George Orwell: A Life in Letters (33 page)

I hope you are quite over your flu. I am very well again and have been putting in some strenuous gardening to make up for lost time. My wife sends all the best.

Yours sincerely

Eric Blair

P.S. [
at top of letter
] If G. wants alterations in the book, I am willing to make the usual minor changes to avoid libel actions, but not structural alterations.

[
XI, 546, pp. 352–3; handwritten]

1
.
Miss Periam was Moore’s secretary and had been ill for some months (see
28.11.38
, n. 7).

To Leonard Moore*

[4 July 193
9?]
¹

The Stores

Wallington

Dear Mr. Moore,

Many thanks for your letter. I called at your office yesterday and was sorry not to find you there. I am terribly behind with my book of essays
²
which I had hoped to finish by September at latest. These infernal illnesses have of course wasted months of time. Also I am sorry to tell you my father has just died. I was with the poor old man for the last week of his life, and then there was the funeral etc., etc., all terribly upsetting and depressing. However, he was 82 and had been very active till he was over 80, so he had had a good life, and I am very glad that latterly he had not been so disappointed in me as before. Curiously enough his last moment of consciousness was hearing that review I had in the
Sunday Times
. He heard about it and wanted to see it, and my sister took it in and read it to him, and a little later he lost consciousness for the last time.

About the book. I shan’t be starting my novel till after I have done the book of essays, and unless something upsets my plans I intend doing next a long novel, really the first part of an enormous novel, a sort of saga(!) which will have to be published in three parts. I think I
ought
to finish the book of essays in October, but the novel will take a long time and even barring wars, illnesses etc. isn’t likely to be finished before the late summer of 1940. Those at any rate are my plans. As to the book of essays, I don’t know whether Gollancz will want them. They may be a bit off his track, and as they are sort of literary-sociological essays they touch at places on politics, on which I am certain to say things he wouldn’t approve of. The subjects are Charles Dickens, boys’ weekly papers (the
Gem
,
Magnet
etc.), and Henry Miller, the American novelist. I am finishing the rough draft of the Dickens one now, but the others probably won’t take so long. I should say it will be a short book, 50–60 thousand words. I don’t know whether this is at all the kind of thing to interest Gollancz, but if he wants to have the first refusal that is up to him and you. If he wants to take a chance on the book and put it in his lists I will think of a title, but I can’t send a specimen, as it is all rather in a mess as yet.

I see
Coming up for Air
has gone into a second edition, so I suppose it’s doing fairly well. It had some wonderful reviews, especially from James Agate. The Frenchwoman
³
who was translating
Homage to Catalonia
has finished it and is hawking it round various publishers, always unsuccessfully, as people are fed up with books on the Spanish war, which well they may be. She has an idea however that she may be able to induce someone to publish it or part of it unpaid. But she is afraid Warburg will kick against this, as he apparently did over some book of Freda Utley’s.
⁴
In case of this coming to anything, I suppose we can get Warburg to agree.
⁵
It’s always a bit of an advert., and in any case one never gets much out of a French publisher. Appropos° of this, can you tell me what if anything ever came of that Burmese translation of
Burmese Days
which those people wrote to me about? It was sometime last year.
⁶

I hope all goes well. My wife sends all the best.

Yours sincerely

Eric Blair

[XI, 555, pp. 365–6; typewritten]

1
.
This letter is dated from its receipt in Moore’s office; Orwell incorrectly dated it the 14
^th
.

2
.
Inside the Whale
.

3
.
Yvonne Davet*.

4
.
Presumably
Japan’s Gamble in China
, mentioned in Orwell’s letter to Yvonne Davet 19 June 1939.

5
.
From an annotation to this letter made in Moore’s office, it appears that Warburg agreed to permit this for a ‘Nominal fee of £1.’

6
.
Nothing came of the proposal, however it was ‘published’ in a pirated photocopied version of the Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics edition in the late 1990s. It could be bought on the approach to the Kuthodaw Pagoda for 600 Kyats (about US $2) in 1999.

To Leonard Moore*

4 August 1939

The Stores

Wallington

Dear Mr Moore,

Naturally I’m delighted about the Albatross business.
¹
It was very clever of you to work it. I’ve always wanted to crash one of those continental editions. English people abroad always read the few English books they can get hold of with such attention that I’m sure it’s the best kind of publicity.

Of course I’ve no objection to the alterations they want to make, but in two of the four cases I’ve suggested substituting another phrase instead of just leaving a blank. Of course they can do as they prefer, but in these two cases I felt that simply to cut the phrase out without inserting another would upset the balance of the paragraph. Also as they’re going to set up the type anew they might correct two misprints which I let through. I’ve made notes on all this on the attached, and perhaps you could explain to them.

Yours

Eric Blair

[XI, 561, pp. 384–5; typewritten]

1
.
The Albatross Modern Continental Library was a paperback series of books in English put out by John Holroyd-Reece (born Johann Herman Riess) for distribution on the Continent. Most were sold in Germany. Holroyd-Reece also later took over the Tauchnitz series.
The entry records that the contract was between Orwell and The Albatross Verlag G.m.b.H. and was dated 31 August 1939. It stipulated that the book was to be issued no later than August 1940. Although the publishing house was German, the contract was issued from 12 rue Chanoinesse, Paris.

