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Such, Such Were the Joys
Viewed as too libelous to print in England until 1968, the title essay in this collection reveals the abuse Orwell experienced as a child at an expensive and snobbish boarding school and offers insights into his lifelong concern for the oppressed."Why I Write" describes Orwell's sense of political purpose, and the classic essay "Politics and the English Language" insists on clarity and precision in communication in order to avoid the Newspeak later described in 1984.Other essays focus on Gandhi (he "disinfected the political air"), Dickens ("no novelist has shown the same power of entering into the child's point of view"), Kipling ("a jingo imperialist"), Henry Miller (who told Orwell that involvement in the Spanish war was an act of an idiot), and England ("a family with the wrong members in control").
Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1952
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About the author
George Orwell
1,621 books49.5k followersEric Arthur Blair was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to all totalitarianism (both authoritarian communism and fascism), and support of democratic socialism.
Orwell is best known for his allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), although his works also encompass literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics, literature, language and culture.
Orwell's work remains influential in popular culture and in political culture, and the adjective "Orwellian"—describing totalitarian and authoritarian social practices—is part of the English language, like many of his neologisms, such as "Big Brother", "Thought Police", "Room 101", "Newspeak", "memory hole", "doublethink", and "thoughtcrime". In 2008, The Times named Orwell the second-greatest British writer since 1945.
Orwell is best known for his allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), although his works also encompass literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics, literature, language and culture.
Orwell's work remains influential in popular culture and in political culture, and the adjective "Orwellian"—describing totalitarian and authoritarian social practices—is part of the English language, like many of his neologisms, such as "Big Brother", "Thought Police", "Room 101", "Newspeak", "memory hole", "doublethink", and "thoughtcrime". In 2008, The Times named Orwell the second-greatest British writer since 1945.
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August 13, 2016
PRE-REVIEW, 6/6/16: Don't trust the title: there's no joy here. This essay may well have been called "Such, Such was the Unending Mistreatment and Bleakness." That's not to say that it isn't great, though, because it really is, in a fascinating, grim sort of way. I certainly don't envy Eric Arthur Blair's upbringing, but it makes for interesting reading, and by the end I felt as though I'd journeyed through his childhood with him.
Not for the first time, I'm eternally grateful not to have been alive in the 1910s, and not to have gone to a boarding school. I doubt they're even remotely as awful nowadays, but something about the idea of it is inextricably tied in my mind to tales of woe, underfeeding, harsh discipline, and malicious snobbery like this one. Hogwarts this is not.
***
In this autobiographical essay, Eric Arthur Blair (who will henceforth be referred to by his pen name, George Orwell) relates his childhood from the ages of six through thirteen, and his experiences at St. Cyprian's boarding school. It's a fascinating mix of banality, sadistic headmasters, loneliness, nostalgia, classist snobbishness, and the potent confusion, camaraderie, and competition that comes with young boys growing up.
"The good and the possible never seemed to coincide."
I'm really struck by how perfectly Orwell is able to describe certain feelings and facets of childhood. Some of the details are vague and forgotten, as is to be expected, but the things he remembers- particular sensations, or words appearing as all capitalised in his mind even decades after because they filled him with such dread- are so well-written that even though I've never been to a boarding school and I have never been beaten with a riding crop, Orwell manages to still make me recall parts of my own childhood during which I felt exactly as he did.
"I was crying partly because I felt that this was expected of me, partly from genuine repentance, but partly also because of a deeper grief which is peculiar to childhood and not easy to convey: a sense of desolate loneliness and helplessness, of being locked up not only in a hostile world but in a world of good and evil where the rules were such that it was actually not possible for me to keep them."
God, that's true, isn't it? I feel like people will attest to feeling that way at least once during their young years- perplexed and frightened and guilty, in equal measure, by the rules and tempers of grownups, helpless and feeling smaller than a speck of dust.
I'm glad that neither of my parents ever use corporal punishment on my brother and I, though their parents used it on them. My mom got hit with a belt or a wooden spoon, and I still remember my dad telling me a story about his brother (my uncle) burning bits of paper at the stove when he was a kid, so as punishment their father took his hand and held it less than an inch away from the flames while the boy screamed. While practises like these are obviously falling out of favour and being rightfully deemed abuse, even long-held traditions of physical punishment like spanking are fading away, let alone being beaten by a riding crop until the handle breaks because you've wet the bed in the night! What makes it worse, though, is that Orwell did nothing wrong- he never intentionally wet the bed, and he was filled with shame and humiliation every time it happened. And I'm sure the punishments he received after each occurrence did nothing to help the problem.
Still, despite all of this terrible treatment and all of these dismal memories, I think "Such, Such were the Joys" works best not as a straightforward autobiographical vignette, but as an exercise in memory.
"...I accepted the broken riding-crop as my own crime. I can still recall my feeling as I saw the handle lying on the carpet — the feeling of having done an ill-bred clumsy thing, and ruined an expensive object. I had broken it: so Sambo told me, and so I believed. This acceptance of guilt lay unnoticed in my memory for twenty or thirty years."
It's so interesting how Orwell probes his memory to study these things, and how such a strong emotion burned into his mind at an impressionable age can lay dormant, accepted, unquestioned, for decades.
There are also some very interesting passages where Orwell talks about the phases of sexuality and "sexlessness" he went through as a child and young adult, with the absence of a complete and accurate sex ed program, where most knowledge is gleaned through rudimentary biology and guessing.
"At twelve I knew more than I had known as a young child, but I understood less, because I no longer knew the essential fact that there is something pleasant in sexual activity."
In this section, he captures perfectly the patchwork of knowledge, guesswork, rumour, curiosity, and disinterest that marks sexuality as a child, escpecially a child in such a repressive environment.
"Thus, I knew in principle how the baby gets into the woman, but I did not know how it gets out again, because I had never followed the subject up. I knew all the dirty words, and in my bad moments I would repeat them to myself, but I did not know what the worst of them meant, nor want to know. They were abstractly wicked, a sort of verbal charm."
Isn't that a little adorable? It's so innocent! I can just picture little Arthur Blair playing along, laughing a bit too loudly to cover up that fact that he's just pretending to understand dirty jokes and the like.
This section also made me laugh, less because of the content and more of how Orwell talked about it, saying that even as a child and young teen he just didn't care very much, and the vague disinterest with which he mentions things like erections made me giggle, because it was so "huh, would you look at that." Case in point: "I had noticed, without feeling much interest, that one's penis sometimes stands up of its own accord (this starts happening to a boy long before he has any conscious sexual desires)..." He shrugs it off in a way I find most endearing and entertaining.
There's also the prevailing grouping of boys based on the wealth and class of their parents; simple joys in the form of rare nature walks and food pilfered from the kitchens during late-night raids; the interminable tests and the push for scholarships. The drudgery, the rote memorisation, the tedium of poor education. The contradictions of the adult world, the space between what's expected and what's possible.
"The essential conflict was between the tradition of nineteenth-century asceticism and the actually existing luxury and snobbery of the pre-1914 age. On the one side were low-church Bible Christianity, sex puritanism, insistence on hard work, respect for academic distinction, disapproval of self-indulgence: on the other, contempt for ‘braininess’, and worship of games, contempt for foreigners and the working class, an almost neurotic dread of poverty, and, above all, the assumption not only that money and privilege are the things that matter, but that it is better to inherit them than to have to work for them."
