Chapter-II
Introduction to Authors
As stated in the last chapter the basic objectives of the study are to trace out elements of Utopia and Dystopia and elements of science fiction in the works of Rahul Sanskritayan Baeeswi Sadi, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four. Besides it another major objective is to ascertain how much the future projected by these authors in the works selected for the study have been transformed into reality and have seen the light of the day and how much it is likely to become true in future and how much it remains hidden in the mysterious dark cave of future. Barring a few isolated articles on these authors and the theme taken up in the book there is no full length comparative work on these authors and works that justifies the composition of this work. After seeing the political and social environment of twentieth century in which these authors lived and worked it is essential to throw some light on the life and works of these authors before proceeding to their works taken up for this study. To take these authors in the chronological order let us first begin with Rahul Sankritayan, then Aldous Huxley and then his pupil George Orwell or Eric Blaire.
Rahul Sankritayan born on 9 April, 1893 was n Indian independence activist, writer and a polyglot who wrote in Hindi. His original name given at the time of his birth was Kedarnath Pandey . Basically he is known for playing a pivotal role in giving travelogue a literary form. He spent nearly forty five years of his life in travelling and is termed as father of Indian travelogue. He was one of the most widely travelled scholars of India remaining away from his home for nearly four decades. He is known for his authentic descriptions about his travel experiences for instance in his work Meri Ladakh Yatra ( My Laddakh Journey) he covers regional, historical and culture aspects of that region quite judiciously. He became a Buddhist monk ( a Bhikkhu) and eventually a marxist. As an activist for Indian independence he was arrested and jailed for three years for his anti British writings and speeches. He was born in Pandaha village in Uttar Pradesh while his ancestral village was Kanila Chakrapanpura in Azamgarh district also in Uttar Pradesh or more specifically in Eastern Uttar Pradesh. He began his education in a local primary school but later on he studied and mastered numerous languages independently besides learning the art of photography. Initially he was a keen follower of Arya Samaj founded by Swami Dayanand Saraswati. Then he was fascinated by Buddhism that changed his life as after taking Diksha in Sri Lanka he took the name Rahul( son of Buddha) and also used his gotra Sankritya and thus Kedarnath Pandey was transformed into Rahul Sankritayan. He later lost faith in God’s existence but still retained faith in reincarnation. Lateron he became a socialist and rejected the concepts of reincarnation and afterlife also.
Sanskritayan’s travels took him to different parts of the country like Ladakh, Kinnaur and Kashmir. He even travelled to various countries like Nepal, Tibet, Sri Lanka, Iran, China and Russia that was the then Soviet Union or USSR. He spent several years in the Parsa Gadh village in Saran district in Bihar. This village’s entry gate has been named as Rahul Gate. He mostly used surface transport while travelling and entered Tibet as a Buddhist monk and brought valuable paintings and Pali and Sanskrit manuscripts back to India. These objects have been taken from libraries of Vikramshila and Nalanda universities by Buddhist monks during twelfth century and after that when invading muslim armies were destroying universities in India. It is also believed that Rahul Sankritayan employed 22 mules to bring these material from Tibet to India. Patna museum has dedicated an entire section of the museum in the honour of Rahul Sankritayan exhibiting these paintings and manuscripts brought by him from Tibet. Sankritayan was a polyglot who was well versed in languages like Hindi, Sanskrit, Pali, Bhojpuri, Magahi Urdu,Persian, Arabic, Tamil, Kannada, Tibetan, Sinhelese, French and Russian and of course English. He was also an Indologist, a Marxist Theoretician and a creative writer. He began writing during his twenties and his works numbering over 100 cover a variety of subjects like sociology, history, philosophy, Buddhism, Tibetology, lexicography, grammar, textual editing, folklore, science, drama and politics. Many of his works remained unpublished. He even translated a work Majjhima from Prakrit to Hindi. His one of the most popular work is Volga se Ganga ( A Journey from Volga to Ganga) which was a work of historical fiction concerning the migration of Aryans from the steppes of the Eurasia to regions around the Volga river and then their movements to the plains of Ganga through the Hindukush and the Himalaya mountains. The book begins in 6000 B.C and ends in 1942 when Mahatama Gandhi launched Quit India movement. It was translated into a number of languages like English, Tamil and Kannada. He worked as Professor of Indology in 1937-38 and again in 1947-48 at University of Leningrad.
Rahul was married when very young and never came to know anything of his child wife named Santoshi. As per his autobiography Meri Jivan Yatra he saw her only once in his life in the fourth decade of his life. During his stay in Soviet Russia a second time on invitation to teach Buddhism at University of Leningrad he came in contact with a Mongolian scholar Lola (Elena Naveertovna Kozerovskaya). She could speak French, English and Russian and write Sanskrit. She helped him in working on Tibetan-Sanskrit dictionary. Their attachment ended in marriage and birth of a child named Igor Rahulovich. However, mother and son were not allowed to accompany him after the completion of teaching assignment due to restrictions imposed by Stalin regime. Later in life he married Kamala, who was an Indian writer, editor, and scholar in Hindi and Nepali. The had a daughter named Jaya Sankritayan Parhawk and a son Jeta who became Professor of Economics at North Bengal University. Rahul Sankritayan accepted a teaching job at a Sri Lankan university, where he fell seriously ill. Diabetes, hypertension and a mild stroke struck him as a result of which he lost his memory. He passed away in Darjeeling in 1963.
