CHAPTER ONE .sx First Impressions .sx In the early summer of 1939 , Richard Walmesley Blair , aged eighty-two , was slowly dying from cancer at his home in Southwold , on the Suffolk coast .sx His family was at his side , including his only son , Eric , with whom his relations had long been strained .sx His son had disappointed him some years earlier by abandoning a well-paid position in the Indian Imperial Police for an uncertain career as a writer .sx The old man was himself a retired colonial official - a veteran of more than thirty-five years of service in British India - and he was never able to understand why Eric had decided to turn his back on the Empire .sx As one who seldom read anything more substantial than the daily newspaper , he did not appreciate his son's love of literature and saw no future in a life devoted to writing books .sx He gave him no encouragement and showed little enthusiasm when the first book - Down and Out in Paris and London - was published in 1933 .sx There is no evidence that he cared one way or the other that it came out under the pen-name George Orwell , though in the case of the second book - Burmese Days - he must have been relieved not to have the family name associated with its harsh criticism of imperialism .sx In the last months of his life , however , his opinion of his son's career changed for the better .sx It was difficult not to respect the young man's uncompromising dedication to his work and his extraordinary productivity - by 1939 he had seven books to his credit .sx Moreover , his father could not ignore the growing number of critics in the national press who had given the books high praise .sx A few days before his death Mr Blair was told that his son's latest novel - Coming Up for Air - had been favourably reviewed in the Sunday Times .sx Indeed , it was called " brilliant" , and the headline proclaimed " MR GEORGE ORWELL'S SUCCESS " .sx He asked to hear the review , and the words were read aloud to him .sx They were the last the dying man would hear .sx Orwell recalled the scene in a letter written shortly afterwards :sx " Curiously enough his last moment of consciousness was hearing that review I had in the Sunday Times .sx He heard about it and wanted to see it , and my sister took it in and read it to him , and a little later he lost consciousness for the last time .sx " It was some comfort to know that his father had finally shown a little interest in his chosen career .sx As he remarked in his letter , " I am very glad that latterly he had not been so disappointed in me as before .sx " .sx Eric Blair had always desired his father's good opinion , but he had never been able to establish a close relationship with him , in large part because they had spent so little time together during Eric's childhood .sx Until he was eight he barely saw his father , who was away in India .sx By the time Mr Blair returned home to enjoy his retirement , his son was away at boarding school , and their subsequent time together during school holidays was short and generally uncomfortable .sx Looking back on this period , Orwell wrote that his father had appeared to him " simply as a gruff-voiced elderly man forever saying 'Don't' " .sx It did not help that the father was so much older than the son .sx He was very much a Victorian figure , and the age difference between them amounted to almost half a century .sx He was born on 7 January 1857 .sx George Gissing , the Victorian novelist whose work would later be a source of so much fascination for Orwell , was born in the same year .sx The Crimean War had recently ended , Lord Palmerston was Prime Minister and Queen Victoria was preparing to give birth to the last of her nine children .sx Charles Dickens was writing Little Dorrit , Thomas Hardy was still in his teens and George Bernard Shaw was only six moths old .sx Like Shaw , Richard Blair would lead a life so long that it would take him from the dawn of the railway age to the dawn of the nuclear age .sx Yet he was hardly the kind of person who welcomed change .sx He was a reserved , cautious , deeply conservative man who liked to keep his life within the confines of an undemanding routine .sx His abilities were modest , his habits moderate , his opinions conventional .sx Driven by no strong ambitions or passions , he took few risks and avoided confrontation .sx Throughout his adult life he maintained the carefully composed exterior of a faithful bureaucrat .sx His appearance was immaculate .sx He wore crisp , well-tailored clothes , and had a sturdy build , a firm jaw and a pair of deep-set blue eyes .sx His favourite pastimes were golf and bridge .sx In old age he kept a reserved seat at his local cinema and dutifully sat through each new film , regardless of its quality .sx In the words of one family member , he was a " superbly unadventurous " man .sx He came from a large family .sx The youngest of ten children , he was born in Milborne St Andrew , Dorset , where his father was the vicar .sx In the eighteenth century the Blairs had been a prosperous family with aristocratic connections .sx Richard's great-grandfather had married a daughter of the Earl of Westmorland , and had enjoyed the income from several lucrative properties in Jamaica .sx But little of this wealth had trickled down to Richard's father , who led a simple , quiet life in his country parish .sx He died when Richard was ten , leaving only a small income for his family's support .sx At eighteen Richard had to make his own way in the world , and he chose to do it in the service of the Empire .sx Many imperial paths were open to him .sx The Army was perhaps the most obvious choice , but if he had been really ambitious , he might have tried to enter the exalted ranks of the Indian Civil Service , which was limited to about one thousand carefully selected men .sx They held the top administrative posts in the various provinces