Read Down and Out in Paris and London Online
Authors: George Orwell
Tags: #Download classic literature as completely free eBooks from Planet eBook.
1
Down and Out in Paris and London
ting lost among the desolate north London slums. Our meal
tickets were directed to a coffee-shop in Ilford. When we
got there, the little chit of a serving-maid, having seen our
tickets and grasped that we were tramps, tossed her head
in contempt and for a long time would not serve us. Final-
ly she slapped on the table two ‘large teas’ and four slices
of bread and dripping—that is, eightpenny-worth of food.
It appeared that the shop habitually cheated the tramps
of twopence or so on each ticket; having tickets instead of
money, the tramps could not protest or go elsewhere.
Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com
1
XXVIII
Paddy was my mate for about the next fortnight, and, as
he was the first tramp I had known at all well, I want to
give an account of him. I believe that he was a typical tramp
and there are tens of thousands in England like him.
He was a tallish man, aged about thirty-five, with fair
hair going grizzled and watery blue eyes. His features were
good, but his cheeks had lanked and had that greyish, dirty
in the grain look that comes of a bread and margarine diet.
He was dressed, rather better than most tramps, in a tweed
shooting-jacket and a pair of old evening trousers with the
braid still on them. Evidently the braid figured in his mind
as a lingering scrap of respectability, and he took care to
sew it on again when it came loose. He was careful of his
appearance altogether, and carried a razor and bootbrush
that he would not sell, though he had sold his ‘papers’ and
even his pocket-knife long since. Nevertheless, one would
have known him for a tramp a hundred yards away. There
was something in his drifting style of walk, and the way he
had of hunching his shoulders forward, essentially abject.
Seeing him walk, you felt instinctively that he would sooner
take a blow than give one.
He had been brought up in Ireland, served two years in
the war, and then worked in a metal polish factory, where he
had lost his job two years earlier. He was horribly ashamed
1
Down and Out in Paris and London
of being a tramp, but he had picked up all a tramp’s ways. He
browsed the pavements unceasingly, never missing a ciga-
rette end, or even an empty cigarette packet, as he used the
tissue paper for rolling cigarettes. On our way into Edbury
he saw a newspaper parcel on the pavement, pounced on it,
and found that it contained two mutton sandwiches/rather
frayed at the edges; these he insisted on my sharing. He nev-
er passed an automatic machine without giving a tug at the
handle, for he said that sometimes they are out of order and
will eject pennies if you tug at them. He had no stomach for
crime, however. When we were in the outskirts of Romton,
Paddy noticed a bottle of milk on a doorstep, evidently left
there by mistake. He stopped, eyeing the bottle hungrily.
‘Christ!’ he said, ‘dere’s good food goin’ to waste. Some-
body could knock dat bottle off, eh? Knock it off easy.’
I saw that he was thinking of ‘knocking it off’ himself.
He looked up and down the street; it was a quiet residential
street and there was nobody in sight. Paddy’s sickly, chap-
fallen face yearned over the milk. Then he turned away,
saying gloomily:
‘Best leave it. It don’t do a man no good to steal. T’ank
God, I ain’t never stolen nothin’ yet.’
It was funk, bred of hunger, that kept him virtuous. With
only two or three sound meals in his belly, he would have
found courage to steal the milk.
He had two subjects of conversation, the shame and
come-down of being a tramp, and the best way of getting a
free meal. As we drifted through the streets he would keep
up a monologue in this style, in a whimpering, self-pitying
Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com
1
Irish voice:
‘It’s hell bein’ on de road, eh? It breaks yer heart goin’
into dem bloody spikes. But what’s a man to do else, eh? I
ain’t had a good meat meal for about two months, an’ me
boots is getting bad, an’—Christ! How’d it be if we was to
try for a cup o’ tay at one o’ dem convents on de way to Ed-
bury? Most times dey’re good for a cup o’ tay. Ah, what’d a
man do widout religion, eh? I’ve took cups o’ tay from de
convents, an’ de Baptists, an’ de Church of England, an’ all
sorts. I’m a Catholic meself. Dat’s to say, I ain’t been to con-
fession for about seventeen year, but still I got me religious
feelin’s, y’understand. An’ dem convents is always good for
a cup o’ tay …’ etc. etc. He would keep this up all day, almost
without stopping.
His ignorance was limitless and appalling. He once
asked me, for instance, whether Napoleon lived before Je-
sus Christ or after. Another time, when I was looking into a
bookshop window, he grew very perturbed because one of
the books was called OF THE IMITATION OF CHRIST.
He took this for blasphemy. ‘What de hell do dey want to go
imitatin’ of HIM for?’ he demanded angrily. He could read,
but he had a kind of loathing for books. On our way from
Romton to Edbury I went into a public library, and, though
Paddy did not want to read, I suggested that he should come
in and rest his legs. But he preferred to wait on the pave-
ment. ‘No,’ he said, ‘de sight of all dat bloody print makes
me sick.’
Like most tramps, he was passionately mean about
matches. He had a box of matches when I met him, but I
10
Down and Out in Paris and London
never saw him strike one, and he used to lecture me for ex-
travagance when I struck mine. His method was to cadge a
light from strangers, sometimes going without a smoke for
half an hour rather than strike a match.
Self-pity was the clue to his character. The thought of his
bad luck never seemed to leave him for an instant. He would
break long silences to exclaim, apropos of nothing, ‘It’s hell
when yer clo’es begin to go up de spout, eh?’ or ‘Dat tay in de
spike ain’t tay, it’s piss,’ as though there was nothing else in
the world to think about. And he had a low, worm-like envy
of anyone who was better off—not of the rich, for they were
beyond his social horizon, but of men in work. He pined
for work as an artist pines to be famous. If he saw an old
man working he would say bitterly, ‘Look at dat old—kee-
pin’ able-bodied men out o’ work’; or if it was a boy, ‘It’s
dem young devils what’s takin’ de bread out of our mouths.’
