Irate at Orwell

[purple]

Not impressed by Orwell, just another one who accepts the hospitality however meagre , then insults the host.

 

If you mean Mr and Mrs Brookes then I think he was perfectly in his rights.After all they were moaning that a lodger was taking rather a long time to die.

[purple]

I love George Orwell.

 

As I wasn't around Sheffield in the 1930s I can't comment on his description of Sheffield.

 

I love Sheffield but I'd acknowldge that even today it's not exactly a beautiful city.

 

 

 

He's my favourite author.I did a few essays on him for my degree, he was a pleasure to read.

[Gerry]

Hello,

 

Hope you are well.

 

I just came across this while doing some research. I think you might be interested in my posts on the subject in my blog 'Beyond 1984' at http://www.rivedon.co.uk/.

 

Best regards,

 

Ian Rivedon

 

That brought back some memories. I worked at the Neepsend Gasworks 12 hrs/day, 7days/week for a year 1957/58 to save up enough to put a down payment on a house.

[sweetdexter]

Texas,I PM'd you

[Nagel]

I remember a winter afternoon in the dreadful environs of Wigan. All

round was the lunar landscape of slag-heaps, and to the north, through the

passes, as it were, between the mountains of slag, you could see the

factory chimneys sending out their plumes of smoke. The canal path was a

mixture of cinders and frozen mud, criss-crossed by the imprints of

innumerable clogs, and all round, as far as the slag-heaps in the distance,

stretched the 'flashes'--pools of stagnant water that had seeped into the

hollows caused by the subsidence of ancient pits. It was horribly cold. The

'flashes' were covered with ice the colour of raw umber, the bargemen were

muffled to the eyes in sacks, the lock gates wore beards of ice. It seemed

a world from which vegetation had been banished; nothing existed except

smoke, shale, ice, mud, ashes, and foul water. But even Wigan is beautiful

compared with Sheffield. Sheffield, I suppose, could justly claim to be

called the ugliest town in the Old World: its inhabitants, who want it to

be pre-eminent in everything, very likely do make that claim for it. It has

a population of half a million and it contains fewer decent buildings than

the average East Anglian village of five hundred. And the stench! If at

rare moments you stop smelling sulphur it is because you have begun

smelling gas. Even the shallow river that runs through the town is-usually

bright yellow with some chemical or other. Once I halted in the street and

counted the factory chimneys I could see; there were thirty-three of them,

but there would have been far more if the air had not been obscured by

smoke. One scene especially lingers in my mind. A frightful patch of waste

ground (somehow, up there, a patch of waste ground attains a squalor that

would be impossible even in London) trampled bare of grass and littered

with newspapers and old saucepans. To the right an isolated row of gaunt

four-roomed houses, dark red, blackened by smoke. To the left an

interminable vista of factory chimneys, chimney beyond chimney, fading away

into a dim blackish haze. Behind me a railway embankment made of the slag

from furnaces. In front, across the patch of waste ground, a cubical

building of red and yellow brick, with the sign 'Thomas Grocock, Haulage

Contractor'.

 

At night, when you cannot see the hideous shapes of the houses and the

blackness of everything, a town like Sheffield assumes a kind of sinister

magnificence. Sometimes the drifts of smoke are rosy with sulphur, and

serrated flames, like circular saws, squeeze themselves out from beneath

the cowls of the foundry chimneys. Through the open doors of foundries you

see fiery serpents of iron being hauled to and fro by redlit boys, and you

hear the whizz and thump of steam hammers and the scream of the iron under

the blow.

[muntjac]

I remember a winter afternoon in the dreadful environs of Wigan. All

round was the lunar landscape of slag-heaps, and to the north, through the

passes, as it were, between the mountains of slag, you could see the

factory chimneys sending out their plumes of smoke. The canal path was a

mixture of cinders and frozen mud, criss-crossed by the imprints of

innumerable clogs, and all round, as far as the slag-heaps in the distance,

stretched the 'flashes'--pools of stagnant water that had seeped into the

hollows caused by the subsidence of ancient pits. It was horribly cold. The

'flashes' were covered with ice the colour of raw umber, the bargemen were

muffled to the eyes in sacks, the lock gates wore beards of ice. It seemed

a world from which vegetation had been banished; nothing existed except

smoke, shale, ice, mud, ashes, and foul water. But even Wigan is beautiful

compared with Sheffield. Sheffield, I suppose, could justly claim to be

called the ugliest town in the Old World: its inhabitants, who want it to

be pre-eminent in everything, very likely do make that claim for it. It has

a population of half a million and it contains fewer decent buildings than

the average East Anglian village of five hundred. And the stench! If at

rare moments you stop smelling sulphur it is because you have begun

smelling gas. Even the shallow river that runs through the town is-usually

bright yellow with some chemical or other. Once I halted in the street and

counted the factory chimneys I could see; there were thirty-three of them,

but there would have been far more if the air had not been obscured by

smoke. One scene especially lingers in my mind. A frightful patch of waste

ground (somehow, up there, a patch of waste ground attains a squalor that

would be impossible even in London) trampled bare of grass and littered

with newspapers and old saucepans. To the right an isolated row of gaunt

four-roomed houses, dark red, blackened by smoke. To the left an

interminable vista of factory chimneys, chimney beyond chimney, fading away

into a dim blackish haze. Behind me a railway embankment made of the slag

from furnaces. In front, across the patch of waste ground, a cubical

building of red and yellow brick, with the sign 'Thomas Grocock, Haulage

Contractor'.

 

At night, when you cannot see the hideous shapes of the houses and the

blackness of everything, a town like Sheffield assumes a kind of sinister

magnificence. Sometimes the drifts of smoke are rosy with sulphur, and

serrated flames, like circular saws, squeeze themselves out from beneath

the cowls of the foundry chimneys. Through the open doors of foundries you

see fiery serpents of iron being hauled to and fro by redlit boys, and you

hear the whizz and thump of steam hammers and the scream of the iron under

the blow.

 

Yes-a lovely piece of writing.

A description of a place where true working class folk battled for an existence. It shouldnt be forgotton that this was a time of austerity. The Sheffield people he describes didn't ask to be born at that time.

[Texas]

Texas,I PM'd you

Hi dex, I haven't recieved your PM owing to the fact that my Inbox is full. In fact it's been full for some time and even following the instructions to empty it doesn't seem to make any difference.

[crookesey]

He was obviously referring to post 1984, he should see some of it now, particularly the City Centre.

[Texas]

A nice quote from GO. I always thought he was readable from a very young age and his description of Neepsend was very dramatic. The thing was though, if a person was actually born and raised in an environment like the one he described they wouldn't think it was any kind of big deal, especially if they were ill educated and hadn't been anywhere, like myself. I lived not all that far from Neepsend, but on top of the hill, top of Woodside Lane, the air was a bit better and we could look down on the fogs of Neepsend. The buildings weren't all that different to how he describes them though.

I think that Orwell will always be castigated by some people because he was basically a 'toff', and well, everybody is entitled to their opinions. When I first saw a photograph of him I thought he was a 'spiv', and knocked out dodgy nylons from a suitcase. I was very young though.

[Fareast]

Yes, Texas, although, like you, I love Orwell 's prose, he certainly didn 't look like a writer from an upper-middle class family.

In fact do you remember the comedian Arthur English ? [ the Spiv ] I think Orwell had very similar features. I can never imagine Orwell at Eton or in the Colonial service in Burma. On top of that I bet he stood out like a sore thumb on his ' in the depths ' travels in the '30 's, due to his accent. An unusual man, on the borderline of eccentricity -----but describes England and the English beautifully.