In the Children's Hospital

Emmie

I

Our doctor had called another, I never had seen him before,
but he sent a chill to my heart when I saw him come in at the door,
fresh from the surgery schools of France and of other lands -
harsh red hair, big voice, big chest, big merciless hands!
Wonderful cures he had done, oh yes, but they said too of him
he was happier using the knife than in trying to save the limb,
and that I can well believe, for he looked so coarse and so red,
I could think he was one of those who would break their jests on the dead,
and mangle the living dog that had loved him and fawned at his knee -
drench'd with the hellish oorali – that ever, such things could be!

II

Here was a boy – I am sure that some of our children would die
but for the voice of love, and the smile, and the comforting eye -
here was a boy in the ward, every bone seemed out of its place
caught in a mill and crushed – it was all but a hopeless case :
and he handled him gently enough; but his voice and his face were not kind,
and it was but a hopeless case, he had seen it and made up his mind,
and he said to me roughly 'The lad will need little more of your care.'
'All the more need I told him, 'to seek the Lord Jesus in prayer;
they are all his children here, and I pray for them all as my own :'
but he turned to me, 'Ay, good woman, can prayer set a broken bone?'
Then he muttered half to himself, but I know what I heard him say
'All very well – but the good Lord Jesus has had his day.'

III

Had? Has it come? It has only dawn'd. It will come by and by.
O how could I serve in the wards if the hope of the world were a lie?
How could I bear with the sights and the loathsome smells of disease
but that He said Ye do it to me when ye do it to these' ?

IV

So he went. And we past to this ward where the younger children are laid :
Here is the cot of our orphan, our darling, our meek little maid;
Empty you see just now! We have lost her who loved her so much -
patient of pain tho' as quick as a sensitive plant to the touch;
hers was the prettiest prattle, it often moved me to tears,
hers was the gratefullest heart I have found in a child of her years -
nay you remember our Emmie; you used to send her the flowers;
how she would smile at 'em, play with 'em, talk to 'em hour after hours!
They that can wander at will where the works of the Lord are reveal'd
little guess what joy can be got from a cowslip out of the field;
flowers to these 'spirits in prison' are all they can know of the spring,
they freshen and sweeten the wards like the waft of an angel's wing;
and she lay with a flower in one hand and her thin hands crost on her breast -
wan, but as pretty as heart can desire, and we thought her at rest,
quietly sleeping – so quiet, our doctor said 'Poor little dear,
nurse I must do it tomorrow; she'll never live through it, I fear.'

V

I walked with our kindly old doctor as far as the head of the stair,
then I returned to the ward; the child didn't see I was there.

VI

Never since I was a nurse, had I been so grieved and so vext!
Emmie had heard him. Softly she called from her cot to the next,
'He says I shall never live thro' it, O Annie, what shall I do?'
Annie consider'd. 'If I,' said the wise little Annie 'was you,
I should cry to the dear Lord Jesus to help me, for, Emmie, you see,
it's all in the picture there: Little children should come to me. '
(Meaning the print that you gave us, I find that it always can please
our children, the dear Lord Jesus with children about his knees.)
Yes, and I will,' said Emmie, 'but then if I call to the Lord,
how should he know that it's me? Such a lot of beds in the ward!'
That was a puzzle for Annie. Again she considered and said:
'Emmie, you put out your arms, and you leave 'em outside the bed -
the lord has so much to see to! But, Emmie, you tell it him plain,
it's the little girl with her arms lying out on the counterpane.'

VII

I had sat three nights by the child – I could not watch her for four -
My brain had begun to reel – I felt I could do it no more.
That was my sleeping night, but I thought that it would never pass.
There was a thunderclap once, and a clatter of hail on the glass,
and there was a phantom cry that I heard as I tost about,
the motherless bleat of a lamb in the storm and the darkness without;
my sleep was broken besides with dreams of the dreadful knife
and fears for our delicate Emmie who scarce would escape with her life;
then in the gray of the morning it seemed she stood by me and smiled,
and the doctor came at his hour, and we went to see to the child.

VII

He had brought his ghastly tools: we believed her asleep again -
her dear, long, lean, little arms lying out on the counterpane;
Say that his day is done! Ah why should we care what they say?
The Lord of the children had heard her, and Emmie had passed away.

