George Orwell: A Life in Letters (84 page)

Cranham

Dear Celia,

I haven’t written earlier because I have really been rather poorly, & I can’t use the typewriter even now, so I hope you will be able to cope with my handwriting.

I couldn’t think of any more names to add to your possible list of writers except
FRANZ BORKENAU
(the
Observer
would know his address) whose name I think I gave you, &
GLEB STRUVE
* (he’s at Pasadena in California at present), the Russian translator and critic. Of course there are hordes of Americans, whose names can be found in the (New York)
New Leader
, the Jewish monthly paper
Commentary,
& the
Partisan Review
. I could also, if it is of any value, give you a list of journalists & writers who in my opinion are crypto-Communists, fellow-travellers or inclined that way & should not be trusted as propagandists. But for that I shall have to send for a notebook which I have at home, & if I do give you such a list it is strictly confidential, as I imagine it is libellous to describe somebody as a fellow-traveller.
¹

Just one idea occurred to me for propaganda not abroad but in this country. A friend of mine in Stockholm
²
tells me that as the Swedes don’t make many
films of their own one sees a lot of German & Russian films, & some of the Russian films, which of course would not normally reach this country, are unbelievably scurrilous anti-British propaganda. He referred especi[ally] to a historical film about the Crimean war. As the Swedes can get hold of these films I suppose we can: might it not be a good idea to have showings of some of them in this country, particularly for the benefit of the intelligentsia?

I read the enclosed article
³
with interest, but it seems to me anti-religious rather than anti-semitic. For what my opinion is worth, I don’t think anti-anti-semitism is a strong card to play in anti-Russian propaganda. The
USSR
must in practice be somewhat anti-semitic, as it is opposed both to Zionism within its own borders & on the other hand to the liberalism and internationalism of the non-Zionist Jews, but a polyglot state of that kind can never be officially anti-semitic, in the Nazi manner, just as the British Empire cannot. If you try to tie up Communism and anti-semitism, it is always possible in reply to point to people like Kaganovich
⁴
or Anna° Pauker,
⁵
also to the large number of Jews in the Communist parties everywhere. I also think it is bad policy to try to curry favour with your enemies. The Zionist Jews everywhere hate us & regard Britain as the enemy, more even than Germany. Of course this is based on misunderstanding, but as long as it is so I do not think we do ourselves any good by denouncing anti-semitism in other nations.

I am sorry I can’t write a better letter, but I really have felt so lousy the last few days. Perhaps a bit later I’ll get some ideas.

With love

George

[
Postscript
] I did suggest
DARCY GILLY
,°
(
Manchester Guardian
) didn’t I? There is also a man called
CHOLLERTON
(expert on the Moscow trials) who could be contacted through the
Observer
.
⁶

[XX, 3590B, pp. 322–7; handwritten]

1
.
Orwell’s Lists of Crypto-Communists and Fellow-Travellers are to be found in XX, 3732, pp. 240–59; supplemented in
LO,
pp. 149–51; and in
LO
, pp.140–9 is the list of names Orwell sent to Celia Kirwan, 2 May
1949. Orwell wrote that the list wasn’t very sensational but ‘it isn’t a bad idea to have the people who are probably unreliable listed’. There is a very serious aspect to the list. It includes, for example, two on the
NKVD
payroll (Tom Driberg, Labour MP (codename ‘Lepage’) and Peter Smollet,
OBE
(= Smolka, codename ‘Abo’ and probably the man who persuaded Cape not to publish
Animal Farm
). There is also a jokey element – Orwell’s income tax inspector is listed. The project has raised considerable comment, some unfavourable, some ill-informed.

2
.
Michael Meyer.*

3
.
Not identified.

4
.
Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich (1
893–1991), a Jew, originally a shoemaker, who became Secretary of the Central Committeee of the Commuist Party. He managed the Soviet Union’s transport system during the war.

5
.
Ana Pauker (1894–1960), daughter of a Jewish butcher, spent some time in the
USA
, served as a Colonel in the Red Army and became a leader of the Romanian Communist Party when the Soviets occupied Romania in 1944.

6
.
Darsie Gillie, the
Guardian
’s
Paris correspondent, told Adam Watson (one of Celia’s colleagues) that Chollerton was ‘an expert on Russia, & would be useful in various ways’. A.T. Chollerton was the
Daily Telegraph
’s correspondent in Moscow in 1939 when the Soviet Union was in alliance with Germany.

To Sir Richard Rees*

8 April 1949

Cranham

Dear Richard,

I thought you’d all like to know that I have just had a cable saying that the Book of the Month Club have selected my novel after all, in spite of my refusing to make the changes they demanded. So that shows that virtue is its own reward, or honesty is the best policy, I forget which. I don’t know whether I shall ultimately end up with a net profit, but at any rate this should pay off my arrears of income tax.

I’ve had the sanatorium cable the magazines to which I had promised articles saying I am unfit to do any work, which is the truth. Don’t depress the others too much with this, but the fact is I am in a bad way at present. They are going to try streptomycin again, which I had previously urged them to do & which Mr Dick* thought might be a good idea. They had been afraid of it because of the secondary effects, but they now say they can offset these to some extent with nicotine, or something, & in any case they can always stop if the results are too bad.
If
things go badly—of course we’ll hope they won’t, but one must be prepared for the worst—I’ll ask you to bring little Richard to see me before I get too frightening in appearance. I think it would upset you less than it would Avril, & there may be business deals to talk over as well. If the stuff works, as it seemed to do last time, I shall take care this time to keep the improvement by leading an invalid life for the rest of the year.

