Down and Out in Paris and London (27 page)

bullying them. It was our revenge upon them for having hu-

miliated us by feeding us.

The minister was a brave man. He thundered steadily

through a long sermon on Joshua, and managed almost to

ignore the sniggers and chattering from above. But in the

end, perhaps goaded beyond endurance, he announced

loudly:

‘I shall address the last five minutes of my sermon to the

UNSAVED sinners!’

Having said which, he turned his face to the gallery and

kept it so for five minutes, lest there should be any doubt

about who were saved and who unsaved. But much we

cared! Even while the minister was threatening hell fire,

we were rolling cigarettes, and at the last amen we clattered

down the stairs with a yell, many agreeing to come back for

another free tea next week.

The scene had interested me. It was so different from the

ordinary demeanour of tramps—from the abject worm-

like gratitude with which they normally accept charity. The

explanation, of course, was that we outnumbered the con-

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Down and Out in Paris and London

gregation and so were not afraid of them. A man receiving

charity practically always hates his benefactor—it is a fixed

characteristic of human nature; and, when he has fifty or a

hundred others to back him, he will show it.

In the evening, after the free tea, Paddy unexpectedly

earned another eighteenpence at ‘glimming’. It was exactly

enough for another night’s lodging, and we put it aside and

went hungry till nine the next evening. Bozo, who might

have given us some food, was away all day. The pavements

were wet, and he had gone to the Elephant and Castle, where

he knew of a pitch under shelter. Luckily I still had some to-

bacco, so that the day might have been worse.

At half past eight Paddy took me to the Embankment,

where a clergyman was known to distribute meal tickets

once a week. Under Charing Cross Bridge fifty men were

waiting, mirrored in the shivering puddles. Some of them

were truly appalling specimens—they were Embankment

sleepers, and the Embankment dredges up worse types than

the spike. One of them, I remember, was dressed in an over-

coat without buttons, laced up with rope, a pair of ragged

trousers, and boots exposing his toes—not a rag else. He

was bearded like a fakir, and he had managed to streak his

chest and shoulders with some horrible black filth resem-

bling train oil. What one could see of his face under the dirt

and hair was bleached white as paper by some malignant

disease. I heard him speak, and he had a goodish accent, as

of a clerk or shopwalker.

Presently the clergyman appeared and the men ranged

themselves in a queue in the order in which they had ar-

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rived. The clergyman was a nice, chubby, youngish man,

and, curiously enough, very like Charlie, my friend in Paris.

He was shy and embarrassed, and did not speak except for a

brief good evening; he simply hurried down the line of men,

thrusting a ticket upon each, and not waiting to be thanked.

The consequence was that, for once, there was genuine grat-

itude, and everyone said that the clergyman was a—good

feller. Someone (in his hearing, I believe) called out: ‘Well,

HE’LL never be a—bishop!’—this, of course, intended as a

warm compliment.

The tickets were worth sixpence each, and were direct-

ed to an eating-house not far away. When we got there we

found that the proprietor, knowing that the tramps could

not go elsewhere, was cheating by only giving four pen-

nyworth of food for each ticket. Paddy and I pooled our

tickets, and received food which we could have got for sev-

enpence or eightpence at most coffee-shops. The clergyman

had distributed well over a pound in tickets, so that the pro-

prietor was evidently swindling the tramps to the tune of

seven shillings or more a week. This kind of victimization

is a regular part of a tramp’s life, and it will go on as long as

people continue to give meal tickets instead of money.

Paddy and I went back to the lodging-house and, still

hungry, loafed in the kitchen, making the warmth of the fire

a substitute for food. At half-past ten Bozo arrived, tired out

and haggard, for his mangled leg made walking an agony.

He had not earned a penny at screeving, all the pitches un-

der shelter being taken, and for several hours he had begged

outright, with one eye on the policemen. He had amassed

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Down and Out in Paris and London

eightpence—a penny short of his kip. It was long past the

hour for paying, and he had only managed to slip indoors

when the deputy was not looking; at any moment he might

be caught and turned out, to sleep on the Embankment.

Bozo took the things out of his pockets and looked them

over, debating what to sell. He decided on his razor, took it

round the kitchen, and in a few minutes he had sold it for

threepence—enough to pay his kip, buy a basin of tea, and

leave a half-penny over.

Bozo got his basin of tea and sat down by the fire to dry

his clothes. As he drank the tea I saw that he was laughing

to himself, as though at some good joke. Surprised, I asked

him what he had to laugh at.

‘It’s bloody funny!’ he said. ‘It’s funny enough for

PUNCH. What do you think I been and done?’

‘What?’

‘Sold my razor without having a shave first: Of all the—

fools!’

He had not eaten since the morning, had walked several

miles with a twisted leg, his clothes were drenched, and he

had a halfpenny between himself and starvation. With all

this, he could laugh over the loss of his razor. One could not

help admiring him.

