George Orwell: A Life in Letters (51 page)

My love to Pat.

Yours

Eric

[XVII,
2712, p. 236; typewritten]

Gleb Struve had written to Orwell on 28 August 1945, saying he had found
Animal Farm
‘delightful, even though I do not necessarily agree with what one of the reviewers described as your “Trotskyist prejudices.” ’ He was teaching in the Russian section of a Summer School at Oxford and students were queuing for the book. He had been very amused ‘by the
pudeur
’ of those reviewers who had praised the book but had avoided mentioning its real target. He wished to translate
Animal Farm
, not for the benefit of Russian émigrés, but for Russians abroad who could read the truth about their country only when outside it. He asked Orwell whether he had severed his connection with
Tribune
; he missed his articles. His own book, on Soviet literature, was soon to be published in French with a special preface emphasising the fact that there was no freedom of expression in the Soviet Union.

To Gleb Struve*

1 September 1945

27B Canonbury Square

Islington N 1

Dear Mr Struve,

Many thanks for your letter of August 28th.

I will keep in mind your suggestion about translating
Animal Farm
, and naturally, if it could be in any way arranged, I should be highly honoured if it were you who made the translation. The thing is that I don’t know what the procedure is. Are books in Russian published in this country, ie. from non-official sources? At about the same time as your letter a Pole wrote wanting to do the book into Polish. I can’t, of course, encourage him to do so unless I can see a way of getting the book into print and recompensing him for his work, and ditto with yourself. If there is any way of arranging this that would allow a reasonable fee to the translators, I would be most happy to do it, as naturally I am anxious that the book should find its way into other languages. If translations into the Slav languages were made, I shouldn’t want any money out of them myself.
¹

No, I haven’t severed connection with
Tribune
, though I have stopped editing for them. I was away in France and Germany between February and May, and my affairs have been disorganised in other ways which obliged me to cut down my journalistic work for some time. However, I am going to start a weekly column again in
Tribune
in October, but not under the old title.

I am glad your book should be° translated into French. My impression in France was that the Soviet mythos is less strong there than in England, in spite of the big Communist party.

I am leaving London shortly for a holiday, but shall be back about the 25th. I would like to meet you if you are in London any time. My phone number is
can
3751.

Yours sincerely

George Orwell

[XVII, 2737
,
pp. 274–5; typewritten]

1
.
Gleb Struve did translate
Animal Farm
into Russian, in conjunction with M. Kriger, as
Skotskii Khutor
.
It first appeared as a serial in
Possev
(Frankfurt-am-Main), Nos. 7–25, 1949, and then in two book versions, one on ordinary paper for distribution in Western Europe and one on thin paper for distribution behind the Iron Curtain. Orwell’s practice was never to benefit from his work distributed in Communist-dominated countries.

To Kay Dick*

26 September 19
45

27B Canonbury Square

Islington N 1

Dear Kay,

I was very glad to get your letter because I had been trying to get in touch with you. When I rang up
John o’ London
°
¹
they just said you had left, and I had lost your home address.

I simply haven’t any ideas for a story at this moment, and I don’t want to force one. Later on I don’t know. I did one time contemplate a story about a man who got so fed up with the weeds in his garden that he decided to have a garden just of weeds, as they seem easier to grow. Then of course as soon as he started to do this he would find the garden being overwhelmed with flowers and vegetables which came up of their own accord. But I never got round to writing it.

I note that you will be back in London about the 4th and will get in touch with you after that. I’ll try and not lose your address this time. I wish you would come round here some time and see my little boy, who is now aged nearly 17 months. If you come from Hampstead you have to go to the Angel and then take a bus, or if you come from the City you come on the 4 bus to Highbury Corner. I am almost always at home because I don’t go to an office now. The child goes to bed about 6 and after that I have high tea about 7.

You may be interested to hear that poor old Wodehouse was most pathetically pleased about the article in the
Windmill
.
I met him in Paris and afterwards heard from him once or twice.

Looking forward to seeing you,

Yours

George Orwell

[
XVII, 2754, p. 290; typewritten]

1
.
John O’ London’s Weekly
was a popular literary journal founded in 1919.

To Leonard Moore*

29 November 1945

27B Canonbury Square

London N 1

Dear Mr Moore,

I have just heard from Erval of Nagel Paris. He says that the contract you drew up for
Animal Farm
provides for publication in not less than a year, and says that this is an impossible condition. The main reason he gives is that it is not usual in France to publish two books by a foreign writer within 18 or 20 months of one another.
Burmese Days
is supposed to appear about February, so
Animal Farm
would clash with it if published in 1946. He also hints that from a political point of view this may not be a happy moment for producing a book like
Animal Farm
and says Nagel Paris would like to be able to judge the right moment. I fancy the second objection is the real one, as they are so short of books of any kind in France at present that the first consideration would not be likely to carry much weight.

I am going to tell him that I leave the matter in your hands. The point is that we don’t want the publication of
A.F.
put off for 18–20 months if it is at all avoidable. I have no doubt that
now
such a book would be likely to get a hostile reception in France, but it would in any case be a question of publishing it some time late in 1946, by which time pro-Russian feeling may have worn thin as it seems to be doing here. I don’t fancy the book would be suppressed while Malraux has the Ministry of Information. I met him when in Paris and found him very friendly, and he is far from being pro-Communist in his views. Could we at need take it to another French publisher? The Fontaine people asked for it, you may remember. How does the contract stand with Nagel? Have they an option on all my books? I should be glad to hear what you are doing about this.

