George Orwell: A Life in Letters (80 page)

4
.
The appendix, ‘The Principles of Newspeak’, was included in English and US editions.

To Sir Richard Rees*

18 January 1949

The Cotswold Sanatorium

Cranham

Dear Richard,

I hope you got home all right & were not too exhausted by all your journeyings on my behalf. I am well settled in here & quite comfortable. The ‘chalet’ isn’t as grim as I had feared—quite warm, with central heating & hot & cold water, & the food is quite good. My appetite has definitely improved. The Tawneys
¹
came in & saw me, but now have left for London. Karl Schnetzler also came, & Warburg is coming on Friday. I’ll send back your book
In Parenthesis
²
when I can. I think it’s very good in a way, but it’s what I call mannered writing, a thing I don’t approve of. I haven’t heard from Barnhill yet, but trust Avril has got properly over her cold. I don’t know how the weather has been there, but here it has been as mild & sunny as early April, & the birds have even been trying to sing. My book has been accepted for the USA & they’ve also agreed to reprint a number of earlier ones on quite good terms, which is unusual in an American publisher. Actually I’m somewhat against this, as they’re sure to lose money on the reprints & this may sour them on later books.

They are giving me something called P.A.S., which I believe stands for para-amino-salicylic acid. They say it is good. It’s very expensive, though not so expensive as streptomycin. You take it by mouth, which I must say I prefer to those endless injections. I have been thinking things over, & have decided that even if I am reasonably well by the summer, I must from now on spend my winters within reach of a doctor—where, I don’t know yet, but possibly somewhere like Brighton. If, therefore, it is impossible for me to be at Barnhill in the winter, can we fix things somehow so that Bill is looked after during those months?
I don’t in the least wish to sever my connection with Barnhill, because it is a marvellous place to be at, & in any case we have now sent down fairly respectable roots there, but I think it would be wiser to do as I first intended, when I took the place in 1946, & use it only for the summers. I must try & stay alive for 5–10 years, which involves having medical attention at hand when necessary, & in addition I am just a nuisance to everybody when I am ill, whereas in a more civilized place this doesn’t matter. In the summers no doubt I shall generally be well enough to potter about, provided that this present infection is got under. In more reasonable times we might arrange to live every winter in Sicily or somewhere, but nowadays I suppose it will have to be somewhere in England.
³
In the beginning we took the house on the understanding that we should only stay there April–November, but now there is Bill. It is a question of finding a housekeeper for him. Have you got any ideas about this? I’ll also write to Avril setting forth the problem.

Gleb Struve sent me a translation of some remarks about me in a Russian magazine.
⁴
They’re really very annoying, but disquieting in a way because the whole thing is somehow so
illiterate
.

Yours

Eric

[XX, 3529, pp. 22–4; handwritten]

1
.
Professor R. H. Tawney (1888–1962), historian, author of
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism
(1926), joint editor of
Economic History Review
, 1926–33, and of
Studies in Economic and Social History
from 1934. He and his wife were very old friends of Richard Rees, who had asked them to visit Orwell at Cranham, as they were on holiday nearby at their country home.

2
.
In Parenthesis
(1937) by David Jones (1895–1974), poet, novelist, and artist. It combines free verse with an account of his World War I experience. It won the Hawthornden Prize.

3
.
Travel abroad was made difficult because the government limited severely the amount of money that could be taken out of the country.

4
.
With his letter to Orwell of 1
January 1949, Gleb Struve had enclosed two articles by Ivan Anisimov attacking Arthur Koestler and Orwell, ‘typical of the literary xenophobia now raging in the Soviet Union’.

To Fredric Warburg*

18 January 1949

Telegram

LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU FRIDAY DO BRING PAMELA CAR WILL MEET YOU

GEORGE

[XX, 3530,
p
. 24]

The visit was arranged for Friday, 21
January 1949. Warburg went with his wife, Pamela, and in
All Authors are Equal
(1973) he gives a vivid account of Cranham (which horrified them) and of Orwell’s distressing state. Warburg, confirming the visit in a letter to Orwell of 19 January, asked his permission to have a frank discussion with his doctors: ‘Your future is important to more people than yourself.’ In reply to their questions, Orwell told Pamela Warburg that ‘a woman doctor [presumably Margaret Kirkman] visits me every morning. . . . I think she’s thoroughly competent and kind, and asks me how I feel and all that.’ However, in response to Mrs Warburg’s questions, it transpired that no chest examination by stethoscope had taken place. ‘I expect they’re understaffed here, you know,’ Orwell told her, ‘she probably hasn’t got time,’ to which Mrs Warburg angrily replied: ‘It’s monstrous, absolutely shocking’ (p. 109). Nevertheless, Orwell thought the doctors knew what they were doing, and Warburg remarks, ‘The reply was so typical of him—he couldn’t bear to make a fuss—and so heartrending that I could hardly believe my ears, but at least it made it easy for Pamela to beg him to see a London specialist.’ She persuaded Orwell to promise to let them know if he would like Dr Andrew Morland (a leading specialist in the field who had treated D. H. Lawrence) to see him and, if necessary, to get him into University College Hospital, London. Warburg also recounts how at this time, Louis Simmonds, a bookseller with whom Orwell dealt and who was a warm admirer of Orwell, told Warburg that he and one or two friends would raise £500—a very large sum in those days—to enable Orwell to go to Switzerland for treatment because ‘he is far too precious to lose’ (pp. 1
07–9).

To Julian Symons*

2 February 1949

The Cotswold Sanatorium

Cranham

Dear Julian,

I wonder how you & family are getting on. I have been in this place about a month. [
Progress of his treatment – P.A.S.
] During the last month my weight has only increased 4 ounces, but actually I do feel better & I am well looked after here, though the doctors don’t strike me as very brilliant.

