George Orwell: A Life in Letters (61 page)

I haven’t really done any work this summer—actually I have at last started my novel about the future, but I’ve only done about 50 pages and God knows when it will be finished. However it’s something that it is started, which it wouldn’t have been if I hadn’t got away from regular journalism for a while. Soon I suppose I shall be back at it, but I am dropping some of it and am going to try and do mostly highly-paid stuff which I needn’t do so much of. I have arranged to do some book reviewing for the
New Yorker
which of course pays well. Please give everyone my love. Looking forward to seeing you. If you can’t come please reply to the flat, as it’s possible a letter might miss me here.

Yours

George

[XVIII, 3084, p. 408; typewritten]

1
.
Possibly Cyril Connolly in connection with the ‘Cost of Letters’, published in
Horizon
, September 1946 (XVIII, 3057, pp. 382–4
).

To George Woodcock*

28 September 1946

Barnhill

Isle of Jura

Dear George,

I was quite stunned on hearing from you about Colletts°
¹
taking over the S.B.C.
²
How could it have happened? I thought they were doing quite well. And what happens about their publications, for instance the pamphlets they were issuing from time to time? There was one of mine they published a few months back,
³
and I don’t even know how many copies it sold. It is simply calamitous if there isn’t one large leftwing bookshop not under C[ommunist] P[arty] control. However, I shouldn’t say it would be impossible to set up a successful rival, because any
CP
bookshop must be hampered as a shop by being unable to stock ‘the wrong’ kind of literature. We must talk it over when I get back. I have no idea what capital you need to set up a well-stocked bookshop, but I fancy it is several thousand pounds. It is not inconceivable that one might dig the money out of some well-intentioned person like Hulton,
⁴
if he saw his way to not making a loss on it. The thing is to have a shop which apart from selling all the leftwing stuff is a good
bookshop
, has a lending library and is managed by someone who knows something about books. Having worked in a bookshop I have got ideas on the subject, which I’ll tell you about when I get back.

Of course it’s very flattering to have that article in
Politics
.
⁵
I haven’t a copy of
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
. I picked up a copy in a secondhand shop some months back, but I gave it away. There are two or three books which I am ashamed of and have not allowed to be reprinted or translated, and that is one of them. There is an even worse one called
A Clergyman’s Daughter
. This was written simply as an exercise and I oughtn’t to have published it, but I was desperate for money, ditto when I wrote
Keep the A
. At that time I simply hadn’t a book in me, but I was half starved and had to turn out something to bring in £100 or so.

I’m leaving here on the 9th and shall reach London on the 13th. I’ll ring you up then. Love to Inge. Richard is blooming.

Yours

George

[XVIII, 3087, pp. 410–11; typewritten]

1
.
Collet’s bookshop specialised in Communist publications. It was still active in the early nineties with an ‘International Bookshop’, a ‘Chinese Bookshop and Gallery’, and a Penguin Bookshop, but was no longer listed in the London telephone directory in 1995.

2
.
Socialist Book Centre.

3
.
James Burnham and the Managerial Revolution.

4
.
Edward Hulton (1906–1988; Kt., 1957), magazine publisher of liberal views, at the time proprietor of
Picture Post
.

5
.
‘George Orwell, Nineteenth Century Liberal’, by George Woodcock,
Politics
, December 1946. The essay forms chapter 7 of Woodcock’s
The Writer and Politics
(1948).

To Dwight Macdonald*

15 October 1946

27B Canonbury Square

Islington N 1

Dear Dwight,

Thanks for your letter,
¹
which I got just before leaving Jura (I’m at the above again until about April of next year.) I’m awfully sorry about not sending you anything as promised, but part of the reason is that I have written almost nothing for 5 months. I went to Scotland largely with that end in view, because I was most desperately tired and felt that I had written myself out.

While there I did write one article
²
and just started a new book (lord knows when it will be finished—perhaps by the end of 1947), but that was all. Now I’m starting up again, but I am going to do my best to keep out of ordinary daily and weekly journalism, except for
Tribune
. As to the
New Republic
, I gave them the reprint of that article because they cabled and asked for it. I would have gladly given it to you, but it didn’t occur to me as a thing that would particularly interest you. Shortly after that the
New Republic
wrote asking whether they could take their pick of any articles I write for
Tribune
, with which they have a reciprocal arrangement for the exchange of articles. I told them they could, but I expect they won’t often avail themselves of it, because when I start writing for
Tribune
again I shall probably take over the ‘As I Please’ column, which is mostly topical English stuff. I am well aware that the
N.R
. people are Stalino-Liberals, but so long as they have no control over what I write, as they wouldn’t under this arrangement, I rather like to have a foot in that camp. Their opposite numbers over here, the
New Statesman
, won’t touch me with a stick, in fact my last contact with them was their trying to blackmail me into withdrawing something I had written in
Tribune
by threats of a libel action.
³
Meanwhile I think I am going to write rather more for American papers when I start writing at all. I am going, I think, to do occasional book reviews for the
New Yorker
, and some agents called Mcintosh and Otis are very anxious for me to send copies of all my articles, a number of which they say they could market in the U.S. I have already arranged with
Polemic
that when I send them anything I shall simultaneously send a copy to the
USA
. Of course the agents’ idea is to sell them to big-circulation magazines, but when there is anything that seems up your street I’ll see that it gets to you first.

