Eileen letters

Martha Bridegam a écrit :

> Did someone already post material out of Eileen's letters in *The Lost
> Orwell*, and/or would anyone like to read same?
>
> /M

I don't know, but if you are offering to post some of this yourself,
yes please do.
B.
 >> Stay informed about: Eileen letters 

Martha Bridegam a écrit :

> georgeorwell.TakeThisOut@email.com wrote:
> > Martha Bridegam a écrit :
> >
> >> Did someone already post material out of Eileen's letters in *The Lost
> >> Orwell*, and/or would anyone like to read same?
> >>
> >> /M
> >
> > I don't know, but if you are offering to post some of this yourself,
> > yes please do.
> > B.
> >
>
> All the newly published letters were written to Norah Myles, a classmate
> from St. Hugh's College, Oxford. Some of them make you feel alternately
> sorry for each of them. E.g. this one, conjecturally from Nov. 3 or 10,
> 1936:
>
> "Tuesday
> 36 High Street
> Southwold
> Suffolk
>
> I wrote the address quite a long time ago & have since played with three
> cats, made a cigarette (I make them now but not with the naked hand),
> poked the fire & driven Eric (i.e. George) nearly mad -- all because I
> didn't really know what to say. I lost my habit of punctual
> correspondence during the first few weeks of marriage because we
> quarrelled so continuously & really bitterly that I thought I'd save
> time & just write one letter to everyone when the murder or separation
> had been accomplished. Then Eric's aunt [Footnote says this was the
> famous Nellie Limouzin of Paris/Esperanto fame] came to stay & was so
> dreadful (she stayed *two months*) that we stopped quarrelling & just
> repined. Then she went away & now all our troubles are over. They arose
> partly because Mother drove me so hard in the first week of June that I
> cried all the time from pure exhaustion & partly because Eric had
> decided that he mustn't let his work be interrupted & complained
> bitterly when we'd been married a week that he'd only done two good
> days' work out of seven. Also I couldn't make the oven cook anything &
> boiled eggs (on which Eric had lived almost exclusively) made me sick.
> Now I can make the oven cook a reasonable number of things & he is
> working very rapidly. I forgot to mention that he had his 'bronchitis'
> for three weeks in July & that it rained every day for six weeks during
> the whole of which the kitchen was flooded & all food went mouldy in a
> few hours. It seems a long time ago now but then seemed very permanent..."
>
> Here's another sorry-for-Eileen one, together with some Kopp revelations
> that make you sorry for Eric again:
>
> "New Year's Day, 1938
> You see I have no pen, no ink, no glasses and the prospect of no light,
> because the pens, the inks, the glasses and the candles are all in the
> room where George is working and if I disturb him again it will be for
> the fifteenth time tonight. But full of determined ingenuity I found a
> typewriter, and blind people are said to type in their [sic] dark.
> I have also to write to a woman [w]ho has suddenly sent me a Christmas
> present (I think it may be intended for a wedding present[)] after an
> estrangement of five or ten years, and in looking to see whether I had
> any clues to her address I found a bit of a letter to you, a very odd
> hysterical little letter, much more like Spain than any I can have
> written in that country. So here it is. The difficulty about the Spanish
> war is that it still dominates our lives in a most unreasonable manner
> because ["Eric" written and stricken out] George (or do you call him
> Eric?) is just finishing the book about it and I give him typescripts
> the reverse sides of which are covered with manuscript emendations that
> he can't read, and he is always having to speak about it and I have
> returned to complete pacifism and joined the P.P.U. [Peace Pledge Union]
> partly because of it. (Incidentally, you must join the P.P.U. too. War
> is fun so far as the shooting goes and much less alarming than an
> aeroplane in a shop window, but it does appalling things to people
> normally quite sane and intelligent -- some make desperate efforts to
> retain some kind of integrity and others like Langdon-Davies make no
> efforts at all but hardly anyone can stay reasonable, let alone honest.)
> The Georges Kopp situation is now more Dellian [The editors suggest she
> means "Delian," being a reference to Delos as home of a mystifying
> oracle] than ever. He is still in jail but has somehow managed to get
> several letters out to me, one of which George opened and read because I
> was away. He is very fond of Georges, who indeed cherished him with real
> tenderness in Spain and anyway is admirable as a soldier because of his
> quite remarkable courage, and he is extraordinarily magnanimous about
> the whole business -- just as Georges was extraordinarily magnanimous.
> Indeed they went about saving each other's lives or trying to in a way
> that was almost horrible to me, though George had not then noticed that
> Georges was more than 'a bit gone on' me. I sometimes think no one ever
> had such a sense of guilt before. It was always understood that I wasn't
> what they call in love with Georges -- our association progressed in
> little leaps, each leap immediately preceding some attack or operation
> in which he would almost inevitably be killed, but the last time I saw
> him he was in jail waiting, as we were both confident, to be shot, and I
> simply couldn't explain to him again as a kind of farewell that he could
> never be a rival to George. So he has rotted in a filthy prison for more
> than six months with nothing to do but remember me in my most pliant
> moments. If he never gets out, which is indeed most probable, it's good
> that he has managed to have some thoughts in a way pleasant, but if he
> does get out I don't know how one reminds a man immediately he is a free
> man again that one has only once missed the cue for saying that nothing
> on earth would induce one to marry him. Being in prison in Spain means
> living in a room with a number of others (about fifteen to twenty in a
> room the size of your sitting-room) and never getting out of it; if the
> window has steel shutters, as many have, never seeing daylight, never
> having a letter; never being charged, let alone tried; never knowing
> whether you will be shot tomorrow or released, in either case without
> explanation; when your money runs out never eating anything but a bowl
> of the worst imaginable soup and a bit of bread at 3 p.m. and at 11 p.m.
> On the whole it's a pity I found that letter because Spain doesn't
> really dominate us as much as all that. We have nineteen hens now --
> eighteen deliberately and the other by accident because we bought some
> ducklings and a hen escorted them. We thought we ought to boil her this
> autumn so we took it in turns to watch the nesting boxes to see whether
> she laid an egg to justify a longer life, and she did. And she is a
> good mother, so she is to have children in the spring. This afternoon we
> built a new henhouse -- that is we put the sections together -- and that
> is the nucleus of the breeding pen. There is probably no question on
> poultry-keeping that I am not able and very ready to answer. Perhaps you
> would like to have a battery (say three units) in the bathroom so that
> you could benefit from my advice. It would be a touching thing to
> collect an egg just before brushing one's teeth and eat it just after.
> Which reminds me that since we got back from Southwold, where we spent
> an incredibly family Christmas with the Blairs, we have eaten boiled
> eggs almost all the time. Before we had only one eggcup from Woolworths'
> -- no two from Woolworths' and one that I gave George with an easter egg
> in it before we were married (that cost threepence with egg). So it was
> a Happy Thought dear, and they are such a nice shape and match your
> mother's butter dish and breadboard, giving tone to the table.
> We also have a poodle puppy. We called him Marx to remind us that we had
> never read Marx and now we have read a little and taken so strong a
> personal dislike to the man that we can't look the dog in the face when
> we speak to him...
>
> [Snipping details on the dog and on a mutual friend, Mary, who wishes to
> avoid pregnancy while Eileen is hoping for it]
>
> ...The last candle is guttering, and there isn't any good way out of
> this letter. But perhaps it has broken a spell. Does yours mean that
> June is at Oxford? I just didn't know. Anyway she can't be more than
> fifteen. Norman? John? Elisabeth? Jean? Ruth? Your mother? Your father?
> I don't think I want any news of you and Quartus because I am quite sure
> I know all about you and it would be so dreadful to hear something quite
> different. The only thing I can do is to come and see. I am supposed to
> be having a holiday when the book is finished, as it will be this month,
> only we sha'n't have any money at all, and we were so rich. When are you
> coming to the sales? Or are you? I don't know whether I can get away
> even for a day because the book is late and the typescript of the final
> draft is not begun and Eric is writing a book in collaboration with a
> number of people including a German and I keep getting his manuscript to
> revise and not being able to understand anything at all in it [The
> editors wonder if this was 'Poverty in Practice,' subject of a contract
> with Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd. that Orwell wasn't well enough to
> fulfill.] -- but if you were coming to the sales these things would all
> be less important to
>
> Pig.
>
> Did I wish you a happy new year?
> Please wish all your family a happy new year from me.
> Eric (I mean George) has just come in to say that the light is out (he
> had the Aladdin lamp because he was Working) and is there any oil (such
> a question) and I can't type in this light (which may be true, but I
> can't read it) and he is hungry and wants some cocoa and some biscuits
> and it is after midnight and Marx is eating a bone and has left pieces
> in each chair and which shall he sit on now."
>
>
> Good grief.
>
> There's more from later on, much of it continuing with deeply black
> humor. What a life.
>
> /M