During his creative career he has written novels, short stories, biographies and autobiographies. Some of his popular and famous novels are Baaeesween Sadi (Twenty Second Century written in 1923), Jeene ke Liye( What to do to live) Simha Senapati ( Simha Commander), Jai Yaudheya ( Victory to Warrior) Bhago Nahi, Duniya ko Badlo( Don’t Flee, Change the World), Madhur Swapna ( Sweet Dream) Rajasthani Raniwas( Queen Palace of Rajasthan), Vismrit Yatri ( Forgotten Traveller), and Divodas. Among his famous short stories are Satmi ke Bacche ( Children of Satmi) Voga se Ganga ( From Volga to Ganga0 Bahurangi Madhupuri (Multicoloured Madhupuri) and Kanaila ki Katha ( Tale of Kanaila). Besides his autobiography Meri Jivan Yatra in fivd volumes Rahul has also written biographies of many leading personalities of his age like Lenin, Karl Marx, Stalin, Mao-Tse-Tung, Sardar Prithvi Singh and the like.
Next author under study is Aldous Huxley, teacher of the next author under consideration George Orwell or Eric Blaire. Aldous Huxley was an English writer and philosopher who wrote nearly 50 books both fiction and non-fiction works as well as wide ranging essays, narratives and poems. He was born on 26th July 1894 at Godalming, Surrey, England, nearly one year after the birth of Rahul Sankritayan. He graduated from Balliol College Oxford, with an undergraduate degree in English literature. Early in his career, he published short stories and poetry and edited the literary magazine Oxford Poetry, before going on to publish travel writing, satire and screen plays. This bring out another similarity between Rahul Sankritayan and Aldous Huxley that both of them have written travel literature though in different languages. He spent the later part of his life in Los Angeles, United States of America from 1937 till his death. One of the reason to include Aldous Huxley in this study was that he represented a new corner part of the world atleast for some part of his life. All these authors have been interrelated in some sense as George Orwell was born and lived his early life in India and then went to Britain where he was taught by Aldous Huxley who both represented the two parts of the world – England and America- quite distant from each other not only physically but in culture and environment as well as Huxley spent the later part of his life in Los Angeles in America. Huxley was acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of his time. He was nominated nine times for the Noble Prize in Literature and was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962. Huxley was a pacifist and he got interested in philosophical mysticism and universalism addressing these subjects with works like The Perennial Philosophy, written in 1945 which illustrates commonalities between Western and Eastern mysticism. His other work is The Doors of Perception, written in 1954 which interprets his own psychedelic experience with mescaline. In his most famous novel Brave New World, written in 1932 and his last novel Island, written in 1962 he presented his vision of dystopia and utopia respectively.
Huxley was third son of the writer and school master Leonard Huxley, who edited The Cornhill Magazine, and his first wife, Julia Arnold who set up Prior’s Field School. Julia was niece of famous nineteenth century poet and critic Matthew Arnold and the sister of Mrs. Humphry Ward. Julia named him Aldous after a character in one of her sister Mrs Humphry Ward’s novel. Aldous was grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley the zoologist, agnostic and controversialist. His brother Julian Huxley and half-brother Andrew Huxley were also outstanding biologists. As a child Huxley ‘s nickname was Ogie short for Ogre. He was described by his mother Julian as someone who frequently contemplated the strangeness of things. Huxley’s education began in his father’s well equipped botanical laboratory, after which he enrolled at Hillside School near Godalming. Here he was taught by his own mother for several years till she became terminally ill. After Hillside he went to Eton College. His mother passed away when Aldous was only 14 years old. He contracted an eye disease Keratitis punctata that left him practically blind for two to three years and that ended his dreams of becoming a doctor. In 1913 he entered Balliol College Oxford where he studied English Literature. He volunteered for the British Army in 1916 to take part in Great War, that later on cqme to be known as World War I but he was rejected on health grounds as he was half blind in one eye. Later his eye sight was partly recovered. He edited Oxford Poetry in 1916 and in the same year he graduated with first class honours. His brother Julian wrote; “ I believe his blindness was a blessing in disguise. For one thing, it put paid to his idea of taking up medicine as a career...His unquietness lay in his universalism. He was able to take all knowledge for his province”. After graduating he sought employment as he was financially indebted to his father for his studies at Balliol College Oxford. He taught for an year at Eton College. Here he came into contact with George Orwell or Eric Balire who was one of his pupil. He was mainly remembered as being an incompetent school master unable to keep order in class. But still Eric Blaire and others like Steven Runciman spoke highly of his excellent command over language. Huxley also worked for some time at Brunner and Mond, which an advanced chemical plant in Billingham in County Durhan, north-east England. The experience he had there of “ an ordered universe in a world of planless incoherence” was an important source of his science fiction Brave New World.
