George Orwell: A Life in Letters (89 page)

1984
has had good reviews in the
USA
, such as I have seen of them, but of course also some very shame-making publicity. You’ll be glad to hear
Animal Farm
has been translated into Russian at last, in a D.P. paper in Frankfurt. I’m trying to arrange for it to be done in book form.

Yours

Eric

[XX, 3669, p. 154; handwritten]

1
.
Charles Williams (
1886–1945), poet, novelist, dramatist, and writer on theological subjects. He worked for the Oxford University Press for much of his life.

To Fredric Warburg*

22 August
1949

Cranham Lodge

Cranham

Dear Fred,

Could you please send one copy each of
Burmese Days
&
Coming Up for Air
to Sonia Brownell, care of
Horizon
.

I have Morland coming to see me again this evening. On & off I have been feeling absolutely ghastly. It comes & goes, but I have periodical bouts of high temperatures etc. I will tell you what Morland says. Richard has just gone back to Jura & is going to the village school for the winter term. Beyond that I can’t make plans for the moment. I have put him down for Westminster, but he wouldn’t be going there till 1957, heaven knows what may have happened by then. As I warned you I might do, I intend getting married again (to Sonia) when I am once again in the land of the living, if I ever am. I suppose everyone will be horrified, but apart from other considerations I really think I should stay alive longer if I were married.

I have sketched out the book of essays I would like to publish next year, but I want it to include two long new essays, on Joseph Conrad and George Gissing, & of course I can’t touch those till I am definitively better.

Love to all

George

[XX, 3678, p.159–60; handwritten]

To Sir Richard Rees*

30 August
1949

Cranham Lodge

Cranham

Dear Richard,

I am removing to a London hospital on September 3rd, and my address will be: Private Wing, University College Hospital, Gower Street, London, W.C.1
. This is Morland’s own hospital and the idea is that I shall go there probably for about two months. I don’t think you need fear my having too many visitors—in fact it may be easier to keep them off in London where people don’t have to come for the whole day.

Of course its° perfectly O.K. about the old Austin. Anything you can get for her should go towards the jeep. As to the motor boat it seems to me that it would be a good idea to leave her in the boat-yard at Ardrishaig for the winter unless they need her at Barnhill. I suppose you can do that with boats like leaving a car in a garage, and then next year it would be in good order when we picked it up.

I am going to send on the remaining books I have here. Could you be kind enough to see that the magazines etc., go in the right place. There are various bundles of papers which I have asked Avril to put in my desk upstairs.

I hope the harvest is going O.K. Avril told me she had started, or was starting another pig. If nothing has been decided yet you might suggest to Avril to think seriously about a sow which I am very in favour of, and would willingly pay the initial costs of. The only difficulty is about getting her to a hog once a year. I suppose one would buy a gravid sow in the Autumn to litter about March, but one would have to make very sure that she really was in pig the first time.

Do make Bill go to the dentist. It is nonsense to put it off when they can come across in the boat and go to Lochgilphead. He was already having trouble with that tooth when I came away in January, and at the last moment refused to go to Glasgow.

Love to all,

Eric

[XX, 3684, pp. 163–4; typewritten]

To David Astor*

5 September 1949

U.C.H.
¹

Dear David,

Thanks ever so for sending those beautiful crysanths° & the box of peaches that actually met me on my arrival here. I feel ghastly & can’t write much, but we had a wonderful journey down yesterday in the most ritzy ambulance you can imagine. This beastly fever never seems to go away but is better some days than others, & I really quite enjoyed the drive down.

What a bastard that doctor
²
must have been. It seems that there’s a regular tradition of withholding anaesthetics & analgesics & that it is particularly bad in England. I know Americans are often astonished by the tortures people are made to go through here.

I hope you’re feeling better & that soon you will be able to meet Sonia. Morland says I mustn’t see people much, but here in London it’s easier for people to just look in for half an hour, which they hardly can at Cranham. Sonia lives only a few minutes away from here. She thinks we might as well get married while I am still an invalid, because it would give her a better status to look after me especially if, eg., I went somewhere abroad after leaving here. It’s an idea, but I think I should have to feel a little less ghastly than at present before I could even face a registrar for 10 minutes. I am much encouraged by none of my friends or relatives seeming to disapprove of my remarrying, in spite of this disease. I had had an uneasy feeling that ‘they’ would converge from all directions & stop me, but it hasn’t happened. Morland, the doctor, is very much in favour of it.

I remember visiting you when you had the sinus but I didn’t know it was this hospital. It seems very comfortable & easy-going here. Can’t write more.

Yours

George

[XX, 3686, p. 165; handwritten]

1
.
University College Hospital, a major teaching hospital in London,
WC1
.

2
.
The doctor attending Astor.

To Sir Richard Rees*

17 September 1949

Room 65 Private Wing

U.C. Hospital

Gower St WC 1

Dear Richard,

Thanks so much for seeing about the boat & for re-arranging my books. I suppose by the way they’ll send on the bill for the bookcases to you—if so, forward it to me, won’t you.°

It’s all right about the literary executorship. You & Sonia wouldn’t quarrel about anything. Some time I’ll have to make another will, & then I’ll regularise it.