Life with George: boiled eggs and candles and quarrelling. She seems to
look on it with a certain detached amusement though. Her letter writing
is quite charming. And Poor Georges Kopp! but she treated him kindly.

'Pig'- I can't decide if it is cute, or if it is slightly...not cute.
Well anyway, I like her very much.
B.
 >> Stay informed about: Eileen letters 

georgeorwell DeleteThis @email.com wrote:
> Martha Bridegam a écrit :
>
>> Did someone already post material out of Eileen's letters in *The Lost
>> Orwell*, and/or would anyone like to read same?
>>
>> /M
>
> I don't know, but if you are offering to post some of this yourself,
> yes please do.
> B.
>

All the newly published letters were written to Norah Myles, a classmate
from St. Hugh's College, Oxford. Some of them make you feel alternately
sorry for each of them. E.g. this one, conjecturally from Nov. 3 or 10,
1936:

"Tuesday
36 High Street
Southwold
Suffolk

I wrote the address quite a long time ago & have since played with three
cats, made a cigarette (I make them now but not with the naked hand),
poked the fire & driven Eric (i.e. George) nearly mad -- all because I
didn't really know what to say. I lost my habit of punctual
correspondence during the first few weeks of marriage because we
quarrelled so continuously & really bitterly that I thought I'd save
time & just write one letter to everyone when the murder or separation
had been accomplished. Then Eric's aunt [Footnote says this was the
famous Nellie Limouzin of Paris/Esperanto fame] came to stay & was so
dreadful (she stayed *two months*) that we stopped quarrelling & just
repined. Then she went away & now all our troubles are over. They arose
partly because Mother drove me so hard in the first week of June that I
cried all the time from pure exhaustion & partly because Eric had
decided that he mustn't let his work be interrupted & complained
bitterly when we'd been married a week that he'd only done two good
days' work out of seven. Also I couldn't make the oven cook anything &
boiled eggs (on which Eric had lived almost exclusively) made me sick.
Now I can make the oven cook a reasonable number of things & he is
working very rapidly. I forgot to mention that he had his 'bronchitis'
for three weeks in July & that it rained every day for six weeks during
the whole of which the kitchen was flooded & all food went mouldy in a
few hours. It seems a long time ago now but then seemed very permanent..."

Here's another sorry-for-Eileen one, together with some Kopp revelations
that make you sorry for Eric again:

"New Year's Day, 1938
You see I have no pen, no ink, no glasses and the prospect of no light,
because the pens, the inks, the glasses and the candles are all in the
room where George is working and if I disturb him again it will be for
the fifteenth time tonight. But full of determined ingenuity I found a
typewriter, and blind people are said to type in their [sic] dark.
I have also to write to a woman [w]ho has suddenly sent me a Christmas
present (I think it may be intended for a wedding present[)] after an
estrangement of five or ten years, and in looking to see whether I had
any clues to her address I found a bit of a letter to you, a very odd
hysterical little letter, much more like Spain than any I can have
written in that country. So here it is. The difficulty about the Spanish
war is that it still dominates our lives in a most unreasonable manner
because ["Eric" written and stricken out] George (or do you call him
Eric?) is just finishing the book about it and I give him typescripts
the reverse sides of which are covered with manuscript emendations that
he can't read, and he is always having to speak about it and I have
returned to complete pacifism and joined the P.P.U. [Peace Pledge Union]
partly because of it. (Incidentally, you must join the P.P.U. too. War
is fun so far as the shooting goes and much less alarming than an
aeroplane in a shop window, but it does appalling things to people
normally quite sane and intelligent -- some make desperate efforts to
retain some kind of integrity and others like Langdon-Davies make no
efforts at all but hardly anyone can stay reasonable, let alone honest.)
The Georges Kopp situation is now more Dellian [The editors suggest she
means "Delian," being a reference to Delos as home of a mystifying
oracle] than ever. He is still in jail but has somehow managed to get
several letters out to me, one of which George opened and read because I
was away. He is very fond of Georges, who indeed cherished him with real
tenderness in Spain and anyway is admirable as a soldier because of his
quite remarkable courage, and he is extraordinarily magnanimous about
the whole business -- just as Georges was extraordinarily magnanimous.
Indeed they went about saving each other's lives or trying to in a way
that was almost horrible to me, though George had not then noticed that
Georges was more than 'a bit gone on' me. I sometimes think no one ever
had such a sense of guilt before. It was always understood that I wasn't
what they call in love with Georges -- our association progressed in
little leaps, each leap immediately preceding some attack or operation
in which he would almost inevitably be killed, but the last time I saw
him he was in jail waiting, as we were both confident, to be shot, and I
simply couldn't explain to him again as a kind of farewell that he could
never be a rival to George. So he has rotted in a filthy prison for more
than six months with nothing to do but remember me in my most pliant
moments. If he never gets out, which is indeed most probable, it's good
that he has managed to have some thoughts in a way pleasant, but if he
does get out I don't know how one reminds a man immediately he is a free
man again that one has only once missed the cue for saying that nothing
on earth would induce one to marry him. Being in prison in Spain means
living in a room with a number of others (about fifteen to twenty in a
room the size of your sitting-room) and never getting out of it; if the
window has steel shutters, as many have, never seeing daylight, never
having a letter; never being charged, let alone tried; never knowing
whether you will be shot tomorrow or released, in either case without
explanation; when your money runs out never eating anything but a bowl
of the worst imaginable soup and a bit of bread at 3 p.m. and at 11 p.m.
On the whole it's a pity I found that letter because Spain doesn't
really dominate us as much as all that. We have nineteen hens now --
eighteen deliberately and the other by accident because we bought some
ducklings and a hen escorted them. We thought we ought to boil her this
autumn so we took it in turns to watch the nesting boxes to see whether
she laid an egg to justify a longer life, and she did. And she is a
good mother, so she is to have children in the spring. This afternoon we
built a new henhouse -- that is we put the sections together -- and that
is the nucleus of the breeding pen. There is probably no question on
poultry-keeping that I am not able and very ready to answer. Perhaps you
would like to have a battery (say three units) in the bathroom so that
you could benefit from my advice. It would be a touching thing to
collect an egg just before brushing one's teeth and eat it just after.
Which reminds me that since we got back from Southwold, where we spent
an incredibly family Christmas with the Blairs, we have eaten boiled
eggs almost all the time. Before we had only one eggcup from Woolworths'
-- no two from Woolworths' and one that I gave George with an easter egg
in it before we were married (that cost threepence with egg). So it was
a Happy Thought dear, and they are such a nice shape and match your
mother's butter dish and breadboard, giving tone to the table.
We also have a poodle puppy. We called him Marx to remind us that we had
never read Marx and now we have read a little and taken so strong a
personal dislike to the man that we can't look the dog in the face when
we speak to him...

[Snipping details on the dog and on a mutual friend, Mary, who wishes to
avoid pregnancy while Eileen is hoping for it]

....The last candle is guttering, and there isn't any good way out of
this letter. But perhaps it has broken a spell. Does yours mean that
June is at Oxford? I just didn't know. Anyway she can't be more than
fifteen. Norman? John? Elisabeth? Jean? Ruth? Your mother? Your father?
I don't think I want any news of you and Quartus because I am quite sure
I know all about you and it would be so dreadful to hear something quite
different. The only thing I can do is to come and see. I am supposed to
be having a holiday when the book is finished, as it will be this month,
only we sha'n't have any money at all, and we were so rich. When are you
coming to the sales? Or are you? I don't know whether I can get away
even for a day because the book is late and the typescript of the final
draft is not begun and Eric is writing a book in collaboration with a
number of people including a German and I keep getting his manuscript to
revise and not being able to understand anything at all in it [The
editors wonder if this was 'Poverty in Practice,' subject of a contract
with Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd. that Orwell wasn't well enough to
fulfill.] -- but if you were coming to the sales these things would all
be less important to

Pig.

Did I wish you a happy new year?
Please wish all your family a happy new year from me.
Eric (I mean George) has just come in to say that the light is out (he
had the Aladdin lamp because he was Working) and is there any oil (such
a question) and I can't type in this light (which may be true, but I
can't read it) and he is hungry and wants some cocoa and some biscuits
and it is after midnight and Marx is eating a bone and has left pieces
in each chair and which shall he sit on now."


Good grief.

There's more from later on, much of it continuing with deeply black
humor. What a life.

/M
 >> Stay informed about: Eileen letters 

georgeorwell DeleteThis @email.com wrote:

> Life with George: boiled eggs and candles and quarrelling. She seems to
> look on it with a certain detached amusement though. Her letter writing
> is quite charming. And Poor Georges Kopp! but she treated him kindly.
>
> 'Pig'- I can't decide if it is cute, or if it is slightly...not cute.
> Well anyway, I like her very much.
> B.
>

Yes, and he's "Working" while she's merely the unpaid editor and
secretary who can't get a day off because "the book" (not "Eric's book,"
you notice) is overdue. It sounds like a strange employment relationship
more than a marriage.

I wonder about the nickname too, & what it means about Animal Farm, &
whether it was given entirely kindly, or with the sort of kindness mixed
with deniable malice that you see sometimes in schoolgirl culture.

/M
 >> Stay informed about: Eileen letters 

Martha Bridegam wrote:
> georgeorwell DeleteThis @email.com wrote:
> > Martha Bridegam a écrit :
> >
> >> Did someone already post material out of Eileen's letters in *The Lost
> >> Orwell*, and/or would anyone like to read same?
> >>
> >> /M
> >
> > I don't know, but if you are offering to post some of this yourself,
> > yes please do.
> > B.
> >
>
> All the newly published letters were written to Norah Myles, a classmate
> from St. Hugh's College, Oxford. Some of them make you feel alternately
> sorry for each of them. E.g. this one, conjecturally from Nov. 3 or 10,
> 1936:
>
> "Tuesday
> 36 High Street
> Southwold
> Suffolk
>
> I wrote the address quite a long time ago & have since played with three
> cats, made a cigarette (I make them now but not with the naked hand),
> poked the fire & driven Eric (i.e. George) nearly mad -- all because I
> didn't really know what to say. I lost my habit of punctual
> correspondence during the first few weeks of marriage because we
> quarrelled so continuously & really bitterly that I thought I'd save
> time & just write one letter to everyone when the murder or separation
> had been accomplished. Then Eric's aunt [Footnote says this was the
> famous Nellie Limouzin of Paris/Esperanto fame] came to stay & was so
> dreadful (she stayed *two months*) that we stopped quarrelling & just
> repined. Then she went away & now all our troubles are over. They arose
> partly because Mother drove me so hard in the first week of June that I
> cried all the time from pure exhaustion & partly because Eric had
> decided that he mustn't let his work be interrupted & complained
> bitterly when we'd been married a week that he'd only done two good
> days' work out of seven. Also I couldn't make the oven cook anything &
> boiled eggs (on which Eric had lived almost exclusively) made me sick.
> Now I can make the oven cook a reasonable number of things & he is
> working very rapidly. I forgot to mention that he had his 'bronchitis'
> for three weeks in July & that it rained every day for six weeks during
> the whole of which the kitchen was flooded & all food went mouldy in a
> few hours. It seems a long time ago now but then seemed very permanent..."
>

I was quite taken, in that first letter from 3 or 10 November 1936,
with Eileen's description of and reaction to the Blairs.