The only reason I gave this four stars instead of five is because it's very loosely organised, and I think it could have been even better if it were detailed with a bit more chronological coherence. I'm also super stingy with my five stars.
I infinitely recommend 'Such, Such were the Joys'- if you can get past the horrors of English boys' boarding schools, which are mainly dealt with in the first half, it's not only well-written, but entertaining, enlightening, and so obviously full of heart and nostalgia. It's the kind of nostalgia that's not saccharine, Orwell wears no rose-tinted glasses... One gets the distinct impression that he's trying to understand his early years and is also inviting us to understand ours.
Lastly, good historical pieces- and this is a very good one- should, in addition to highlighting the differences between the setting and modern day, also illuminate the similarities between them. Orwell pulls this off wonderfully, and his philosophies about so many facets of childhood still ring true to me. Good historical pieces should connect the reader to the narrator in spite of the many decades and miles that lie between them, and to say I felt a connection to young Orwell would be an understatement- I sympathised with him, I felt his pain, I understood his confusion and his later assessments with the benefit of hindsight.
Our narrator ends the essay with an assertion that I feel is still incredibly true:
"Take away God, Latin, the cane, class distinctions and sexual taboos, and the fear, the hatred, the snobbery and the misunderstanding might still all be there."
I think it's part and parcel of being a child and an adolescent, and being thrust into an environment (be it public or private school) with a bunch of other kids who are going through the same self-consciousness, discomfort, confusion, and loneliness as you.
My childhood wasn't nearly as ghastly as Orwell's, and I faced completely different hardships. Still, I can only hope that when I'm middle-aged, I can look upon my own childhood and adolescence with even a fraction of the lucidity, wit, and eloquence as Mr. Orwell has accomplished here.
Find yourself half an hour and read it for free here!
Not for the first time, I'm eternally grateful not to have been alive in the 1910s, and not to have gone to a boarding school. I doubt they're even remotely as awful nowadays, but something about the idea of it is inextricably tied in my mind to tales of woe, underfeeding, harsh discipline, and malicious snobbery like this one. Hogwarts this is not.
***
In this autobiographical essay, Eric Arthur Blair (who will henceforth be referred to by his pen name, George Orwell) relates his childhood from the ages of six through thirteen, and his experiences at St. Cyprian's boarding school. It's a fascinating mix of banality, sadistic headmasters, loneliness, nostalgia, classist snobbishness, and the potent confusion, camaraderie, and competition that comes with young boys growing up.
"The good and the possible never seemed to coincide."
I'm really struck by how perfectly Orwell is able to describe certain feelings and facets of childhood. Some of the details are vague and forgotten, as is to be expected, but the things he remembers- particular sensations, or words appearing as all capitalised in his mind even decades after because they filled him with such dread- are so well-written that even though I've never been to a boarding school and I have never been beaten with a riding crop, Orwell manages to still make me recall parts of my own childhood during which I felt exactly as he did.
"I was crying partly because I felt that this was expected of me, partly from genuine repentance, but partly also because of a deeper grief which is peculiar to childhood and not easy to convey: a sense of desolate loneliness and helplessness, of being locked up not only in a hostile world but in a world of good and evil where the rules were such that it was actually not possible for me to keep them."
God, that's true, isn't it? I feel like people will attest to feeling that way at least once during their young years- perplexed and frightened and guilty, in equal measure, by the rules and tempers of grownups, helpless and feeling smaller than a speck of dust.
I'm glad that neither of my parents ever use corporal punishment on my brother and I, though their parents used it on them. My mom got hit with a belt or a wooden spoon, and I still remember my dad telling me a story about his brother (my uncle) burning bits of paper at the stove when he was a kid, so as punishment their father took his hand and held it less than an inch away from the flames while the boy screamed. While practises like these are obviously falling out of favour and being rightfully deemed abuse, even long-held traditions of physical punishment like spanking are fading away, let alone being beaten by a riding crop until the handle breaks because you've wet the bed in the night! What makes it worse, though, is that Orwell did nothing wrong- he never intentionally wet the bed, and he was filled with shame and humiliation every time it happened. And I'm sure the punishments he received after each occurrence did nothing to help the problem.
Still, despite all of this terrible treatment and all of these dismal memories, I think "Such, Such were the Joys" works best not as a straightforward autobiographical vignette, but as an exercise in memory.
"...I accepted the broken riding-crop as my own crime. I can still recall my feeling as I saw the handle lying on the carpet — the feeling of having done an ill-bred clumsy thing, and ruined an expensive object. I had broken it: so Sambo told me, and so I believed. This acceptance of guilt lay unnoticed in my memory for twenty or thirty years."
It's so interesting how Orwell probes his memory to study these things, and how such a strong emotion burned into his mind at an impressionable age can lay dormant, accepted, unquestioned, for decades.
There are also some very interesting passages where Orwell talks about the phases of sexuality and "sexlessness" he went through as a child and young adult, with the absence of a complete and accurate sex ed program, where most knowledge is gleaned through rudimentary biology and guessing.
"At twelve I knew more than I had known as a young child, but I understood less, because I no longer knew the essential fact that there is something pleasant in sexual activity."
In this section, he captures perfectly the patchwork of knowledge, guesswork, rumour, curiosity, and disinterest that marks sexuality as a child, escpecially a child in such a repressive environment.
"Thus, I knew in principle how the baby gets into the woman, but I did not know how it gets out again, because I had never followed the subject up. I knew all the dirty words, and in my bad moments I would repeat them to myself, but I did not know what the worst of them meant, nor want to know. They were abstractly wicked, a sort of verbal charm."
Isn't that a little adorable? It's so innocent! I can just picture little Arthur Blair playing along, laughing a bit too loudly to cover up that fact that he's just pretending to understand dirty jokes and the like.
This section also made me laugh, less because of the content and more of how Orwell talked about it, saying that even as a child and young teen he just didn't care very much, and the vague disinterest with which he mentions things like erections made me giggle, because it was so "huh, would you look at that." Case in point: "I had noticed, without feeling much interest, that one's penis sometimes stands up of its own accord (this starts happening to a boy long before he has any conscious sexual desires)..." He shrugs it off in a way I find most endearing and entertaining.
There's also the prevailing grouping of boys based on the wealth and class of their parents; simple joys in the form of rare nature walks and food pilfered from the kitchens during late-night raids; the interminable tests and the push for scholarships. The drudgery, the rote memorisation, the tedium of poor education. The contradictions of the adult world, the space between what's expected and what's possible.
"The essential conflict was between the tradition of nineteenth-century asceticism and the actually existing luxury and snobbery of the pre-1914 age. On the one side were low-church Bible Christianity, sex puritanism, insistence on hard work, respect for academic distinction, disapproval of self-indulgence: on the other, contempt for ‘braininess’, and worship of games, contempt for foreigners and the working class, an almost neurotic dread of poverty, and, above all, the assumption not only that money and privilege are the things that matter, but that it is better to inherit them than to have to work for them."
