George Orwell: A Life in Letters (95 page)

Dennis Collings
(1905–2001) was a friend of Orwell’s from the time the Blair family moved to Southwold in 1921. Collings’s father became the Blairs’ family doctor. He read anthropology at Cambridge and was appointed assistant curator of the Raffles Museum, Singapore in 1934. He was taken prisoner by the Japanese but survived the war. Also in 1934 he married Eleanor Jaques, a close friend of Orwell’s.

Alex Comfort
(1920–2000), poet, novelist, medical biologist. He wrote a number of books including
No Such Liberty
(1941), a miracle play (
Into Egypt
, 1942) and, most famously,
The Joy of Sex
(1972). He also co-edited
Poetry Folios
, nos 1–10, 1942–46.

Jack Common
(1903–68), a working man from Tyneside who worked for
The Adelphi
from 1930 to 1936, first as a circulation pusher, then as assistant editor, and from 1935–36 as co-editor with Sir Richard Rees. He wrote several books and Crick called him ‘one of the few authentic English proletarian writers. In 1938 Orwell reviewed his
The Freedom of the Streets
(XI, pp. 162–3). He and his wife, Mary, lived in the Orwells’ cottage at Wallington whilst the latter were in Morocco.

Cyril Connolly
(1903–74) was with Orwell at St Cyprian’s and Eton. They met again in 1935 after Connolly had reviewed
Burmese Days.
They were associated in a number of literary activities, particularly the journal
Horizon
which Connolly edited with great distinction. See his
Enemies of Promise
(1938), which has references to Orwell; and
The Rock Pool
(1936), which Orwell reviewed (X, pp. 490–1) and which includes the critique, ‘A more serious objection is that even to want to write about so-called artists who spend on sodomy what they have gained by sponging betrays a kind of spiritual inadequacy’, a world that it is clear the author ‘rather admires’.

Lettice Cooper
(1897–1994), novelist and biographer. She worked during the war at the Ministry of Food with Eileen, who looked after the ‘Kitchen Front’ radio broadcasts. Her novels include
The Lighted
Room
(1925), and
Black Bethlehem
(1947), in which the character Ann is said to be based on Eileen. In her touching memoir of Eileen (recorded for the Orwell Archive) she tells how Orwell read each instalment of
Animal Farm
to her every evening ‘and she used to come in and tell us next morning how it was getting on, she knew at once it was a winner’ (see
Remembering Orwell
, pp. 116–17, 130–2, 144–5, and 196–7). She underwent psychoanalysis and Orwell’s knowledge of this may have come from her.

Stafford Cottman
(1918–99) was the youngest member of the ILP unit which fought with the POUM in the Spanish Civil War. He and Orwell fought alongside each other and escaped together. He was initially pro-Communist but rejected Communism after the May Events in Barcelona in 1937. On his return home to Bristol he was expelled from the Young Communist League as an enemy of the working class and his house was ‘shadowed’ by its members. There is an excellent obituary of Cottman in the Independent, 3 November 1999.

Humphrey Dakin
(1896–1970) married Orwell’s older sister, Marjorie in July 1920. He was a civil servant and worked for the National Savings Committee. Orwell stayed with them from time to time in Leeds when he was examining conditions in the Distressed Areas. Humphrey seemed to resent his brother-in-law, considering him a ‘work-shy drop-out’ (
Orwell Remembered
, pp. 127–30).

Marjorie Dakin
née
Blair
(1898–1946), Orwell’s elder sister. She served as motorcycle despatch rider for the Women’s Legion during the First World War. She married Humphrey Dakin (1896–1970). Their children, Henry, Jane and Lucy, all stayed with Orwell on Jura.

C.D. Darlington
(1903–81), Director of the John Innes Horticultural Institution, 1939–53, Professor of Botany and Keeper of the Botanic Garden, Oxford University, 1953–71. He pubished
The Conflict of Science and Society
(1948), which Orwell read in May 1949. Although associated with J.D. Bernal and J.G. Crowther he was an anti-communist. He and Orwell were both concerned about the damage done to science (and the Soviet people) by the work of Trofim Denisovich Lysenko, Director of the Soviet Academy of Agricultural Science, who rejected Western genetics and was favoured by Stalin. Hearing John Baker lecture on Lysenko at the PEN Conference, 22–26 August 1944, was one of the motivating factors in Orwell’s writing
Nineteen Eighty-Four
. When Orwell was working at the BBC, he engaged Darlington to give three talks to India.