"... We are staying with the Blairs & I like it. Nothing has
surprised me more, particularly since I saw the house which is very
small and furnished almost entirely with paintings of ancestors. The
Blairs are by origin Lowland Scottish and dull but one of them made a
lot of money in slaves & his son Thomas who was inconceivably like a
sheep married the daughter of the Duke of Westmoreland (of whose
existence I never heard) & went so grand that he spent all the money &
couldn't make any more because slaves had gone out. So his son went
into the army and came out of that into the church & married a girl of
15 who loathed him and had ten children of whom Eric's father, now
80, is the only survivor & they are all quite penniless but still on
the shivering verge of gentility as Eric calls it in his new book which
I cannot think will be popular with the family. In spite of all this
the family on the whole is fun & I imagine unusual in their attitude to
me because they all adore Eric & consider him quite impossible to live
with - indeed on the wedding day Mrs Blair shook her head & said that
I'd be a brave girl if I knew what I was in for, and Avril the sister
said that obviously I didn't know what I was in for or I shouldn't
be there. They haven't I think grasped that I am very much like Eric
in temperament which is an asset once one has accepted the fact."

Interesting, and rare, to see the Blair family described as "fun".
On the whole. And deadpan funny throughout: "Lowland Scottish and
dull"; "inconceivably like a sheep" - LOL; "because slaves
had gone out"; "a girl of 15 who loathed him and had ten
children"

"Shivering verge of gentility" is Sweet. I know he wrote something
very similar but did he ever write that?

The wedding day anecdote sounds familiar from one or more of the
biographies. I suppose there are worse things to hear on your wedding
day. (Like hearing your husband instruct his adjutant to dowse your
bodies in petrol and burn them after the suicide pact as the Russian
shells crash down overhead). But still...

That last line. Touching? Or Matter of Fact? Both, I think, and
sounding almost George-like.

N
 >> Stay informed about: Eileen letters 

Nigee a écrit :
> Martha Bridegam wrote:
> > georgeorwell DeleteThis @email.com wrote:
> > > Martha Bridegam a écrit :
> > >
> > >> Did someone already post material out of Eileen's letters in *The Lost
> > >> Orwell*, and/or would anyone like to read same?
> > >>
> > >> /M
> > >
> > > I don't know, but if you are offering to post some of this yourself,
> > > yes please do.
> > > B.
> > >
> >
> > All the newly published letters were written to Norah Myles, a classmate
> > from St. Hugh's College, Oxford. Some of them make you feel alternately
> > sorry for each of them. E.g. this one, conjecturally from Nov. 3 or 10,
> > 1936:
> >
> > "Tuesday
> > 36 High Street
> > Southwold
> > Suffolk
> >
> > I wrote the address quite a long time ago & have since played with three
> > cats, made a cigarette (I make them now but not with the naked hand),
> > poked the fire & driven Eric (i.e. George) nearly mad -- all because I
> > didn't really know what to say. I lost my habit of punctual
> > correspondence during the first few weeks of marriage because we
> > quarrelled so continuously & really bitterly that I thought I'd save
> > time & just write one letter to everyone when the murder or separation
> > had been accomplished. Then Eric's aunt [Footnote says this was the
> > famous Nellie Limouzin of Paris/Esperanto fame] came to stay & was so
> > dreadful (she stayed *two months*) that we stopped quarrelling & just
> > repined. Then she went away & now all our troubles are over. They arose
> > partly because Mother drove me so hard in the first week of June that I
> > cried all the time from pure exhaustion & partly because Eric had
> > decided that he mustn't let his work be interrupted & complained
> > bitterly when we'd been married a week that he'd only done two good
> > days' work out of seven. Also I couldn't make the oven cook anything &
> > boiled eggs (on which Eric had lived almost exclusively) made me sick.
> > Now I can make the oven cook a reasonable number of things & he is
> > working very rapidly. I forgot to mention that he had his 'bronchitis'
> > for three weeks in July & that it rained every day for six weeks during
> > the whole of which the kitchen was flooded & all food went mouldy in a
> > few hours. It seems a long time ago now but then seemed very permanent...."
> >
>
> I was quite taken, in that first letter from 3 or 10 November 1936,
> with Eileen's description of and reaction to the Blairs.
>
> "... We are staying with the Blairs & I like it. Nothing has
> surprised me more, particularly since I saw the house which is very
> small and furnished almost entirely with paintings of ancestors. The
> Blairs are by origin Lowland Scottish and dull but one of them made a
> lot of money in slaves & his son Thomas who was inconceivably like a
> sheep married the daughter of the Duke of Westmoreland (of whose
> existence I never heard) & went so grand that he spent all the money &
> couldn't make any more because slaves had gone out. So his son went
> into the army and came out of that into the church & married a girl of
> 15 who loathed him and had ten children of whom Eric's father, now
> 80, is the only survivor & they are all quite penniless but still on
> the shivering verge of gentility as Eric calls it in his new book which
> I cannot think will be popular with the family. In spite of all this
> the family on the whole is fun & I imagine unusual in their attitude to
> me because they all adore Eric & consider him quite impossible to live
> with - indeed on the wedding day Mrs Blair shook her head & said that
> I'd be a brave girl if I knew what I was in for, and Avril the sister
> said that obviously I didn't know what I was in for or I shouldn't
> be there. They haven't I think grasped that I am very much like Eric
> in temperament which is an asset once one has accepted the fact."
>
> Interesting, and rare, to see the Blair family described as "fun".
> On the whole. And deadpan funny throughout: "Lowland Scottish and
> dull"; "inconceivably like a sheep" - LOL; "because slaves
> had gone out"; "a girl of 15 who loathed him and had ten
> children"
>
> "Shivering verge of gentility" is Sweet. I know he wrote something
> very similar but did he ever write that?
>
> The wedding day anecdote sounds familiar from one or more of the
> biographies. I suppose there are worse things to hear on your wedding
> day. (Like hearing your husband instruct his adjutant to dowse your
> bodies in petrol and burn them after the suicide pact as the Russian
> shells crash down overhead). But still...
>
> That last line. Touching? Or Matter of Fact? Both, I think, and
> sounding almost George-like.
>
> N
these examples certainly show that Eileen was a good writer with a keen
wit. And yes very George-like. I wonder if this is because of *the
weight* of his influence or whether, as she says, "I am very much like
Eric in temperament". She should have become a writer herself but one
might say that Orwell absorbed her into his work. And perhaps she
absorbed him too - but he was the stronger. And so, we only talk about
her because of her connection to him, and not otherwise. But the fact
remains we *are* talking about her and in the context of writing.
Orwell spoke of two types - (1) the majority, who are "not acutely
selfish" and who "After the age of about thirty...almost abandon the
sense of being individuals at all - and live chiefly for others, or
are simply smothered under drudgery", and (2) "the minority of gifted,
willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end".
Eileen was type (1), and Orwell type (2) (obviously) but both were in a
sense, "disinterested" in the writer's ego and worked as partners
towards a common goal, and that goal was the writing itself.
This is not at all saying that Orwell needed Eileen, but she is
definitely a factor in his later work. Her influence on Animal Farm has
been discussed (and in an indirect way on Nineteen Eighty-Four) by
various biographers and so on, but Orwell's debt to her includes
something more general, something that one could sum up with the words
'faith and support', although that doesn't quite describe it - rather
perhaps - der Sturm und Drang.