The only reason I gave this four stars instead of five is because it's very loosely organised, and I think it could have been even better if it were detailed with a bit more chronological coherence. I'm also super stingy with my five stars.
I infinitely recommend 'Such, Such were the Joys'- if you can get past the horrors of English boys' boarding schools, which are mainly dealt with in the first half, it's not only well-written, but entertaining, enlightening, and so obviously full of heart and nostalgia. It's the kind of nostalgia that's not saccharine, Orwell wears no rose-tinted glasses... One gets the distinct impression that he's trying to understand his early years and is also inviting us to understand ours.
Lastly, good historical pieces- and this is a very good one- should, in addition to highlighting the differences between the setting and modern day, also illuminate the similarities between them. Orwell pulls this off wonderfully, and his philosophies about so many facets of childhood still ring true to me. Good historical pieces should connect the reader to the narrator in spite of the many decades and miles that lie between them, and to say I felt a connection to young Orwell would be an understatement- I sympathised with him, I felt his pain, I understood his confusion and his later assessments with the benefit of hindsight.
Our narrator ends the essay with an assertion that I feel is still incredibly true:
"Take away God, Latin, the cane, class distinctions and sexual taboos, and the fear, the hatred, the snobbery and the misunderstanding might still all be there."
I think it's part and parcel of being a child and an adolescent, and being thrust into an environment (be it public or private school) with a bunch of other kids who are going through the same self-consciousness, discomfort, confusion, and loneliness as you.
My childhood wasn't nearly as ghastly as Orwell's, and I faced completely different hardships. Still, I can only hope that when I'm middle-aged, I can look upon my own childhood and adolescence with even a fraction of the lucidity, wit, and eloquence as Mr. Orwell has accomplished here.
Find yourself half an hour and read it for free here!
August 5, 2016
When George Orwell was a young boy, he won a scholarship to a prestigious private school called St Cyprian’s, almost exclusively catering to the children of the upper classes and the occasional bright “lower-upper-middle class” (as Orwell described his circumstances as) kid, like Orwell was. The title of this 56-page essay, Such, Such Were The Joys, is bitterly ironic as he found the experience to be extremely miserable. He was bullied by an older boy, beaten by the incompetent teachers, fed the bare minimum to keep him alive, and the little money his parents sent him was withheld by the Headmaster’s wife who doled out the money according to class (meaning that Orwell was allowed to spend the least, even if he was given more pocket money).
The essay opens with a young Orwell wetting the bed for the first time in years when he arrives at the school because he’s afraid of his new environs, miles away from his family and friends. He’s warned by the Headmaster’s wife, nicknamed Flip, that if he didn’t stop doing that, she’d get the Sixth Form (the older boys’ grade) to beat him up! When he doesn’t stop (because threatening a child with violence was surely going to work!), he’s sent to the Headmaster, nicknamed Sambo, who beats him with a riding crop in what reads like a semi-comical scene with Orwell writing Sambo’s words in a staccato style as he beat him “you-are – a – ve-ry – nau-ghty- boy!”. It sets the tone for the essay, being a frank and open discussion of his schooldays that were often cruel and unrecognisable in the 1940s when he wrote this, let alone in the 21st century.
The conditions he experienced would go on to influence Orwell’s literary career, particularly his two most celebrated novels including Animal Farm. Orwell discusses the class politics at the school with the boys arguing over whose dad has the most modern car and status was measured by who had their own cricket bat and who didn’t. The situation is encouraged by Sambo and Flip who acquiesced to the rich offspring, letting them get away with lackadaisical study but coming down hard on the scholarship students like Orwell who were there to raise the grades of the school. They would also give the rich kids a cake on their birthday but not the less affluent kids.
There’s a revealing passage when Orwell recounts going into the town one day to buy sweets with some money he’d stashed in the wall vines and, on the way back, imagining the Headmaster’s power extending out into the community, that there were spies of Sambo ready to rat on Orwell the moment he returned to the school. The episode and the character of Sambo in Orwell’s mind feels like a precursor to his greatest work, Nineteen Eighty-Four. It’s also a part of Orwell’s insightful exploration of how children perceive the adult world.
He critiques the teaching system which drilled into children like himself important dates, quotes and names without ever giving them any context – they were told to recite them to rote questions because it would make them seem clever when they were merely parroting back to examiners a script they didn’t understand. Moreover, he finds the whole idea of sending away young children to these private boarding schools a distasteful custom that damages children’s psyches, frightening them with unfamiliar surroundings, strangers, and putting them at the mercy of harsh, unloving people like Sambo and Flip.
Orwell’s writing is as powerful and clear as it always is, effortlessly communicating to us through the years and bringing the reader back to an Edwardian school where the cheesy wet towels, unclean sheets, cold rooms and grotty food are vividly drawn to the point where we can feel and smell St Cyprian’s today. The memoirs are infused with an energy and wit that makes for compelling reading, despite the grim subject matter, and Orwell masterfully weaves in emotional moments and enlightening ideas throughout the essay. Reading Such, Such Were The Joys is both a reminder of how accomplished a writer Orwell was and a truly enjoyable experience to be in the hands of a writer so assured in their craft.
Of course Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four are the Orwell books everyone should read but these small paperbacks Penguin is publishing as part of their fantastic Great Ideas series are essential reading too, bringing to light George Orwell’s astonishingly good non-fiction essays and journalism. The essay ends humorously with Orwell wishing the rumour he heard that St Cyprian’s burned down was true. Regardless, Orwell provides his old school with a more thorough demolition job than any wrecking ball could in this wonderfully vitriolic essay.
The essay opens with a young Orwell wetting the bed for the first time in years when he arrives at the school because he’s afraid of his new environs, miles away from his family and friends. He’s warned by the Headmaster’s wife, nicknamed Flip, that if he didn’t stop doing that, she’d get the Sixth Form (the older boys’ grade) to beat him up! When he doesn’t stop (because threatening a child with violence was surely going to work!), he’s sent to the Headmaster, nicknamed Sambo, who beats him with a riding crop in what reads like a semi-comical scene with Orwell writing Sambo’s words in a staccato style as he beat him “you-are – a – ve-ry – nau-ghty- boy!”. It sets the tone for the essay, being a frank and open discussion of his schooldays that were often cruel and unrecognisable in the 1940s when he wrote this, let alone in the 21st century.
The conditions he experienced would go on to influence Orwell’s literary career, particularly his two most celebrated novels including Animal Farm. Orwell discusses the class politics at the school with the boys arguing over whose dad has the most modern car and status was measured by who had their own cricket bat and who didn’t. The situation is encouraged by Sambo and Flip who acquiesced to the rich offspring, letting them get away with lackadaisical study but coming down hard on the scholarship students like Orwell who were there to raise the grades of the school. They would also give the rich kids a cake on their birthday but not the less affluent kids.
There’s a revealing passage when Orwell recounts going into the town one day to buy sweets with some money he’d stashed in the wall vines and, on the way back, imagining the Headmaster’s power extending out into the community, that there were spies of Sambo ready to rat on Orwell the moment he returned to the school. The episode and the character of Sambo in Orwell’s mind feels like a precursor to his greatest work, Nineteen Eighty-Four. It’s also a part of Orwell’s insightful exploration of how children perceive the adult world.
