George Orwell: A Life in Letters (76 page)

2
.
Orwell is correct.

3
.
The first edition of
Hymns Ancient and Modern
was published in 1861. Ironically in the light of his comments about Roman Catholicism ‘Praise to the Holiest in the height’ was by Cardinal John Henry Newman.

To Celia Kirwan*

27 May 1948

Hairmyres Hospital

East Kilbride

Dearest Celia,

Thanks ever so much for your letter. I must say, anything to do with
unesco
sounds pretty discouraging. Any way, I should knock all the money you can out of them, as I don’t suppose they’ll last much longer. [
Paragraph on health; Richard, now aged four.
]

How I wish I were with you in Paris, now that spring is there. Do you ever go to the Jardin des Plantes? I used to love it, though there was really nothing of interest except the rats, which at one time overran it & were so tame that they would almost eat out of your hand. In the end they got to be such a nuisance that they introduced cats & more or less wiped them out. The plane trees are so beautiful in Paris, because the bark isn’t blackened by smoke the way it is in London. I suppose the food & so on is still pretty grisly, but that will improve if the Marshall plan
¹
gets working. I see you have to put a 10 franc
²
stamp on your letter, which gives one an idea of what meals must cost now.

I can’t help feeling that it’s a bit treacherous on Arthur’s part if he does settle down in the
USA
.
³
He was talking about doing it before. I suppose he is furious about what is happening in Palestine, though what else was to be expected I don’t know. His lecture tour seems to have been quite a success. I wonder if he has got back yet, & what he will do about his place in Wales. It seems a pity to start sending roots down somewhere & then tear them up again, & I can imagine Mamaine not liking it.

[
His book put back ‘
frightfully’] – now it can’t be finished before the end of the year, which means not coming out till the end of 1949. However it’s something to be capable of working again. Last year before they brought me here I really felt as though I were finished. Thank Heaven Richard looks as if he is going to have good health. We have got 2 tested cows now, so at any rate he won’t get this disease through milk, which is the usual way with children. Take care of yourself & write to me again some time.

With love

George

[XIX, 3405, pp. 344–5; handwritten]

1
.
The Marshall Plan, properly the European Recovery Program, was the outcome of the Paris Economic Conference, July
1947, to aid post-war recovery in a number of European countries. It was financed by the United States ($17 billion in grants and loans over four years) and was named after
US
Secretary of State George C. Marshall (1880–1959), whose advocacy of such aid was instrumental in bringing the scheme to fruition. In 1953 General Marshall was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his work in this field.

2
.
Ten francs was about one old penny in mid-1948.

3
.
Arthur Koestler, who had been living with his wife, Mamaine, in Wales, decided he would like to move to the United States, and they lived there for a short time.

To Anthony Powell*

25 June 1948

Hairmyres Hospital

East Kilbride

Dear Tony,

I received a letter from your friend Cecil Roberts
¹
asking me if he could have my flat. I had to write and tell him it was impossible. I am awfully sorry about this, but they have already been riding me like the nightmare for lending it to Mrs Christen, and threatening to let the Borough take it away from me. I don’t want this to happen because I must have
a
pied à terre in London, and also I have a little furniture still there and a lot of papers which it’s awkward to store elsewhere. Even if I gave up the flat they won’t let you transfer the lease and of course they have their own candidates ready many deep, with bribes in their hands.
²

If you happen to see Graham Greene, could you break the news to him that I have written a very bad review of his novel
³
for the
New Yorker
. I couldn’t do otherwise—I thought the book awful, though of course don’t put it as crudely as that. I am going to review Kingsmill’s book
⁴
for the
Obs.
as soon as possible, but I still have another book to get out of the way first.
⁵
I seem to be getting quite back into the journalistic mill, however I do tinker a little at my novel and no doubt shall get it done by the end of the year.

I am a lot better and now get up for three hours a day. I have been playing a lot of croquet, which seems quite a tough game when you’ve been on your back for 6 months. In the ward below me the editor of the
Hotspur
⁶
is a patient. He tells me their circulation is 300,000. He says they don’t pay very good rates per thou, but they can give people regular work and also give them the plots so that they only have to do the actual writing. In this way a man can turn out 40,000 words a week. They had one man who used to do 70,000, but his stuff was ‘rather stereotyped.’ I hope to get out in August, but the date isn’t fixed because it depends on when my lung resumes its normal shape after the collapse therapy has worn off. Richard is coming to see me early in July. He couldn’t before because of infection. I suppose I shall hardly know him after six months.

It’s my birthday to day—45, isn’t it awful. I’ve also got some more false teeth, and, since being here, a lot more grey in my hair. Please remember me to Violet.

Yours

George

[XIX, 3416, pp. 393–4; typewritten]

1
.
Cecil A. (“Bobby”) Roberts, sometime manager of Sadler’s Wells Theatre, had recently been demobilised from the Royal Air Force.

2
.
Accommodation was hard to find in the years immediately after the war. Most leases included a clause forbidding the lessee to sub-let or ‘part with possession’ in whole or in part, whether or not money changed hands, for example as a ‘premium’.

3
.
The Heart of the Matter
, see 17 July 1948 (XIX, 3424, pp. 404–7).

4
.
The Dawn’s Delay
;
see 18 July
1948 (XIX, 3425, pp. 407–8).