I had to make a new will when my wife died, and I am just having it put into proper legal form. It is not that there is likely to be much to leave, but I must think of copyrights and reprints. I am naming Christy & Moore as my literary agents and Sir Richard Rees as my literary executor, and I am leaving it to him to sort out whatever unpublished or reprintable material I may leave behind and decide what is worth preserving. I am also leaving records of anything I publish in periodicals, as there might at any given moment be a good deal that was worth salvaging for some kind of reprint. It is just as well to get all this cleared up, what with atomic bombs etc.

Yours sincerely

Eric Blair

[XVII, 2806, pp. 401–2
; typewritten]

To Michael Sayers

11 December 1945

27B Canonbury Square

London N 1

Dear Michael,

Please forgive delay in answering. I’ve been rather overwhelmed since I saw you.

I’d love to meet again, but I haven’t many spare dates before Christmas. Dates I could manage would be Monday 17
^th
or Friday 21
^st
, for dinner either day. I can’t arrange any lunch times at present, because I’m in the throes of getting a secretary
¹
, and when she starts I want to see how the time works out.

I don’t think I could fairly be described as Russophobe. I am against all dictatorships and I think the Russian myth has done frightful harm to the leftwing movement in Britain and elsewhere, and that it is above all necessary to make people see the Russian regime for what it is (ie. what I think it is). But I thought all this as early as 1932
or thereabouts and always said so fairly freely. I have no wish to interfere with the Soviet regime even if I could. I merely don’t want its methods and habits of thought imitated here, and that involves fighting against the Russianisers in this country. The danger as I see it is not our being conquered by Russia, which might happen but depends chiefly on geography. The danger is that some native form of totalitarianism will be developed here, and people like Laski, Pritt, Zilliacus, the
News Chronicle
and all the rest of them seem to me to be simply preparing the way for this. You might be interested in the articles I wrote for the first two numbers of
Polemic
.
²

Looking forward to seeing you.

Yours

George

P.S. Nearly everyone calls me George now though I’ve never changed my name.
³

1
.
Miss Siriol Hugh-Jones (see XVII, afternote to 2689, pp. 199–200).

2
.
‘Notes on Nationalism’,
Polemic
1, October 1945 (XVII, 2668, pp. 141–57) and ‘The Prevention of Literature’,
Polemic
2, January 1946 (XVII, 2792, pp. 369–81
). Orwell records payment for the former of £25 on 15 May 1945 and of £26 5s on 12 November 1945. ‘The Prevention of Literature’ was translated and published in French, Dutch, Italian and Finnish journals.

3
.
This important letter was one of two addressed to Michael Sayers discovered as this volume was in the press. The editor is extremely grateful to Michael Sayers (now aged 98 and living in New York) and his sons, Sean and Peter, for permission to publish it. In his first letter of 29 November 1945, Orwell expresses pleasure in hearing from Mr Sayers and suggests meeting over lunch. Sayers, Rayner Heppenstall and Orwell had shared a flat in 1935 (see letter to Heppenstall,
24.9.35
, n. 1).

To G. H. Bantock

Late 1945–early 1946

These extracts are from a letter Orwell wrote to G. H. Bantock (1914– ), who was then doing research for his
L.H. Myers: A Critical Study
, published in 1956. Myers had died in 1944. (See 19.2.46
, n. 1).

I was staying with him when war broke out. He spoke with the utmost bitterness of the British ruling class and said that he considered that many of them were actually treacherous in their attitude towards Germany. He said, speaking from his knowledge of them, that the rich were in general very class-conscious and well aware that their interests coincided with the interests of the rich in other countries, and that consequently they had no patriotism—‘not even
their
kind of patriotism,’ he added. He made an exception of Winston Churchill. . . .

. . . I didn’t see Leo very frequently during the war. I was in London and he was generally in the country. The last time I saw him was at John Morris’s flat.
¹
We got into the usual argument about Russia and totalitarianism, Morris taking my side. I said something about freedom and Leo, who had got up to get some more whisky, said almost vehemently, ‘I don’t believe in freedom.’ (NB. I think his exact words were ‘I don’t believe in liberty.’) I said, ‘All progress comes through heretics,’ and Leo promptly agreed with me. It struck me then, not for the first time, that there was a contradiction in his ideas which he had not resolved. His instincts were those of a Liberal but he felt it his duty to support the
USSR
and therefore to repudiate Liberalism. I think part of his uncertainty was due to his having inherited a large income. Undoubtedly in a way he was ashamed of this. He lived fairly simply and gave his money away with both hands, but he could not help feeling that he was a person who enjoyed unjustified privileges. I think he felt that because of this he had no right to criticise Russia. Russia was the only country where private ownership had been abolished, and any hostile criticism might be prompted by an unconscious desire to protect his own possessions. This may be a wrong diagnosis, but that is the impression I derived. It was certainly not natural for such a sweet-natured and open-minded man to approve of a regime where freedom of thought was suppressed.

[XVII, 2825, p. 456; typewritten]

1
.
John Morris was one of Orwell’s colleagues at the BBC. Their relations were rather sour. For an unfavourable account of Orwell by Morris, see his ‘Some Are More Equal than Others,’
Penguin New Writing
, No. 40 (1950); as ‘That Curiously Crucified Expression’, in
Orwell Remembered
, pp. 1
71–76, and Crick’s comments thereon, pp. 419–20.