Huxley completed his first (unpublished) novel at the age of 17 and began writing seriously in his early twenties establishing himself as a successful writer and social satirist. His first published novels were Crome Yellow, published in 1921, Antic Hay in 1923 and Point Counter Point in 1928. His work under study Brave New World was his fifth novel and hailed as his first dystopian work. In 1920’s he also contributed to Vanity Fair and British Vogue magazines. During the Great War ( WWI) Huxley spent much of his time at Garsington Manor near Oxford which was home of Lady Ottoline Morrell. Here working as a farm labourer he met several Bloomsbury Group figures like Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead and Clive Bell. Later in Crome Yellow he caricatured the Garsington lifestyle. Jobs were quite scarce, but in 1919 John Middleton Murry was reorganizing the Athenaeum and invited Huxley to join the staff. He accepted the offer immediately and married the Belgian refugee Maria Nys also at Garsington. Here during his stay in Italy in 1920’s he would visit another great novelist of 20th century D.H. Lawrrence. After Lawrence’s death Huxley edited Lawrence’s Letters, published in 1932. In early 1929 he met Gerald Heard, a brilliant writer and broadcaster, philosopher and interpreter of contemporary science. Works of this period were important novels on the dehumanising aspects of scientific progress, most famously Brave New World and on pacifist theme like Eyeless in Gaza. Huxley was strongly influenced by F. Matthias Alexander and portrayed him as a character in Eyeless in Gaza. During this period, Huxley began to write and edit non-fiction works on pacifist issues, including Ends and Means , An Encyclopaedia of Pacifism, and Pacifism and Philosophy. He was also an active member of organization Peace Pledge Union.
In 1937 Huxley moved to Holywood with his wife Maria,son Matthew and friend Gerald Heard. He lived in the U.S mainly in California until his death but he spent also some time in Taos, Mexico that is a tract on war, religion, nationalism and ethics. It was published in 1937. Heard introduced Huxley to Vedanta (Upanishad-centred philosophy), meditation, and vegetarianism through the principle of ahimsa. In 1938, Huxley befriended Jiddu Krishnamurti, whose teachings he greatly admired. Huxley and Krishnamurti entered into an enduring exchange, sometimes edging on debate over many years, with Krishnamurti representing the more rarefied detached, ivory tower perspective and Huxley, with his pragmatic concerns, the more socially and historically informed position. He provided an introduction to Krishnamurti’s quintessential statement The First and Last Freedom.
Huxley also became a Vedantist in the circle of Hindu Swami Prabhavananda and introduced Christopher Isherwood to this circle. Not long, afterwards he wrote his book on widely held spiritual values and ideas titled The Perennial Philosophy in which he discusses the teachings of renowned mystics of the world. Huxley’s book affirmed a sensibility that insists there are realities beyond the generally accepted ‘five senses’ and that there is genuine meaning of for humans beyond both sensual satisfactions and sentimentalities. Huxley became a close friend of Remesen Bird, President of Occidental College. He spent mush of his time in the college, which is in the Eagle Rock neighbourhood of Los Angeles. This college appears as “Tarzana College” in his fictional work After Many a Summer, written in 1939. Huxley was awarded James Tait Black Memorial Prize for this novel in which he had incorporated Mr.Bird too. During this period Huxley worked as a screen writer for Hollywood and earned quite a substantial income from it. On 21 October 1949 Huxley wrote to George Orwell congratulating him on how fine and how profoundly important the book is. In this letter to Orwell he predicted
Within the next few generations
I believe that the world’s
leaders will discover that
infant conditioning and
narco hyponosis are more
efficient, as instruments of
government, than clubs and
prisons, and that the lust for
power can be just as
completely satisfied by
suggesting people into
loving their servitude as by
flogging them and kicking
them into obedience ( Ed. Grover Smith: Letters of Aldous Huxley)
In 1953 Huxley and Maria applied for US citizenship and presented themselves for examination. When Huxley refused to bear arms for the U.S and would not state that his objections were based on religious ideals, the only excuse allowed under the McCarran Act, the judge had to adjourn the proceedings. He withdrew his application but however he remained in U.S. In 1959 he turned down the offer of Macmillan government to be given the tile of Knight Bachelor without any reason. In the fall semester in 1960 he was invited by Professor Huston Smith to be the Carnegie Visiting Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As part of the MIT centennial program of events organized by Department of Humanities, Huxley presented as series of lectures titled, “ What a Piece of Work is a Man” which concerned history, language and art.
Beginning in 1939 and continuing till his last breath Huxley had an extensive association with the Vedanta Society of Southern California, founded and headed by Swami Prabhavananda. Together with Gerald Heard, Christopher Isherwood and other followers, he was initiated by the Swami and was taught meditation and spiritual practices. In 1944 , Huxlwy wrote the Introduction to the translation of Bhagavad Gita : The Song of God translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, which was published by the Vedanta Society of Southern California. From 1941 to 1960 Huxley contributed 48 articles to Vedanta and the West, published by the society. He also served on the editorial board with Isherwood, Heard and playwright John Van Druten from 1951 to 1962. Huxley also occasionally lectured at the Hollywood and Santa Barbara Vedanta Temples. Two of his lectures Knowledge and Understanding and Who are We ? Have been released on CD. However, Huxley’s agnosticism, together with his speculative propensity, made it difficult for him to fully embrace any form of institutionalised religion.