The "sheer egoism" that Orwell famously gave as his number one reason
for writing is absolutely true. But no doubt Eileen knew really how
unimportant that that is in the long run, because the fact is, the
thing was done and only done because *you* did it, whether the world
knows your name or not.
B.
ps thanks too for the insightful connection between Eileen B. and Eva B.
 >> Stay informed about: Eileen letters 

georgeorw... DeleteThis @email.com wrote:
> Nigee a écrit :
> > Martha Bridegam wrote:
> > > georgeorwell DeleteThis @email.com wrote:
> > > > Martha Bridegam a écrit :
> > > >
> > > >> Did someone already post material out of Eileen's letters in *The Lost
> > > >> Orwell*, and/or would anyone like to read same?
> > > >>
> > > >> /M
> > > >
> > > > I don't know, but if you are offering to post some of this yourself,
> > > > yes please do.
> > > > B.
> > > >
> > >
> > > All the newly published letters were written to Norah Myles, a classmate
> > > from St. Hugh's College, Oxford. Some of them make you feel alternately
> > > sorry for each of them. E.g. this one, conjecturally from Nov. 3 or 10,
> > > 1936:
> > >
> > > "Tuesday
> > > 36 High Street
> > > Southwold
> > > Suffolk
> > >
> > > I wrote the address quite a long time ago & have since played with three
> > > cats, made a cigarette (I make them now but not with the naked hand),
> > > poked the fire & driven Eric (i.e. George) nearly mad -- all because I
> > > didn't really know what to say. I lost my habit of punctual
> > > correspondence during the first few weeks of marriage because we
> > > quarrelled so continuously & really bitterly that I thought I'd save
> > > time & just write one letter to everyone when the murder or separation
> > > had been accomplished. Then Eric's aunt [Footnote says this was the
> > > famous Nellie Limouzin of Paris/Esperanto fame] came to stay & was so
> > > dreadful (she stayed *two months*) that we stopped quarrelling & just
> > > repined. Then she went away & now all our troubles are over. They arose
> > > partly because Mother drove me so hard in the first week of June that I
> > > cried all the time from pure exhaustion & partly because Eric had
> > > decided that he mustn't let his work be interrupted & complained
> > > bitterly when we'd been married a week that he'd only done two good
> > > days' work out of seven. Also I couldn't make the oven cook anything &
> > > boiled eggs (on which Eric had lived almost exclusively) made me sick.
> > > Now I can make the oven cook a reasonable number of things & he is
> > > working very rapidly. I forgot to mention that he had his 'bronchitis'
> > > for three weeks in July & that it rained every day for six weeks during
> > > the whole of which the kitchen was flooded & all food went mouldy in a
> > > few hours. It seems a long time ago now but then seemed very permanent..."
> > >
> >
> > I was quite taken, in that first letter from 3 or 10 November 1936,
> > with Eileen's description of and reaction to the Blairs.
> >
> > "... We are staying with the Blairs & I like it. Nothing has
> > surprised me more, particularly since I saw the house which is very
> > small and furnished almost entirely with paintings of ancestors. The
> > Blairs are by origin Lowland Scottish and dull but one of them made a
> > lot of money in slaves & his son Thomas who was inconceivably like a
> > sheep married the daughter of the Duke of Westmoreland (of whose
> > existence I never heard) & went so grand that he spent all the money &
> > couldn't make any more because slaves had gone out. So his son went
> > into the army and came out of that into the church & married a girl of
> > 15 who loathed him and had ten children of whom Eric's father, now
> > 80, is the only survivor & they are all quite penniless but still on
> > the shivering verge of gentility as Eric calls it in his new book which
> > I cannot think will be popular with the family. In spite of all this
> > the family on the whole is fun & I imagine unusual in their attitude to
> > me because they all adore Eric & consider him quite impossible to live
> > with - indeed on the wedding day Mrs Blair shook her head & said that
> > I'd be a brave girl if I knew what I was in for, and Avril the sister
> > said that obviously I didn't know what I was in for or I shouldn't
> > be there. They haven't I think grasped that I am very much like Eric
> > in temperament which is an asset once one has accepted the fact."
> >
> > Interesting, and rare, to see the Blair family described as "fun".
> > On the whole. And deadpan funny throughout: "Lowland Scottish and
> > dull"; "inconceivably like a sheep" - LOL; "because slaves
> > had gone out"; "a girl of 15 who loathed him and had ten
> > children"
> >
> > "Shivering verge of gentility" is Sweet. I know he wrote something
> > very similar but did he ever write that?
> >
> > The wedding day anecdote sounds familiar from one or more of the
> > biographies. I suppose there are worse things to hear on your wedding
> > day. (Like hearing your husband instruct his adjutant to dowse your
> > bodies in petrol and burn them after the suicide pact as the Russian
> > shells crash down overhead). But still...
> >
> > That last line. Touching? Or Matter of Fact? Both, I think, and
> > sounding almost George-like.
> >
> > N
> these examples certainly show that Eileen was a good writer with a keen
> wit. And yes very George-like. I wonder if this is because of *the
> weight* of his influence or whether, as she says, "I am very much like
> Eric in temperament". She should have become a writer herself but one
> might say that Orwell absorbed her into his work. And perhaps she
> absorbed him too - but he was the stronger. And so, we only talk about
> her because of her connection to him, and not otherwise. But the fact
> remains we *are* talking about her and in the context of writing.
> Orwell spoke of two types - (1) the majority, who are "not acutely
> selfish" and who "After the age of about thirty...almost abandon the
> sense of being individuals at all - and live chiefly for others, or
> are simply smothered under drudgery", and (2) "the minority of gifted,
> willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end".
> Eileen was type (1), and Orwell type (2) (obviously) but both were in a
> sense, "disinterested" in the writer's ego and worked as partners
> towards a common goal, and that goal was the writing itself.
> This is not at all saying that Orwell needed Eileen, but she is
> definitely a factor in his later work. Her influence on Animal Farm has
> been discussed (and in an indirect way on Nineteen Eighty-Four) by
> various biographers and so on, but Orwell's debt to her includes
> something more general, something that one could sum up with the words
> 'faith and support', although that doesn't quite describe it - rather
> perhaps - der Sturm und Drang.
>
> The "sheer egoism" that Orwell famously gave as his number one reason
> for writing is absolutely true. But no doubt Eileen knew really how
> unimportant that that is in the long run, because the fact is, the
> thing was done and only done because *you* did it, whether the world
> knows your name or not.
> B.
> ps thanks too for the insightful connection between Eileen B. and Eva B.

