On the island of Jura (Hebrides), in the solitary Spartan and beloved Scottish hermitage where, in the final years of his life, Orwell spent most of his time — at least when he was not in hospital, for his failing health had already reduced him to semi-invalidity — he used a small rowing boat equipped with an outboard engine both for fishing (his great passion) and for short coastal excursions. Returning from one of those excursions with his little son, nephew and niece, he had to cross the notorious Corryvreckan Whirlpool — one of the most dangerous whirlpools in all British waters. Normally, the crossing can be safely negotiated only for a brief moment on the slack of the tide. Orwell miscalculated this — either he misread the tide chart or neglected to consult it — and the little boat reached the dangerous spot at exactly the worst time, just in the middle of a furiously ebbing tide. Orwell realised his mistake too late: the boat was already out of control, tossed about by waves and swirling currents; the outboard engine which was not properly secured was shaken off its sternpost and swallowed by the sea; having lost all steering the little boat overturned, spilling its occupants and all their gear into the waves. Luckily the wreck occurred near a small rocky islet; Orwell managed to grab his son who had remained trapped under the boat, and the entire party swam safely ashore. Perchance the weather was sunny; Orwell proceeded immediately to dry his lighter and collect some fuel — dry grass and peat — and soon succeeded in lighting a fire by which the castaways were then able somehow to dry and warm themselves. Having gone to inspect the islet, Orwell discovered a spring of freshwater and an abundance of nesting birds. Under his unflappably calm and thoughtful direction the little party settled down in an orderly fashion. Some hours later, by extraordinary chance in such forlorn waters, a lobster-boat that was passing by noticed their presence and rescued them.
Virtually nothing of this dramatic succession of events is conveyed in Orwell’s desiccated note: half of the diary entry is devoted to naturalist’s observations on the islet puffin burrows and young cormorants learning to fly. To get the full picture, as I just said, one must read the nephew’s narrative. There, one is struck first by Orwell’s total absence of practical competence and of simple common sense[1] — and secondly by his calm courage and absolute self-control, which prevented the little party from panicking. And yet, at the time, he entertained no illusions regarding their chances of survivaclass="underline" as he simply told his nephew afterwards: “I thought we were goners.” And the nephew commented: “He almost seemed to enjoy it.”
Conclusion: if one had to go out to sea in a small boat, one would not choose Orwell for skipper. But when meeting with shipwreck, disaster or other catastrophe, one could not dream of better company.
* * *
Orwell left explicit instructions that no biography be written of him, and even actively discouraged one early attempt. He felt that “every life viewed from the inside would be a series of defeats too humiliating and disgraceful to contemplate.” And yet the posthumous treatment he received from his biographers and editors is truly admirable — I think in particular of the works of Bernard Crick and of Peter Davison, which are models of critical intelligence and scholarship.
John Henry Newman said: “It has ever been a hobby of mine (unless it be a truism, not a hobby) that a man’s life is in his letters.” This selection of Orwell’s correspondence splendidly verifies Newman’s observation — which otherwise may not be true for many letter-writers and especially not for “men of letters,” who tend to adjust their tune to the ears of those whom they address. But Orwell is always himself and speaks with only one voice: reserved even with old friends; generous with complete strangers; and treating all with equal sincerity.
The letters illustrate all his main concerns, interests and passions; they also illuminate some striking aspects of his personality.
POLITICS
Orwell’s old schoolmate and friend Cyril Connolly famously stated: “Orwell was a political animal. He reduced everything to politics… He could not blow his nose without moralising on the conditions in the handkerchief industry.” This observation has a point, yet it could also be very misleading. Eileen, his wife — probably the only person who ever understood him in depth, since she managed to love him and live with him (while being herself the very opposite of a doormat) — had a much clearer view of the matter. She said that happiness for Orwell would have been to live in the country (he hated modern urban life and detested London), cultivating his vegetable garden and writing novels. Orwell himself repeatedly said very much the same thing — and proved it during the last years of his life, when he settled in his beloved (and very inaccessible) island of Jura. He had already expressed it in an earlier poem (1935) — Orwell’s poems may not be great poetry, but they always reveal his innermost feelings:
A happy vicar I might have been
Two hundred years ago
To preach upon eternal doom
And watch my walnuts grow;
But born, alas, in an evil time
I missed that pleasant haven…
He once defined himself half in jest — but only half — as a “Tory Anarchist.” Indeed, after his youthful experience in the colonial police in Burma, he knew only that he hated imperialism and all forms of political oppression; all authority appeared suspect to him, even “mere success seemed to me a form of bullying.” Then, after his enquiry into workers’ conditions in northern industrial England during the Depression, he developed a broad non-partisan commitment to “socialism”: “Socialism means justice and liberty when the nonsense is stripped of it.” The decisive point in his political evolution took place in Spain, where he volunteered to fight fascism: first he was nearly killed by a fascist bullet, then he narrowly escaped being murdered by Stalinist secret police: “What I saw in Spain and what I have seen of the inner-workings of left-wing political parties have given me a horror of politics… I am definitely ‘left,’ but I believe that a writer can only remain honest if he keeps free from Party labels” (my emphasis).
From then on he considered that the first duty of a socialist is to fight totalitarianism, which means in practice, “to denounce the Soviet myth, for there is not much difference between Fascism and Stalinism.” Inasmuch as they deal with politics, the Letters focus on the anti-totalitarian fight. In this, the three salient features of Orwell’s attitude are his intuitive grasp of concrete realities, his non-doctrinaire approach to politics (accompanied with a deep distrust of left-wing intellectuals) and his sense of the absolute primacy of the human dimension. He once identified the source of his strength: “Where I feel that people like us understand the situation better than the so-called experts is not in any power to foretell specific events, but in the power to grasp what kind of world we are living in.” This uncanny ability received its most eloquent confirmation when Soviet dissidents who wished to translate Animal Farm into Russian (for clandestine distributors behind the Curtain) wrote to him to ask for his authorisation: they wrote to him in Russian, assuming that a writer who had such a subtle and thorough understanding of the Soviet reality — in contrast with the dismal ignorance of most Western intellectuals — had naturally to be a fluent Russian speaker!