He critiques the teaching system which drilled into children like himself important dates, quotes and names without ever giving them any context – they were told to recite them to rote questions because it would make them seem clever when they were merely parroting back to examiners a script they didn’t understand. Moreover, he finds the whole idea of sending away young children to these private boarding schools a distasteful custom that damages children’s psyches, frightening them with unfamiliar surroundings, strangers, and putting them at the mercy of harsh, unloving people like Sambo and Flip.
Orwell’s writing is as powerful and clear as it always is, effortlessly communicating to us through the years and bringing the reader back to an Edwardian school where the cheesy wet towels, unclean sheets, cold rooms and grotty food are vividly drawn to the point where we can feel and smell St Cyprian’s today. The memoirs are infused with an energy and wit that makes for compelling reading, despite the grim subject matter, and Orwell masterfully weaves in emotional moments and enlightening ideas throughout the essay. Reading Such, Such Were The Joys is both a reminder of how accomplished a writer Orwell was and a truly enjoyable experience to be in the hands of a writer so assured in their craft.
Of course Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four are the Orwell books everyone should read but these small paperbacks Penguin is publishing as part of their fantastic Great Ideas series are essential reading too, bringing to light George Orwell’s astonishingly good non-fiction essays and journalism. The essay ends humorously with Orwell wishing the rumour he heard that St Cyprian’s burned down was true. Regardless, Orwell provides his old school with a more thorough demolition job than any wrecking ball could in this wonderfully vitriolic essay.
March 10, 2021
faves -
Why I write
Poetry and the Microphone
Looking Back on the Spanish War
Inside the Whale
"When one thinks of all the people who support or have supported Fascism, one stands amazed at their diversity. What a crew! Think of a programme which at any rate for a while could bring Hitler, Petain, Montagu Norman, Pavelitch, William Randolph Hearst, Streicher, Buchman, Ezra Pound, Juan March, Cocteau, Thyssen, Father Coughlin, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Arnold Lunn, Antonescu, Spengler, Beverley Nichols, Lady Houston, and Marinetti all into the same boat! But the clue is really very simple. They are all people with something to lose, or people who long for a hierarchical society and dread the prospect of a world of free and equal human beings. Behind all the ballyhoo that is talked about ‘godless’ Russia and the ‘materialism’ of the working class lies the simple intention of those with money or privileges to cling to them."
December 19, 2022
The title story is a biographical essay of Orwell’s time at St Cyprian's boarding school in Eastbourne, Sussex. From age eight to age thirteen (1911 - 1916), Orwell was a witness to both the class favoritism and the austere corporal discipline of St Cyprian.
For the most part, Orwell’s essay reads like a chapter out of David Copperfield where the adults are damned-near villainous and the children valiantly struggle to persevere.
Published after his death in 1950, there is some question as to the authenticity of Orwell’s accounting. Several of his Cyprian classmates have since written that Such, Such Were the Days is either an exaggeration or, on some points, a complete fabrication. Either way, it matters not to me. As with many other posthumous publications (Harper Lee comes to mind) the onus of final form lies more heavily on the editor than it does on the writer.
For the most part, Orwell’s essay reads like a chapter out of David Copperfield where the adults are damned-near villainous and the children valiantly struggle to persevere.
Published after his death in 1950, there is some question as to the authenticity of Orwell’s accounting. Several of his Cyprian classmates have since written that Such, Such Were the Days is either an exaggeration or, on some points, a complete fabrication. Either way, it matters not to me. As with many other posthumous publications (Harper Lee comes to mind) the onus of final form lies more heavily on the editor than it does on the writer.
October 24, 2021
I read this essay because it was mentioned by Julian Barnes in an essay. Orwell somewhat takes the shine off the glowing aura of pre-WW1 Britain in his brutally honest depiction of life at a boarding school in that era.
Read
March 13, 2018Impossible to rate (and measure) child's suffering.
February 22, 2014
This is a short essay, recollecting not so fond memories of Orwell's time at school. An insightful and enjoyable read for all George Orwell fans.
August 15, 2025
If you are into Orwell's biography or want to understand what UK private schooling looked like at the beginning of the 20th century, this is a read for you. It amazes me how wild and uncivilised such schooling was that it was literally mentally breaking young boys and their confidence :( Looking back, I am so glad that educational psychology and schooling have made such significant progress since that time.
May 8, 2025
In this essay, George Orwell reflects on his time at St Cyprian's preparatory school in Eastbourne, Sussex. Orwell attended on a scholarship and was therefore treated differently to the boys who came from money. The headmaster and his wife held him to higher and harsher expectations and would wield guilt against him: ‘Do you think it's quite fair to us, the way you're behaving? After all we've done for you? You do know what we've done for you, don't you?’
Orwell explores how this treatment affected his confidence and self-worth. I had won two scholarships but I was a failure, because success was measured not by what you did but by what you were. Because he did not grow up with money, he could never hope to elevate himself to the same level as his peers.
What makes this very interesting read is how it foreshadows the themes of Orwell's best known works. The school functions as a miniature totalitarian state, with the headmaster ruling with fear, shame, and punishment, under the guise of moral authority. Your home might be far from perfect, but at least it was a place ruled by love rather than by fear, where you did not have to be perpetually on your guard against the people surrounding you.
There's even mention of surveillance being a concern: It did not seem to me strange that the headmaster of a private school should dispose of an army of informers, and I did not even imagine that would have to pay them. I assumed that any adult, inside the school or outside, would collaborate voluntarily in preventing us from breaking the rules. Sambo was all-powerful; it was natural that his agent should be everywhere. This seems eerily similar to the surveillance states in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
It's not hard to see why, when treated so cruelly and unfairly in his youth, Orwell became interested in how power corrupts and manipulates perception. Towards the end of the essay, he reflects: The weakness of the child is that it starts with a blank sheet. It neither understands nor questions the society in which it lives, and because of its credulity other people can work upon it, infecting it with the sense of inferiority and the dread of offending against mysterious, terrible laws.
Orwell explores how this treatment affected his confidence and self-worth. I had won two scholarships but I was a failure, because success was measured not by what you did but by what you were. Because he did not grow up with money, he could never hope to elevate himself to the same level as his peers.
What makes this very interesting read is how it foreshadows the themes of Orwell's best known works. The school functions as a miniature totalitarian state, with the headmaster ruling with fear, shame, and punishment, under the guise of moral authority. Your home might be far from perfect, but at least it was a place ruled by love rather than by fear, where you did not have to be perpetually on your guard against the people surrounding you.
There's even mention of surveillance being a concern: It did not seem to me strange that the headmaster of a private school should dispose of an army of informers, and I did not even imagine that would have to pay them. I assumed that any adult, inside the school or outside, would collaborate voluntarily in preventing us from breaking the rules. Sambo was all-powerful; it was natural that his agent should be everywhere. This seems eerily similar to the surveillance states in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
It's not hard to see why, when treated so cruelly and unfairly in his youth, Orwell became interested in how power corrupts and manipulates perception. Towards the end of the essay, he reflects: The weakness of the child is that it starts with a blank sheet. It neither understands nor questions the society in which it lives, and because of its credulity other people can work upon it, infecting it with the sense of inferiority and the dread of offending against mysterious, terrible laws.