I forgot to say, I wish some time you’d have a look at my books & see they’re not getting too mildewy (I asked Avril to light a fire from time to time for that reason) & that the magazines in the bottom shelf are in some sort of order. I want to keep all the magazines that are there, as some of them have articles of mine that I might want to reprint. The books are piling up here & I’m going to start sending them home some time, but I can’t do up parcels at present.

Love to all

Eric

[XX, 3594, pp. 82–3; handwritten]

To Tosco Fyvel*

Fyvel lost the original of this letter after most of it had been printed in
Encounter
, January 1962. It is reproduced here as printed in
Encounter
.

15 April 1949

[The Cotswold Sanatorium]

Cranham

Dear Tosco,

Thanks so much for sending Ruth Fischer’s book.
¹
I had intended buying it, but perhaps after reading a borrowed copy I shan’t need to. I’ll see you get it back. I read Margarete Neumann’s book
²
with some interest. It wasn’t a particularly good book but she struck me as a sincere person. Gollancz also has a quite remarkable novel about the forced-labour camps coming along, by someone calling himself pseudonymously ‘Richard Cargoe’
³
—a Pole I should say—how authentic I couldn’t be sure, but quite a striking book, in the Slav manner.

There were several points in your articles that I had been meaning to take up with you. One is about Graham Greene. You keep referring to him as an extreme Conservative, the usual Catholic reactionary type. This isn’t so at all, either in his books or privately. Of course he is a Catholic and in some issues has to take sides politically with the church, but in outlook he is just a mild Left with faint
CP
leanings. I have even thought that he might become our first Catholic fellow-traveller, a thing that doesn’t exist in England but does in France, etc. If you look at books like
A Gun for Sale
,
England Made Me
,
The Confidential Agent
and others, you will see that there is the usual left-wing scenery. The bad men are millionaires, armaments manufacturers etc., and the good man is sometimes a Communist. In his last book there is also the usual inverted colour-feeling. According to Rayner Heppenstall, Greene somewhat reluctantly supported Franco during the Spanish civil war, but
The Confidential Agent
is written from the other point of view.

The other thing is that you are always attacking novelists for not writing about the contemporary scene. But can you think of a novel that ever was written about the strictly contemporary scene? It is very unlikely that any novel,
i.e.
worth reading, would ever be set back less than three years at least. If you tried,
in
1949, to write a novel about 1949 it would simply be ‘reportage’ and probably would seem out of date and silly before you could get it into print. I have a novel dealing with 1945 in my head now, but even if I survive to write it I shouldn’t touch it before 1950.
⁴
The reason is not only that one can’t see the events of the moment in perspective, but also that a novel has to be lived with for years before it can be written down, otherwise the working-out of detail, which takes an immense time and can only be done at odd moments, can’t happen. This is my experience and I think it is also other people’s. I have sometimes written a so-called novel within about two years of the original conception, but then they were always weak, silly books which I afterwards suppressed. You may remember that nearly all the worth-while books about the
1914 war appeared 5, 10 or even more years after it was over, which was when one might have expected them. I think books about the late war are about due to appear now, and books about the immediate post-war at some time in the fifties.

I’ve been horribly ill the last few weeks. I had a bit of a relapse, then they decided to have another go with streptomycin, which previously did me a lot of good, at least temporarily. This time only one dose of it had ghastly results, as I suppose I had built up an allergy or something. I’m a bit better now, however, but I can’t work and don’t know when I shall be able to. I’ve no hope of getting out of here before the late summer. If the weather is good I might then get up to Scotland for a few weeks, but not more, and then I shall have to spend the autumn and winter somewhere near a doctor, perhaps even in some kind of residential sanatorium. I can’t make plans till my health takes a more definite turn one way or the other. Richard is blooming, or was when I last saw him. He will be five in May. I think he will go to the village school this winter, but next year I shall have to remove him to the mainland so that he can go to a proper day school. He is still backward about talking but bright in other ways. I don’t think he will ever be one for books. His bent seems to be mechanical, and he is very good at farm work. If he grew to be a farmer
⁵
I should be pleased, though I shan’t try to influence him. . . .
⁶

Yours

George

[XX, 3598, pp. 85–7; handwritten]

1
.
Stalin and German Communism
, by Ruth Fischer; Orwell lists it as read in April.

2
.
Under Two Dictators
, by Margarete Buber-Neumann; Orwell lists it as read in April.

3
.
The Tormentors
;
listed by Orwell as read in February. Cargoe’s real name was Robert Payne (1911–1983). Orwell apparently did not know him by his pseudonym, but he may have known him as Payne when he was a war correspondent in Spain in 1938 (the year after Orwell fought there). In 1941–4
2 he worked for the British Ministry of Information in Chungking, China.

4
.
This was the second of the two books Orwell had in mind at his death.

5
.
Richard Blair did initially take up farming as a career. In 1964 he married Eleanor Moir, a schoolteacher; they have two sons.

6
.
The letter was cut here by
Encounter
.

To Sir Richard Rees*

17 April 1949

[The Cotswold Sanatorium]

Cranham

Dear Richard,