George Orwell: A Life in Letters (78 page)

Please remember me to your wife and give my best regards to your daughter.

Yours

George

[XIX, 3481, pp. 460–2; typewritten]

1
.
National Dried was a milk powder, akin to proprietary brands such as Ostermilk, made available by the government through Baby Clinics to mothers of young babies.

2
.
John Davenport (1906–1966), critic and man of letters, a friend of many writers and painters. The paper was probably
Our Time
, to which he was a contributor. In the autumn of 1948 it was edited by Frank Jellinek and in 1949 by Randall Swingler.

3
.
Tosco Fyvel*, a long-standing friend of Orwell’s, comments on Orwell’s remark that he, Fyvel, doubtless thought him anti-Semitic in
George Orwell: A Personal Memoir
, pp. 178–82
: ‘I would never have said that,’ though he reported that Malcolm Muggeridge thought Orwell ‘at heart strongly anti-Semitic’. Fyvel went on, ‘Put baldly like that, I would not agree. . . . It was unthinkable that he should ever have been openly anti-Semitic. But his ideological views concerning the assimilation into British culture of a strong Jewish ethnic minority were a different matter.’

4
.
John Strachey (1901–1963), politician and political theorist; Labour MP, 1929–31, 1945–63. In 1946 he became a prominent member of the Labour government.

5
.
Soviet Russia tested its first atomic bomb in September
1949.

To David Astor*

19 November 1948

Barnhill

Isle of Jura

Dear David,

Thanks so much for your letter. If you’d really like to give Richard something for Christmas, I wonder whether one can still get Meccano sets?
I should think he is about ripe for one of the lower grades. Of course he’ll lose all the bolts, but still that is the kind of thing he likes. He is tremendously active about the farm and household, has to take part in all operations such as chopping firewood, filling lamps etc., and even insists on pouring out my ration of gin for me every evening. He goes fishing with the others and caught several fish the other day. I am so glad your little girl is going on well. I suppose at 20 months she will be talking a bit, as well as walking. Julian Symons, whom I think you met at lunch once, has just got a baby and seems very absorbed in it. Margie Fletcher is over on the mainland having her fourth.

It’s very kind of Charoux
¹
to help about restoring the picture. When I can get round to doing so I’ll make a crate and send it to him direct. I never can remember his address but I expect I have a letter of his somewhere. It’s only a very small picture, about 20'' by 16 '', so it won’t be difficult to pack. In sending it here those bloody fools Pickfords succeeded in making a slit in the canvas and also chipping it in two places, but I don’t imagine it would be difficult to mend. It’s of no value, but it has sentimental associations and I think is quite a good painting. There was also that picture which you gave me and which got blitzed.
²
I was going to have that restored, but it’s a more extensive job as it got scratched all over. It was thrown right across the room by the blast.

I am on the grisly job of typing out my book which I have at last finished after messing about with it ever since the summer of 1947. I tried to get a stenog. to come here and do it for me, but it’s awkward to get anyone for such a short period so I am doing it myself. I feel somewhat better now, but I was in absolutely lousy health for about a month and I have decided if I can arrange it to go into a private sanatorium for Jan–Feb, which is the worst of the winter. Dr. Dick thinks it would be a good idea. I seem to be all right so long as I stay in bed till lunch time and then spend the rest of the day on a sofa, but if I walk even a few hundred yards or pull up a few weeds in the garden I promptly get a temperature. Otherwise everything is going well here and the farm has had quite a good first year in spite of the vile weather. There is now a bull, which is very good and quiet and I trust will remain so, as I can’t run very fast these days. Bobbie, your pony, is still at Tarbert, and I am not sure whether McIntyre° wants us to winter him or not. I had a talk with your brother about it when I met him at the sports about August, but subsequently there was some mix-up and nobody from here has been down as far as Tarbert for some months. Anyway, if they would like us to winter Bobbie, we are pleased to do so, as he is useful to us in several ways and also makes a companion for the other horse. I do not know whether I shall be in London at any time in the near future—I suppose some time next year, but I must try and get my health right.

I am so glad the
Obs.
is taking up Africa so to speak. Also that O’Donovan
³
is going on reporting Asia for you. He is really a great acquisition. Your friend de Gaulle seems to be bent on making mischief all round. However it rather looks now as if there won’t be war for some years.

Yours

George

[XIX, 3490, pp. 468–9; typewritten]

1
.
A picture-framer and restorer; his address is given in Orwell’s address book as 65 Holland Park Road, [London] W.14.

2
.
A flying bomb fell close by the Orwells’ flat in Mortimer Crescent on 28 June 1944.

3
.
Patrick O’Donovan, who had joined the
Observer
in 1946 and worked with distinction as a roving correspondent abroad. (See his
A Journalist’s Odyssey
, 1985.)

To Gleb Struve*

22 November 1948

Barnhill

Isle of Jura

Dear Struve,

Thanks so much for your letter of November 6th (only just got here.) I have written to Warburg, explaining the circumstances about
We,
and suggesting that if interested he should write either to you or to the people handling Westhouse’s affairs. Of course if Warburg isn’t interested there are plenty of others.

Yes, of course it’s all right about the Russian translation of
Animal Farm.
¹
Naturally I don’t want any money from D.Ps, but if they ever do produce it in book form I should like a copy or two of that. Did I tell you it was done into Ukrainian by the D.Ps in the American Zone about a year ago? I understand that the American authorities seized about half the copies printed and handed them over to the Soviet repatriation people, but that about 3000 copies got distributed.

