My father, George Orwell (or Uncle Eric)
By Conrad / Spinebreakers Crew
Conrad Landin interviews George Orwell's son Richard Blair about the connection between his father's personality and writing
George Orwell died in the year 1950, when his son Richard was only five. But was Eric Blair who Richard really knew, and not the pseudonym under which he published his works and associated in literary circles. While Richard Blair readily admits that his relationship with his father was severely limited by the fact that it was not able to "advance any further than the age of five and a half", one cannot help seeing some modest reflection of the literary great in him, and thus consider the connection between Orwell's personality and work.
Blair agrees that Orwell's role in his upbringing did leave some mark, although he may not have noticed it at the time. "I don't suppose I would really have understood what he was trying to instil in me as a child;" he acknowledges, "he just simply wanted me to grow up in the best possible way. He would be quite free to let me do whatever I wanted to do." It is hard to define this as far away from the freedom-seeking protagonists of Orwell - a theme which could also be associated with Orwell's residence, and his son's upbringing, in the remote Scottish island of Jura.
But Blair makes clear this was also an upbringing of values, akin to those he promoted in his writing: "He wanted to bring up a child possibly in a very middle class way, or perhaps teach the child the values of what was a decent human being - doesn't matter whether working class, middle class, whatever, really based around the ten commandments, without making it religious, because otherwise if you don't do that you're in trouble - you're in anarchy." Is this not a message of Orwell's novels, most significantly Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm?
Perhaps the most obvious reflection of Orwell in his writing is his protagonists, I ask Blair. He agrees: "I think he saw the main characters of these books as a reflection perhaps of himself," he says. "In Coming Up for Air George Bowling, somebody who liked the countryside and so on, [Orwell] despised the ways of the middle classes - the awful public school feeling." I suggest that the feeling of his protagonists could be described as a quiet discomfort. "Yes," Blair continues, "he just simply rebelled, presumably because of his own upbringing, when he was at prep school, he despised that whole veneer of respectability, where the people behind were complete and utter bastards, for want of a better word." In Coming Up for Air, protagonist Bowling devises an escape from his respectable suburban life to the roots of his childhood detesting the boredom of the modern world - could we not also imagine Orwell, or Eric Blair, having similar feelings?
We are speaking after a panel discussion hosted at Hampstead Town Hall titled Orwell in the Twenty-First Century. Of course, Blair tells me, it would really be completely impossible to suggest what he would be doing if he were still alive. "The moment he flatlined in 22 Jan 1950, all bets were off, because you never know what would he have thought, you can only surmise, you can only go on what he'd written and said before and kind of project that onwards, but none of us have any idea about in what direction he might have gone, depending on circumstances at the time."
The importance of seeing writers in the context of time was highlighted time and time again during the panel discussion. "Broadly speaking, he would probably hold the same sort of views, I think he was fairly faithful to that," he concedes. But he believes his father was adaptable, rather than fixed, in his philosophy. "I think he could be, well, not manipulated, but he could say 'well this is perhaps not so bad after all'" But has politics changed much over time? Blair doesn't think so. "Not the politics, the way people think. I mean really that was the whole point of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four - tyranny, totalitarianism - one person holding power over another person, and that has gone on since time in memorial, as you'll always have somebody who'll always come to the top, who'll always be a leader, and you'll always have those who are led."
It's easy to perceive Orwell to have been simply staunchly anti-Communist from the outset, a view frequently promoted by those on the Right, although his anti-totalitarian (and pro-democratic socialist) did not in fact develop until his experience of Stalinists in the Spanish Civil War. I ask Blair if he agrees that Animal Farm expresses a degree of sympathy with the intentions of the Communists in Russia, and he does. "Unfortunately, it involved 'human beings'," he quips. "And as soon as that happens you know it's not going to work out. That's of course exactly what happened in Animal Farm, wasn't it. [Communism] is a wonderful idea, the principle of the idea was great, that the animals would run the place, and everyone would be happy, but it wasn't so, as well all know."
But how did Orwell juggle his personal and literary commitments? "Really to family he was Uncle Eric," he replies, "always slightly eccentric but a very delightful man to be with." "Slightly quirky," he adds, "but nevertheless an ordinary human being." So how did this change when writing? "When he went into the George Orwell mode he always had something churning around in his mind about 'what can I write about next, I've got this idea that I need to get down on paper'. And then he'd go off on his own and type away, and keep everyone at arms length I suppose."
It is clear that many of the traits of Orwell's character were reflected in his writing, notably the eccentricity and frustration of his protagonists. Richard Blair's personal experience of his father from a family perspective is crucial to seeing the closeness between George Orwell and Eric Blair, although interestingly, it seems that the great political passion was rooted in the character of Orwell rather than what family experienced of 'Uncle Eric'. Nevertheless, Richard demonstrates the importance of values and decency in his father's life as well as his writing.
Conrad interviewed Richard Blair after an event titled 'Orwell in the Twenty-First Century' hosted by the Hampstead Rotary Club.