George Orwell: A Life in Letters (62 page)

To Leonard Moore*

23 October 1946

27 B Canonbury Square

Islington N
1

Dear Moore,

Many thanks for your letter of the 22nd. It doesn’t matter sending those two copies of
Polemic
to America. I can get others. The great rarity is the first number, of which only a very few battered copies exist.

As you know Warburg wants some time to do a uniform edition of my books, and would like in any case to re-issue one of the old ones some time in 1947, as I am not likely to have a new book ready for publication before 1948. The question therefore arises about copyright. To date, the books worth reprinting are—

Homage to Catalonia

Animal Farm

Critical Essays

Down & Out

Burmese Days

Coming Up for Air
.
¹

The first three were originally published by Warburg himself, the other three by Gollancz. How does it stand about the re-issue of these three? Are the copyrights mine? My impression is that the copyrights reverted to me after two years, and I know that the copyright of the American edition of
Burmese Days
(actually the first edition of that book) is mine. The question arises first about
Coming Up for Air
, which has not been reprinted and which Warburg thinks it would be best to start with. Could you get in communication with him so that an agreement can be negotiated [?]

I think you were keeping for me some copies of the American edition of the
Essays
.
²
If so I should be glad if you could send me them, as I have no copies of that book. Perhaps you could at the same time let me know the address of Harcourt Brace, to whom I want to write recommending a novel by a friend of mine which has been published here but not in the
USA
.

Yours sincerely

Eric Blair

[XVIII, 3100, pp. 453–4; typewritten]

1
.
Annotations made in Moore’s office show that a letter was sent to Gollancz about the last three books on 29 October 1946. In the left-hand margin has been written ‘R/R R/R their letter 21/4/43’ against
Down & Out
and
Burmese Days
;
and ‘R.R. their 22/xi/41 letter’ against
Coming Up for Air
.
‘R/R’ is also written in the margin against the reference to the American edition of
Burmese Days
.
R.R. stands for Rights Reverted.

2
.
In the left-hand margin has been written ‘3 copies’.

Dwight Macdonald wrote to Orwell on 2 December 1946. He was still anxious to have something from Orwell for
Politics
, the circulation of which was dropping enough (from 5,500 in spring 1946 to its present 5,000) to cause a financial crisis. He referred to George Woodcock’s article on Orwell in the latest number of
Politics
–
‘neither flattering nor the reverse’, which was how he imagined Orwell would like his work considered.
¹
He had bought shoes for Orwell, at $8.95, which showed how the price had gone ‘way up of late’. He wanted to know how they should be packed and whether Orwell needed shirts or sweaters, for example, into which they could be bundled and labelled as ‘old clothes’ to avoid pilfering. If they fitted, he would get him another pair; he feared American and English size twelves were not the same.
²
He also reported that anti-Stalinist intellectuals of his acquaintance claimed that the parable of
Animal Farm
meant that revolution always ended badly for the underdog, ‘hence to hell with it and hail the
status quo
’. He himself read the book as applying solely to Russia and not making any larger statement about the philosophy of revolution. ‘I’ve been impressed with how many leftists I know make this criticism quite independently of each other—impressed because it didn’t occur to me when reading the book and still doesn’t seem correct to me. Which view would you say comes closer to your own intentions?’

To Dwight Macdonald*

5 December 1946

27B Canonbury Square,

Islington N 1

Dear Dwight,

I can’t thank you enough about the shoes. I’ve written at once to my agent to see about getting the money to you. I suppose it would be better to see whether the first pair fits, though I think the American sizes are the same. Probably it would be all right if you did them up as old clothes as you said. But someone did tell me it was a good idea to send shoes in two separate parcels, then it’s not worth anyone’s while to pinch them, unless there happened to be a one-legged man on the dock.

Re. your query about
Animal Farm
. Of course I intended it primarily as a satire on the Russian revolution. But I did mean it to have a wider application in so much that I meant that
that kind
of revolution (violent conspiratorial revolution, led by unconsciously power-hungry people) can only lead to a change of masters. I meant the moral to be that revolutions only effect a radical improvement when the masses are alert and know how to chuck out their leaders as soon as the latter have done their job. The turning-point of the story was supposed to be when the pigs kept the milk and apples for themselves (Kronstadt.
³
) If the other animals had had the sense to put their foot down then, it would have been all right. If people think I am defending the
status quo
, that is, I think, because they have grown pessimistic and assume that there is no alternative except dictatorship or
laissez-faire
capitalism. In the case of Trotskyists, there is the added complication that they feel responsible for events in the
USSR
up to about 1926 and have to assume that a sudden degeneration took place about that date. Whereas I think the whole process was foreseeable—and was foreseen by a few people, eg. Bertrand Russell—from the very nature of the Bolshevik party. What I was trying to say was, ‘You can’t have a revolution unless you make it for yourself; there is no such thing as a benevolent dictat[or]ship.’
⁴

I am at present struggling with a radio version of the book, which is a ghastly difficult job and will take a long time. But after that I shall get back to a long article I am doing for
Polemic
, and possibly it might interest you for
Politics
. Any way I’ll see that a copy gets to you first. It’s on Tolstoy’s essay on Shakespeare, which I expect you have read. I dare say you won’t approve of what I say. I don’t like Tolstoy, much as I used to like his novels. I believe George Woodcock is writing an attack on me for something I wrote in
Polemic
about Tolstoy, Swift and anarchism.
⁵