5
.
Probably
Mr. Attlee: An Interim Biography
;
see 4 July
1948 (XIX, 3419, pp. 398–9).

6
.
A weekly paper for boys published from 1933 to 1959. In a letter to Ian Angus, 17.9.96, Professor Williamson said this man shared a room with Orwell for a while and that Professor Dick was interested to see how they got on. ‘In the event they got on well together (as I think almost anyone would have . . .).’

To Julian Symons*

10 July 1948

Hairmyres Hospital

East Kilbride

Dear Julian,

I must thank you for a very kind review in the
M
[
anchester
]
E
[
vening
]
News
¹
which I have just had a cutting of. I hope your wife is well and that everything is going all right. I thought you would like to hear that I am leaving here on the 25th. They seem to think I am pretty well all right now, though I shall have to take things very quietly for a long time, perhaps a year or so. I am only to get up for six hours a day, but I don’t know that it makes much difference as I have got quite used to working in bed. My sister brought Richard over to see me this week, the first time I had seen him since Christmas. He is tremendously well and almost frighteningly energetic. His talking still seems backward, but in other ways I should say he was forward. Farm life seems to suit him, though I am pretty sure he is one for machines rather than animals. [
References to Hotspur and Gissing
] I also wasn’t so up in the air as most people about Evelyn Waugh’s
The Loved One
, though of course it was amusing. Unlike a lot of people I thought
Brideshead Revisited
was very good, in spite of hideous faults on the surface. I have been trying to read a book of extracts from Leon Bloy,°
²
whose novels I have never succeeded in getting hold of. He irritates me rather, and Peguy,°
³
whom I also tried recently, made me feel unwell. I think it’s about time to do a new counterattack against these Catholic writers. I also recently read Farrell’s
Studs Lonigan
⁴
for the first time, and was very disappointed by it. I don’t know that I’ve read much else.

The weather here was filthy all June but now it’s turned at last and they are getting the hay in with great speed. I am longing to go fishing, but I suppose I shan’t be able to this year, not because fishing in itself is much of an exertion, but because you always have to walk five or ten miles and end up by getting soaked to the skin. Please remember me to your wife. After the 25th my address will be as before, ie. Barnhill, Isle of Jura, Argyllshire.

Yours

George

[XIX, 3420, pp. 400–
1; handwritten]

1
.
Symons had reviewed the reprint of
Coming Up for Air
in the
Manchester Evening News
, 19 May 1948.

2
.
Leon Marie Bloy (1846–1917), French novelist whose work attacks the bourgeois conformism of his time. He expected the collapse of that society and became increasingly influenced by Roman Catholic mysticism, expressed particularly in his Journal, 1892–1917.

3
.
Republican and socialist, he founded
Cahiers de la Quinzaine
(1900–14). This set out ‘To tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, to tell flat truth flatly, dull truth dully, sad truth sadly’—that was its doctrine and method, and, above all, its action (Péguy, quoted by Daniel Halevy,
Peguy and ‘Les Cahiers de la Quinzaine’,
1946, 52). In the course of his editing, his Roman Catholicism and his patriotism were intensified. A favourite story of Orwell’s, which he dramatised for the BBC, was Anatole France’s
L’Affaire Crainquebille
(11 August 1943, XV, 2230, pp. 186
-97), first published by Péguy in
Les Cahiers
.

4
.
James Thomas Farrell (1904–1979), prolific and successful
US
novelist and a forthright social and literary critic (for example,
The League of Frightened Philistines
, 1
945).

Fredric Warburg* to Orwell

19 and 22 July 1948

On 19 July 194
8, Warburg wrote to Orwell saying he had heard that Orwell was looking very much better and he mentioned Orwell’s interest in getting more of Gissing’s novels back into print. The main burden of the letter concerned
Nineteen Eighty-Four
:

I was of course specially pleased to know that you have done quite a substantial amount of revision on the new novel. From our point of view, and I should say also from your point of view, a revision of this is far and away the most important single undertaking to which you could apply yourself when the vitality is there. It should not be put aside for reviews or miscellaneous work, however tempting, and will I am certain sooner rather than later bring in more money than you could expect from any other activity. If you do succeed in finishing the revision by the end of the year this would be pretty satisfactory, and we should publish in the autumn of 1949, but it really is rather important from the point of view of your literary career to get it done by the end of the year, and indeed earlier if at all possible.

On 22 July, he told Orwell of the great interest aroused in Japan by
Animal Farm
. The Americans had submitted 50–75 titles of Western books to Japanese publishers and invited them to bid for them.
Animal Farm
received the most bids; forty-eight Japanese publishers were anxious to publish it. It was ‘finally knocked down to an Osaka firm who are paying 20 cents or 20 yens° per copy, I am not sure which’. It would not make Orwell wealthy and the yen could be spent only in Japan: ‘Perhaps a trip one Spring in cherry time might be practicable for you, if and when the world clears up a bit.’

[XIX, 3426, pp. 408–9]

Avril Blair* to Michael Kennard
¹

29 July 1948

Barnhill

Isle of Jura

…
²
Eric returned yesterday & looks much better. He has got to take it very easy but is interested in how things are going & has been going round the estate today; practically everything is new or different since he was last at home. Richard Rees is also here for a day or two & we all (not E) bravely went down & had a bathe this afternoon. The water was icy despite the fact that we are in the midst of a terrific heat wave…