The letter of sometime in the period 14-17 December, written from
Morocco:

"The news is that I feel very happy now. So far as I can judge the
happiness is the direct result of yersterday's news, which was a) that
Mr Blair is dying of cancer, b) that Gwen's baby Laurence had to be
taken to Great Ormand Street (he is 4 1/2 weeks old, or 5), c) that
George Kopp proposes to come and stay with us in Morocco (he has no
money & we had heard the day before by cable that he was out of jail &
Spain; Eric's reaction to the cable was that George must stay with us &
reaction to George's letter announcing his arrival is that he must not
[underlined] stay with us, but I think the solution may be that George
won;t find anyone to lend him the money)."

She goes on to write of how they had both been ill (and that
Eric/George "may not be much worse at the end of the winter abroad than
he was at the beginning. I expect his life has been shortened by
another year or two but all the totalitarians make that irrelevant.")
before turning to the efforts of her brother (Eric-other) to deceive
Orwell as to the parlous state of his health and Orwell's
bitter-sounding reaction to this, before lightening up:

"However, now that we're hardened to the general frightfulness of the
country we're quite enjoying it & Eric is writing a book [CUFA] that
pleases both of us very much. And in a way I have forgiven Brother
Eric who can't help being Nature's Fascist & indeed is upset by this
fact which he realises."

Even though she proceeds to write brightly of life in Morocco - "We
have an Arab too, called Mahjroub" - the "happy" above does seem rather
misplaced unless it is intended as the dourest of dour irony.