The third author under consideration in this work is Eric Arthur Blair, popularly known by his pen name George Orwell. He was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitarianism, and support of democratic socialism. Orwell was born in 1903 in Motihari, Bihar, India in a lower-upper middle class family. His great grandfather Charles Blair was a wealthy country gentleman and absentee owner of Jamaican plantations from Dorset who entered into marital alliance with Lady Mary Fane, daughter of the 8th Earl of Westmorland. Orwell’s grandfather Thomas Richard Arthur Blair, was an Anglican clergyman, and his father Richard Walmesley Blair worked as a Sub-Deputy agent in the Opium Department of Indian Civil Service overseeing the production and storage of opium for sale in China. Orwell’s mother Ida Mabel Blair (nee Limouzin) grew up in Moulmein Burma where her father was involved in speculative ventures. Eric had two sisters- Marjorie who was five years older to him and Avril who was five years younger to him. When he was one year old his mother took him and Marjorie to England. In 1904 Ida Blair settled with her children at Oxfordshire. So he was being brought up in the company of his mother and sister and apart from a brief visit in 1907 he did not see his father till 1912. At the age of five years Eric was sent as a day boy to a convent school in Henley-on -Thomas, which his elder sister Marjorie also attended. It was a Roman catholic convent run by French Ursuline nuns. His mother wanted that he should get public school education but their family could not afford the fees. Through the social connections of Ida Blair’s brother Charles Limouzin Blaire generated the scholarship to St. Cyprian School Eastbourne, East Sussex. Arriving in the school in 1911, he boarded at the school for the next five years, returning home only during school vacations. Although he knew nothing about the reduced fees but he came to know that he was from a poor home, so he hated the school and many years expressed in his essay written years later under the title “ Such,Such were the Joys’, published posthumously. At this school he met Cyril Connolly who became a writer and who as an editor of Horizon, published several of his essays. Before the First World War the family moved to Shiplake, Oxfordshire, where Orwell became friendly with Buddicom family especially their daughter Jacintha. They read and wrote poetry and dreamed of becoming famous writers by writing a book like H.G. Well’s A Modern Utopia. During this period he enjoyed shooting, fishing and birdwatching with Jacaintha and her brother. While at St. Cyprian’s Blair wrote two poems that were published by Henley and South Oxfordshire Standard. He came second to Connolly in the Harrow History Prize ane earned scholarships to Wellington and Eton. But inclusion on the Eton scholarship roll did not guarantee a place, and none was immediately available for him. So he took up the place at Wellington where he spent the spring term. In May 1917 a place became available at Eton as King’s Scholar. He told Jacintha that Wellington was beastly but he was interested and happy at Eton. His principal tutor was A.S.F. Grow, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge who also gave him advise later in his career. Here he was taught French for a very brief period by Aldous Huxley. Steven Runciman who was with Blaire at Eton noted that he and his contemporaries appreciated Huxley’s linguistic flair. Though Cyril Connolly also followed him to Eton but as they were in separate years so they did not associate much with each other. His academic performance indicated that he neglected studies but during his stay he worked with Roger Mynors to bring out a college magazine, The Election Times and other publications like College Days and Bubble and Squeak. He also participated in Eton Wall Game. His parents could not send him to another university without another scholarship and they were convinced from his poor academic result that he will not be able to bag another scholarship.
Runciman noticed that he had romantic ideas about the East and the family decided that Blair should join the Imperial Police, the precursor of Indian Police Service. For this he had to pass an entrance exam and he cleared it by coming 7th out of 25 examinees. His maternal grandmother lived at Moulmein Burma, so he chose a posting in Burma which was a province of India at that time. In 1922 he boarded SS Herefordshire to come to Burma via Suez Canal and Ceylon. A month later he reached Rangoon and travelled to the Police Training School Mandalay where he was appointed Assistant District Superintendent with the pay of Rs. 525/- per month at Burma’s main hill station Maymyo. After a brief tenure here he was posted to the frontier outpost of Myaungmya in Irrawaddy Delta in 1924.
