Keep the Aspidistra Flying
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Authors: George Orwell
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not money, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not money, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not money, it profiteth me nothing. Money suffereth long, and is kind; money envieth not; money vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things… And now abideth faith, hope, money, these three; but the greatest of these is money.
I CORINTHIANS XIII (
adapted
)
PENGUIN BOOKS
in association with Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd
PENGUIN BOOKS
Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell) was born in 1903 in India, where his father worked for the Civil Service. The family moved to England in 1907 and in 1917 Orwell entered Eton, where he contributed regularly to the various college magazines. From 1922 to 1927 he served with the Indian Imperial Police Force in Burma, an experience that inspired his first novel,
Burmese Days
(1934). Several years of poverty followed. He lived in Paris for two years before returning to England, where he worked successively as a private tutor, schoolteacher and bookshop assistant, and contributed reviews and articles to a number of periodicals.
Down and Out in Paris and London
was published in 1933. In 1936 he was commissioned by Victor Gollancz to visit areas of mass unemployment in Lancashire and Yorkshire, and
The Road to Wigan Pier
(1937) is a powerful description of the poverty he saw there. At the end of 1936 Orwell went to Spain to fight for the Republicans and was wounded.
Homage to Catalonia
is his account of the civil war. He was admitted to a sanatorium in 1938 and from then on was never fully fit. He spent six months in Morocco and there wrote
Coming Up for Air
. During the Second World War he served in the Home Guard and worked for the BBC Eastern Service from 1941 to 1943. As literary editor of
Tribune
he contributed a regular page of political and literary commentary, and he also wrote for the
Observer
and later for the
Manchester Evening News
. His unique political allegory,
Animal Farm
, was published in 1945, and it was this novel, together with
Nineteen Eighty-Four
(1949), which brought him world-wide fame.
George Orwell died in London in January 1950. A few days before, Desmond MacCarthy had sent him a message of greeting in which he wrote: ‘You have made an indelible mark on English literature… you are among the few memorable writers of your generation.’
Peter Davison is Research Professor of English at De Montfort University, Leicester. He was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1926 and studied for a London External BA (1954) by correspondence course. He edited an Elizabethan text for a London MA (1957) and then taught at Sydney University, where he gained a Ph.D. He was awarded a D.Litt. and an Hon. D. Arts by De Montfort University in 1999. He has written and
edited fifteen books as well as the Facsimile Edition of the manuscript of
Nineteen Eighty-Four
and the twenty volumes of Orwell’s
Complete Works
(with Ian Angus and Sheila Davison). He is a Past-President of the Bibliographical Society, whose journal he edited for twelve years. He was made an OBE in 1999 for services to literature.
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
was published by Gollancz on 20 April 1936. Three thousand copies were run off, of which 2,194 were sold; most of the remainder were lost as the result of an air-raid. It was not published again in Orwell’s lifetime, only appearing in Secker & Warburg’s Uniform Edition in 1954 and in America in December 1955, published by Harcourt, Brace. Despite the fact that there is only one relevant edition, and that Orwell corrected the proofs, preparing a text in line with what Orwell originally wrote presents difficulties, some insoluble.
Orwell completed writing
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
by the beginning of 1936, and by the time he left London on 31 January 1936 for his journey north to gather material for
The Road to Wigan Pier
, he was under the impression that his text had been accepted. It was only as the proofs started to come through in February that fears were aroused at Gollancz, who then referred the book to their solicitor. Orwell was required to make drastic changes at proof stage and this he strongly resented. He was upset partly because he objected to such in-house censorship, and at so late a stage, and partly because he had to make the changes, using the same number of letters in order that his text would not overrun. Moreover, he had to do all this in a setting the grimness of which contrasted markedly with the bourgeois comforts that he was attacking as essentially worthless in the novel. After dealing with one series of objections, he wrote to his agent, Leonard Moore, with considerable bitterness, to say that had he been told these changes were required before type-setting began he would ‘have entirely
rewritten the first chapter and modified several others… In general a passage of prose or even a whole chapter revolves round one or two key phrases, and to remove these, as was done in this case, knocks the whole thing to pieces.’ This letter was written on 24 February 1936, the day after Orwell’s descent into the Crippen pit, Wigan, about which he wrote with such feeling. What infuriated Orwell was that he was not allowed to link a description of the popular novels of Ethel M. Dell and Warwick Deeping as ‘garbage’ with the ‘synthetic garbage’ he refers to on
page 4, line 2
. A key phrase was cut (and one that cannot be restored). It is quite probable that, as with
A Clergyman’s Daughter
, it was not only weakness he perceived in his novel that led him to reject
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
later in his life, but the way it had been ‘garbled’. Although he wished neither of these books to be reprinted, he was not averse to their publication in cheap editions ‘which may bring in a few pounds for my heirs’ (Notes for his Literary Executor, 31 March 1945).
