He was humiliated as a bed wetter, forced to memorize streams of dates and names, mocked by the wealthier boys, and led to believe that (in his own words), "ife was more terrible, and I was more wicked, than I had imagined." The headmaster and his wife routinely reminded Eric that he was attending their school on a partial scholarship in order to shame him into behaving as they wished - this was another lesson to young Eric about the importance of social class and money. He began his first term there in 1912 and, until he left it five years later, almost wholly dreaded and hated the experience. Cyprian's, a preparatory school in Eastbourne with a reputation for readying boys for notable "public" (that is, private) schools. In the summer of 1911, Eric entered into the defining phase of his childhood when he was admitted to St. During this time, he began to vaguely understand his family's need to spend money to "keep up appearances" and the differences between members of different social classes: A friendship with a plumber's daughter was broken by his mother because she found the girl "too common." Not surprisingly, Eric was enthralled with books, notably Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels - a novel whose political satire would find its way into the books of George Orwell.
Richard did not see his youngest child until his return to England when he retired from the Opium Department in 1912.Įric spent his early boyhood in Henley, Oxfordshire, where he was an admittedly "chubby boy" who enjoyed walks in the Oxfordshire countryside. For the next eight years, Eric would see his father for only three months in 1907, during one of his leaves. One year after Eric's birth, Ida moved back to England. After their marriage, the couple lived in Bengal for eight years, where they had two children: Marjorie (born 1898) and Eric.
In 1896, he met Ida Amble Limouzin, a British governess 20 years his junior, also living in India. Like many middle-to-upper-class men of his time, Richard Blair served the British Empire in its most prized and lucrative colony. George Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair on June 25, 1903, in Bengal, India, where his father, Richard Walmesley Blair, was an official in the Opium Department.
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