March 28, 2014
What a writer, my God! (Or 'what a writer, by Jove', if one wishes to sound more English). I read 'Homage to Catalonia' - in Italian translation - as a leftist, passionate, troubled teenager, and absolutely adored it. I moved on to 'Down and out in Paris and London' - again in Italian translation - during my University years, and also loved it with a passion. As the years went by, I discovered a few things about Orwell, which, mutually-contradictory as they may seem, actually bear witness to his unflinching moral stance. I must admit that this is, as I recall, my first Orwell in English. And Jesus, could the man write! Two main 'discoveries' were triggered by the book. First, how little the British society and education system have changed, despite the obvious, major external changes. Among the latter, for instance, the fact that, not only is it not allowed to hit a child now, and thank god for that, but things have gone so far that teachers, educators, sports trainers and the likes, have to be extremely careful as to any physical contact they may have with minors of age, as a potential lawsuit is always around the corner (hugs are also dangerous, in that typical,extreme Anglo-Saxon/British exaggeration and passion for political correctness which makes society an awkward, uncomfortable place). I may have to clarify that what I am writing applies to a specific part of the UK, Northern Ireland, where the typical British child abuse described by Orwell adds up to the horrific abuses perpetrated, in Ireland North and South, by the 'beloved' Catholic church. A society that has a guilty conscience must find ways to silence that conscience without actually looking in depth into its own distortions and their causes. Despite such major changes, as I mentioned, the class-structure that underpinned the British education system during Orwell's time is still very much in place, thanks to despicable things like the A-levels, which only serve to make sure that working-class kids do not go to grammar schools...or at least, to make it extremely difficult for them to get there. The second discovery is how similar, in many respects, Orwell's experiences in a prep school in the 1910s were to my own experiences - beginning in 1987! - in a so-called 'Liceo classico' in Italy (a sort of grammar school were pupils learn, or are expected to learn Latin AND Greek): a very similar class system, if based on slightly different values, a very similar cruelty, if not physical, and very similar effects on the pupil's mind- or at any rate, on my own. One passage will suffice to illustrate this: (On leaving the prep school): "...With a sense of coming out from darkness into sunlight. (...). It was not that I expected, or even intended, to be any more successful at a public school than I had been at St. Cyprian's. But still, I was escaping. I knew that at a public school there would be more privacy, more neglect, more chance to be idle and self-indulgent and degenerate. For years I had been resolved -unconsciously at first, but consciously later on - that once my scholarship was won I would 'slack off' and cram no longer. This resolve, by the way, was so fully carried out that between the ages of thirteen and twenty-two or three I hardly ever did a stroke of avoidable work". To say that this rings a bell would be an understatement. That 'sense of coming out of darkness into sunlight' and the notion that I had 'escaped', mirror exactly what I felt on finally leaving high school (the Liceo classico), aged 20. I was free from that toxic, insane atmosphere, and that was all that mattered, even if the future was uncertain. And the 'resolve' not to do a single 'stroke of avoidable work' ever again is the same that I formulated, 'unconsciously at first, but consciously later on' when finally, after three painful years, I moved on from the 'ginnasio' (the first, hard, two years of Liceo classico, in which one is supposed to learn the entire grammar of Latin and Greek- in my case these became three years, as I failed once and had to re-do a year) to the 'liceo' proper, the last three years, in which one could, to an extent, slack off and live off her previous work. Incidentally and to conclude, four years of postgraduate studies in a British University have persuaded me that the political-correctness that rules those institutions is pure fluff, meant to cover up the absurdity of that system and to silence its guilty conscience. Another very striking feature of that system, which makes it, in my experience, significantly worse than Italian University, is the total absence of criticism, self-criticism, ans self-analysis of its teaching staff. All they complain about is their salaries, but they manage to ignore completely their own complicity in maintaining that system and its disgusting little power games and power abuses. They manage to exclude from their intellectual and moral horizon the knowledge that power is not always 'elsewhere' (in the Government, for instance, which refuses to give them a salary raise): that power, in fact, is them, in many respects. British universities have a significantly greater amount of money than Italian universities, but, to anyone thinking of studying in one such institutions, I would remind a very nice line from Virgil: "timeo Danaos et dona ferentes". From which derives the suggestion: mistrust educational institutions, even - or especially - if they have money.
(ps: needless to say, not ALL academics are like that, etc)
(ps: needless to say, not ALL academics are like that, etc)
September 17, 2019
In my 20's I set myself the task of reading everything that George Orwell had written. I made a fairly decent stab at it in that I read of all the major works but got lost somewhere in the depths of his collected essays. Glad, then, that I came across 'Such, such were the joys'. This is a short essay memoir of his schooldays at St. Cyprian's, '... an expensive and snobbish school'.
As ever, it's written in his lucid, journalistic style shot through with piercing insights into the human condition. Only Orwell would start an essay with, "Soon after I arrived at St. Cyprian's (not immediately, but after a week or two, just when I seemed to be settling into the routine of school life) I began wetting my bed".
Here's a passage that I was particularly struck by the truth of (for me at least), "I was crying partly... because of a deeper grief which is peculiar to childhood and not easy to convey: a sense of desolate loneliness and helplessness, of being locked up not only in a hostile world but in a world of good and evil where rules were such that it was actually not possible for me to keep them".
As ever, it's written in his lucid, journalistic style shot through with piercing insights into the human condition. Only Orwell would start an essay with, "Soon after I arrived at St. Cyprian's (not immediately, but after a week or two, just when I seemed to be settling into the routine of school life) I began wetting my bed".
Here's a passage that I was particularly struck by the truth of (for me at least), "I was crying partly... because of a deeper grief which is peculiar to childhood and not easy to convey: a sense of desolate loneliness and helplessness, of being locked up not only in a hostile world but in a world of good and evil where rules were such that it was actually not possible for me to keep them".
April 9, 2016
This is a book I definitely had to walk off. Like most of the world, I'd read 1984 and Animal Farm--though so long ago that I'd retained a stick figure view of them. And that'll probably just fine for Animal Farm. A fable doesn't need nuance. But I happened across a list of Orwell's writing that went on and on and picked this collection of essays. These are essays about his relatively privileged childhood, a childhood that makes Jane Eyre's look pampered.
Starting with the first essay, which is about his experiences at 8 being punished and publicly humiliated when the experience of being sent to boarding school causes a bed-wetting relapse, he both sees and analyzes with frightening objectivity. Is it good? Yes, like a skin graft for a 3rd-degree burn is good. Is it fun? So much fun that it now has me reading Darkness at Noon for the relief. A 20th century totalitarian prison classic is a walk in the park in comparison to a British middle class upbringing.
Starting with the first essay, which is about his experiences at 8 being punished and publicly humiliated when the experience of being sent to boarding school causes a bed-wetting relapse, he both sees and analyzes with frightening objectivity. Is it good? Yes, like a skin graft for a 3rd-degree burn is good. Is it fun? So much fun that it now has me reading Darkness at Noon for the relief. A 20th century totalitarian prison classic is a walk in the park in comparison to a British middle class upbringing.
