Churchill and Orwell by Thomas E. Ricks

Author:Thomas E. Ricks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2017-04-28T13:14:15+00:00

Animal Farm appeared in Britain’s bookstores five months after Eileen’s death, and just three days after the end of World War II. It was published by Fredric Warburg. The reaction was entirely unlike that given any earlier book by Orwell. “We printed as many copies as we had paper for, that is, 5,000 copies, and they were sold within a month or two,” said Warburg. “And then we scrounged around and got more paper and we printed and printed and printed. And it’s never stopped selling since.”

For the first time in his life, Orwell found himself a literary and financial success. He was able to repay, through a friend, the anonymous benefactor who had sent him three hundred pounds in 1938 to enable him to spend a winter in Morocco resting his lungs. In a note accompanying the first installment of the repayment, he was apologetic. “It’s a terribly long time afterwards to start repaying, but until this year I was really unable to,” he wrote. “Just latterly I have started making money.”

But he was hardly cheerful. Not long after Animal Farm appeared, Orwell purchased a pistol from a friend, telling him that he feared a communist attempt to kill him. Two experts on Orwell, John Rodden and John Rossi, write that his fear was more real than he might have known. The post–Cold War examination of the Soviet archives has revealed that he had been listed for execution in Spain if captured. That said, outside of Spain, most of those murdered by Soviet secret police were Soviet defectors or anticommunist Russians, so there may have been at least a bit of paranoia in Orwell’s thinking.

Newly widowed, Orwell began withdrawing from the world, spending as much time as possible on the far, almost roadless northern end of the remote island of Jura, off the west coast of Scotland. But he also knew he was lonely, and on his visits to London proposed marriage to a variety of young women, often barely knowing them. He knew he was ill, and wanted to ensure there was someone to care for his son, Richard, after he was gone. One friend, Celia Kirwan, gently rejected his proposal, but kept seeing him. In another encounter, he invited to tea Anne Popham, a neighbor he barely knew. She recalled that he asked her to sit on the bed, embraced her, and said, “You’re very attractive. . . . Do you think you could care for me?” She found the awkward approach “embarrassing” and left as quickly as she could disengage herself.

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