Working as an imperial police officer gave him considerable responsibility while most of his contemporaries were still studying at universities. When he was posted farther east in the delta of Twante as a sub-divisional officer, he was responsible for the security of nearly 2 lac people. At th end of 1924 he was transferred to Syriam, closer to Rangoon that had a refinery of Burmah Oil Company with the surrounding land a barren waste, all vegetation killed by the fumes of Sulphur di oxide but as the town was near Rangoon, a cosmopolitan seaport so Blair went into the city often to browse in a bookshop and eat well cooked food and to be away from the dreary routine of police life. In September 1925 he was sent to Insein, that had second largest prison in Burma. Here he had a long conversation on a number of subjects with Elisa Maria Langford Rae who later married Kazi Lhendup Dorjee of Sikkim. Now Blair had completed his training and was getting the salary of Rs. 750/- per month, including all allowances. In Burma he acquired the reputation of an outsider though he had learnt Burmese before he left the country and conversed fluently with Burmese priests. He spent much of his time alone reading or pursuing non-pukka activities,such as attending the churches of the Karen ethnic group. In April 1926 he moved to Moulmein where his maternal grandmother lived. At the end of 1926 he was shifted to Katha in Upper Burma where he contracted dengue fever in 1927, so he had to return to England on sickness leave. He was living with his family in Cornwall where he decided to resign from Indian Imperial Police Service to become a writer. In England he settled back in the family home at Southwold, renewing acquaintances with local friends and attending an Old Etonian Dinner. He visited his old tutor Gow at Cambridge to seek his advise on becoming a writer and in 1927 he moved to London. With the help of a family acquaintance Ruth Pitter he was able to find lodgings. Pitter had a sympathetic interest in Blair’s writings and pointing out weaknesses in his poetry advised him to write about what he knew. So he decided to write of certain aspects of the present that he set out to know and ventured into the East of London. In imitation of Jack London whose writings particularly The People of the Abyss he admired Blair started to explore the poorer parts of London. On his first outing he set out to Limehouse Causeway, spending his first night in a common lodging house, possibly George Levy’s Kip. For a while he went native in his own country and dressing like a tramp and adopting the name of P.S. Burton he recorded his experiences of the low life in The Spike, his first published essay in English, and in the second half of his first book Down and Out in Paris and London, published in 1933. In early 1928 he moved to Paris and lived in a working class district where his aunt Nellie Limouzin also lived and gave him social and financial support. He began to write novels, including an early version of Burmese Days, but nothing else of that period is surviving. He was more successful as a journalist and published articles in Monde, a political, literary journal edited by Barbusse and G.K.’s Weekly. Blaire fell seriously ill in 1929 and was taken to Hopital Cochin which was a free hospital where medical students were trained. His experiences there were the basis of his essay How the Poor Die published in 1946. Shortly afterwards his money was stolen from his lodging house so he had to do menial jobs of even dishwashing in a fashionable hotel of Paris .In August 1929 he sent his article The Spike to John Middleton Murry’s New Adelphi magazine in London which was accepted for publication by the editors Max Plowman and Sir Richard Rees.
In December 1929 Blair returned to England and went to his parent’s house in Southwold,a coastal town in Suffolk where his sister Avril was running a tea house successfully. He became acquainted with a number of local people like Brenda Salkeld, the clergyman’s daughter who worked as a gym teacher at St. Felix’s Girl’s School. Though she rejected his offer of marriage but she remained a life long friend. He also renewed friendship with his old friends like Dennis Collings whose girl friend Eleanor Jacques was also to play a part in his life. In early 1930 he stayed with his sister Marjorie and her husband Humphrey Dakin who was as unappreciative of Blair as when they knew each other as children. At this time Blair was writing reviews for Adelphi and acting as a private tutor to a disabled child at Southwold. He also tutored three young brothers , one of whom, Richard Peters later became a distinguished academic. He now regularly contributed to Adelphi , with “ A Hanging” appearing in August 1931. From August to September 1931 his explorations of poverty continued, and, like a protagonist of A Clergyman’s Daughter, he followed the East End tradition of working in the Kent hop fields. He kept a dairy about his experiences there. Afterwards he lodged in the Tooley Street Kip, but could not stand it for long, and with financial aid from his parents moved to Windsor Street where he stayed until Christmas. “Hop Picking” by Eric Blair appeared in October 1931 issue of New Statesman, whose editorial staff included his old friend Cyril Connolly. Mabel Fierz put him in contact with Leonard Moore, who became his literary agent in April 1932. At this time Jonathan Cape rejected A Scullion’s Diary, the first version of Down and Out. On the advise of Richard Rees, he offered it to Faber and Faber , but their editorial director, T.S. Eliot also rejected it. He ended the year by deliberately getting himself arrested so that he could experience Christmas in prison but after he was taken to Bethnal Green Police Station in the East End of London the authorities did not regard his drunk and disorderly behaviour as imprisonable, and after two days in a cell he returned home to Southwold.
