Mr Clew
The head copywriter at the New Albion in Gordon Comstock's advertising days: a harassed man of about forty with wiry hair he keeps plunging his fingers into, working in a stuffy little office papered entirely with his own posters. He took Gordon under his wing, showed him the ropes, listened to his suggestions, and thought him very promising, which is the judgement Gordon spends the rest of the novel running away from.
A copywriter with some imagination. Orwell says the agency is permanently short of them, and Clew is willing to hear out the suggestions of a clerk with no experience at all.
The book
At a glance
- Head copywriter at the New Albion; Gordon's boss for six months
- About forty
- Magazine advertisements for a new deodorant called April Dew
- Chapter 3, in the account of Gordon's advertising years
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeMr Clew is the head copywriter at the New Albion Publicity Company, a London advertising agency, in Keep the Aspidistra Flying, the novel George Orwell published in 1936. A copywriter is the person who writes the words in advertisements, and in the 1930s that was a job an agency found much harder to fill than the drawing.
He appears in the chapter that explains how Gordon Comstock, the poet at the centre of the book, once had a career and threw it away. Gordon spent six months as Clew's assistant, and it was Clew who taught him the trade. Orwell describes him as a harassed man of about forty with wiry hair that he is always plunging his fingers into, working in a stuffy little office whose walls are papered from edge to edge with the posters he has produced.
He is not a villain and he is not a fool. He is friendly, he shows Gordon the ropes, and he is willing to listen to a junior's suggestions, which is rarer than it sounds. His verdict on Gordon is that the young man is very promising. That verdict is what frightens Gordon into resigning.
How the book draws them
- The office papered with his own workA stuffy little room at the agency, its walls entirely covered with the posters he has written over the years. Orwell calls them his past triumphs, and they are the only decoration.
- The hairWiry, and he keeps pushing his fingers into it. Orwell uses the word harassed for him, and the gesture is the evidence.
- How he trains an apprenticeHe takes Gordon under his wing in a friendly way, shows him how the work is done, and is even ready to listen to his suggestions. The arrangement lasts six months and Gordon is a clerk from the accounts department with no experience at all.
- The campaign they work onA run of magazine advertisements for April Dew, a new deodorant being launched by the Queen of Sheba Toilet Requisites Company. Gordon starts the job hating it and discovers, to his own horror, that he is unusually good at it.
- The judgement Gordon runs fromClew thinks him very promising. The agency raises his wages by ten shillings a week. Gordon watches himself succeed at writing advertisements first with surprise, then amusement, then real fear, and hands in his notice to stop it going any further.
Clew never appears in person again. By the last chapter he has left the New Albion, a year before Gordon comes back to it, and his job has gone to a Canadian named Warner who spent five years with a New York agency. The account Gordon is handed on his return is the same deodorant Clew put him on six years earlier.