I’ll look out for your Turgenev translation in
Politics
.
²
[
I
s typing his book.
]

Yours sincerely

Geo. Orwell

[XIX, 3496, pp. 472–3; typewritten]

1
.
The Russian translation of
Animal Farm
,
Skotskii Khutor
, was made by M. Kriger and Gleb Struve; it appeared in
Possev
, a weekly social and political review, Nos. 7–25, 1
949, which published it as a book in 1950.
Possev
means the sowing of seed and outlasted the Soviet Union.

2
.
Politics
ceased publication before the translation could be published.

To Leonard Moore*

30 November 1948

Barnhill

Isle of Jura

Dear Moore,

I am afraid there has been a mix-up about this typing business and that you and perhaps the typing agencies you applied [to] have been put to unnecessary trouble. What happened was this. I wrote first to Warburg, asking him to engage a typist in London, but he and Senhouse apparently decided that it would be easier to arrange it in Edinburgh, because of the journey, although, of course, the tiresome part of the journey is not between London and Scotland but between Jura and the mainland. I waited for a bit, and then Roger Senhouse said he was putting his niece in Edinburgh on to the job of finding a typist. Meanwhile in case nothing materialised I had started doing it myself. Then apparently Warburg rang you up and I got two letters from you, suggesting the names of two people in London, but I couldn’t close with this in case Senhouse’s niece suddenly produced somebody. I have never heard from her, and now I hear from Senhouse that in fact she couldn’t get anybody. Meanwhile I have almost finished the typing and shall send it off probably on the 7th December, so you should get it in about a week. I do hope the two women whose names you suggested have not been inconvenienced or put off other engagements or anything like that. It really wasn’t worth all this fuss. It’s merely that as it tires me to sit upright for any length of time I can’t type very neatly and can’t do many pages a day.

These copies I am sending you are only carbons, and not first-class typing. If you think bad typing might prejudice the
MS
. with the American publishers, it would be worth having it redone by a commercial agency. But if you do decide on that, can you see that they don’t make mistakes. I know what these agencies are like. As the thing is typed already, and I don’t
think
I have left any errors in it, it should be easy enough, but it is wonderful what mistakes a professional typist will make, and in this book there is the difficulty that it contains a lot of neologisms.

Yours sincerely

Eric Blair

[XIX, 3501, p. 477; typewritten]

To David Astor*

21 December 1948

Barnhill

[Isle of Jura]

Dear David,

I am really very unwell indeed, & have been since about September, & I am arranging to go into a private sanatorium early in January & stay there at least 2 months. I was going to go to a place called Kingussie, reccommended° by Dr. Dick, but they were full up & I have made arrangements to go to a place in Glostershire.° I suppose there might be some slip-up, but if not my address as from 7th Jan. will be The Cotswold Sanatorium,
CRANHAM, GLOS
.

I tell you this chiefly because I feel I simply must stop working, or rather trying to work, for at least a month or two. I would have gone to a sanatorium two months ago if I hadn’t wanted to finish that bloody book off, which thank God I have done. I had been messing about with it for 18 months thanks to this bloody disease. I have polished off all the reviews I promised for the
Observer
except two [
details and apologies to Mr Rose
]. I’m afraid I[vor] B[rown] will mark this as another black mark against me, but I just must have a good rest for a month or two. I just must try & stay alive for a while because apart from other considerations I have a good idea for a novel.
¹

Everything is flourishing here except me. [
Life at Barnhill; has a stationary engine for Richard’s Meccano.
] We sent our pig to be slaughtered a week or two ago. He was only nine months old & weighed 2 cwt.
after
removal of the head & trotters.

I hope your little girl is well. Margie Fletcher’s new baby had something wrong intestinally, but it seems to be better now. It’s another boy.

Yours

George

[XIX, 3510, pp. 485–6; handwritten]

1
.
Perhaps ‘A Smoking-Room Story’ (see XX, 3723–4, pp. 193–200).

To Fredric Warburg*

21 December 1948

Barnhill

[Isle of Jura]

Dear Fred,

Thanks for two letters. [
Is really very unwell indeed & arranging to go into The Cotswold Sanatorium
.]
But better consider Barnhill my address till I confirm the other. I ought to have done this 2 months ago but I wanted to get that bloody book finished.

About photos. I have none here, but I’m pretty certain I had a number at my flat, which my sister has just been closing up & dismantling. The photos will have been in a file which will be coming up here, but I suppose not for ages, as anything sent by rail takes months. I’ll send you any photos I can when they arrive, but meanwhile could you try first Moore, who I
think
has one or two, & then Vernon & Marie-Louise Richards
¹
who took a lot 3 years ago. [
How to find them
.] At need we could bring a photographer to the sanatorium, but I am really a deathshead at present, & I imagine shall be in bed for a month or so.

I’m glad you liked the book. It isn’t a book I would gamble on for a big sale, but I suppose one could be sure of 10,000 any way. It’s still beautiful weather here, but I never stir out of doors & seldom off the sofa. Richard is offensively well, & everything else flourishing except me. I am trying to finish off my scraps of book-reviewing etc. & must then just strike work for a month or so. I can’t go on as at present. I have a stunning idea for a very short novel which has been in my head for years, but I can’t start anything until I am free from high temperatures etc.

Love to all.

George