of the sub-continent , and were widely admired for their efficiency and integrity .sx Below them were the specialised services - the police , the civil engineers , the forest service , etc. It was at this second tier of the bureaucracy that young Richard found a place .sx With a little help from a family friend in London , he managed to secure a position in the least distinguished , most obscure branch of the specialised services - the Opium Department .sx In one brief autobiographical note from 1947 , Orwell refers vaguely to his father's years as " an official in the English administration " of India .sx Orwell never wrote anything more specific about the job , but it was not something which he could have described with pride .sx Other writers have given the impression that his father was a sort of policeman engaged in a benign supervision of the native drug trade .sx But the truth is that Mr Blair spent his entire working life helping to perpetuate one of the worst evils of the British colonial system .sx Although the high-minded Victorian defenders of imperialism were reluctant to admit it , British India profited enormously from the sale of opium .sx It was legally available in India , but the real money came from exports to China .sx When Richard Blair began his new job in 1875 , the government opium monopoly in Bengal was producing 4000 tons of the narcotic annually , and nearly every ounce was destined for China's cramped slums where millions of addicts smoked it .sx They prized Indian opium because of its exceptional purity , and the job of the Opium Department was to keep it that way .sx English agents like Blair carefully supervised every step of production to ensure quality .sx Too much money was at stake to do otherwise .sx The trade produced a staggering profit of pounds6 .sx 5 million , or roughly one-sixth of the government's total revenue for India .sx There was no way to justify the trade morally , but giving it up was not easy when the benefit to the treasury was so handsome .sx As one historian put it , " Politically , the British Raj was as addicted to opium as any twenty-pipe-a-day coolie .sx " .sx Mr Blair was a loyal , efficient servant of this trade , and there is no sign that he ever had any serious doubts or regrets about the nature of his work .sx It was a secure job , the pay was good and the skills required were few .sx One can only speculate about his reasons for joining this particular service , but once he was in it , he stayed until retirement .sx It was the same for so many men who devoted their lives to the work of the Empire .sx Confident that its ultimate goals were just , they did what was expected of them and asked few questions .sx It was a way of life which Eric Blair would later come to know only too well in Burma .sx But as George Orwell he would devote considerable effort to repudiating it , repeatedly asking the hard questions about colonialism which his father's generation had evaded .sx Burdened with the awkward title of Assistant Sub-Deputy Opium Agent , 3rd grade , Richard Blair spent his first year of service in the far north of the sprawling province of Bengal .sx As he slowly worked his way through the department's lower ranks , he was posted to a variety of stations scattered over Bengal and the United Provinces .sx At each place his duties required him to spend nearly half his time travelling round his district .sx He was expected to keep a close eye on the poppy growers in his area , making sure that each was employing proper methods of cultivation , advancing loans to those who needed them and making estimates of production .sx It was a lonely existence , with few recreations or diversions .sx Nights were spent in tents or in the ubiquitous dak bungalows , which were reserved for touring officials .sx The great cities of India were hundreds of miles away , and extended leaves from service were infrequent .sx During the hottest months - from April to October - the insects , rain and scorching temperatures made life miserable .sx When he was not travelling , much of his time was spent on paperwork .sx As a bachelor , he braved twenty years of this life without complaint , and then one day in 1896 - when he was thirty-nine - he married an attractive young woman who was nearly half his age .sx Her name was Ida Mabel Limouzin .sx She had been a governess in India , and had been engaged to marry another man , but was jilted , and accepted Blair on the rebound .sx A slender woman with large eyes and thick wavy hair , she had a dark , faintly exotic appearance .sx Her family background was itself somewhat exotic .sx The daughter of a French father and an English mother , she was born on 18 May 1875 in the small suburb of Penge in South London .sx She grew up , however , thousands of miles away in Moulmein , a busy port in Lower Burma , where her father's family was established in the teak trade , and in boat building .sx There was even a street named after them in the town .sx At the height of their prosperity they lived very well indeed .sx One of Ida's sisters would later boast that their father , Frank , had lived " the life of a prince " in Burma , employing at one point a staff of thirty servants .sx This may have been the case for a short period , but the fact is that he was a reckless man who wasted his fortune .sx His taste for grand living led him to risk a large part of his capital on a speculative venture in the rice trade .sx He lost most of this investment , and his other businesses went into decline .sx Ida's mother , Theresa Catherine , was a stalwart Victorian lady who endured not only her husband's thriftless ways but also the pains of bearing their nine children , and of bringing them up in an arduous tropical climate .sx She was still leading an active life in Moulmein in the early 1920s when her grandson Eric arrived in Burma as a young colonial policeman .sx