Cyril Connolly
From Mrs George Orwell Sir: In your paragraph about the late Cyril Connolly, 'Dying beyond his means' (April 12) you correctly say an appeal is being sent round to raise money to pay his debts and provide for his widow and children, but you make a serious error in repeating the hoary legend of "Connolly's many rich friends" and in implying "there must be more cash on the way" (from them). It is true that one of his oldest friends, a resident abroad, gave a large donation to the Fund. I only wish I had, through my appeal, been able to match that sum. The rich are no longer very rich or else Cyril did not have rich friends: some people have been very generous but the bulk of the money I have so far managed to raise has come from poor writers or artists who know the difficulties writers face and have sent from £2 to £15. My gratitude towards everyone who has contributed is boundless, but I am far from achieving what I would like to accomplish.
You talk of Connolly's "extravagant tastes": many writers, painters and musicians have extravagant tastes and for them to die in debt is hardly uncommon, as a glance at history will show. As a group they are notoriously inept at handling money. You treat a familiar phenomenon as something we must start wondering at. People who care for the arts are not surprised: you apparently are and somehow seem to wish to punish — or at least reprove — artists for not being business men.
You make two further factual errors: the Bank has been extremely kind to Mrs Connolly and, far from being "an indefatigable fund-raiser", I am a complete novice at this sort of thing and am only sending out this appeal, with a few friends, through our friendship for Cyril and concern for his family's appalling situation. I 'woud point out that his children are aged fourteen and four.
You say "the life of a literary man is not always an easy one". Through your flippant journalism you seem determined to make life equally difficult for their widows and children. Reverting to the title of your paragraph I must say I did not know that dying itself required money.
Sonia Orwell Gloucester Road, London SW7.
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