June 5, 2016
I read this a few years ago while on holiday in Paris. I loved it. Nobody could ever equal Orwell for acerbic social commentary.
May 1, 2019
A near perfect collection of why Orwell matters.
September 7, 2021
It is amazing how well some of these essays hold up. It is especially obvious when an essay is about an artist whose work I have never seen or read and yet it is still so good. Orwell is always humane and his willingness to criticize in good faith those which may ostensibly be on “his side” is always refreshing.
September 20, 2021
This book truly conveys the true traumatic horrors that people experience in their childhood lives. Orwell highlights this through his own personal experience, which at first is quite shocking, but turns out to be very interesting and moving.
August 29, 2019
I was hoping for a little bit more here, but such, such was the book. It’s a long essay about Orwell’s life at a British public school, and it’s very middle class. Eh.
February 10, 2018
Such, such a collection of essays provides insight into the developmental psychology that wrote some of the 20th century's greatest books. Nineteen Eighty-Four would have never been written had it not been for Orwell's class-conscience, authority-laden, and sexually repressed youth, nor his experience volunteering for a losing side of a disastrous civil war. These are just a few examples among many more. Well worth reading if you are an admirer of Orwell's writing.
Read
March 10, 2019So crisp, clean, and evergreen
January 23, 2023
Orwell saggista e giornalista che parla di politica, letteratura, politica nella letteratura e letteratura nella politica. Adoro tutto.
"A cinquant'anni ciascuno ha la faccia che si merita".
Con un'introduzione magnifica di Vittorio Giacopini ♡
"A cinquant'anni ciascuno ha la faccia che si merita".
Con un'introduzione magnifica di Vittorio Giacopini ♡
October 25, 2022
A great writer like Orwell is a pleasure to read, even if the topic isn’t relevant to my times or life. (I did skip 2 of the essays) A fabulous audiobook too. Orwell is better aloud.(because he is exceedingly British, don’t you see.) The reader does multiple accents and injects some life into the works. The essays are still thought provoking. They also contain the answer to any questions about Orwell’s politics; if someone had only read his novels and remained confused. The stand outs for me were: “why I write”, “killing an elephant”, and “such were the joys.” The essay on Spain is not only an important supplement to “homage to Catalonia,” it also has the wisdom to stand on its own merit. I’m surprised how well his takes on Rudyard Kipling and Gandhi hold up. He was older than my grandfather and yet I agree with him on almost everything. I wish I could channel him for the present day. He can even make the word “hum-bug” seem cool.
“Broadly, you were bidden to be at once a Christian and a social success. Which is impossible.”
“Private property is an obstructive nuisance.”
“Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.”
“A good bad poem is a graceful monument to the obvious.”
“Some who aspire or achieve sainthood have never felt much temptation to being human beings. The main motive for non attachment is a desire to escape from the pain of living, or from love, which sexual or not sexual, is hard work.”
“War is evil, and it is often the lesser evil. Those who take the sword perish by the sword and those who don’t take the sword perish by smelly diseases.”
“What can the England of 1940 have in common with the England of 1840? But then, what have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantle piece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person.”
What I learned: Bull elephants go into a periodic condition called Musth. Musth is less like an animal going into heat, and more like a rage zombie movie. The elephant’s testosterone levels can Increase by 70 to 100 times! They leak a stinky orange pheromone out of their temples. The Musth causes the elephant pain which they try to relieve by tusking everything. Not only will an elephant in Musth kill people and sometimes rhinoceroses, but they will also kill other elephants or their own calf. The word Musth comes from the Persian word for intoxicated. It reminds me of the story of hercules. Anyway if you need to shoot an elephant; aim to shoot trough one ear hole and out the other. An elephant’s brain is smaller and further back in the skull than one would assume.
Ecclesiastes 9.11 is an interesting passage that essentially says we are all victims of fate, or undeserving of our successes.
The revolutionary asks “how can you improve human nature until you have changed the system?” The moralist argues “What is the use of changing the system until you have improved human nature?”
Christian culture leads to a quasi instinctive siding with the oppressed over the oppressors. This requires changing sides frequently and sometimes with inconsistant morality.
He describes England as such: “a family with the wrong members in control” this could describe most nations.
“Broadly, you were bidden to be at once a Christian and a social success. Which is impossible.”
“Private property is an obstructive nuisance.”
“Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.”
“A good bad poem is a graceful monument to the obvious.”
“Some who aspire or achieve sainthood have never felt much temptation to being human beings. The main motive for non attachment is a desire to escape from the pain of living, or from love, which sexual or not sexual, is hard work.”
“War is evil, and it is often the lesser evil. Those who take the sword perish by the sword and those who don’t take the sword perish by smelly diseases.”
“What can the England of 1940 have in common with the England of 1840? But then, what have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantle piece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person.”
What I learned: Bull elephants go into a periodic condition called Musth. Musth is less like an animal going into heat, and more like a rage zombie movie. The elephant’s testosterone levels can Increase by 70 to 100 times! They leak a stinky orange pheromone out of their temples. The Musth causes the elephant pain which they try to relieve by tusking everything. Not only will an elephant in Musth kill people and sometimes rhinoceroses, but they will also kill other elephants or their own calf. The word Musth comes from the Persian word for intoxicated. It reminds me of the story of hercules. Anyway if you need to shoot an elephant; aim to shoot trough one ear hole and out the other. An elephant’s brain is smaller and further back in the skull than one would assume.
Ecclesiastes 9.11 is an interesting passage that essentially says we are all victims of fate, or undeserving of our successes.
The revolutionary asks “how can you improve human nature until you have changed the system?” The moralist argues “What is the use of changing the system until you have improved human nature?”
Christian culture leads to a quasi instinctive siding with the oppressed over the oppressors. This requires changing sides frequently and sometimes with inconsistant morality.
He describes England as such: “a family with the wrong members in control” this could describe most nations.
May 27, 2018
I've only read the title essay of this collection, about Orwell's terrible experience at an English boarding school in the early 20th century, but it was weirdly brilliant. First, of course, there's the insight into the violence of school life. But mostly, I don't know another work that captures the mental experience of being a child so well: brutalized and blindly submitting to the ideas of adults and the people around you, always internalizing them even as a part (somewhere deep inside) somehow resists. Orwell's insight in this essay goes way beyond that to cover issues of class, bullying, and education itself with an unbelievable amount of clarity and insight. I've never actually read Orwell before--he's always seemed almost like a cliche, someone whose ideas were so familiar there was no need to read him. I picked this essay up out of random curiosity, but I had never imagined it could feel so fresh.
September 2, 2014
Though the situations were entirely different, elements of Orwell's essay on his school days rang true for me too. The practice of memorising certain facts and passages in preparation for exams rather than actually engaging with the subject certainly existed 15-20 years ago in Ireland. I suspect it still does.
Orwell does a magnificent job of writing about the complexities of being a child trying to understand the world around him, giving voice to thoughts I'm not sure I ever considered. It was certainly a timely read personally, as my 5 year old son starts school this week. Thankfully, times have obviously changed for the better, but I do wonder how my son will view this new world.
