Billed as some of Orwells' less accessible material, Decline of the English Murder and other essays contains ten texts on a strange variety of subjects, but in which his potent insights into the flaws of man and society remain constant as well as a biting wit. The title piece is a case in point, drawing an unflattering, and humorously cynical, comparison between the popular contemporary (post-World War II) crimes making the headlines and those doing so between 1850 and 1925 what he refers to as Our great period in murder, our Elizabethan period, so to speak.
Describing a downward slide from a time of middle-class murder, when to poison one's spouse was considered less shameful than the ignominy of divorce, to one of trivial 'Americanised' slaughter (effectively the thrill killing of films like Natural Born Killers, to which his war years British example is remarkably close), Orwell narrows the field down to what a News of the World reader would consider the perfect murder (like the one depicted on the cover of my copy, reading about MORE CRIPPEN DISCOVERIES), and establishes for us the petty, small-minded nature of the culprit and most likely his tabloid voyeur as well, along with his social standing, political leanings, career, motivations and modus operandi.
The next, A Hanging, is one of three more autobiographical pieces. In this case it is almost a short story, describing Orwell's witnessing of an execution in Burma, and the observations of the condemned, his condemners (Orwell included) and the layers of social nicety that exist around so morbid an event are quite fascinating. The second of these pieces, How the Poor Die, recounts a period spent in a French hospital in 1929 as a non-paying patient. Suffering from pneumonia, the treatment he receives is frighteningly severe, as is that of the other state-supported individuals around him. Nurses with a minimum of training and no emphasis on or expectation of a caring attitude; rarely spoken to or even looked in the eye by doctors and their students; treated as subjects for study and even experimentation or student pranks. A death in the night is routine, as is for the body in question to remain in situ for hours until someone can be bothered to haul it away. As soon as he is able Orwell flees, and although he discovered later that this particular hospital had a reputation, he notes that all such institutions have similar ghosts in their past, that even their architecture echoes it; and that for many ordinary people the belief that a hospital is a place one goes to die remains strong, even if times have changed for the better.
Between these two, and off the subject of his own past, comes Benefit of Clergy (Some Notes on Salvador Dali), more specifically on Dali's autobiography, Life.
Some of the incidents in it are flatly incredible, others have been rearranged and romanticised, and not merely the humiliation but the persistent ordinariness of everyday life been cut out. Dali is even by his own diagnosis narcissistic, and his autobiography is simply a strip-tease act conducted in pink limelight.
Orwell proceeds to tear strips off Dali for the self-serving nonsense he spouts throughout the book, along the way examining the quality of art appreciation he has provoked amongst the public and critics, critiquing them in turn. He examines social changes that have transpired which may reveal some of Dali's most powerful motivations and why aristocrats should buy his pictures instead of hunting and making love like their grandfathers, and registers his own disgust with some of Dali's work without in any way demanding it cease.
Short of the dirty post cards that used to be sold in Mediterranean seaport towns, it is doubtful policy to suppress anything, and Dali's fantasies probably cast useful light on the decay of capitalist civilisation.
Seaside post cards are clearly of some interest to Orwell, as three years previously he wrote about The Art of Donald McGill, the man who would be King of the saucy post card. Perhaps there was a sea change in his thinking in 1944 as his earlier opinions come out decidedly on McGill?s side unless the Mediterranean product was less wholesome.
All in all a fascinating window into the workings of Orwell's mind. Clever, witty, concise and analytical. A Brilliant read.
The book is not in print anymore and relatively difficult to get hold of for a reasonable price.
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