In April 1932 Blair became a teacher at The Hawthorns High School, a school for boys, in Hayes, West London. This was a small school offering private schooling for children of local tradesmen and shopkeepers , and had only 14 or 16 boys aged between ten and sixteen and one other master. While at the school he became friendly with the curate of the local parish church and became involved with activities there. Mabel Fierz had pursued matters with Moore, and at the end of June 1932 Moore told Blair that Victor Gollancz was ready to publish a Scullion’s Dairy for 40 pounds in advance though his publishing house was an outlet for radical and socialist works. At the end of the Summer term in 1932 he returned to Southwold where his parents used a legacy to buy their own home. Blair and his sister Avril spent the holidays making the house habitable while he also worked on Burmese Days. His essay “Clink” describing his failed attempt to get sent to prison, appeared in Adelphi in its 1932 issue. He returned to teaching at Hayes and prepared for the publication of his book, now known as Down and Out in Paris and London. He wished to publish it under a different name to avoid any embarrassment to his family over his time as a tramp. And he finally adopted the nom de plume of George Orwell as it was a good round English name out of other options like P.S. Burton ( a name he used when tramping), Kenneth Miles and H Leewis Allways. The name George was inspired by the patron saint of England and Orwell after the River Orwell in Suffolk which was one of George’s favourite locations. Down and Out in Paris and London was published by Victor Gollancz in London on 9 January 1933 and received favourable views from papers like The Times Literary Supplement. It was a modestly successful and was next published by Harper and Brothers in New York. In mid 1933 he left Hawthorns to become a teacher at Frays College in Uxbridge, West London. It was a much larger establishment with 200 pupils and a full complement of staff. He acquired a motorbike and took trips through the surrounding countryside. On one of these expeditions he got soaked and caught a chill that developed into pneumonia. He was taken to Cottage Hospital in Uxbridge where for a time his life was believed to be in danger. When he was discharged in January 1934 he returned to Southwold to his parents house to convalesce. After that he never returned to reaching.
He was disappointed when Gollancz turned down Burmese Days, mainly on the grounds of potential suits for libel, but Harper were prepared to publish it in America. Meanwhile Blair started working on the novel A Clergyman’s Daughter, drawing upon his life as a teacher and on life in Southwold. As Eleanor Jacques was now married and living in Singapore and Brenda Salkeld had gone to Ireland so Blair was relatively isolated in Southwold- working on his allotments, walking alone and spending time with his father. So in October after sending A Clergyman’s Daughter to Moore he left for London to take job that had been found by his aunt Nellie Limouzin. This job was a part-time assistant in Booklover’s Corner, a second-hand bookshop in Hampstead run by Francis and Myfanwy Westrope, who were friends of Nellie Limouzin in the Esperanto movement. The Westropes friendly with him and provided him with comfortable accommodation at Warwick Mansions. He was sharing the job with Jon Kimche who also lived with Westropes. Blair worked at the shop in the afternoons and had his mornings free to write and his evenings free to socialise. These experiences provided background for the novel Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936). Like other guests at of the Westropes, he was able to enjoy company of Richard Rees and the Adelphi writers and Mabel Fierz. Though Westropes and Kimche were members of Independent Labour Party but Blair was not politically active at this time as he was writing for the Adelphi and preparing A Clergyman’s Daughter and Burmese Days for publication. In 1935 Clergyman’s Daughter was published and Blair met his future wife Eileen O’ Shaughnessy when his Landlady Rosalind Obermeyer, who was pursuing a degree in Psychology from University College London invited her classfellows for a party. In the month of June in the same year that is 1935 Burmese Days were published. Prompted by positive review of the book by Cyril Connolly in the New Statesman he moved to 50, Lawford Road, Kentish town. Here he remained till the end of January 1936. At this time, Victor Gollancz suggested Orwell to spend some time in investigating social conditions in economically depressed Northern England. On January 31, 1936 Orwell set out by public transport and on foot reaching Manchester at a time when banks had closed so he had to spend the night in a common lodging house. Next day he was suggested by one of the trade union official Frank Meade to go to Wigan. Here he visited many homes to see how people lived, took detailed notes of housing conditions and wages earned, went down to Bryn Hall coal mine and used the local public library to consult public health records and reports on working conditions in mines. While observing social conditions in the mines like Grimethorpe he also attended meetings of Communist Party. He also made visits to his sister at Headingley, during which he visited Bronte Parsonage at Haworth where he was impressed by a pair of Charlotte Broonte’s cloth tipped boots, very small, with square toes and lacing up at the sides. Orwell needed some place where he could concentrate on writing his book and again the aid came from Aunt Nellie, who was living at Wallington, Hertfordshire in a small cottage with almost no modern facilities. He moved in this place in April 1936 and started working on The Road to Wigan Pier. Keep the Aspidistra was published in this year by Gollancz and next year The Road to Wigan Pier, which was the result of his journeys through the north was also published by Victor Golancz for the Left Book Club. In the month of June in 1937 Blair married Eileen but shortly he decided to join Spanish Civil War from the Republican side after Franco’s military uprising that was supported by Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and local groups such as Falange. He used his Independent Labour Party contacts to get a letter of introduction to John McNair in Barceloa.
Orwell started for Spain on 23 December 1936 and dined with famous writer Henry Miller on his way at Paris. He met John McNair of Independent Labour Party at Barcelona. He stepped into the complex political situation at Catalonia. The Republican government was supported by a number of factions with conflicting aims. He was exasperated by this Kaleidoscope of political parties and trade unions with their tiresome names. As Independent Labour Party was affiliated to POUM ( Partido Obrero de Unification Marxista or Worker’s Party of of Marxist Unification) so he joined it. After a time at Lenin Barracks in Barcelona he was sent to a comparatively quieter place Aragon Fort under Georges Kopp. In January 1937 he was at Alcubierre 1500 feet above sea level in the height of winters. There was little military action and he was shocked by the shortage of munitions, food and fuel and other extreme deprivations. With his cadet corps and police training he was quickly promoted to the rank of Corporal. Along with British ILP contingent he was sent to Oscuro and then to Huesca.