Orwell does a magnificent job of writing about the complexities of being a child trying to understand the world around him, giving voice to thoughts I'm not sure I ever considered. It was certainly a timely read personally, as my 5 year old son starts school this week. Thankfully, times have obviously changed for the better, but I do wonder how my son will view this new world.
July 15, 2014
Orwell's essays are always entertaining and this is no exception. The ironic title 'Such, such were the joys' lets you know what is in store in this essay about his life as one of the poorer kids at a public school - beatings, near starvation, humiliation, just what you would expect. But it is his take on how he, and children as a whole, view adults that is most interesting. It also explains about the society in England just before the first world war. I love Orwell's witty and relaxed style. He really lets his personality shine here.
June 14, 2011
Style, clarity. Unmatched; very hard to match by anyone, anywhere, writing in English. Underestimated stylistic genius.
April 1, 2020
I loved the "Why I Write" essay. And, of course, each essay is intelligent and artfully written. If you love Dickens or Kipling and similar subjects this is probably a four or five rating for you.
April 22, 2023
Eric Blair (aka George Orwell) attended St Cyprian’s School in Eastbourne, Sussex England. From our opening at St Cyprian's "snobbish school which was in process of becoming more snobbish," to the end of our read, we observe Orwell's formative years with a well-deserved literary curiosity. Latin and Greek studies where: "We never, for example, read right through even a single book of a Greek or Latin author: we merely read short passages which were picked out because they were the kind of thing likely to be set as an ‘unseen translation’"; History courses that "was a series of unrelated, unintelligible but — in some way that was never explained to us—important facts with resounding phrases tied to them," and the 'Classics' filled young Orwell's days.
The rich parents' children treated with kid gloves while poor scholarship pupils receive cane beatings for most any offense were common, as was birthday cakes for the wealthy brood, but none for the poor... despite their parents being billed for a yearly cake regardless. But Orwell did have a few fond memories from days that brought leisurely enjoyment and experiences with nature and animals. These experiences paved the pathway for Orwell's life and certainly influenced his literary career.
We see a confused you boy who learns just enough of a school subject to know little at all. Orwell did discover, however, the reality of being guilty without having done anything deliberate, which is a primary ‘thought crime' theme expressed in his later authored work 'Nineteen-Eighty-four'.
- Excerpts:
"The Sixth Form was a group of older boys who were selected as having ‘character’ and were empowered to beat smaller boys."
"Indeed, I doubt whether classical education ever has been or can be successfully carried on without corporal punishment."
"I did not question the prevailing standards, because so far as I could see there were no others. How could the rich, the strong, the elegant, the fashionable, the powerful, be in the wrong? It was their world, and the rules they made for it must be the right ones. And yet from a very early age I was aware of the impossibility of any subjective conformity."
"A Russian boy, large and fair-haired, a year older than myself, was questioning me. ‘How much a year has your father got?’ I told him what I thought it was, adding a few hundreds to make it sound better. The Russian boy, neat in his habits, produced a pencil and a small notebook and made a calculation. ‘My father has over two hundred times as much money as yours,’ he announced with a sort of amused contempt. That was in 1915. What happened to that money a couple of years later, I wonder? And still more I wonder, do conversations of that kind happen at preparatory schools now?"
"The real question is whether it is still normal for a school child to live for years amid irrational terrors and lunatic misunderstandings. And here one is up against the very great difficulty of knowing what a child really feels and thinks. A child who appears reasonably happy may actually be suffering horrors which it cannot or will not reveal. It lives in a sort of alien underwater world which we can only penetrate by memory or divination."
"I have never been back to St Cyprian's. Reunions, old boys’ dinners and such-like... As for St Cyprian's, for years I loathed its very name so deeply that I could not view it with enough detachment to see the significance of the things that happened to me there."
The rich parents' children treated with kid gloves while poor scholarship pupils receive cane beatings for most any offense were common, as was birthday cakes for the wealthy brood, but none for the poor... despite their parents being billed for a yearly cake regardless. But Orwell did have a few fond memories from days that brought leisurely enjoyment and experiences with nature and animals. These experiences paved the pathway for Orwell's life and certainly influenced his literary career.
We see a confused you boy who learns just enough of a school subject to know little at all. Orwell did discover, however, the reality of being guilty without having done anything deliberate, which is a primary ‘thought crime' theme expressed in his later authored work 'Nineteen-Eighty-four'.
- Excerpts:
"The Sixth Form was a group of older boys who were selected as having ‘character’ and were empowered to beat smaller boys."
"Indeed, I doubt whether classical education ever has been or can be successfully carried on without corporal punishment."
"I did not question the prevailing standards, because so far as I could see there were no others. How could the rich, the strong, the elegant, the fashionable, the powerful, be in the wrong? It was their world, and the rules they made for it must be the right ones. And yet from a very early age I was aware of the impossibility of any subjective conformity."
"A Russian boy, large and fair-haired, a year older than myself, was questioning me. ‘How much a year has your father got?’ I told him what I thought it was, adding a few hundreds to make it sound better. The Russian boy, neat in his habits, produced a pencil and a small notebook and made a calculation. ‘My father has over two hundred times as much money as yours,’ he announced with a sort of amused contempt. That was in 1915. What happened to that money a couple of years later, I wonder? And still more I wonder, do conversations of that kind happen at preparatory schools now?"
"The real question is whether it is still normal for a school child to live for years amid irrational terrors and lunatic misunderstandings. And here one is up against the very great difficulty of knowing what a child really feels and thinks. A child who appears reasonably happy may actually be suffering horrors which it cannot or will not reveal. It lives in a sort of alien underwater world which we can only penetrate by memory or divination."
"I have never been back to St Cyprian's. Reunions, old boys’ dinners and such-like... As for St Cyprian's, for years I loathed its very name so deeply that I could not view it with enough detachment to see the significance of the things that happened to me there."
August 11, 2021
It is amazing how England leads America in the fall from greatness; leads and predicts. Orwell is a social democrat (whatever that means or meant to him) and lays most of the blame for failure on the left, especially the intelligentsia. America seems to be going through now what England did in the 1930’s and 1940’s. From loss of power and prestige (the empire broke up), confronting racism (of course for England they were literally racist against anyone and everyone that was a foreigner), to loss of nationalism to the extent that people were ashamed to be British.
Below is a quote from the essay “England Your England” that, though long, summarizes the point:
“In intention, at any rate, the English intelligentsia are Europeanized. They take their cookery from Paris and their opinions from Moscow. In the general patriotism of the country they form a sort of island of dissident thought. England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during ‘God save the King’ than of stealing from a poor box. All through the critical years many left-wingers were chipping away at English morale, trying to spread an outlook that was sometimes squashily pacifist, sometimes violently pro-Russian, but always anti-British. It is questionable how much effect this had, but it certainly had some. If the English people suffered for several years a real weakening of morale, so that the Fascist nations judged that they were ‘decadent’ and that it was safe to plunge into war, the intellectual sabotage from the Left was partly responsible. Both the New Statesman and the News Chronicle cried out against the Munich settlement, but even they had done something to make it possible. Ten years of systematic Blimp-baiting affected even the Blimps themselves and made it harder than it had been before to get intelligent young men to enter the armed forces. Given the stagnation of the Empire, the military middle class must have decayed in any case, but the spread of a shallow Leftism hastened the process.”
