Second paragraph of third chapter:
‘What are you working on?’ she asks. It’s a new, adult question for her.
This is a tremendous biography, and I’m very grateful to S for flagging it up to me. Eileen O’Shaughnessy married Eric Blair, known to history as George Orwell, in 1936; she was 31 and he was about to turn 33. She devoted herself to supporting his writing, though they were both very ill; he had tuberculosis, which would kill him in 1950; she suffered persistent uterine bleeding, and died during an operation for a hysterectomy in 1945, aged 39.
Funder goes through the few surviving records of Eileen herself, which include six letters to her best friend, three to Orwell (including the unfinished one that she left on her bedside table before she died) and a few others. Out of this she spins a dense narrative, most of it sticking clearly to the facts, some fictionalised thought processes of what was going through Eileen’s head, and the occasional flashforward to the present day and the writer’s own family life. As far as I can tell, the fiction is clearly demarcated, which I appreciate – I’ve tried a couple of historical works recently where the line between fact and fiction is irritatingly fudged.
Funder comes to Eileen’s story as a fan of Orwell’s writing, but she shows how you can usefully explore the flaws in the work you love and in creators too. The most significant part of the book is her reconstruction of what was going on in Barcelona. Eileen peeps out of the corners of the writing of Homage to Catalonia; in fact she was the central organiser of the office of John McNair, the Independent Labour Party leader, and at great risk to herself managed Orwell’s escape after he was wounded and the POUM, who he was fighting for, were proscribed.
One vivid example of how she was erased from the story (which she herself typed up for publication) is the vignette of Orwell’s encounter with some stray soldiers: “I remember a couple of men from the International Column sitting in my room at the hotel when I came in tired, hungry, and dirty after a night on guard.” He does not mention the other person in the hotel room, or why she had had to let the soldiers in.
Eileen’s direct influence on Orwell’s work is debatable, because she herself controlled all the surviving records, so we can only surmise. It’s clear that he was utterly dependent on her support. For much of their marriage she was the one with the steady income, and for all of their relationship she organised their household affairs, while he got on with writing that was rarely and barely paid. He was serially unfaithful to her, starting on their honeymoon, and emotionally very neglectful.
When Eileen died in March 1945, Orwell was in Europe on assignment as a war correspondent, and it seems very cruel to me that he was not there for her operation – even if it was not expected to be fatal (though as Funder points out, the warning signs were there), it was none the less a serious procedure. He professed to be devastated, but proposed marriage to several other women before ending up with their friend Sonia Brownell three months before his death.
A fascinating, sad and thought-provoking book, and my renewed thanks to S for flagging it up to me. You can get Wifedom here.
