Wife let Orwell pursue woman for biannual sex
George Orwell’s romances that started on the cusp of literary recognition and continued to his deathbed marriage have been brought out of the shadows.
Letters written to two women have shed fresh light on the author’s lovers and life-long influences.
Biographers said the contents of the letters, which have been bought by Orwell’s son Richard Blair to give to an archive, would radically change the understanding of the most recognised and discussed British writer of the 20th century.
One of the newly discovered batch of letters discloses how Orwell wrote to Brenda Salkeld on the day after his first wedding, while another later suggests that the two should have biannual sexual liaisons, with the approval of his first wife.
He continued to write to Salkeld until 1949, just days before his second wedding and weeks away from death.
The batch of about 30 letters to Salkeld, whom he met a few years before his initial publishing success in 1933 with Down and Out in Paris and London, illustrate how he would use her as a sounding board for his literary ideas.
The discovery of the ‘‘Salkeld letters’’ which was disclosed yesterday, follows the unearthing just months before of a tranche of letters written by Orwell to another lover, Eleanor Jaques. In these, he reveals the depth and despair of their relationship.
Orwell had written to her in 1932, remembering ‘‘your nice white body in the dark green moss’’ with the correspondence continuing after her marriage. One letter states: ‘‘Is it still permissible to send you my love – or have you found too many other admirers?’’ Blair told The Times that within the past few months he had bought both sets of letters from descendants of the recipients. He plans to donate them to the George Orwell Archive at University College London.
Blair said it was clear that the letters indicated the two women ‘‘had far more influence on him than first supposed’’.
The intricacies of the personal life of the author behind Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four have been difficult to pin down, partly as Orwell stipulated in his will that he did not welcome biographical analysis.
Weeks before his death at just 46 on January 21, 1950, he married for a second time. His new bride, Sonia Brownell, assumed control of his estate.
One letter to Salkeld reveals Orwell’s ‘‘humiliation’’ at her rejection of him and how he put up with it because he was ‘‘longsuffering ... it must be in the nature of the male’’.
Another letter written by Orwell four years after he married his first wife Eileen O’Shaughnessy, claims she understood his desires and said ‘‘she wished I could sleep with you about twice a year, just to keep me happy’’.
An earlier letter to Salkeld states: ‘‘I don’t know if you have ever realised quite how much you mean to me. Besides you said you thought you would finally take a lover, and if so I don’t see why it shouldn’t be me.’’
The Orwell biographer DJ Taylor said the letters transformed our understanding of the author’s life adding: ‘‘It isn’t just that he loved them but that he used them as sounding boards for his views about everything from the books he was reading to the world situation.’’
‘‘They were very personal letters,’’ Blair said. ‘‘I think there was a bit of physical contact in both cases from time to time. He liked very strong women. Women who had an opinion. That is what attracted him. The fact he got anything after that was a bonus.’’