Robbie And The Poet
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Robbie and the Poet
plans with two friends whom, he says, “I will call the
Poet and the Padre” (p.45). It is strange that even
Gerry Abbott
twenty years later when his autobiography was first
published, he clearly did not wish to identify this pair.
In 1921 Captain H.R. Robinson, known affectionately
It suggests that he wanted to protect them because he
in later life as ‘Robbie,’ was transferred at his own re-
had already become persona non grata in Mandalay’s
quest from the Indian Army to the Burma Military Po-
expatriate society, someone with whom respectable
lice. In May of that year he arrived in Katha. This was
people did not associate. The reason might well be
his first posting in Burma, although he had briefly
that whereas he claims to have retired from the Indian
glimpsed Rangoon and Mandalay some years earlier.
Army, in reality Robinson – as Stansky and Abrahams
His stay in Katha was also to be brief, for he was
claim – “after a scandal involving his native mistress,
transferred six months later to distant Konglu
had been cashiered” (1972:172). Other commentators
(Kawng-lu), a small hilltop town near the north-east
have also remarked on Robbie’s notoriety. Crick
border. Getting there meant having to take a train to
(1980:87), for example, observes that Blair “could have
the railhead town of Myitkyina and then march for
earned no bonus marks for knowing such a man as
twenty-four days at the head of a line of mules laden
Robinson.” I assume that ‘the Padre’ was an army
with a year’s supply of provisions. Once he had been
chaplain trying to help Robbie, though he too might
settled in at this remote post, he was left in single-
have been reprehensible in some way. Whatever the
handed charge of the civil and military affairs of a
case, my main purpose here is to suggest that ‘the
huge tract of mountainous terrain. The above details
Poet’ was Eric Blair.
about Robbie’s career are drawn from his autobiogra-
There is ample evidence that at this time Blair re-
phy, and the page references that follow relate to the
garded himself as a versifier, if not as a budding poet.
second edition of that book (Robinson, 2004), not to its
While still an Eton schoolboy he had seen two of his
original publication in 1942.
patriotic verses published in local newspapers, The
For this 24-year-old expatriate the first year or so in
Henley and South Oxfordshire Standard and The
Konglu was, in Robbie’s words, “interesting, if rather
Henley and South Oxfordshire Gazette (see Crick: 36
lonely” (p.11). Finding and apprehending law-
& 38), and he had sent romantic poems to Jacintha
breakers called for stamina, persistence and (as he
Buddicom, a would-be girlfriend (Crick: 57 & 61). In
came to understand) great self-control. In one case it
Burma he was still conceiving poems. Two deal with
took him an arduous two weeks’ march to seek out a
prostitution, one of them a wry tale told in the first
young woman accused of poisoning her elderly hus-
person:
band. On the way back she ran away into the forest, so
he then had to find her, re-arrest her and finally im-
ROMANCE
prison her in Konglu. Thus far, stamina and persis-
When I was young and had no sense
tence had triumphed; but after some days his self-
In far-off Mandalay
control failed him. From the beginning, he had found
I lost my heart to a Burmese girl
the young woman, handcuffed and in leg irons, very
As lovely as the day.
attractive. Not surprisingly he eventually found that –
as he put it – ‘an overwhelming aching and yearning
Her skin was gold, her hair was jet,
seized upon my soul, and one night I fell’ (p.20). Al-
Her teeth were ivory;
though she seems to have been a willing participant in
I said ‘For twenty silver pieces,
what followed, the fact that she was still manacled
Maiden, sleep with me.’
and shackled adds a chilling note to Robbie’s narra-
She looked at me, so pure, so sad,
tive.
The loveliest thing alive,
He asserts that in February 1923, after more than a
And in her lisping, virgin voice,
year in the hills, he received news that as part of the
Stood out for twenty-five.
Geddes programme of cuts his service was to be dis-
continued and he was to return to Mandalay. There,
Interestingly enough, the second poem is told in the
the formalities concerning retirement from the Indian
persona of a man of the church (possibly ‘the Padre’?)