A search of the files of Victor Gollancz Ltd brought to light several pages of the original typescript of
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
and correspondence between Orwell and his publisher about the changes that were required. The objections can be grouped under three headings: 1.
Advertising
; 2.
Names of people and companies
,
etc
.; 3.
Alleged obscenity
. Some of this information is in sufficient detail to enable the original text to be restored. (Page/line numbers are given in brackets.)
1.
Advertising
: The advertising character, ‘Roland Butta’, had to be changed to ‘Corner Table’ (4/9). As Orwell explained, the new name ‘has the same number of letters and to some extent preserves the effect of Lyons teashops etc. without referring to any real advertisement’. The link, presumably, was with Messrs Lyons’s Corner House restaurants. Throughout the novel, Orwell used a number of
genuine advertising slogans. It was decided that all these had to go. ‘Have a Camel’ was omitted, as was ‘Earn £5 in Your Free Time’; ‘Are you a Highbrow… Dandruff is the Reason’ was replaced by ‘Kiddies Clamour for their Breakfast Crisps’, and a ‘Night Starvation’ advertisement by ‘Prompt Relief for Feeble Kidneys’; ‘Guinness is good for you’ was cut out and ‘Get that waistline back to normal’ substituted—and so on. Orwell explained that in making these changes he had ‘equalised the letters but [I] have altered the order entirely and have stuck in slips of paper showing how it should read. I hope the compositor will get this right.’ ‘Bovex’ also presented problems. Its name was too like Bovril, Oxo, Beefex, etc., but Orwell insisted there was no meat extract called Bovex: ‘Now that the remark about “garbage” is cut out there is no comment on the quality of the things advertised, only a protest against the whole business of advertisement.’
2.
Names of people and companies
, etc.: Orwell had to remove the names of specific furniture stores—Times Furnishing and Drage’s—on
page 274
somewhere about lines 20—27, and ‘Drage’ at 126/21. The business—college at 56/11 was originally called Clark’s College. The name
The Hamp-stead and Camden Town Messenger
(211/16) was cut out and even the Waterloo Rad (222/7) had to be delocalised. Understandable fears were expressed that Mr McKechnie was based on Orwell’s former employer at Booklovers’ Corner, Francis Westrope. Orwell explained that McKechnie is ‘an old man with white hair & beard who is a teetotaller and takes snuff. My late employer… is a middle-aged clean-shaven man who is not a teetotaller & never takes snuff… If you really wish I will get him to furnish a written undertaking not to bring a libel action.’
3.
Alleged obscenity
: It is possible to restore much of what has so far been described. Unfortunately, Gordon Comstock’s abortive love-making with Rosemary at
Burnham Beeches cannot be printed as Orwell wrote it. Gollancz’s lawyer advised that pages 155—7 should ‘be considered very carefully from the point of view of alleged obscenity’. Orwell’s response is poignant: ‘I have altered certain passages here in Mr Gollancz’s office and I think he has now no objection.’ Gollancz walked a knife-edge in the matter of risking legal action and his caution was justified, but for Orwell there must have been some humiliation in rewriting his novel at his publisher’s desk. Yet Orwell also showed a certain innocence in these matters. It was suggested that ‘Come here. Not a bad mouth. Come here.’ (197/6—7) should be excised ‘for reasons wh. it wd. be easier to explain in conversation than in writing!’ (and this was a handwritten note added to a typed letter so that the typist should not be shamed). Orwell was nonplussed. ‘Not altered,’ he replied. ‘Cannot see any dirty meaning here.’ It was allowed to stand.
Where restoration is possible, this has been done. A more specific list is given in the Textual Note to the Complete Works, IV (Secker & Warburg, 1987). There is, however, an intriguing irony in this matter of censorship, although it is not certain whether Orwell intended it, in the choice of ‘Comstock’ for the principal character’s surname. The founder of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (1873) was Anthony Comstock (1844—1915) who initiated the ‘Comstock Act’ which prohibits the sending of obscene matter through the US mail.