N
 >> Stay informed about: Eileen letters 

On Jan 30, 5:20 pm, "Edward Belsky" <edwardbel....TakeThisOut@worldnet.att.net>
wrote:
> Boy was I knocked by these letters! My working image of Eileen had been
> that she was a walk-onish, retiring, help-mate in tweeds of George,
> consuming whatever spark she had in the genteel firebuckets were allowed to
> women
> before the war and in drudgery for the MOI or the BBC during the war. That
> was how I roujnded out her picture. These letters disabuse. She was cool
> as a cucumber and dauntless as a lord..
>
> Of course, these letters are to a college girlfriend and continue in their
> tone of former days, when Eileen was self-identified as "Pig" probably for
> theoretical amoralism, and you could argue that all women sound like
> Tamburlaine when writing to girlfriends about keeping unsuccessful suitors
> on a string but in terms of audacity the letters transcend even their genre.
>
> " I don't think I want any news of you and Quartus because I am quite sure
> I know all about you and it would be so dreadful to hear something quite
> different."
> What daring in saying that! It says that Eileen's need to keep her sense
> of omniscience about Nora and Quartus outweighs Nora's need to spout
> exactly the kind of
> bubbly news that Eileen's letter is filled with. It is a pre-emption that
> would incense Nora
> if Eileen and she were strangers but Eileen gets away with it because she
> is really recalling to Nora her (Eileen's) cold-bloodedness when she was in
> the social whirl at Oxford, which contrasts sharply with
> her current rough life.
>
> These letters show that the most important thing in life is character, more
> important than living conditions. Character is the primitive construct. It
> is the seed-bed. The resources of your country count too because they set
> the limits on what character can accomplish. Orwell wrote 8 books in the
> thirties as a time when he was poor and his health was starting to go.
> Eileen must have been terribly important as a facilitator and sounding-board
> and advisor on which publisher to trust, not because she didn't complain but
> because she knew how to gaffe the men (in this case, one man), hew to a
> bruising schedule, sense strategies and openings and do all with a light
> touch.
>
> Something of Eileen may have "rubbed off" on George after her death. When
> a person you have been close to dies, you miss them. One way of bridging
> the gap created by the loss is to imitate the departed, which is a way of
> keeping them present. So Eileen's ability to condense complex information,
> apparent in these letters, may appear in the post-war essays which do seem
> to be his best.<bride....TakeThisOut@pacbell.net> wrote in message
>
> news:udCoh.32719$Gr2.32185@newssvr21.news.prodigy.net...> georgeorw....TakeThisOut@email.com wrote:
> > > Martha Bridegam a écrit :
>
> > >> Did someone already post material out of Eileen's letters in *The Lost
> > >> Orwell*, and/or would anyone like to read same?
>
> > >> /M
>
> > > I don't know, but if you are offering to post some of this yourself,
> > > yes please do.
> > > B.
>
> > All the newly published letters were written to Norah Myles, a classmate
> > from St. Hugh's College, Oxford. Some of them make you feel alternately
> > sorry for each of them. E.g. this one, conjecturally from Nov. 3 or 10,
> > 1936:
>
> > "Tuesday
> > 36 High Street
> > Southwold
> > Suffolk
>
> > I wrote the address quite a long time ago & have since played with three
> > cats, made a cigarette (I make them now but not with the naked hand),
> > poked the fire & driven Eric (i.e. George) nearly mad -- all because I
> > didn't really know what to say. I lost my habit of punctual
> > correspondence during the first few weeks of marriage because we
> > quarrelled so continuously & really bitterly that I thought I'd save
> > time & just write one letter to everyone when the murder or separation
> > had been accomplished. Then Eric's aunt [Footnote says this was the
> > famous Nellie Limouzin of Paris/Esperanto fame] came to stay & was so
> > dreadful (she stayed *two months*) that we stopped quarrelling & just
> > repined. Then she went away & now all our troubles are over. They arose
> > partly because Mother drove me so hard in the first week of June that I
> > cried all the time from pure exhaustion & partly because Eric had
> > decided that he mustn't let his work be interrupted & complained
> > bitterly when we'd been married a week that he'd only done two good
> > days' work out of seven. Also I couldn't make the oven cook anything &
> > boiled eggs (on which Eric had lived almost exclusively) made me sick.
> > Now I can make the oven cook a reasonable number of things & he is
> > working very rapidly. I forgot to mention that he had his 'bronchitis'
> > for three weeks in July & that it rained every day for six weeks during
> > the whole of which the kitchen was flooded & all food went mouldy in a
> > few hours. It seems a long time ago now but then seemed very permanent...."
>
> > Here's another sorry-for-Eileen one, together with some Kopp revelations
> > that make you sorry for Eric again:
>
> > "New Year's Day, 1938
> > You see I have no pen, no ink, no glasses and the prospect of no light,
> > because the pens, the inks, the glasses and the candles are all in the
> > room where George is working and if I disturb him again it will be for
> > the fifteenth time tonight. But full of determined ingenuity I found a
> > typewriter, and blind people are said to type in their [sic] dark.
> > I have also to write to a woman [w]ho has suddenly sent me a Christmas
> > present (I think it may be intended for a wedding present[)] after an
> > estrangement of five or ten years, and in looking to see whether I had
> > any clues to her address I found a bit of a letter to you, a very odd
> > hysterical little letter, much more like Spain than any I can have
> > written in that country. So here it is. The difficulty about the Spanish
> > war is that it still dominates our lives in a most unreasonable manner
> > because ["Eric" written and stricken out] George (or do you call him
> > Eric?) is just finishing the book about it and I give him typescripts
> > the reverse sides of which are covered with manuscript emendations that
> > he can't read, and he is always having to speak about it and I have
> > returned to complete pacifism and joined the P.P.U. [Peace Pledge Union]
> > partly because of it. (Incidentally, you must join the P.P.U. too. War
> > is fun so far as the shooting goes and much less alarming than an
> > aeroplane in a shop window, but it does appalling things to people
> > normally quite sane and intelligent -- some make desperate efforts to
> > retain some kind of integrity and others like Langdon-Davies make no
> > efforts at all but hardly anyone can stay reasonable, let alone honest.)
> > The Georges Kopp situation is now more Dellian [The editors suggest she
> > means "Delian," being a reference to Delos as home of a mystifying
> > oracle] than ever. He is still in jail but has somehow managed to get
> > several letters out to me, one of which George opened and read because I
> > was away. He is very fond of Georges, who indeed cherished him with real
> > tenderness in Spain and anyway is admirable as a soldier because of his
> > quite remarkable courage, and he is extraordinarily magnanimous about
> > the whole business -- just as Georges was extraordinarily magnanimous.
> > Indeed they went about saving each other's lives or trying to in a way
> > that was almost horrible to me, though George had not then noticed that
> > Georges was more than 'a bit gone on' me. I sometimes think no one ever
> > had such a sense of guilt before. It was always understood that I wasn't
> > what they call in love with Georges -- our association progressed in
> > little leaps, each leap immediately preceding some attack or operation
> > in which he would almost inevitably be killed, but the last time I saw
> > him he was in jail waiting, as we were both confident, to be shot, and I
> > simply couldn't explain to him again as a kind of farewell that he could
> > never be a rival to George. So he has rotted in a filthy prison for more
> > than six months with nothing to do but remember me in my most pliant
> > moments. If he never gets out, which is indeed most probable, it's good
> > that he has managed to have some thoughts in a way pleasant, but if he
> > does get out I don't know how one reminds a man immediately he is a free
> > man again that one has only once missed the cue for saying that nothing
> > on earth would induce one to marry him. Being in prison in Spain means
> > living in a room with a number of others (about fifteen to twenty in a
> > room the size of your sitting-room) and never getting out of it; if the
> > window has steel shutters, as many have, never seeing daylight, never
> > having a letter; never being charged, let alone tried; never knowing
> > whether you will be shot tomorrow or released, in either case without
> > explanation; when your money runs out never eating anything but a bowl
> > of the worst imaginable soup and a bit of bread at 3 p.m. and at 11 p.m.
> > On the whole it's a pity I found that letter because Spain doesn't
> > really dominate us as much as all that. We have nineteen hens now --
> > eighteen deliberately and the other by accident because we bought some
> > ducklings and a hen escorted them. We thought we ought to boil her this
> > autumn so we took it in turns to watch the nesting boxes to see whether
> > she laid an egg to justify a longer life, and she did. And she is a
> > good mother, so she is to have children in the spring. This afternoon we
> > built a new henhouse -- that is we put the sections together -- and that
> > is the nucleus of the breeding pen. There is probably no question on
> > poultry-keeping that I am not able and very ready to answer. Perhaps you
> > would like to have a battery (say three units) in the bathroom so that
> > you could benefit from my advice. It would be a touching thing to
> > collect an egg just before brushing one's teeth and eat it just after.
> > Which reminds me that since we got back from Southwold, where we spent
> > an incredibly family Christmas with the Blairs, we have eaten boiled
> > eggs almost all the time. Before we had only one eggcup from Woolworths'
> > -- no two from Woolworths' and one that I gave George with an easter egg
> > in it before we were married (that cost threepence with egg). So it was
> > a Happy Thought dear, and they are such a nice shape and match your
> > mother's butter dish and breadboard, giving tone to the table.
> > We also have a poodle puppy. We called him Marx to remind us that we had
> > never read Marx and now we have read a little and taken so strong a
> > personal dislike to the man that we can't look the dog in the face when
> > we speak to him...
>
> > [Snipping details on the dog and on a mutual friend, Mary, who wishes to
> > avoid pregnancy while Eileen is hoping for it]
>
> > ...The last candle is guttering, and there isn't any good way out of
> > this letter. But perhaps it has broken a spell. Does yours mean that
> > June is at Oxford? I just didn't know. Anyway she can't be more than
> > fifteen. Norman? John? Elisabeth? Jean? Ruth? Your mother? Your father?
> > I don't think I want any news of you and Quartus because I am quite sure
> > I know all about you and it would be so dreadful to hear something quite
> > different. The only thing I can do is to come and see. I am supposed to
> > be having a holiday when the book is finished, as it will be this month,
> > only we sha'n't have any money at all, and we were so rich. When are you
> > coming to the sales? Or are you? I don't know whether I can get away
> > even for a day because the book is late and the typescript of the final
> > draft is not begun and Eric is writing a book in collaboration with a
> > number of people including a German and I keep getting his manuscript to
> > revise and not being able to understand anything at all in it [The
> > editors wonder if this was 'Poverty in Practice,' subject of a contract
> > with Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd. that Orwell wasn't well enough to
> > fulfill.] -- but if you were coming to the sales these things would all
> > be less important to
>
> > Pig.
>
> > Did I wish you a happy new year?
> > Please wish all your family a happy new year from me.
> > Eric (I mean George) has just come in to say that the light is out (he
> > had the Aladdin lamp because he was Working) and is there any oil (such
> > a question) and I can't type in this light (which may be true, but I
> > can't read it) and he is hungry and wants some cocoa and some biscuits
> > and it is after midnight and Marx is eating a bone and has left pieces
> > in each chair and which shall he sit on now."
>
> > Good grief.
>
> > There's more from later on, much of it continuing with deeply black
> > humor. What a life.
>
> > /M


Character is a good word and I know what you are saying here. This
word has a slightly unpleasant aftertaste though, having been used by
those who see themselves as having it on those whom they judge as
deficient in same.