I suppose these letters aren’t now opened by snoopers, and I want to ask you to do me a favour which I believe involves illegality (on my part, not yours.) Do you think you could get me some shoes? Or is it the same about clothes in the US as well? Even if you have the clothes coupons, which I never have, you simply can’t get shoes in my size (twelves!) here. The last new pair I had were bought in 1941 and you can imagine what they are like now. I don’t care what they cost, but I like stout heavy walking shoes and I would like two pairs if it’s at all possible. I believe the American sizes are the same as the English.
⁴
Could you let me know whether you think you can do this and what it will cost? I can get the money to you because I have or shall have some dollars in the
USA
. Even if you can manage to get them it will need strategy to send them because things like that get pinched in the docks. I’ll tell you about that later. I suppose this black-market business seems very sordid to you, but I have been almost ragged for years, and in the end it becomes irritating and even depressing, so I am doing my best to get hold of a few clothes by one route and another.

I was very flattered to learn that George Woodcock is writing an article on me for you. He wrote asking me for a copy of one of the books I have suppressed.
⁵
He was also very indignant about something I said about anarchism in
Polemic
and is writing a reply.
⁶
Polemic
is making rather a speciality of ‘reply’ articles. I think it is now shaping better, and it is doing quite well from a circulation point of view. You’ll be glad to hear that
Animal Farm
has been or is being translated into 10 languages besides various clandestine translations or ones made abroad by refugees from the occupied countries. All the best.

Yours

Geo. Orwell

[XVIII, 3097, pp. 449–51; typewritten]

1
.
Dwight Macdonald wrote on 10 September 1946 with particular reference to Orwell’s article on James Burnham. He thought Orwell’s points were akin to those Macdonald had made in his review of Burnham in 1942 and that Burnham was no longer taken seriously in America. He asked Orwell why he didn’t write for
Politics
any more, and in particular why he had let
The New Republic
have ‘Politics and the English Language’. He proposed to reprint Orwell’s review of Koestler’s ‘The Yogi and the Commissar’, which had been published in
C.W. Review
, November 1945 (‘Catastrophic Gradualism’, XVII, 2778, pp. 342–7) in the September issue of
Politics
.

2
.
Presumably ‘Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of
Gulliver’s Travels’
(XVIII, 3089, pp. 417–32).

3
.
It is possible that Orwell is referring to the response (especially Kingsley Martin’s) to ‘As I Please’, 40 (XVI, 2541, pp. 371-2), in which he discussed the Warsaw Uprising and the reaction to it of the press and intellectuals. Martin, editor of the
New Statesman and Nation
, protested that Orwell was not justified in including it among those which had ‘licked the boots of Moscow’.

4
.
They are not the same. English 12 is
US
12½.

5
.
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
.
Woodcock’s article was ‘George Orwell, Nineteenth Century Liberal’,
Politics
, December 1946.

6
.
See afterword to ‘Politics vs. Literature’, p. 431,
for a summary of Woodcock’s article.

To Leonard Moore*

18 October 1946

27 B Canonbury Square

Islington N 1

Dear Moore,

Many thanks for your letter of
17th October. I am glad to hear about the Norwegian serialisation of
Animal Farm
.
¹
You sent me recently some copies of the German edition, and it occurred to me that if the book sells well there may be some royalties over and above the amount Amstutz
²
paid in advance. If so, is there any way by which I could leave some francs in Switzerland? Everyone who comes back from there tells me about how easy it is to buy clothes in Switzerland, and after years of rationing I am in such desperate straits for shirts, underclothes etc. that I should like to be able to buy a few odds and ends. Or is one obliged to bring all foreign exchange back to this country? This matter isn’t urgent, as even if extra royalties do accrue they won’t be due for some months. But I should be glad to know how the position stands. With regard to possible future earnings in the
USA
, Mr Harrison
³
explained to me that by becoming a chartered company in the
USA
I could leave money there if I wished to, and so long as it was spent there and not here it would only be liable to American income tax. I told him I should like to do this, as if I ever go to the
USA
—I don’t want to do so now, but I might some time in 1948—it would be convenient to have some money there and I might as well avoid the higher tax.

He also said that he was going to Hollywood, and could he make any attempt on my behalf to negotiate film rights. I told him to get in touch with you, and I suppose he did this before leaving.

Yours sincerely

Eric Blair

[XVIII, 3099, pp. 452–3; typewritten]

1
.
In addition to a serialisation in Norwegian, a cheap edition was published in October 1946 as
Diktatoren
by Brann Forlag, Oslo. Only a small number of the 5–6,000 copies printed were sold, and when Brann Forlag was taken over, the new owners reduced the price (1948).

2
.
Verlag Amstutz, Herdeg & Co, Zurich, publishers of
Farm der Tiere
, October 19
46.

3
.
Of Harrison, Son, Hill & Co., accountants. ‘No one is patriotic about taxes’ as Orwell remarked in his Wartime Diary on 9 August 1940. However, tax at the time he was earning anything like the just rewards for his labours amounted to 45% in the £ at the basic level and then rose to as much as 98% in the £.