Army were soon completed and his passage to Eng-
and describes how his ‘parson’s week’ – an occasional
land was booked for early May. Meanwhile, he would
extended week off duty – was spent. Both poems were
sample the pleasures of life in Mandalay.
written on Burma Government paper and are quoted
About three months before Robbie came back down
by Crick(1980: 92-3). Of the second poem’s eight stan-
from the hills, a nineteen-year-old named Eric Blair
zas, three are enough to establish the much darker
had arrived in Mandalay for training as an assistant
tone of this tale:
superintendent of police. One evening late in April,
Robinson was in the Upper Burma Club discussing his
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THE LESSER EVIL
looked what he was – a poet. But poets, like
Empty as death and slow as pain
woman with child, have
The days went by on leaden feet;
peculiar fancies, and this one wanted to shoot
And parson’s week had come again
an elephant. (p.93)
As I walked down the little street.
***
While we must not be distracted by that final phrase,
I thought of all the church bells ringing
when Blair’s colleague Roger Beadon asked him on
In towns that Christian folk were in;
another occasion whether he wanted to come out for a
I heard the godly maidens singing;
tiger shoot, Blair “thought it was a good idea” (Cop-
I turned into the house of sin.
pard and Crick, 1984:63). This confirms that Blair had
***
no compunctions about big game hunting. What is
Why did I come, the woman cried,
more relevant here is the description of the Poet as
So seldom to her bed of ease?
“pale and delicate in appearance but otherwise
When I was not, her spirit died
healthy enough.” Soon (p. 94) “the slight figure of the
And would I give her ten rupees.
Poet” is seen running back from the futile hunt and is
described as “exhausted” – as one would expect in the
(There is another poem which Crick rightly calls ‘aw-
case of a man with weak lungs. These descriptions
ful’ (ibid: 99-100.)
might be seen as supporting my theory. Taylor (2004)
disagrees with me on the basis that Blair was ‘a gan-
While the above supports my theory that ‘the Poet’
gling six foot three’, but in my view tallness in itself
was Blair the evidence is admittedly only circumstan-
does not make anyone appear less sallow, thin, gaunt
tial, and more substantiation is needed. A comparison
or slight.
of physical descriptions of the two might help to con-
Robbie provides a little more evidence that could
firm my hypothesis. When Blair first arrived in Man-
suggest that ‘the Poet’ was Blair. We know that Blair’s
dalay he was met at the station by another recent re-
mother Ida Limouzin grew up in Moulmein, and that
cruit, Roger Beadon, who recorded his impression of a
Blair had a grandmother and at least one aunt, Nora,
young man
still living there – see, for example, Bowker (2003: 6-8)
and Taylor (2003:72). In his attempts to shake off an
sallow-faced, tall, thin, and gangling, whose
addiction to opium, Robinson took the train to Ran-
clothes, no matter
goon, where he “put up at the house of the Poet” and
how well cut, seemed to hang on him – Eric A.
‘The Poet’s aunt’ gave him an injection of morphia
Blair.
(p.97). Had Nora by now moved to Rangoon? Was
(Stansky & Abrahams: 150-151.)
this another aunt? Or in this case was ‘aunt’ just the
usual term of respect for an unrelated elderly lady?
A few years later, when Blair was working in Moul-
Since we do not know and probably never shall, this
mein, he was described as “a tall, gaunt, young man”
little piece of evidence is inconclusive.
(Hearsey: 94). The adjectives sallow, thin, gaunt and
However, further evidence of a link between Rob-
gangling do not suggest a robust constitution, and
bie and Blair can be found in the latter’s writings.
Blair’s tallness would only tend to heighten any fragil-
Robbie had already been repatriated by the time Eric
ity of body. We also know that his lungs were frail: his
Blair left Burma in 1927, and by 1934 – when Burmese
sister wrote that in the early thirties ‘he got desper-
Days was published – Eric had chosen to be known by
ately ill with pneumonia’ (Coppard & Crick: 28). Blair
the name of George Orwell. I believe that there are in
claimed to have left Burma “partly because the climate
this novel several echoes of Blair’s friendship with
had ruined my health” (ibid:38), and in a letter to
Robinson. Once he had become addicted to opium,
Cyril Connolly in 1938 he referred to ‘an old TB lesion
Robbie had set up his own smoking den at home,
…which I must have had ten years or more’– perhaps,
screened by “deep red velvet curtains, some nine feet
therefore, before he left Burma in 1927.
in height” (p.77). Later, when he was at his wits’ end,
Let us, then, compare these impressions with Rob-
he decided to shoot himself. Retiring to his bedroom,
bie’s physical descriptions of ‘the Poet’. Towards the
he hesitated to bite on the barrel of his revolver:
end of ‘the cold weather of 1923-24’, Robinson says, he
drove out with ‘the Poet’ and another man towards
That would, I thought, result in an unsightly
what must have been Maymyo:
corpse, with the back of the head blown out.
