ORWELL, George (pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair, 1903-1950). Autograph letter signed (‘Eric A Blair’) to Dennis Collings, n.p. [London], ‘Thursday night’ [27 August 1931; envelope postmarked 28 August 1931].

ORWELL, George (pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair, 1903-1950). Autograph letter signed (‘Eric A Blair’) to Dennis Collings, n.p. [London], ‘Thursday night’ [27 August 1931; envelope postmarked 28 August 1931].

5 pages, 177 x 114mm, in pencil. Envelope. Half morocco box.

‘You take my tip & never sleep in Trafalgar Square’: George Orwell reports on a tramping in central London, giving a striking autobiographical account of the experiences on which Down and Out in Paris and London was based. Arguably one of the most important Orwell letters ever to come for auction. Orwell sets the scene for his correspondent – 'Please excuse pencil & bed writing, as I am writing this in a lodging house. It is a 7d kip – & looks it, I may say – in Southwark, & I believe the only one at the price in London. We go down for the hopping tomorrow…’ – before embarking upon a detailed account of his two days in Trafalgar Square, which ‘has, at this time of year, a floating population of 200 or so […] I was there all yesterday & was to have slept the night in St Martin’s church, but as you had to queue up for an hour to get a decent place we decided to stay in the square. You take my tip & never sleep in Trafalgar Square [...] After midnight the cold was glacial. Perhaps a dozen people managed to sleep, the rest walked the streets, with an occasional sit-down for a rest — this for 4 consecutive hours. At 4am someone managed to get hold of a big pile of newspaper posters & brought them along to use as blankets. ‘’Ere y’are, mate, tuck in the fucking eiderdown. Don’t we look like fucking parsons in these ‘ere surplices? ‘Ere, I got “Dramatic appeal from the Premier” round my neck. That ought to warm yer up, oughtn’t it?’. After making themselves into large newspaper parcels, yet failing to warm up sufficiently for sleep, Orwell and his companions proceed to Stewart’s coffee shop in St Martin’s Lane, ‘where it is understood that you can sit from 5am to 9am for a 2d cup of tea – or even for less, for often 2 or 3 fellows who had only 2d between them clubbed together & shared a cup of tea [...] This is the absolutely regular routine of Trafalgar Square "sleepers"'. Orwell continues to explain more of the curious rules of the square – which ‘should interest you as an anthropologist’ – before relaying two anecdotes about some of its female denizens, first noting: ‘About 8pm last night a woman came up crying bitterly. It appeared that she was a tart & someone had poked her & then cleared off without paying the fee, which was 6d. It appeared that of the dozen or so women among the 200 in the square, half were prostitutes; but they were the prostitutes of the unemployed, & usually earn so little that they have to spend the night in the square. 6d is the usual fee, but in the small hours when it was bitter cold they were doing it for a cigarette. The prostitutes live on terms of perfect amity with the other down & out women’. Having taken a bed for the night in anticipation of a long day tomorrow, Orwell describes the ‘appalling squalid cellar’ in which he finds himself, ‘as hot as hell & the air of [sic] sort of vapour of piss, sweat & cheese. A pale youth, some kind of labourer but looking consumptive, keeps declaiming poetry in front of the fire. Evidently he is genuinely fond of it’ – Orwell records some of the youth’s utterances here for posterity, as well as a short ditty on the subject of begging, or ‘tapping’, that he has picked up, before ending: ‘If you don’t hear within a fortnight it probably will mean I’ve been pinched for begging, as the mates I’m going with are hardened "tappers" & not above petty theft’.

Orwell completed the first portion of Down and Out in Paris and London – working title: A Scullion's Diary – in October 1930, less than a year after returning from near destitution in France, but the manuscript was rejected for publication by Jonathan Cape, then Faber & Faber. The rewritten book, now incorporating a ‘London’ pendant inspired by the colourful experiences from his tramping expeditions in England in 1930-31, would be published in January 1933, the first to appear under Eric Blair’s newly-minted pseudonym ‘George Orwell’.