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BOOKS AND LETTERS FROM THE LIBRARY OF ANTHONY POWELL
Lot 322
ORWELL (GEORGE) Autograph letter signed ("George"), to the novelist Anthony Powell ("Dear Tony"), containing a bleak assessment of his future, Cranham, 11 May 1949
24 June 2015, 11:00 BST
London, KnightsbridgeSold for £8,750 inc. premium
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ORWELL (GEORGE)
Autograph letter signed ("George"), to the novelist Anthony Powell ("Dear Tony"), containing a bleak assessment of his future: "I have been beastly ill, on & off. I can't make any firm plans. If I'm reasonably well this winter I shall go abroad for some months. If I'm able to walk but can't face the journey I shall stay in somewhere like Brighton. If I have to continue in bed I shall try to move to some sanatorium near London where people can come & see me more easily. It looks as if I may have to spend the rest of my life, if not actually in bed, at any rate at the bath-chair level. I could stand that for say 5 years if only I could work. At present I can do nothing, not even a book review"; the rest of the letter being devoted to book chat: he tells Powell that he has at last got hold of a copy of his Aubrey ("...I had not realised he was such an all-round chap – had simply thought of him in connection with scandalous anecdotes. I look forward to seeing your selections..."), recommends Muggeridge read Ruth Fischer's Stalin and German Communism, says how sorry he is to hear about Hugh Kingsmill ("...tell him I just re-read his book on Dickens...& that I think the same as before – it's a brilliant book, but it's the case for the prosecution. I wonder why somebody doesn't reprint 'After Puritanism'..."), and wonders how he can get Gissing's New Grub Street, of which he has at last secured a copy, reprinted, 2 pages, one or two small marks, 4to, Cranham, 11 May 1949
Footnotes
'THE REST OF MY LIFE, IF NOT ACTUALLY IN BED, AT ANY RATE AT THE BATH-CHAIR LEVEL' – Orwell to Powell, resigning himself to life as an invalid which he could stand for five years "if only I could work". Powell wrote of Orwell at this time: 'In due course the trouble with Orwell's lung became so serious that he had to take to his bed. It was fairly clear that he was not going to recover; only the length of time that remained to him in doubt. "I don't think one dies," he said to me, "as long as one has another book to write – and I have"' (To Keep the Ball Rolling, p. 76).
Hugh Kingsmill, the inspiration for, and first subject of, Michael Holroyd as biographer, greatly admired Animal Farm which in his Progress of a Biographer he described as revealing Orwell's 'poetry, humour and tenderness'. Orwell in his turn thought that Kingsmill's biography of Dickens, The Sentimental Journey (1934) 'a brilliant book' and that his After Puritanism 'struck a telling blow at every form of tyranny, not excluding the ones which it is now fashionable to admire' (Holroyd, 'Hugh Kingsmill, forgotten writer', TLS, 17 January 2007).