To Leonard Moore*

6 October 1939

The Stores

Wallington

Dear Mr Moore,

Can you tell me whether there is any channel through which one can find out the circulations of weekly papers? As I think I told you, one of the essays in the book I am doing deals with the boys’ twopenny weeklies of the type of the
Gem
,
Wizard
etc, and I should like to know their circulations, but don’t quite know how to find them out. I suppose if you write and ask the editor he won’t necessarily tell you? I have a dozen papers on my list, and should be greatly obliged if you could help me to find this out.

My wife has already got a job in a government office.
¹
I have so far failed to do so. I shall try again later, but for the time being I am staying here to finish the book
²
and get our garden into trim for the winter, as I dare say we shall be glad of all the spuds we can lay hands on next year. The book should be finished some time in November. It ought to have been done already, but of course this war put me right off my stride for some weeks.

Yours

Eric A Blair

[XI, 572, pp. 410–1; typewritten]

1
.
Eileen was working in the Censorship Department, War Office, Whitehall; see Crick, p. 382.

2
.
Inside the Whale
, the book of essays described in a letter to Leonard Moore,
4.7.39
.

To Leonard Moore*

Friday [8 December 1939]

The Stores

Wallington

Dear Mr Moore,

I have finished my book (the book of essays—the title is
Inside the Whale
)
and have typed most of it but my wife is typing another portion in London. Meanwhile Cyril Connolly* and Stephen Spender*, who as perhaps you know are starting a new monthly called
Horizon
want to see the Ms. in case they would like to print one of the essays in their paper.
¹
I don’t know if any of them are really suitable for this, but if they do wish to use one of them, would that be all right with the publisher? Could one arrange things? As you may remember Gollancz wanted to see the book but whether he’ll publish it I don’t know, as there is at any rate one passage which politically won’t appeal to him.
²
If Gollancz refuses it, what about trying Warburg again? I met him a little while back and he was very anxious to have my next non-fiction book, so perhaps we might get a good offer out of him for this, though no doubt it would be better to get the money in advance if possible. I am arranging with Connolly to keep the Ms. only a few days. I should think it would be best not to say anything to any publisher about this beforehand, because if Connolly and Co. don’t want any of it, which they well may not, it might prejudice him against the book.

Do you know what has happened to the Albatross people?
³
You may remember we signed up a contract with them for
Coming Up for Air
just before war broke out. Have they gone west, I wonder?

Yours sincerely

Eric Blair

[XI,
581, pp. 422–3; typewritten]

1
.
Inside the Whale
consisted of the essay with that title, ‘Charles Dickens,’ and ‘Boys’ Weeklies’. An abridged version of the last was published in
Horizon
the same month as the book’s publication, March 1940.

2
.
In fact,
Inside the Whale
appealed greatly to Victor Gollancz, who did publish it. He wrote to Orwell on 1
January 1940 (misdated 1939) to express his delight: ‘It is, if I may say so, first rate.’ He was in complete sympathy with Orwell’s general political point of view, ‘though I fight against pessimism’. He suggested that the only thing worth doing was ‘to try to find some way of reconciling the inevitable totalitarian economics with individual freedom’. Finally, he asked Orwell whether he could lend him a copy of Henry Miller’s
Tropic of Cancer
, of which he had not heard. Exactly four weeks after Gollancz wrote, Orwell returned to him the page proofs of
Inside the Whale
. The collection of essays was published on 11 March 1940.

3
.
Although Albatross and Tauchnitz were German firms, the contract Orwell signed was from their Paris office. (See
4.8.39
.)
William B. Todd and Ann Bowden in their
Tauchnitz International Editions in English
record a document in the Albatross archive that notes that the publisher still hoped in 1940 to publish
Coming Up for Air.
After Paris was occupied by the Germans, 14 June 1940, a decree was issued forbidding the sale of British books first published after 1870 (Todd and Bowden, item 5365), and that finally ended Orwell’s hopes for an Albatross edition.

To Victor Gollancz*

8 January 1940

The Stores

Wallington

Dear Mr Gollancz,

I cannot
at this moment
lend you
Tropic of Cancer
, because my copy has been seized. While I was writing my last book two detectives suddenly arrived at my house with orders from the public prosecutor to seize all books which I had ‘received through the post’. A letter of mine addressed to the Obelisk Press had been seized and opened in the post. The police were only carrying out orders and were very nice about it, and even the public prosecutor wrote and said that he understood that as a writer I might have a need for books which it was illegal to possess. On these grounds he sent me back certain books, eg.
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
, but it appears that Miller’s books have not been in print long enough to have become respectable. However, I know that Cyril Connolly has a copy of
Tropic of Cancer
. He is down with flu at present, but when I can get in touch with him again I will borrow the book and pass it on to you.

As to your remarks on my book. I am glad you liked it. You are perhaps right in thinking I am over-pessimistic. It is quite possible that freedom of thought etc. may survive in an economically totalitarian society. We can’t tell until a collectivised economy has been tried out in a western country. What worries me at present is the uncertainty as to whether the ordinary people in countries like England grasp the difference between democracy and despotism well enough to want to defend their liberties. One can’t tell until they see themselves menaced in some quite unmistakeable manner. The intellectuals who are at present pointing out that democracy and fascism are the same thing etc. depress me horribly. However, perhaps when the pinch comes the common people will turn out to be more intelligent than the clever ones. I certainly hope so.