The correct way, according to the tenets of
The Poet was hardly one’s idea of a mighty
common usage, was to fire through the temple.
hunter before the Lord.
It is strange, is it not, that men should be
Pale and delicate in appearance, but otherwise
swayed thus in their final hour? (p. 120)
healthy enough, he
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In Burmese Days the central figure Flory is as much a
with various people, one describing him as having
misfit as Robbie – or indeed as Blair – and again like
been “our closest friend, Robbie. A man in a million –
Robbie has a ‘native mistress’ who is the cause of his
so caring, so wise, and such fun to be with” (Personal
disgrace. Like Robbie, Flory retires to his bedroom in
correspondence, 2004). Unfortunately, however, he
order to commit suicide, but decides first to turn his
finally killed himself in March 1965 at the age of sixty-
pistol on his dog Flo:
nine.
When she was a yard away, he fired, blowing
REFERENCES
her skull to fragments.
Her shattered brain looked like red velvet.
Bowker, G. 2003. George Orwell. London: Little,
Was that what he would look like? The heart,
Brown.
then, not the head. (Orwell, 1934: Ch. 24)
Crick, B. 1980. George Orwell: a Life. London: Martin
The detail about red velvet may be sheer coincidence,
Secker & Warburg.
but the fact that both Robbie and Flory paused to
worry about what they would look like after death
Coppard, A. and Crick, B. 1984. Orwell Remembered.
suggests that it was a topic that Robbie had discussed
London: BBC.
with Blair. Indeed, in his review of Robbie’s book Or-
well makes a point of highlighting this aspect of Rob-
Hearsey, M. 1981. Land of Chindits and Rubies. Lon-
bie’s suicide attempt:
don: Mrs.M.A. Leverston-Allen.
The description of the attempted suicide is
Orwell, G. 1934. Burmese Days. New York: Harper
worth the rest of the book put together. It is
Brothers.
profoundly interesting to know what the mind
can still contain in the face of apparently cer-
________. 1942. Review of A Modern De Quincey. The
tain death – interesting to know, for instance,
Observer, 13 Sept, 1942.
that a man can be ready to blow his brains out
but anxious to avoid a disfiguring wound.
Robinson, Capt. H.R. 2004. A Modern de Quincey:
(Orwell, 1942)
autobiography of an opium addict. Bangkok:
Orchid Press.
Finally, the very fact that Orwell chose to review
Robbie’s book may be significant. In his phrasing –
Stansky, P. & Abrahams,W. 1972. The Unknown Or-
“Those who knew the author in Mandalay” and
well. London: Constable.
“Those who knew Captain Robinson in the old days”
(ibid) – he clearly indicates his acquaintance with
Taylor, D. J. 2003. Orwell: the life. London: Chatto &
Robbie. This is reinforced by his expressed pleasure in
Windus.
seeing
________. 2004. Review of A Modern De Quincey,
the photograph of him…completely cured of
Times Literary Supplement, August 6.
the opium habit and apparently well-adjusted
and happy, in spite of his blindness. (ibid)
I consider the various coincidences outlined above to
be fairly convincing support of my theory that ‘the
Poet’ was the future George Orwell, but there may
well be a scholar somewhere who can prove me
wrong.
POSTSCRIPT
Robbie’s blindness had been caused by his blowing
out both eyeballs in the suicide attempt seventeen
years earlier. Soon after arriving in England, Robinson
decided to enter the Massage School of the National
Institute for the Blind and subsequently worked in
South London hospitals as a physiotherapist until his
retirement in 1960. He developed close friendships
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