I’m sorry about the circulation of
Politics.
You
ought
to be able to dispose of more copies over here, but I don’t know how one sets about the distribution. Did I previously send you lists of possible subscribers? One thing I found when trying to circularise the
Partisan Review
was that people don’t know whether there is a regular channel for paying for American magazines, so if you are canvassing people you ought to make this clear to them. Of course everyone has felt the draught a bit.
Tribune
’s
circulation has dropped over the past year, and I must say that during the last six months it has deserved to. However they’ve now got more paper and Kimche is back as editor, so I expect it will improve. The trouble was that with Labour in office they couldn’t make up their minds whether to attack the government or not, especially as there are several Labour M.Ps on the board of directors. Also the paper had been given its main emphasis by Bevan who can now have nothing to do with it. By the way what you said about
Tribune
’s attitude to the squatters was not fair. Of course they didn’t want squatters shot, but one must realise that that kind of action simply interferes with re-housing. The later part of the squatting campaign, ie. siezure° of flats, was ‘got up’ by the Communists in order to make trouble and also in hopes of winning popularity for the coming municipal elections. They therefore led on a lot of unfortunate people, representing to them that they could get them houses, with the result that all these people lost their places in the housing queue. I imagine the heavy defeat the CP had in the municipal elections was partly a result of this.

I have stopped sending my things to the
New Republic
, because what I am now doing is mostly topical English stuff that wouldn’t interest them. I seldom see the
N.R.
and am not sure how far it is a fellow-traveller paper. From their frequently swapping articles with
Tribune
, and being anxious to have my stuff, I thought they couldn’t be very much, but I was rather taken aback when I heard Wallace had become editor in chief.
⁶

Yours

George

[XVIII, 3128, pp. 506–8; typewritten]

1
.
Woodcock described Orwell’s reaction to this article in his study of Orwell,
The Crystal Spirit
(1967). He met Orwell in the Freedom Bookshop just as Orwell had bought this number of
Politics
. He felt apprehensive because on some points the essay was very critical. He had ‘got into trouble with London literary friends over much less critical comments on their work’. That evening, Orwell telephoned him; ‘he liked the essay and thought it was as good a first study as any writer could expect.’ He objected only to Woodcock’s accusation of political opportunism for arguing that conscription could not be avoided in wartime but thereafter must be ended because it infringed the liberties of the individual. ‘But even here his protest took a surprisingly mild form. “I have my reasons for arguing like that,” he said, but he never explained them’ (pp. 38–39).

2
.
English size 12 = American size 12½. The shoes did prove to be too small.

3
.
Kronstadt, a naval base guarding the approach to St Petersburg, a few miles from Finland, was established by Peter the Great in 1704. The turning point in
Animal Farm
is related to events that took place there early in 1921. Food shortages and a harsh regime prompted a series of strikes in Leningrad; in March the strikers were supported by sailors at the Kronstadt naval base. This was the first serious uprising not only by supporters of the Revolution against their government but by a city and by naval personnel particularly associated with ensuring the success of the
1917 Revolution. Trotsky and Mikhail Tukhachevsky (1893–1937) put down the rebellion, but the losses sustained by the rebels were not in vain. A New Economic Policy was enunciated shortly after which recognised the need for reforms. Tukhachevsky was made a Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1935, but two years later he was executed in one of Stalin’s purges. The fact that Macdonald missed the significance of the ‘turning-point’ in
Animal Farm
may be the reason why Orwell strengthened this moment in his adaptation for radio, the script of which he was to deliver in a week or so. He added this little exchange:

CLOVER
: Do you think that it is quite fair to appropriate the apples?

MOLLY
: What, keep all the apples for themselves?

MURIEL
: Aren’t we to have any?

COW
: I thought they were to be shared out equally. (
VIII
, p. 1
53)

Unfortunately, Rayner Heppenstall cut these from the script as broadcast.

4
.
When Yvonne Davet wrote to Orwell on 6 September 1946 (XVIII, 3063, pp. 390–1), she told him that the title initially chosen for the French translation of
Animal Farm
was to be
URSA – Union des Républiques Socialistes Animales
(= URSA, the Bear) but it was changed ‘to avoid offending the Stalinists too much, which I think is a pity’.

5
.
See
15.10.46
, n. 6.

6
.
Henry Wallace (1888–1965),
US
Secretary of Agriculture, 1933–
41; Vice-President, 1941–45. His very liberal views led to his replacement by Harry S. Truman as Vice-President, but he nevertheless served as Secretary of Commerce until, owing to his opposition to President Truman’s policy toward the Soviet Union, he was forced to resign. He was editor of
New Republic
, 1946–47. In
1948 he stood as presidential candidate for the Progressive Party advocating closer co-operation with the Soviet Union. He received more than one million votes but none in the Electoral College.

To Mamaine Koestler

24 January 1947

27B Canonbury Square

Islington N 1

Dear Mamaine,

I can’t thank you enough for the tea.
^l
We always seem to drink more than we can legally get, and are always slightly inclined to go round cadging it, but I don’t want to give you the impression that the shortage is calamitous.