Orwell in Islington
Sir: John Casey is surely unfair in accusing George Orwell (13 March) of patronising the work- ing classes. Leaving aside the point that he was an outsider— not to say an Outsider, in the Colin Wilson sense of the word— the circumstances which produced Mr Casey's damning quotation are worth remembering.
It comes, I think, from an Evening Standard series of articles just after the war. Orwell was at last financially successful, hap- pily married, had a child, and had discovered Islington; he was the first of the middle-class intellec- tuals to settle in Canonbury. After him, the fashionable flood. In those days Islington was the world of Giles; I mean literally that the creator of Grandma and Chalky, the awful elementary school headmaster, was an Angel-bred cartoonist. I suppose it could be said that Giles 'patronised' his formidable working-class family, as Wells, who knew equally well what he was talking about, drew tasteless fun from the ghastly relatives of Kipps and Mr Polly. Orwell, with his class disadvan- tages, was much more respectful; and at the end of a really rather awful life was moved by what he conceived of as the domestic, fire- side life of his working-class neighbours. For the first time in his life he had a fireside, and a child; and money. One can forgive him some sentimentality, one really cannot forgive the accusa- tion of patronage.
Everything else Mr Casey has to say seems to me to make excel- lent sense; but he certainly undei- estimates the emotional resonance in their time of Orwell's novels.
Charles Harris 1 Garway Road, London w2
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