Yvonne Davet
(c. 1895–?) was for many years secretary to André Gide. She and Orwell did not meet but corresponded before and after the war. Her translation of
Homage to Catalonia
was completed before the war and read and commented upon by Orwell. Orwell’s instructions were later applied to the
Complete Works
edition. Her translation was not published until 1955, after Orwell’s death. She also translated the work of Jean Rhys, Graham Greene, and Iris Murdoch.

E. Rowan Davies
When Orwell joined the BBC in 1941 Davies was listed as a Transcription Assistant in the Eastern Service. On 21 August 1943 he was shown on a staff list as Schools Broadcasting Manager in the Home Service.

R.R. Desai
was a postgraduate student at Cambridge whose department had been evacuated to Aberystwyth. He translated into Gujerati forty-two English texts written by Orwell and re-cast two others. He would travel each Sunday night to London to read his versions, the BBC paying his rail fare and giving him £1 14s subsistence together with a fee of £5 5s. Later he wrote the newsletters himself. He was still living in London in 2004.

Dr Bruce Dick
, specialist in charge of the Thoracic Unit at Hairmyres Hospital. Much to Orwell’s amusement, he thought that Dick had served with Franco’s forces in the Spanish Civil War. However, his junior doctor at the time, Dr James Williamson thought that ‘bunkum’. Williamson’s description of Orwell’s treatment is reproduced in
Remembering Orwell
, pp. 197–202. In 1996 Professor Williamson told Ian Angus that for a while Orwell shared a room with the editor of the boys’ comic
Hotspur
and Professor Dick had been interested to see how they got on. ‘In the event they got on well together (as I think almost anyone would have . . .).’

Kay Dick
(1915–2001), under the pen-name Edward Lee, was co-editor with Reginald Moore of
The Windmill,
nos 1–12, which ran from 1944–48.

Sergei Dinamov
(1901–39), chief editor of
International Literature
, Moscow. He was an authority on Western literature and a leading Shakespeare scholar. He was arrested in 1938 and died in a Gulag, probably having been shot.

Charles Doran
(1894–1974) was born in Dublin but moved to Glasgow in 1915. He served in the First World War and then became active in the Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation. He joined the ILP in the 1930s and served with Orwell in the POUM in Spain. His widow, Bertha, said her husband classed Orwell ‘as a rebel – not a revolutionary – who was dissatisfied with the Establishment, while remaining part of it.’ In 1983 Mrs Doran told Dr James D. Young that her late husband was impressed with Orwell’s modesty and sincerity. ‘I remember Charlie saying that Orwell was not an argumentative sort of person. He [Charlie] might voice an opinion about something, hoping to provoke Orwell into agreeing or disagreeing, but Orwell would just say: “You might be right, Doran!” ’

T.S. Eliot
(1888–1965), poet and critic. Orwell commissioned Eliot to make half-adozen broadcasts to India and he reviewed
The Four Quartets
in 1944 (XVI, pp. 420–3). As a reader for Faber, he rejected
Down and Out in Paris and London,
and
Animal Farm.

Roy Fuller
(1912–91), although a solicitor for the Woolwich Building Society, he was also a prolific poet. He became Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1968, the year in which he was awarded the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize. In 1969 he became Vice-President of the Building Societies Association.

Tosco Fyvel
(1907–85), his parents had emigrated to Palestine (as it then was) from Vienna and he became associated with the Zionist movement, working with Golda Meir. Orwell met him with Fredric Warburg in January 1940 the outcome of which was the Searchlight series of books, which Fyvel and Orwell edited. (Orwell contributed
The Lion and the Unicorn
.) Fyvel’s
George Orwell: A Personal Memoir
(1982) is particularly helpful especially on the subject of anti-Semitism and Zionism (see pp. 178–82).

Victor Gollancz
(1893–1967), Orwell’s first publisher. After Oxford he taught at Repton for two years where his introduction of a class on civics brought him into conflict with the headmaster, Dr Geoffrey Fisher, who would later become Archbishop of Canterbury. He was sacked in 1918, worked on minimum-wage legislation, and after working for OUP joined Benn Brothers, publishers of trade journals. His success there led to his establishing his own publishing house in 1927. In his first year he published sixty-four books. Although a member of the Labour Party and born into an orthodox Jewish family he would later describe himself as a Christian socialist. His major achievement was the formation of the Left Book Club, which brought out
The Road to Wigan Pier
. He was well-known for offering modest advances to authors ensuring the likelihood that there would be more to follow after publication.

