George Orwell: A Life in Letters (68 page)

We’re going to spend the winter up here, but I shall be in London roughly for November—I haven’t fixed a date because it partly depends on when I finish the rough draft of my novel. I’ll let you know later just when I am coming up.
³

Love

Eric

[XIX, 3262, pp. 195–6; typed and hadwritten]

1
.
Presumably the adjacent bays of Glentrosdale and Gleann nam Muc at the northwestern tip of Jura which, on a map, with a headland separating the bays, looks like the letter W. Eilean Mór lies opposite the centre point of the ‘W’.

2
.
This would involve a walk of at least three miles over rough country.

3
.
Orwell was to lecture at the Working Men’s College, Crowndale Road, London, NW1, on 12 November 1947. However, he was too ill to leave Jura and so could not give his lecture.

To Arthur Koestler*

20 September 1947

Barnhill

Isle of Jura

Dear Arthur,

I think a Ukrainian refugee named Ihor Sevcenko° may have written to you—he told me that he had written and that you had not yet answered.

What he wanted to know was whether they could translate some of your stuff into Ukrainian, without payment of course, for distribution among the Ukrainian D.Ps, who now seem to have printing outfits of their own going in the American Zone and in Belgium. I told him I thought you would be delighted to have your stuff disseminated among Soviet citizens and would not press for payment, which in any case these people could not make. They made a Ukrainian translation of
Animal Farm
which appeared recently, reasonably well printed and got up, and, so far as I could judge by my correspondence with Sevcenko°, well translated. I have just heard from them that the American authorities in Munich have siezed° 1500 copies of it and handed them over to the Soviet repatriation people, but it appears about 2000 copies got distributed among the D.Ps first. If you decide to let them have some of your stuff, I think it is well to treat it as a matter of confidence and not tell too many people this end, as the whole thing is more or less illicit. Sevcenko °asked me simultaneously whether he thought Laski
¹
would agree to let them have some of his stuff (they are apparently trying to get hold of representative samples of Western thought.) I told him to have nothing to do with Laski and by no means let a person of that type know that illicit printing in Soviet languages is going on in the allied zones, but I told him you were a person to be trusted. I am sure we ought to help these people all we can, and I have been saying ever since 1945
that the DPs were a godsent opportunity for breaking down the wall between Russia and the west. If our government won’t see this, one must do what one can privately.

[
Final paragraph omitted: will visit London but stay at Barnhill for winter.
]

Yours

George

[XIX, 3275, pp. 206–7; typewritten]

1
.
Harold J. Laski (1893–1950), political theorist, Marxist, author, and journalist, was connected with the London School of Economics from 1
920 and Professor of Political Science in the University of London from 1926, member of the Fabian Executive, 1922 and 1936, member of the Executive Committee of the Labour Party, 1936–49. Although critical of Laski, Orwell had appealed for support for him after Laski lost an action for libel; see ‘As I Please’, 67, 2
7 December 1946,
(
XVIII, 3140, p. 523).

To David Astor*

29 September 1947

Barnhill

Isle of Jura

Dear David,

I wonder how things are going with you and the family. I am going to be in London for November to see to some odds and ends of business, but after that we intend spending the winter here. I think it will be easier to keep warm here, as we are better off for coal etc., also I am struggling with this novel and can work more quietly here. I hope to finish it some time in the spring. I have got on fairly well but not so fast as I could have wished because I have been in wretched health a lot of the year, starting with last winter. We have got the house a lot more in order and some more garden broken in, and I am going to send up some more furniture this winter. I think the Barnhill croft is going to be farmed after all, which eases my conscience about living here. A chap I don’t think you have met named Bill Dunn,
¹
who lost a foot in the war, has been living with the Darrochs all the summer as a pupil, and in the spring he is going to take over the Barnhill croft and live with us. Apart from the land getting cultivated again, it is very convenient for us because we can then share implements such as a small tractor which it [is] not worth getting for the garden alone, and also have various animals which I have hitherto hesitated to get for fear a moment should come when nobody was here. We have had a marvellous summer here, in fact there was a severe drought and no bath water for ten days. Four of us including Richard were nearly drowned in Corrievrechan,° an event which got into the newspapers even as far away as Glasgow. Richard is getting enormous and unbelievably destructive, and is now talking a good deal more. I expect your baby will have grown out of recognition by this time. I don’t know if you’re going to be up here any time in the winter but if so do look in here. There’s always a bed and food of sorts, and the road is I think slightly better as it’s being drained in places. Your friend Donovan came over riding on Bob and bearing incredible quantities of food, evidently sure he would find us starving. Actually we do very well for food here except bread, because we buy huge hunks of venison off the Fletchers whenever they break up a deer, also lobsters, and we have a few hens and can get plenty of milk.

Please remember me to your wife.

Yours

George

P.S. Do you want Bob wintered again by any chance? I got hay for him last year and he seemed to me in pretty good condition when I took him back, though I’m no judge. Till the day I took him back I had never mounted him, because the Darrochs had built up a picture of him as a sort of raging unicorn, and I was in such poor health I felt I was getting past that sort of thing. Actually he was as good as gold even when ridden bareback.