In the Children's Hospital (1879) -Alfred Lord Tennyson

h/t Orwell How the Poor Die

in case you missed it

Amazon goes all big brothery on Orwell's books for Kindle.

This morning [July 17, 2009], hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others

Here's what the FSF recommends people do in response.

on Orwell writing 1984

Just came across this interesting short biographical piece on Orwell in the Guardian.

The circumstances surrounding the writing of Nineteen Eighty-Four make a haunting narrative that helps to explain the bleakness of Orwell's dystopia. Here was an English writer, desperately sick, grappling alone with the demons of his imagination in a bleak Scottish outpost in the desolate aftermath of the second world war. The idea for Nineteen Eighty-Four, alternatively, "The Last Man in Europe", had been incubating in Orwell's mind since the Spanish civil war. His novel, which owes something to Yevgeny Zamyatin's dystopian fiction We, probably began to acquire a definitive shape during 1943-44, around the time he and his wife, Eileen adopted their only son, Richard. Orwell himself claimed that he was partly inspired by the meeting of the Allied leaders at the Tehran Conference of 1944. Isaac Deutscher, an Observer colleague, reported that Orwell was "convinced that Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt consciously plotted to divide the world" at Tehran.

(emphasis mine) h/t Arts and Letters Daily

Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London"

George Packer has a nice short piece on Orwell's first book (which I have yet to read).

Orwell began “tramping” and staying in shelters in 1928, when he was twenty-four years old and had just returned from five years as a colonial policeman in Burma. This period (which the critic V. S. Pritchett described as “going native in his own country”) continued—including the year and a half Orwell spent as a dishwasher and English tutor in Paris—for the better part of four years.
...
[Orwell]

I was conscious of an immense weight of guilt that I had got to expiate. I suppose that sounds exaggerated; but if you do for five years a job that you thoroughly disapprove of, you will probably feel the same…I felt that I had got to escape not merely from imperialism but from every form of man’s dominion over man. I wanted to submerge myself, to get right down among the oppressed; to be one of them and on their side against their tyrants.

Sometimes the self demands penance.

this is a great idea

The Libertarian Party UK 1984 campaign is this week delivering a copy of George Orwell's prophetic novel to every Member of Parliament. The books will be inscribed with the words, 'This book was a warning, not a blueprint' and will arrive at Parliament on or before November 5th - a date of well known historical significance for that building.

Every MP to receive a copy of Orwell's 1984

We should get some sort of similar project going here in the US.

"Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." - Orwell

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we're not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there is no reason or excuse for committing thought crime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak," he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. "Has it ever occured to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now."

"Except- " began Winston doubtfully, "and then stopped".

It had been on the tip of his tongue to say "except the proles," but he checked himself, not feeling fully certain that this remark was not in some sense unorthodox. Syme, had divined what he was about to say.

"The proles are not human beings" he said carelessly. "By 2050- earlier probably- all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron- they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like, 'freedom is slavery' when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."

One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.

George Orwell - 1984

Orwell's Essays

It’s a shame that “Politics and the English Language” is the only Orwell essay many readers know. The essays are the essential Orwell, where his voice is at its strongest and the working of his mind at its clearest. There are too many great ones to put between the covers of a book—which is why a new, two-volume edition of Orwell’s essays, edited by yours truly, has just been published by Harcourt: “Facing Unpleasant Facts,” which gathers the narrative essays, such as “Shooting an Elephant,” and “All Art Is Propaganda,” which compiles the critical essays, like the studies of Dickens and Dalí. I made sure to include lesser-known gems alongside the more famous essays: you’ll find Orwell’s wartime diary from 1940, his dismal recollection of working in a bookshop, his review of Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator,” his brilliant takedown of Eliot’s “Four Quartets,” and a truly obscure piece called “Dear Doktor Goebbels—Your British Friends Are Feeding Fine!”

On November 5th, you’ll need to clear your head of a great deal of accumulated nonsense. I would suggest a long, deep, surprising drink of Orwell.

The Cure for the Campaign - George Packer

Sounds like good advice.