George Orwell Diaries

Relevant Entries from Last Literary Notebook

Having suffered a serious relapse, Orwell was taken from Jura about 2 January 1949 to Cranham Sanatorium near Stroud in Gloucestershire.

Orwell’s last Literary Notebook (see CW, XX, p. 200) contains a few handwritten entries relating to Cranham Sanatorium and University College Hospital. The routine is given for each hospital, as it was for Hairmyres and there are brief, dated, descriptive details. The entries for Cranham are dated March 21 and 24 and April 17, 1949. The first and last entries are given here and the second has been inserted on page 537 because it refers to Orwell’s treatment with streptomycin at Hairmyres in 1948, and is therefore placed where it is relevant to the medication Orwell was then receiving. For the Cranham Sanatorium routine, see CW, XX, pp. 69–70.

The note numbering starts at 1.

3.21.49: The routine here (Cranham Sanatorium) is quite different from that of Hairmyres Hospital. Although everyone at Hairmyres was most kind & considerate to me – quite astonishingly so, indeed – one cannot help feeling at every moment the difference in the texture of life when one is paying one’s own keep.

The most noticeable difference here is that it is much quieter than the hospital, & that everything is done in a more leisurely way. I live in a so-called chalet, one of a row of continuous wooden huts, with glass doors, each chalet measuring about 15' by 12'. There are hot water pipes, a washing basin, a chest of drawers & wardrobe, besides the usual bed-tables etc. Outside is a glass-roofed verandah. Everything is brought by hand – none of those abominable rattling trolleys which one is never out of the sound of in a hospital. Not much noise of radios either – all the patients have headphones. (Here these are permanently tuned in to the Home Service. At Hairmyres, usually to the Light.1) The most persistent sound is the song of birds.

The day’s routine:–

7 am. Pulse & temperature taken. For this I don’t wake up further than is necessary to put the thermometer in my mouth, & am usually too sleepy to take the reading then.

7.30. Sputum cups changed.

8.00. Breakfast. After breakfast I get up & wash. I am only allowed a bath twice a week, as it is supposed to be “weakening.”

9.30. (about). Beds made.

11.00. Cup of coffee.

12.00 (about). Room swept & dusted.

12.00.–12.40. Rest hour. One is supposed to lie down during this period. Doctor generally arrives about this time.

12.40. Lunch.

2.00–2.40. Rest hour. Actually I usually sleep from about 2.30 to 3.30.

3.30. Tea.

6.00. Temperature & pulse taken.

6.00.–6.40. Rest hour.

6.40. Dinner.

9.30. (about). Cup of tea.

10.30. Lights out.

One is only weighed, screened etc. about once a month. The charge here is £12–12–0 a week, but this does not cover much more than one’s board & lodging, special medicines, operations etc. being extra.

4.17.49: Cranham: Curious effect, here in the sanatorium, on Easter Sunday, when the people in this (the most expensive2) block of “chalets” mostly have visitors, of hearing large numbers of upper-class English voices. I have been almost out of the sound of them for two years, hearing them at most one or two at a time, my ears growing more & more used to working-class or lower-middle class Scottish voices. In the hospital at Hairmyres, for instance, I literally never heard a “cultivated” accent except when I had a visitor. It is as though I were hearing these voices for the first time. And what voices! A sort of over-fedness, a fatuous self-confidence, a constant bah-bahing of laughter about nothing, above all a sort of heaviness & richness combined with a fundamental ill-will – people who, one instinctively feels, without even being able to see them, are the enemies of anything intelligent or sensitive or beautiful. No wonder everyone hates us so.

Nineteen Eighty-Four was published by Secker & Warburg on June 8, 1949, and five days later by Harcourt, Brace in New York. Such was its impact that as early as August 27, 1949, a radio version was broadcast in the NBC University Theatre series, skilfully dramatised by Milton Wayne and with David Niven as Winston Smith; the novelist James Hilton gave an interval commentary.

On September 3 Orwell was transferred to University College Hospital, London. The following is the entry Orwell made in his last Literary Notebook, c. September 1949, about the daily routine at this hospital (CW, XX, pp. 165–6). It also gives a description of his room.3

Daily Routine at University College Hospital (Private Wing)

7–7.30 am. Temperature taken. Routine question: “How did you sleep?”

7.30–8. Blanket bath. Bed made. Shaving water. “Back” rubbed.

8.45. (about) Breakfast. Newspaper arrives.

9.30. (about) Wing sister arrives with mail.

10. Temperature taken.

10.30. (at present) my bed is “tipped”. Ward maid comes to sweep room.

11. (about) Orderly arrives to dust.

12.30. Bed taken down.

12.45 pm. Lunch.

2. Temperature taken.

2.30. Bed “tipped.”

3.30. Bed taken down.

3.45. Tea.

5. Temperature taken.

5.30. (about) am washed as far as waist. “Back” rubbed.

6.45. Dinner.

10. Temperature taken; a drink of some sort.

10.30. (about) Bed “tipped” & light put out shortly after.

No fixed hour for visits of doctor. No routine daily visit.

Room has: washbasin, cupboard, bedside locker, bed table, chest of drawers, wardrobe, 2 mirrors, wireless (knobs beside bed), electric fire, radiator, armchair & 1 other chair, bedside lamp & 2 other lamps, telephone. Fees 15 guineas a week, plus extra fee for doctor, but apparently including special medicines. Does not include telephone or wireless. (Charge for wireless 3/6 a week.)

Orwell’s diary entries end here.

Whilst in University College Hospital Orwell married Sonia Brownell on October 13, 1949. He hoped to be well enough to recuperate in Switzerland and friends (especially booksellers) raised funds to enable him to make the journey. Alas, before he could go, he died of a massive haemorrhage of the lungs in the early hours of Saturday, January 21, 1950. His beloved fishing rods stood in the corner of his hospital room. His funeral service was arranged by Malcolm Muggeridge at Christ Church, Albany Street, London, NW1. He had asked that he be buried, not cremated, and David Astor arranged for that to take place at All Saints, Sutton Courtney, Berkshire. His headstone is inscribed simply: ‘Here Lies Eric Arthur Blair’, with his dates of birth and death.