Below is a quote from the essay “England Your England” that, though long, summarizes the point:
“In intention, at any rate, the English intelligentsia are Europeanized. They take their cookery from Paris and their opinions from Moscow. In the general patriotism of the country they form a sort of island of dissident thought. England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during ‘God save the King’ than of stealing from a poor box. All through the critical years many left-wingers were chipping away at English morale, trying to spread an outlook that was sometimes squashily pacifist, sometimes violently pro-Russian, but always anti-British. It is questionable how much effect this had, but it certainly had some. If the English people suffered for several years a real weakening of morale, so that the Fascist nations judged that they were ‘decadent’ and that it was safe to plunge into war, the intellectual sabotage from the Left was partly responsible. Both the New Statesman and the News Chronicle cried out against the Munich settlement, but even they had done something to make it possible. Ten years of systematic Blimp-baiting affected even the Blimps themselves and made it harder than it had been before to get intelligent young men to enter the armed forces. Given the stagnation of the Empire, the military middle class must have decayed in any case, but the spread of a shallow Leftism hastened the process.”
May 11, 2020
Such, Such Were the Joys — I just realized how much I miss this Orwell.
After Animal Farm and 1984, I moved to less popular books by Orwell and decided on Down and Out in Paris and London through which I discovered an altogether new Orwell; a more down to earth kind of writer in the sense that you experience an experimental-with-style Orwell rather than the conceptual author he disguised himself behind in books such as 1984. Why I Write is another essay that I truly enjoyed with all its sober colours and style. Such, Such Were the Joys is a short memoir written in a very sombre almost journalistic tone. He traces back some of his early memories in a boarding school between the age of nine and thirteen. What is striking about it is the minute amount of vivid details about his childhood. Many critics think that this it was written just a few months before he started working on 1984; and indeed we have a good reason to believe that since in Such, Such Were the Joys, even though it might not be one of his most serious works about class conflicts and the effect of being among the unbright ones, it is certainly a critical take on how children come to be affected by their early experiences in a world meticulously defined by a classificatory eye. Around the end of it, the memoir gains an almost improvised tone — obviously intended by the author— in which he discusses the corporal punishment and its effect on his psyche as a kid. He also briefly and rather boldly refers to his early conception about his sexuality, and the shame his fellow classmates and teachers thrust upon him using that very yet unclear image of one’s sexuality.
Some of my favourite snippets from Such, Such Were the Joys —
“And yet all the while, at the middle of one's heart, there seemed to stand an incorruptible inner self who knew that whatever one did — whether one laughed or snivelled or went into frenzies of gratitude for small favours — one's only true feeling was hatred.”
“Take away God, Latin, the cane, class distinctions and sexual taboos, and the fear, the hatred, the snobbery and the misunderstanding might still all be there.”
After Animal Farm and 1984, I moved to less popular books by Orwell and decided on Down and Out in Paris and London through which I discovered an altogether new Orwell; a more down to earth kind of writer in the sense that you experience an experimental-with-style Orwell rather than the conceptual author he disguised himself behind in books such as 1984. Why I Write is another essay that I truly enjoyed with all its sober colours and style. Such, Such Were the Joys is a short memoir written in a very sombre almost journalistic tone. He traces back some of his early memories in a boarding school between the age of nine and thirteen. What is striking about it is the minute amount of vivid details about his childhood. Many critics think that this it was written just a few months before he started working on 1984; and indeed we have a good reason to believe that since in Such, Such Were the Joys, even though it might not be one of his most serious works about class conflicts and the effect of being among the unbright ones, it is certainly a critical take on how children come to be affected by their early experiences in a world meticulously defined by a classificatory eye. Around the end of it, the memoir gains an almost improvised tone — obviously intended by the author— in which he discusses the corporal punishment and its effect on his psyche as a kid. He also briefly and rather boldly refers to his early conception about his sexuality, and the shame his fellow classmates and teachers thrust upon him using that very yet unclear image of one’s sexuality.
Some of my favourite snippets from Such, Such Were the Joys —
“And yet all the while, at the middle of one's heart, there seemed to stand an incorruptible inner self who knew that whatever one did — whether one laughed or snivelled or went into frenzies of gratitude for small favours — one's only true feeling was hatred.”
“Take away God, Latin, the cane, class distinctions and sexual taboos, and the fear, the hatred, the snobbery and the misunderstanding might still all be there.”
January 13, 2025
Эссе Оруэла «Славно, славно мы резвились» рассказывает об обучении молодого автора (1911-1916гг) в школе интернате Святого Киприана для детей из богатых семей, в которую его взяли для престижа школы, дабы он выиграл стипендии в колледж. Эта честная брутальная, содержащая множество сожалений и детских травм книга несколько оголяет сияющую ауру Великобритании перед Первой Мировой войной.
Суровая дисциплина, частые наказания (моральные, телесные, денежные, пищевые), злобный снобизм, - это все, через что проходили будущие правители страны туманных Альбионов. В каком-то смысле немудрено, что они же и привели к утрате ее мирового господства
Описывая наказания, порядки в школе интернате, небольшие крупицы воспоминания товарищества, давление со стороны преподавателей и более состоятельных учеников (благодаря родителям, конечно), описывая так же свои воспоминания о моральных дилеммах и соперничестве, автор заставляет меня лично прочувствовать все это на себе. Да, я никогда через это не проходил, но прочувствовать через написанное могу. Так же пробудились мои забытые воспоминания о школьных годах в РФ, стало горько невыносимо, но иногда и радостно, хотя, подчеркну, эти воспоминания и на 10% не такие удачные, как у Оруэла.
Но есть ощущение, что через несколько лет дети РФ смогут познать больше 10% боли автора, давность которой больше 100 лет, морально уж точно, особенно дети, которым посчастливилось родиться не такими, как остальные 🌈
«Take away God, Latin, the cane, class distinctions and sexual taboos, and the fear, the hatred, the snobbery and the misunderstanding might still all be there.»
Суровая дисциплина, частые наказания (моральные, телесные, денежные, пищевые), злобный снобизм, - это все, через что проходили будущие правители страны туманных Альбионов. В каком-то смысле немудрено, что они же и привели к утрате ее мирового господства
Описывая наказания, порядки в школе интернате, небольшие крупицы воспоминания товарищества, давление со стороны преподавателей и более состоятельных учеников (благодаря родителям, конечно), описывая так же свои воспоминания о моральных дилеммах и соперничестве, автор заставляет меня лично прочувствовать все это на себе. Да, я никогда через это не проходил, но прочувствовать через написанное могу. Так же пробудились мои забытые воспоминания о школьных годах в РФ, стало горько невыносимо, но иногда и радостно, хотя, подчеркну, эти воспоминания и на 10% не такие удачные, как у Оруэла.
Но есть ощущение, что через несколько лет дети РФ смогут познать больше 10% боли автора, давность которой больше 100 лет, морально уж точно, особенно дети, которым посчастливилось родиться не такими, как остальные 🌈
«Take away God, Latin, the cane, class distinctions and sexual taboos, and the fear, the hatred, the snobbery and the misunderstanding might still all be there.»
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