Read.
³
I saw recently a book published by Eyre and Spottiswoode and I think they must be all right—perhaps, as you say, I was mixing them up with Burns, Oates and Washburne. Failing all else I will try to get one of the small highbrow presses to do it, in fact I shouldn’t wonder if that is the likeliest bet. I know of one which has just started up and has a certain amount of money to dispose of. Naturally I want this book printed because I think what it says wants saying, unfashionable though it is nowadays.

I hope the copy went off to the
USA
? I suppose you still have one copy, so perhaps you might send it me to show to Read if I can contact him.

How do my copyrights with Gollancz stand? When I have done the necessary stuff I want to compile that book of essays and I am anxious to include the Dickens essay which was printed by Gollancz. I suppose if I fixed up with some other publisher, eg. Cape, to do
Animal Farm
they might ask for my next book, which would be the essays. Have I the right to reprint the Dickens essay, since the book is out of print?

Your sincerely

Eric Blair

[XVI, 2453, pp. 155–6; typewritten]

1
.
In a letter to
The Observer
, 23 November 1980, Andre Deutsch, who was working for Nicholson & Watson in 1944, told how, having been introduced to Orwell in 1943 by George Mikes, he had occasionally been commissioned to write reviews for
Tribune
for a fee of £1. About Whitsun 1944, Orwell let him read the typescript of
Animal Farm
, and he was convinced that Nicholson & Watson would be keen to publish Orwell’s book. Unfortunately, though they did not share Gollancz’s political reservations, they lectured Orwell on what they perceived to be errors in
Animal Farm
.
Orwell was calm but depressed; Deutsch, deeply embarrassed. Deutsch was even then hoping to start publishing in his own right, but though Orwell twice offered him
Animal Farm
, and he would dearly have loved to publish it, he felt himself still a novice and not yet able to start his own firm.

2
.
Veronica Wedgwood (1910–1997; DBE, 1968), the historian, was then working for Cape.

3
.
T.S. Eliot was working for Faber & Faber, and Herbert Read for Routledge.

To Noel Willmett

18 May 1944

10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6

Dear Mr Willmett,

Many thanks for your letter. You ask whether totalitarianism, leader-worship etc. are really on the up-grade and instance the fact that they are not apparently growing in this country and the
USA
.

I must say I believe, or fear, that taking the world as a whole these things are on the increase. Hitler, no doubt, will soon disappear, but only at the expense of strengthening (a) Stalin, (b) the Anglo-American millionaires and (c) all sorts of petty fuhrers° of the type of de Gaulle. All the national movements everywhere, even those that originate in resistance to German domination, seem to take non-democratic forms, to group themselves round some superhuman fuhrer (Hitler, Stalin, Salazar, Franco, Gandhi, De Valera are all varying examples) and to adopt the theory that the end justifies the means. Everywhere the world movement seems to be in the direction of centralised economies which can be made to ‘work’ in an economic sense but which are not democratically organised and which tend to establish a caste system. With this go the horrors of emotional nationalism and a tendency to disbelieve in the existence of objective truth because all the facts have to fit in with the words and prophecies of some infallible fuhrer. Already history has in a sense ceased to exist, ie. there is no such thing as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted, and the exact sciences are endangered as soon as military necessity ceases to keep people up to the mark. Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history. He can’t say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it.
¹
That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the process is reversible.

As to the comparative immunity of Britain and the
USA
. Whatever the pacifists etc. may say, we have
not
gone totalitarian yet and this is a very hopeful symptom. I believe very deeply, as I explained in my book
The Lion and the Unicorn
, in the English
people
and in their capacity to centralise their economy without destroying freedom in doing so. But one must remember that Britain and the
USA
haven’t been really tried, they haven’t known defeat or severe suffering, and there are some bad symptoms to balance the good ones. To begin with there is the general indifference to the decay of democracy. Do you realise, for instance, that no one in England under 26 now has a vote and that so far as one can see the great mass of people of that age don’t give a damn for this? Secondly there is the fact that the intellectuals are more totalitarian in outlook than the common people. On the whole the English intelligentsia have opposed Hitler, but only at the price of accepting Stalin. Most of them are perfectly ready for dictatorial methods, secret police, systematic falsification of history
²
etc. so long as they feel that it is on ‘our’ side. Indeed the statement that we haven’t a Fascist movement in England largely means that the young, at this moment, look for their fuhrer elsewhere. One can’t be sure that that won’t change, nor can one be sure that the common people won’t think ten years hence as the intellectuals do now. I
hope
³
they won’t, I even trust they won’t, but if so it will be at the cost of a struggle. If one simply proclaims that all is for the best and doesn’t point to the sinister symptoms, one is merely helping to bring totalitarianism nearer.

You also ask, if I think the world tendency is towards Fascism, why do I support the war. It is a choice of evils—I fancy nearly every war is that. I know enough of British imperialism not to like it, but I would support it against Nazism or Japanese imperialism, as the lesser evil. Similarly I would support the
USSR
against Germany because I think the
USSR
cannot altogether escape its past and retains enough of the original ideas of the Revolution to make it a more hopeful phenomenon than Nazi Germany. I think, and have thought ever since the war began, in 193
6 or thereabouts, that our cause is the better, but we have to keep on making it the better, which involves constant criticism.