[XIX, 3277, p. 209–10; typewritten]

1
.
Bill Dunn (1921–92), had been an officer in the army but after the loss of a leg had been invalided out. He came to Jura in 1947 and later entered into a partnership with Sir Richard Rees to farm Barnhill. He married Avril, Orwell’s sister, in 1951. See
Orwell Remembered
, pp. 231–5, and
Remembering Orwell
, pp. 1
82–5. Richard Blair has contributed a very interesting memoir about Avril and Bill Dunn to the
Eric & Us
website (www.finlay-publisher.com).

To Roger Senhouse*

22 October 1947

Barnhill

Isle of Jura

Dear Roger,

I’m returning the proofs of
Coming Up for Air
.

There are not many corrections. In just one or two cases I’ve altered something that had been correctly transcribed, including one or two misprints that existed in the original text. I note that on p. 46 the compositor has twice altered ‘Boars’ to ‘Boers,’ evidently taking it for a misprint. ‘Boars’ was intentional, however (a lot of people used to pronounce it like that.)

What about dates? On the title page it says ‘1947,’ but it isn’t going to be published in 1947. And should there not somewhere be a mention of the fact that the book was first published in 1939?

Did you know by the way that this book hasn’t got a semicolon in it? I had decided about that time that the semicolon is an unnecessary stop and that I would write my next book without one.
¹

I’m coming up to London on November 7th and shall be there for about a month. I have various time-wasting things to do, lectures and so on. I
hope
before I arrive to have finished the rough draft of my novel, which I’m on the last lap of now. But its° a most dreadful mess and about two-thirds of it will have to be rewritten entirely besides the usual touching up. I don’t know how long that will take—I hope only 4 or 5 months but it might well be longer. I’ve been in such wretched health all this year that I never seem to have much spare energy. I wonder if Fred will be back by November.
²
I hope to see you both then.

Yours

George

[XIX, 3290, pp. 216–17; typewritten]

1
.
See Textual Note to
Coming Up for Air
, VII, pp. 249–50. Despite Orwell’s clearly expressed wishes, the proofs and Uniform Edition include three semi-colons. Whether Orwell missed these (and they do make for easier reading than do the commas he wished to have used) or whether his instructions were ignored is not known.

2
.
Warburg had gone on his first of a dozen visits to the United States. Orwell had written to him on 1 September 1947 asking him, if he had time, to buy him a pair of shoes.

To Anthony Powell*

29 November 1947

Barnhill

Isle of Jura

Dear Tony,

Thanks so much for your letter. I’m still on my back, but I think really getting better after many relapses. I’d probably be all right by this time if I could have got to my usual chest specialist, but I dare not make the journey to the mainland while I have a temperature. It’s really a foul journey in winter even if one flies part of the way. However I’ve arranged for a man to come from Glasgow & give me the once-over, & then maybe I’ll get up to London later, or perhaps only as far as Glasgow. I think I’ll have to go into hospital for a bit, because apart from treatment there’s the X-raying etc., & after that I might have a stab at going abroad for a couple of months if I can get a newspaper assignment to somewhere warm. Of course I’ve done no work for weeks—have only done the rough draft of my novel, which I always consider as the halfway mark. I was supposed to finish it by May—now, God knows when. I’m glad the Aubrey book
¹
is coming along at last. I think in these days besides putting the date of publication in books one also ought to put the date of writing. In the spring I’m reprinting a novel which came out in 1939 & was rather killed by the war, so that makes up a little for being late with my new one.

Apparently Mrs Christen has just sailed. What I partly wrote about was this: have you got, or do you know anyone who has got, a saddle for sale? Good condition doesn’t matter very much so long as it has a sound girth & stirrups. It’s for a horse only about 14 h[ands] but on the stout side, so very likely a saddle belonging to a big horse would do. It’s the sort of thing someone might have kicking round, & you can’t buy them for love or money. The farm pony we have here is ridden for certain errands to save petrol, & it’s so tiring riding bareback. I am ready to pay a reasonable price.

Richard is
offensively
well & full of violence. He went through whooping cough without noticing that he had it. My love to everyone. I hope to see you all some day.

Yours

George

[XIX, 3308, pp. 227–8; handwritten]

1
.
Powell published
John
Aubrey and His Friends
in 1948, and
Brief Lives and Other Selected Writings of John Aubrey
in 1949.

To Leonard Moore*

7 December 1947

Barnhill

Isle of Jura

Dear Moore,

Thanks for your letter of the 1st. I have of course no objection to the arrangement with the F[oreign] O[ffice] about
A.F.
¹
I had already written to the U.S. Information Service to tell them they could broadcast it free of charge.

I have seen a chest specialist, &, as I feared, I am seriously ill. As soon as there is a bed vacant, I think in about 10 days, I shall have to go into a sanatorium—for how long I don’t know of course, but I gather probably something like 4 months. It’s T.B., as I suspected. They think they can cure it all right, but I am bound to be
hors de combat
for a good while. Could you inform all the publishers etc. concerned. Could you also thank very kindly Harcourt Brace for getting & sending me a pair of shoes (just arrived) & find out from Fred Warburg who paid for them, ie. whom I should repay. I believe Warburg paid.

Yours sincerely

Eric Blair

P.S. I’ll send you the address of the hospital as soon as I’m there, but any way this address will find me.

[XIX, 3313, pp. 233–4; handwritten]

1
.
Probably for the Persian-language version,
Enqelā
b Hayvānāt
, arranged by the Central Office of Information and translated by Ali Jav
ā
herk
ā
l
ā
m, 1947.

To Frederick Tomlinson,
The Observer

23 December 1947