Your baby must be getting quite a size & must be cutting teeth & eating solid food. I wonder if you had the battle over weaning that we had with Richard. It’s like Machiavelli says about government, you can’t do it except by force or fraud. Richard is getting [on] for 5 now & is enormous & very healthy, though still not interested in learning his letters. He likes to be read to, but doesn’t see that as a reason for learning to read himself. I suppose this coming winter he will have to start going to school, which he is certain to enjoy as he is very gregarious.

My new book is supposed to come out in July (Warburg said May or June, which means July in publisher’s language) but maybe the American edition will be out first. Any way I’ll see you get a copy. I must thank you for some friendly references in the
M
[
anchester
]
E
[
vening
]
News
, including one to that ghastly book of pamphlets in which I reluctantly collaborated. I am having another try to get Warburg to reprint some of Gissing’s books, to which I would write introductions. They reprinted (I forget which publishers) those 3 last year, but of course the wrong ones.
¹
Meanwhile I am still trying to get hold of a copy of
New Grub Street
, & am now trying in New York. Somewhat to my annoyance that paper
Politics & Letters
got me to write an essay on Gissing & then died, & have never sent my article back or answered my queries about it, though it appears distinctly unlikely that the magazine will re-appear. What a calamity that we can’t find a way of financing
one
decent magazine in this country. I suppose it’s only a question of losing about £2000 a year. The
Partisan Review
have either increased their sales or got hold of some money from somewhere, as I notice they now pay one quite decently. For all those articles I did during the war for them I got only 10 dollars a time.
²

I don’t know this part of the country but it’s supposed to be a beauty spot. Professor Tawney lives nearby, but unfortunately he’s had to go back to London as the L.S.E. term had started. The weather is quite incredible, bright sunshine & birds singing as though it were April. Please remember me to your wife & excuse this bad handwriting.

Yours

George

[XX, 3538, pp. 31–2; handwritten]

1
.
In the Year of the Jubilee
and
The Whirlpool
were published by Watergate Classics; the former had an introduction by William Plomer, and the latter, one by Myfanwy Evans.

2
.
Ten dollars was then approximately £2.50.

To Sir Richard Rees*

4 February 1949

The Cotswold Sanatorium

Cranham

Dear Richard,

I enclose cheque for what I owed you. You will notice I have added £3. Do you think you could be kind enough to get your wine merchant to send me 2 bottles
of rum, which I suppose will come to about that. I assume he will know how to pack them so as not to get them broken.

I have heard from Avril who says she and Bill both think it would be better to move to a farm on the mainland. I think they are right, but can’t help feeling
bad about it as I feel my health is the precipitating factor, though the state of the road is a good second. I think you would be rash to sink more money
in any non-removable improvements etc.,
¹
because such a place might of its nature become untenable at some time. I trust it will be possible to move without selling off the stock and losing on the transaction. I am afraid the actual move will be a godawful° business from which I shall probably absent myself whenever it happens. I have asked Avril to tell Robin [Fletcher] that unless he happens on a tenant who would actually farm the place, I would like to keep on the lease of the house. I don’t see why we shouldn’t have it as a summer holiday place, and one could leave camp beds etc. there. Of course I may never be strong enough for that kind of thing again even in the summer, but others may be and the rent is next to nothing.

I am reading B. Russell’s latest book, about human knowledge.
²
He quotes Shakespeare, ‘Doubt that the stars are fire, Doubt that the earth doth move’ (it goes on I think, ‘Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.’) But he makes it ‘Doubt that the
sun
doth move,’ and uses this as an instance of S.’s ignorance. Is that right? I had an idea it was ‘the earth.’ But I haven’t got Shakespeare here and I can’t even remember where the lines come (must be one of the comedies I think.) I wish you’d verify this for me if you can remember where it comes.
³
I see by the way that the Russian press has just described B. R. as a wolf in a dinner jacket and a wild beast in philosopher’s robes.

I don’t know really that I’d be very interested in that book about the cards etc. I had heard of that chap before,
⁴
but I can’t get very interested in telepathy unless it could be developed into a reliable method.

I’ve been reading
The First Europe
⁵
(history of the Dark Ages), very interesting though written in a rather tiresome way. For the first week or two here I hadn’t got my book supply going and had to rely on the library, which meant reading some fearful trash. Among other things I read a Deeping
⁶
for the first time—actually not so bad as I expected, a sort of natural novelist like A. S. M. Hutchinson.
⁷
Also a Peter Cheyney.
⁸
He evidently does well out of his books as I used often to get invites from him for slap-up parties at the Dorchester. I have sent for several of Hardy’s novels
⁹
and am looking at them rather unenthusiastically.

Yours

Eric

[XX, 3540, pp. 33–5; typewritten]

1
.
Rees had invested £1,000 in developing Barnhill.

2
.
Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits
(1948). In his list of what he read in 1949, Orwell wrote against this book, ‘Tried & failed.’

3
.
Russell was almost textually correct. The passage is from
Hamlet
,
2.2.116–19; the first line should read: ‘Doubt thou’ not ‘Doubt that’. Russell takes the meaning at its simple, face value—that the earth does not move. If that is correct, Shakespeare (or Hamlet) cannot be accused of ignorance because, as the cosmos was still almost uniformly then understood, that was correct according to Ptolomaic theory. Copernicus and Galileo were challenging that theory (Galileo and Shakespeare were born in the same year), and their theory was regarded as heretical, as the Inquisition pointedly explained to Galileo. However, this passage is usually interpreted as hinting that the earth does move; Shakespeare was more subtle than either Russell or Orwell seems to have realised, and Hamlet, perhaps, more devious.