Geoffrey Gorer
(1905–85), social anthropologist and author of many books including
Africa Dances
(1935),
The American People
(1964), and
Death Grief and Mourning in Contemporary Britain
(1965). He wrote to Orwell about
Burmese Days
, ‘it seems to me you have done a necessary and important piece of work as well as it could be done’. They met and remained lifelong friends.

A.S.F. Gow
(1886–1978), Orwell’s tutor at Eton. He was later appointed to a fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge. He and Orwell corresponded occasionally. His name was inverted to ‘Wog’ at Eton and Orwell wrote a doggerel verse when there starting, ‘Then up waddled Wog and he squeaked in Greek: / “I’ve grown another hair on my cheek” ’ (X, p. 52).

Rayner Heppenstall
(1911–81), novelist, critic and crime historian. He shared a flat with Orwell in 1935 but the arrangement was not an unqualified success; they even came to blows. Nevertheless they remained friends and Heppenstall produced some of Orwell’s work for the BBC, notably his script for
The Voyage of the Beagle
and a radio adaptation of
Animal Farm
. Orwell is one of those featured in his
Four Absentees
(1960), extracts from which are reproduced in
Orwell Remembered
.

Inez Holden
(1906–74), novelist, short-story writer, journalist and broadcaster, was a cousin of Celia Kirwan, twin sister of Arthur Koestler’s wife, Mamaine. She proved a good friend to the Orwells lending them her flat in Portman Square after they had been bombed out. She and Orwell considered publishing their war diaries as a joint venture. The project fell through because she wanted to change anything Orwell wrote with which she disagreed. Her diary was published as
It Was Different at the Time
(1943).

Lydia Jackson
née
Jiburtovich (1899–1983), psychologist, writer and translator (using the pen-name Elisaveta Fen). She was born in Russia and came to England in 1925. She met Eileen at University College London in 1935 and they remained friends. She stayed at the Orwell’s Wallington cottage when they were not there and visited Orwell at Barnhill and Hairmyres Hospital. She translated Chekhov’s plays for Penguin, 1951–54. Her
A Russian’s England
, 1976, gives good accounts of Eileen, Wallington, and Eileen and Orwell’s relationship.

Eleanor Jaques
(?–1962) arrived in Southwold from Canada in 1921 shortly before the Blair family. They were for a time the Blairs’ next-door-neighbours in Stradbroke Road. Eleanor and Orwell became friends. She is first mentioned in Orwell’s letter to Dennis Collings of 12 October 1931 saying she might be allowed to read Orwell’s ‘narrative of my adventures’ when hop-picking.

Revd Iorwerth Jones
, Minister of Pan-teg Congregational Church, Ystalyfera, Swansea. He wrote to Malcolm Muggeridge on 4 May 1955 enclosing Orwell’s letter of 8 April, 1941. He had written to Orwell to ‘raise queries about his comments on pacificism’. The minister thought this letter might be helpful to Muggeridge in writing Orwell’s biography – a biography he did not, in the event, get round to writing.

Dr Thomas Jones
, C H (1870–1955), described by Crick as ‘Lloyd George’s famous Cabinet Secretary’. He was a prime mover in the establishment of CEMA, the forerunner of the Arts Council. Orwell had written to him about 20 March 1942 regarding the abysmal delay in the issue of ammunition to the Home Guard in a surprise call-out (XIII, p. 236).

Denys King-Farlow
(1903–82), a fellow Colleger in Orwell’s Election at Eton. They produced
The
Election Times
and co-edited
College Days
, nos. 4 and 5. He won scholarships to Cambridge and Princeton and worked for Royal Dutch Shell in Canada. For his reminiscences of Orwell, see
Orwell Remembered,
pp. 54–60.

Celia Kirwan
(1916–2002) was the twin sister of Mamaine Koestler. The sisters both suffered badly from asthma. She and Orwell first met when they travelled together (with Richard) to spend Christmas 1945 with the Koestlers at Bwylch Ocyn near Blaenau Ffestiniog. Orwell proposed marriage to her after Eileen’s death. Although she ‘gently refused him’ they remained close friends. She worked as an editorial assistant for
Polemic
(which published ‘Politics vs. Literature’, 1946) but when that collapsed moved to Paris to work on Occident, a tri-lingual magazine. When she worked for the Information Research Department, she was, so far as her relationship with Orwell was concerned, far more a close friend than a government official. She visited Orwell at Cranham to ask him to write for the Information Research Department. He did not feel well enough to do so but suggested names of those who might help and also gave a list of those whom he thought could not be trusted. See XX, pp. 318–27 and
The Lost Orwell
, pp. 140–51.