Writers can be attractive for reasons strictly speaking outside the
text and Orwell's biography is intertwined with his writing in ways
that are difficult to explain. Where Eileen fits in makes for
interesting speculation. We know her simply through the few lines she
wrote and you would think that that couldn't evoke such strong
feelings. But I believe how we connect with another person - living
or dead - is all rather inexplicable. It may seem odd to actually feel
love for a person whose life never intersected with your own in the
flesh and bone, yet isn't that just what can happen when you get to
know someone through their writing.

The relationship that George and Eileen had looks terribly complicated
to me and yes not merely one of mate and matee. Or if it was they took
turns playing each part. The letters that went between Orwell and
Brenda Salkeld confirm this to a certain degree. The very next day
after his wedding, GO writes to Brenda, telling her Eileen had the
'obey' clause removed from their marriage vows: he says it was "not
the correct marriage service". And barely a year later he is trying
to start an affair with Brenda, which he said Eileen did not object
to. oh I'm sure she did really, but she knew that if the relationship
were finally consummated he would lose the fantasy -- and therefore
the feeling. He was burning for something that didn't exist.
B.
 >> Stay informed about: Eileen letters 

Boy was I knocked by these letters! My working image of Eileen had been
that she was a walk-onish, retiring, help-mate in tweeds of George,
consuming whatever spark she had in the genteel firebuckets were allowed to
women
before the war and in drudgery for the MOI or the BBC during the war. That
was how I roujnded out her picture. These letters disabuse. She was cool
as a cucumber and dauntless as a lord..

Of course, these letters are to a college girlfriend and continue in their
tone of former days, when Eileen was self-identified as "Pig" probably for
theoretical amoralism, and you could argue that all women sound like
Tamburlaine when writing to girlfriends about keeping unsuccessful suitors
on a string but in terms of audacity the letters transcend even their genre.

" I don't think I want any news of you and Quartus because I am quite sure
I know all about you and it would be so dreadful to hear something quite
different."
What daring in saying that! It says that Eileen's need to keep her sense
of omniscience about Nora and Quartus outweighs Nora's need to spout
exactly the kind of
bubbly news that Eileen's letter is filled with. It is a pre-emption that
would incense Nora
if Eileen and she were strangers but Eileen gets away with it because she
is really recalling to Nora her (Eileen's) cold-bloodedness when she was in
the social whirl at Oxford, which contrasts sharply with
her current rough life.


These letters show that the most important thing in life is character, more
important than living conditions. Character is the primitive construct. It
is the seed-bed. The resources of your country count too because they set
the limits on what character can accomplish. Orwell wrote 8 books in the
thirties as a time when he was poor and his health was starting to go.
Eileen must have been terribly important as a facilitator and sounding-board
and advisor on which publisher to trust, not because she didn't complain but
because she knew how to gaffe the men (in this case, one man), hew to a
bruising schedule, sense strategies and openings and do all with a light
touch.

Something of Eileen may have "rubbed off" on George after her death. When
a person you have been close to dies, you miss them. One way of bridging
the gap created by the loss is to imitate the departed, which is a way of
keeping them present. So Eileen's ability to condense complex information,
apparent in these letters, may appear in the post-war essays which do seem
to be his best.
<bridegam RemoveThis @pacbell.net> wrote in message
news:udCoh.32719$Gr2.32185@newssvr21.news.prodigy.net...
> georgeorwell RemoveThis @email.com wrote:
> > Martha Bridegam a écrit :
> >
> >> Did someone already post material out of Eileen's letters in *The Lost
> >> Orwell*, and/or would anyone like to read same?
> >>
> >> /M
> >
> > I don't know, but if you are offering to post some of this yourself,
> > yes please do.
> > B.
> >
>
> All the newly published letters were written to Norah Myles, a classmate
> from St. Hugh's College, Oxford. Some of them make you feel alternately
> sorry for each of them. E.g. this one, conjecturally from Nov. 3 or 10,
> 1936:
>
> "Tuesday
> 36 High Street
> Southwold
> Suffolk
>
> I wrote the address quite a long time ago & have since played with three
> cats, made a cigarette (I make them now but not with the naked hand),
> poked the fire & driven Eric (i.e. George) nearly mad -- all because I
> didn't really know what to say. I lost my habit of punctual
> correspondence during the first few weeks of marriage because we
> quarrelled so continuously & really bitterly that I thought I'd save
> time & just write one letter to everyone when the murder or separation
> had been accomplished. Then Eric's aunt [Footnote says this was the
> famous Nellie Limouzin of Paris/Esperanto fame] came to stay & was so
> dreadful (she stayed *two months*) that we stopped quarrelling & just
> repined. Then she went away & now all our troubles are over. They arose
> partly because Mother drove me so hard in the first week of June that I
> cried all the time from pure exhaustion & partly because Eric had
> decided that he mustn't let his work be interrupted & complained
> bitterly when we'd been married a week that he'd only done two good
> days' work out of seven. Also I couldn't make the oven cook anything &
> boiled eggs (on which Eric had lived almost exclusively) made me sick.
> Now I can make the oven cook a reasonable number of things & he is
> working very rapidly. I forgot to mention that he had his 'bronchitis'
> for three weeks in July & that it rained every day for six weeks during
> the whole of which the kitchen was flooded & all food went mouldy in a
> few hours. It seems a long time ago now but then seemed very permanent..."
>
> Here's another sorry-for-Eileen one, together with some Kopp revelations
> that make you sorry for Eric again:
>
> "New Year's Day, 1938
> You see I have no pen, no ink, no glasses and the prospect of no light,
> because the pens, the inks, the glasses and the candles are all in the
> room where George is working and if I disturb him again it will be for
> the fi