Meanwhile back in England Eileen had been handling the issues related to the publication of The Road to Wigan. The she too decided to leave for Spain leaving the matters Neillie Limouzin. She volunteered for a job in McNair’s office and with the help of George Kopp paid visits to her husband bringing him English tea, chocolate and cigars. Orwell had to spend a few days in hospital due to poisoned hand and had most of his possessions stolen by the staff. He returned to the front and saw some action in a night assault on the Nationalist trenches where he chased an enemy soldier with a bayonet and bombed an enemy rifle position.
In April, Orwell returned to Barcelona. Wanting to be sent to Madrid front, that implied that he must join the International Column, he approached a communist friend attached to the Spanish Medical Aid and explained his case. Although he did not think much of the Communists, Orwell was still ready to treat them as allies and friends. This was the time of the Barcelona May Days and he was caught up in factional fighting. Orwell spent much of his time on a roof, with a stack of novels, but encountered Jon Kimche from his Hampstead days. The following campaign lies and distortion carried out by the Communist Press, in which the POUM was accused of collaborating with the fascists, had a dramatic effect on him. Instead of joining International Column, as he had intended Orwell decided to return to the Aragon Front. Once the My fighting was over, he was approached by a communist friend who asked if he sill intended to join International Brigades. Orwell expressed surprise that they should still need him because according to the Communist Press he was a fascist. After his return to the front he was wounded in the throat by a sniper’s bullet. He recovered sufficiently at a hospital in Lleida. On 27 May 1937 Orwell was sent to Tarragona and two days later to a POUM sanatorium in the suburbs of Barcelona. The bullet had missed his main artery by the barest margin as a result of which his voice was barely audible. Though he received electrotherapy but he was declared unfit for active service.
By the middle of June POUM was painted by Trotskyist organisation as objectively Fascist and hence outlawed and utter attack so Orwell and his wife had to lie low as their life was under threat though a number of members like Kopp were arrested. Finally they escaped with their passport ready from Spain by train, diverting to Banyuls-sur-Meir for a short stay before returning to England in June 1937 and stayed at O’ Shaughnessy home at Greenwich. Here he found his views on the Spanish Civil War out of favour as a result of which Kinglsley Martin rejected two of his works and Gollancz was also equally cautious. Orwell was able to find a more sympathetic publisher in for his views in Fredric Warburg of Secker and Warburg. He acquired goats, a cockerel whom he called Henry Ford and a Poddle Puppy named Marx and settled down to animal husbandry and writing Homage to Catalonia. There were thoughts of going to India to work on a Lucknow newspaper named The Pioneer in March 1938 but his health deteriorated and was admitted to Preston Hall Sanatorium as he was thought to be suffering from tuberculosis and stayed here till September. The novelist L.H. Myers secretly funded a trip to French Morocco for half a year to avoid English winters and recover his health. So Orwells set out in September 1938 to French Morocco via Gibralatar and Tangier to avoid Spanish Morocco and arrived at Marrakech where they hired a villa on the road to Casablanca and here he wrote coming Up for Air they returned back to England in March 1939.
At the onset of World War II Orwell’s wife Eileen started working in the Censorship Department of the Ministry of Information in Central London., staying during the week with her family in Greenwich. Orwell also submitted his name to the Central Register for war work but nothing transpired. Orwell told Geoffrey Gorer “ They won’t have me in the army, at any rate at present because of my lungs”. So he returned to Wallington and in late 1939 wrote material for his first collection of essays Inside the Whale. For the next year he was busy writing reviews for plays, films and books for The Listener, Time and Tide and New Adelphi. On march 29,1940 his long association with Tribune began with a review of a sergeant’s account of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. At the beginning of 1940 the first edition of Connoly’s Horizon appeared and this provided a new outlet for Orwell’s work as well as new literary contacts. At the same time death of Eileen’s brother in France caused her considerable grief and long-term depression. Throughout this time Orwell kept a wartime dairy. Though Orwell was declared medically unfit for any kind of military service by the Medical Board but soon afterwards he joined Home Guards to get involved in war activities. Sergeant Orwell managed to recruit Fredric Warburg to his unit. During the battle of Britain he used to speak weekends with Warburg. At Wallington he worked on his article “ England, Your England”. Early in 1941 he began to write for the american Partisan Review which linked Orwell with the New York Intellectuals who were also anti- Stalinist. In August 1941 he finally obtained war work when he was taken on full time by BBC’s Eastern Service. When interviewed for the job he indicated that he recognised the need for propaganda to be directed by the government and stressed the need of discipline during wartime in the execution of government policy. At the BBC Orwell introduced Voice, a literary programme for his Indian broadcasts, and by now was leading an active social life with literary friends , particularly on the political left. Late in 1942 he started working regularly for the left wing weekly Tribune. In march 1943 his mother died and in the same year In the same year he started working on a new book that turned out to be Animal Farm and at the same time he resigned from BBC that he had served for two years. Though it was said that he resigned out of his fear that few Indians listened to the broadcasts but he was also