I am getting on quite well & have felt distinctly better since being here. The only new treatment they have done to me is to make me lie all night & part of the day with my feet higher than my head. Sonia comes & sees me for an hour every day & otherwise I am allowed one visitor for 20 minutes. Sonia thinks that when I am a little better it would be a good idea for us to get married while I am still in hospital, which would make it easier for her to accompany me wherever I have to go afterwards. Someone, I think Fred Warburg, told the press about this & there was some rather nasty publicity.
¹

I’m afraid I haven’t a copy of Trilling’s review of
1984
.
²
The only copy I had was among some press cuttings I sent up to Barnhill. I’ve just had back that picture that went to be restored.
³
He’s made a beautiful job of it, & it is almost like a new picture. Apparently they can lift a picture right off & stick it onto a new piece of canvas. I have another old picture which I thought was past praying for, as the canvas is sort of moth eaten, but perhaps this chap could do something with it. He also put the picture in a quite nice new frame, & only charged 12 guineas for the whole job.

Things seem to be going O.K. at Barnhill. R[ichard] evidently hasn’t started going to school yet, as Mrs Angus
⁴
was ill. He sent me a ‘letter’ which showed that he knows at any rate 12 letters of the alphabet. Unless I am out of England by then, I will have him down for the Xmas holidays, & then he can start getting to know Sonia a bit better. I do not think there need be any complications about his upbringing. We have agreed that if I should die in the near future, even if I were already married, Avril shall be his guardian. Beyond that I can’t make plans at present.

Yours

Eric

[XX, 3692, pp. 168–9; handwritten]

1
.
In
The Star
(one of the then three London evening papers)
and
Daily Mail,
17 September 1949.

2
.
The review by Lionel Trilling (1
905–1975) appeared in
The New Yorker
, 18 June 1949. He praised the ‘intensity and passion’ of this ‘momentous book’ (Crick, p. 564).

3
.
Mr Charoux, the picture-restorer recommended by
Rees. (See
19.11.48
.)

4
.
Presumably the teacher on Jura.

Arthur Koestler* to Orwell

24 September 1949

My dear George,

I thought that Mamaine had written to you and Mamaine thought that I had written to you, hence the delay. I was extremely happy to hear that you are going to marry Sonia. I have been saying for years that she is the nicest, most intelligent and decent girl that I met during my whole stay in England. She is precisely for this reason also very lonely in that crowd in which she moves and she will become a changed person when you take her out of it. I think I had a closer view of the Connolly set-up than you did; it has a steady stultifying effect which left its mark even on a tough guy like me. If a fairy had granted me three wishes for Sonia, the first would have been that she should be married to you, the second some dough for her, and the third a child – adopted or not makes little difference.

If you don’t resent the advice of a chronically meddlesome friend, get through with it, the sooner the better, without waiting until your health is entirely restored. Delay is always a bore and as an amateur psychologist I have a feeling that having this settled will to a surprising extent speed up your recovery.

I hardly dare to hope of having you both down here in the near future, but whenever it is feasible it will be a great treat for me to see you both again and pop champagne corks into the Seine.

[
No valediction or signature
]

[XX, 3695A, p. 329; typewritten carbon copy]

Nancy Heather Parratt, Orwell’s secretary at the BBC, wrote from Geneva. As she says in her letter, she had telephoned Orwell early in November, and he apparently asked her for a photograph, which she was now enclosing. This shows her rowing and is dated August 1949. Her description of life in the United States has been omitted here. Despite many inquiries, and the help of the Ministry of Defence and
Navy News
, it was not possible to trace her.

Nancy Parratt* to Orwell

8 December 1949

Dear George,

Just a line to send you the enclosed [photograph]. I wonder which will amuse you most. It must be a pretty strange sensation to be quoted so approvingly by men who, a couple of years ago, would have been on very different ground from you. I must say I at least find it strange to see you turning up so often in such respectable places! You presumably know that the
Philadelphia Inquirer
is serializing
1984
in its Sunday supplement starting 4 December. I wonder if it is the only one or if a whole gang of them are doing it.

Bill
¹
told me after I talked to you at the beginning of Nov. that he had sat next to a very pretty girl at a Hallow’en° party who told him she was reading a v.g. book—
1984
, but it was too strong meat for her. She couldn’t remember the name of the author but Bill happened to know it, and she said—Yes, he just got married recently. So Bill knew you were married before I did!
And
he forgot to tell me. . . .

You see I have one of these new fangled ball point pens—I only just succumbed to the fashion last week—it seems quite good, only cost $1
²
but sometimes I get carried away by it and it writes funny things!

I hope you are getting on well and not finding the time goes too slowly. If you are allowed visitors being in London must have its compensations I should think. Next time we come we hope to stay at least twice as long. By that time I am sure you will be moved on to the country or to some mountains or other.

All the best

Nancy

I don’t really talk American but it was such a lousy line I had to talk loudly & then I do sound a bit peculiar! If I can mutter I can usually get away with it!

[XX, 3713, pp. 183–4]

1
.
Nancy’s husband.

2
.
Orwell had started using a Biro early in 1946. He found it particularly useful when writing in bed where liquid ink was not allowed. Even by the end of 1947 he was paying £3 for a new pen.

Sonia Orwell* to Yvonne Davet*

6 January 1950