In Homage to Catalonia, p. 142 [VI/152], Orwell describes it as being near Tibidabo, ‘the queer-shaped mountain that rises abruptly behind Barcelona’. Sarria (not ‘Sania’ as sometimes recorded) is the name of an old township in the Barcelona area.

2. ‘Behind Barcelona’s Barricades’, by Liston M. Oak, New Statesman & Nation, 15 May 1937.

[373]

Eileen Blair to Dr Laurence (‘Eric’) O’Shaughnessy

[c. 10 June 1937]    Handwritten; undated

Dear Eric,

Ten days ago George Kopp wrote you an account of the medical investigations & reports on Eric, & I wrote letters to you & Mrs Blair & the aunt. As we wanted you all to get the correspondence quickly we gave them to a man who was crossing into France, to be sent Air Mail from there. Today we hear that he lost the whole packet. So everyone will be feeling bitterly neglected, including me as I had expected a reassuring cable. I’ve written at least three letters & four postcards each to the three addresses since, but I don’t know which have arrived or when. You might ask mother to telephone Mrs Blair & write [to the]1 aunt – or better telephone yourself & give a medical opinion.

Eric is I think much better, though he cannot be brought to admit any improvement. His voice certainly improves very slowly, but he uses his arm much more freely though it is still very painful at times. He eats as much as anyone else & can walk about & do any ordinary thing quite effectively for a short time. He is violently depressed, which I think encouraging. I have now agreed to spend two or three days on the Mediterranean (in France) on the way home – probably at Port-Vendres.2 In any case we shall probably have to wait somewhere for money. The discharge is not through but I think we can leave next week, wire you for money when we arrive at Port-Vendres or other resting place, go on to Paris & spend there two nights & the day between, & then get the morning train to England. I do not altogether like this protracted travel, but no urgent complication seems possible now, & he has an overwhelming desire to follow this programme – anyway it has overwhelmed me.

Give my love to everyone. I now realise I haven’t explained that the enclosed letter from G.K. is a copy of the one that was lost.

Thank you very much for the liniment & the things for Lois, which I collected today.

Eileen

Did you get £20 from Fenner Brockway?

1. ‘to the’ is represented by two (or three) indecipherable letters.

2. They spent three days at Banyuls-sur-Mer, about ten kilometres north of the Spanish border and some five south of Port-Vendres. It was ‘the first station up the line’ into France, a ‘quiet fishing-town’, as Orwell wrote in Homage to Catalonia, p. 166–7 [VI/184]. They continued their journey via Paris, where ‘the Exhibition was in full swing, though we managed to avoid visiting it’ (p. 168 [VI/186]).

[374A]

Escape from Spain

On 23 June 1937, Eileen and Orwell, with John McNair and Stafford Cottman, boarded the morning train from Barcelona to Paris. Sitting in the restaurant car, as if they were tourists, they safely crossed into France. Sir Richard Rees later wrote that the strain of her experience in Barcelona, even before the May Events, showed clearly on Eileen’s face: ‘In Eileen Blair I had seen for the first time the symptoms of a human being living under a political terror.’1 The nature of this terror is exemplified by documents concerning Orwell and Eileen (and also Orwell’s colleague, Charles Doran, 1894–1974, see note to Orwell’s letter to him of 2 August 1937, below), prepared for the Tribunal for Espionage and High Treason, Valencia, three weeks after the Orwells escaped. Orwell’s experiences in Spain, exemplified by these documents, are significant witnesses to the way Orwell and his comrades, especially those of the POUM, were betrayed by those supposedly fighting with them against Fascism in Spain. It was an experience that Orwell never forgot and coloured his thinking, actions and writing for the rest of his life. Orwell did not know of the existence of these documents though it is clear from Homage to Catalonia and his letters, articles and reviews that he well understood what had given rise to them.

The Spanish originals of these documents are in the Archivo Histórico Nacional de España, Madrid.