And all foreigners to him were ‘dem bloody dagoes’—for,
according to his theory, foreigners were responsible for un-
employment.
He looked at women with a mixture of longing and ha-
tred. Young, pretty women were too much above him to
enter into his ideas, but his mouth watered at prostitutes.
A couple of scarlet-lipped old creatures would go past; Pad-
dy’s face would flush pale pink, and he would turn and stare
hungrily after the women. ‘Tarts!’ he would murmur, like a
boy at a sweetshop window. He told me once that he had not
had to do with a woman for two years—since he had lost his
job, that is—and he had forgotten that one could aim higher
than prostitutes. He had the regular character of a tramp—
Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com
11
abject, envious, a jackal’s character.
Nevertheless, he was a good fellow, generous by nature
and capable of sharing his last crust with a friend; indeed
he did literally share his last crust with me more than once.
He was probably capable of work too, if he had been well fed
for a few months. But two years of bread and margarine had
lowered his standards hopelessly. He had lived on this filthy
imitation of food till his own mind and body were com-
pounded of inferior stuff. It was malnutrition and not any
native vice that had destroyed his manhood.
1
Down and Out in Paris and London
XXIX
On the way to Edbury I told Paddy that I had a friend
from whom I could be sure of getting money, and sug-
gested going straight into London rather than face another
night in the spike. But Paddy had not been in Edbury spike
recently, and, tramp-like, he would not waste a night’s free
lodging. We arranged to go into London the next morning.
I had only a halfpenny, but Paddy had two shillings, which
would get us a bed each and a few cups of tea.
The Edbury spike did not differ much from the one at
Romton. The worst feature was that all tobacco was confis-
cated at the gate, and we were warned that any man caught
smoking would be turned out at once. Under the Vagrancy
Act tramps can be prosecuted for smoking in the spike—in
fact, they can be prosecuted for almost anything; but the
authorities generally save the trouble of a prosecution by
turning disobedient men out of doors. There was no work to
do, and the cells were fairly comfortable. We slept two in a
cell, ‘one up, one down’—that is, one on a wooden shelf and
one on the floor, with straw palliasses and plenty of blan-
kets, dirty but not verminous. The food was the same as at
Romton, except that we had tea instead of cocoa. One could
get extra tea in the morning, as the Tramp Major was sell-
ing it at a halfpenny a mug, illicitly no doubt. We were each
given a hunk of bread and cheese to take away for our mid-
Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com
1
day meal.
When we got into London we had eight hours to kill be-
fore the lodging-houses opened. It is curious how one does
not notice things. I had been in London innumerable times,
and yet till that day I had never noticed one of the worst
things about London—the fact that it costs money even
to sit down. In Paris, if you had no money and could not
find a public bench, you would sit on the pavement. Heaven
knows what sitting on the pavement would lead to in Lon-
don—prison, probably. By four we had stood five hours, and
our feet seemed red-hot from the hardness of the stones. We
were hungry, having eaten our ration as soon as we left the
spike, and I was out of tobacco—it mattered less to Paddy,
who picked up cigarette ends. We tried two churches and
found them locked. Then we tried a public library, but there
were no seats in it. As a last hope Paddy suggested trying
a Rowton House; by the rules they would not let us in be-
fore seven, but we might slip in unnoticed. We walked up
to the magnificent doorway (the Rowton Houses really are
magnificent) and very casually, trying to look like regular
lodgers, began to stroll in. Instantly a man lounging in the
doorway, a sharp-faced fellow, evidently in some position of
authority, barred the way.
‘You men sleep ‘ere last night?’
‘No.’
‘Then—off.’
We obeyed, and stood two more hours on the street
corner. It was unpleasant, but it taught me not to use the ex-
pression ‘street corner loafer’, so I gained something from
1
Down and Out in Paris and London
it. At six we went to a Salvation Army shelter. We could
not book beds till eight and it was not certain that there
would be any vacant, but an official, who called us ‘Brother’,
let us in on the condition that we paid for two cups of tea.
The main hall of the shelter was a great white-washed barn
of a place, oppressively clean and bare, with no fires. Two
hundred decentish, rather subdued-looking people were
sitting packed on long wooden benches. One or two offi-
cers in uniform prowled up and down. On the wall were
pictures of General Booth, and notices prohibiting cooking,
drinking, spitting, swearing, quarrelling, and gambling. As
a specimen of these notices, here is one that I copied word
for word:
Any man found gambling or playing cards will be ex-
pelled and will not be admitted under any circumstances.
A reward will be given for information leading to the
discovery of such persons.
The officers in charge appeal to all lodgers to assist them
in keeping this hostel free from the DETESTABLE EVIL OF
GAMBLING.
‘Gambling or playing cards’ is a delightful phrase. To
my eye these Salvation Army shelters, though clean, are
far drearier than the worst of the common lodging-hous-
es. There is such a hopelessness about some of the people
there—decent, broken-down types who have pawned their
collars but are still trying for office jobs. Coming to a Sal-
vation Army shelter, where it is at least clean, is their last
clutch at respectability. At the next table to me were two
Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com
1
foreigners, dressed in rags but manifestly gentlemen. They
were playing chess verbally, not even writing down the
moves. One of them was blind, and I heard them say that
they had been saving up for a long time to buy a board, price