LONDON LETTER
411
bie11 and more rickety. Sixteen people in a railway carriage designed for
ten is quite common. The countryside has quite changed its face, the
once green meadows having changed into cornfields, and in the remotest
places one cannot get away from the roar of airplanes, which has become
the normal background noise, drowning the larks.
There are very few literary developments to report. After nine
months as a literary editor I am startled and frightened by the lack of
talent and vitality. The crowd whq are grouped
a:bout New Road, Now
and
Poetry) London-and
I suppose these are "the movement" in so far
as there is one-give me the impression of fleas hopping among the
ruins of a civilization. There are endless anthologies and other scissor–
and-paste books, and enormous output of unreadable pamphlets from
every kind of political party and religious body, in spite of the paper
shortage. On the other hand innumerable standard books are out of print
and unobtainable. Attempts are constantly being made in short-lived
reviews to revivify the various regional literatures, Scottish, Welsh, Irish
and Northern Irish. These movements always have a strong nationalist
and separatist tinge, sometimes bitterly anti-English, and will print any–
thing however bad which is politically O.K. But the various nationalisms
are so to speak interchangeable. The leading Anglophobes all contribute
to one another's papers, and the London pacifist intellectuals pop up in
all of them. There arc also signs, which I haven't been able to investigate
yet, that Australian, literature is at last getting on its own feet.
No more news to speak of. This has been a foul summer, everything
happening at ·the wrong time and hardly any fruit. I have been tied so
tight to this beastly town that for the first time in my life I have; not
heard a cuckoo this year.... After the wail of the siren comes the zoom–
zoom-zoom of the bomb, and as it draws nearer you ·get up from your
table and squeeze yourself into some corner that flying glass is not likely
to reach. Then BOOM! , the windows rattle in their sockets, and you go
back to work. There are disgusting scenes in the Tube stations
a~
night,
sordid piles of bedding cluttering up the passageways and hordes of
dirty-faced children playing round the platforms at all hours. Two nights
ago, about midnight, I came on a little girl of five "minding" her
younger sister, aged about two. The tiny child had got; hold of a scrub–
bing brush with which she was scrubbing the filthy stones of the plat–
form, and then sucking the bristles. I took it away from her and told the
elder girl not to let her have it. But I had to catch my train, and no
doubt the poor little brat would again be eating; filth in another couple
of minutes. This kind of thing is happening everywhere. However, the
disorganization and consequent neglect of children hasn't been serious
compared with 1940.
GEORGE ORWELL