keen to concentrate on writing Animal Farm. He also resigned from Home Guards on medical grounds. In November 1943 he was appointed literary editor at Tribune where his assistant was his old buddy Jom Kimche. Orwell was on staff till 1945 and on 3 December 1945 he started writing a regular column “As I Please “ usually addressing three or four subjects in each. By April 1944 Animal Farm was ready for publication but Victor Gollancz refused to publish it considering it to be attack on the Soviet regime which was a crucial ally in the War. A similar fate was met from other publishers like Faber and Faber until Jonathan Cape agreed to take it. In May 1945 Orwell’s adopted a child named him Richard Horatio Blair thanks to the contacts of Eileen’s sister. In June a V 1 flying bomb struck Mortimer Crescent and they had to leave that place and seek some other place to live. Another blow was Cape’s reversal of his plan to publish Animal Farm after his visit to Peter Smollett, an official at Ministry of Information who later turned out to be Soviet Agent. In February 1945 David Astor invited Orwell to become a war correspondent for The Observer. He was looking for war action but his failed medical reports prevented him from being allowed near action. He went first to liberated Paris and then to Germany and Austria to the cities like Cologne and Stuttgart. He was never in the front line but he followed the troops closely, sometimes entering a captured town within a day of its fall while dead bodies lay in the streets. Some of his reports were published in the Manchester Evening News. During this time Eileen went intohospital for a hysterectomy and died under anaesthesia on 29 March 1945. Orwell returned home for a while and then returned back to Europe. He returned finally to London to cover 1945 General Elections . Finally Animal Farm was published in Britain on !7 August 1945 and an year later in US.
Animal Farm had particular resonance in the post war climate and its world wide success made Orwell a sought-after figure. For the next four years Orwell mixed journalistic work mainly for Tribune, The Observer and the Manchester news and composing his best known work Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was published in 1949. He became a leading figure in the so called Shanghai Club named after a restaurant in Soho that consisted of left leaning and emigre journalist. He employed a housekeeper to look after his son and came to Jura in the Inner Hebrides and saw it as a place to escape from the hassle of literary life of London. He suffered a tubercular haemorrhage in 1946 but disguised his illness. In early 1946 he wrote an article on British Cookery complete with recipes commissioned by the British Council. But looking at the post war shortage of things both parties decided not to publish it. In May 1946 he set off to live on the Isle of Jura at an abandoned farm house called Barnhill. Conditions of the farm house were primitive but the natural history and the challenge of improving place appealed to Orwell. He returned to London in late 1946 to pick up his career in literary journalism again. Now a well known writer he was swamped with work. Again Orwell left London for Jura in April 1947 to work on Nineteen Eighty Four and made a good progress. During this time he had a disastrous boating expedition that nearly took away his life as he was soaked while trying to cross the notorious Gulf of Corryvreckan. This soaking was not good for his health. In December a Chest Specialist was summoned from Glasgow who declared Orwell to be seriously ill. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis and with the help of David Astor, who was now Health Minister Orwell began his course of medication of Streptomycin in 1948. By the end of July 1948 he returned back to Jura to finish the manuscript of Nineteen Eighty-Four. In a very weak condition he set off for a sanatorium at Cranham. His health continued to decline. In mid-1949 he courted Sonia Brownell and they announced their engagement in September shortly after he was admitted to University College Hospital in London. Sonia took charge of Orwell’s affairs and attended him diligently in hospital. Their wedding took place in hospital room in October 1949 in the presence of David Astor. Even the plans to visit Swiss Alps were also made but before that on 21 January 1950 an artery burst in Orwell’s lungs killing him at the age of 46 years and was buried in the Churchyard of All Saints in Oxfordshire.
So all these three authors were joined with each other at some or the other level. Rahul Sankritayan was born, brought up and worked and lived in India through out his life in the first part of twentieth century. Another author under study George Orwell or Eric Blair was born in Mothihari, Bihar India and later on worked in Imperial Police Service in Burma which was part of India at that time and the third author Aldous Huxley on one hand taught Eric Blair or Orwell at Eton while on the other hand he became attached to Indian philosophy and mysticism Influenced by teachings of Swami Prabhvananda he became member of Vedanta Society of Southern California. In 1944 he even wrote Introduction to Bhagvad Gita : The Song of God which was translated by Swami Prabhvananda. From 1941 to 1960 Huxley contributed 48 articles to Vedanta and the West. So that makes the circle complete as Rahul Sankritayan lead life in India while George Orwell though born in India lead most of his life in Europe and England, though he worked in Police force in Burma for some time which was a part of India before 1939 and Aldous Huxley born in England was a teacher of George Orwell for a brief span and worked and lived both in England and in America where he became associated with Swami Prabhavananda and Vedanta Society of Southern California. Coming to the main theme of this work projection of the future world in the selected works of these authors will ensue in the coming chapters followed by inferences and the study of gap between their projections about future world and the reality.
- End of Second Chapter-
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