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XXXIV

The next morning, our money being at an end, Paddy

and I set out for the spike. We went southward by the

Old Kent Road, making for Cromley; we could not go to a

London spike, for Paddy had been in one recently and did

not care to risk going again. It was a sixteen-mile walk over

asphalt, blistering to the heels, and we were acutely hungry.

Paddy browsed the pavement, laying up a store of cigarette

ends against his time in the spike. In the end his persever-

ance was rewarded, for he picked up a penny. We bought a

large piece of stale bread, and devoured it as we walked.

When we got to Cromley, it was too early to go to the

spike, and we walked several miles farther, to a plantation

beside a meadow, where one could sit down. It was a regular

caravanserai of tramps—one could tell it by the worn grass

and the sodden newspaper and rusty cans that they had left

behind. Other tramps were arriving by ones and twos. It

was jolly autumn weather. Near by, a deep bed of tansies

was growing; it seems to me that even now I can smell the

sharp reek of those tansies, warring with the reek of tramps.

In the meadow two carthorse colts, raw sienna colour with

white manes and tails, were nibbling at a gate. We. sprawled

about on the ground, sweaty and exhausted. Someone man-

aged to find dry sticks and get a fire going, and we all had

milkless tea out of a tin ‘drum’ which was passed round.

Down and Out in Paris and London

Some of the tramps began telling stories. One of them,

Bill, was an interesting type, a genuine sturdy beggar of the

old breed, strong as Hercules and a frank foe of work. He

boasted that with his great strength he could get a nawying

job any time he liked, but as soon as he drew his first week’s

wages he went on a terrific drunk and was sacked. Between

whiles he ‘mooched’, chiefly from shopkeepers. He talked

like this:

‘I ain’t goin’ far in—Kent. Kent’s a tight county, Kent is.

There’s too many bin’ moochin’ about ‘ere. The—bakers get

so as they’ll throw their bread away sooner’n give it you.

Now Oxford, that’s the place for moochin’, Oxford is. When

I was in Oxford I mooched bread, and I mooched bacon,

and I mooched beef, and every night I mooched tanners for

my kip off of the students. The last night I was twopence

short of my kip, so I goes up to a parson and mooches ‘im for

threepence. He give me threepence, and the next moment

he turns round and gives me in charge for beggin’. ‘You bin

beggin’,’ the copper says. ‘No I ain’t,’ I says, ‘I was askin’ the

gentleman the time,’ I says. The copper starts feelin’ inside

my coat, and he pulls out a pound of meat and two loaves of

bread. ‘Well, what’s all this, then?’ he says. ‘You better come

‘long to the station,’ he says. The beak give me seven days. I

don’t mooch from no more—parsons. But Christ! what do I

care for a lay-up of seven days?’ etc. etc.

It seemed that his whole life was this—a round of

mooching, drunks, and lay-ups. He laughed as he talked of

it, taking it all for a tremendous joke. He looked as though

he made a poor thing out of begging, for he wore only a cor-

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duroy suit, scarf, and cap—no socks or linen. Still, he was

fat and jolly, and he even smelt of beer, a most unusual smell

in a tramp nowadays.

Two of the tramps had been in Cromley spike recently,

and they told a ghost story connected with it. Years earli-

er, they said, there had been a suicide there. A tramp had

managed to smuggle a razor into his cell, and there cut his

throat. In the morning, when the Tramp Major came round,

the body was jammed against the door, and to open it they

had to break the dead man’s arm. In revenge for this, the

dead man haunted his cell, and anyone who slept there was

certain to die within the year; there were copious instances,

of course. If a cell door stuck when you tried to open it, you

should avoid that cell like the plague, for it was the haunted

one.Two tramps, ex-sailors, told another grisly story. A man

(they swore they had known him) had planned to stow away

on a boat bound for Chile. It was laden with manufactured

goods packed in big wooden crates, and with the help of a

docker the stowaway had managed to hide himself in one of

these. But the docker had made a mistake about the order

in which the crates were to be loaded. The crane gripped

the stowaway, swung him aloft, and deposited him—at the

very bottom of the hold, beneath hundreds of crates. No one

discovered what had happened until the end of the voyage,

when they found the stowaway rotting, dead of suffoca-

tion.

Another tramp told the story of Gilderoy, the Scottish

robber. Gilderoy was the man who was condemned to be

Down and Out in Paris and London

hanged, escaped, captured the judge who had sentenced

him, and (splendid fellow!) hanged him. The tramps liked

the story, of course, but the interesting thing was to see that

they had got it all wrong. Their version was that Gilderoy

escaped to America, whereas in reality he was recaptured

and put to death. The story had been amended, no doubt de-

liberately; just as children amend the stories of Samson and

Robin Hood, giving them happy endings which are quite

imaginary.

This set the tramps talking about history, and a very old

man declared that the ‘one bite law’ was a survival from

days when the nobles hunted men instead of deer. Some

of the others laughed at him, but he had the idea firm in

his head. He had heard, too, of the Corn Laws, and the JUS

PRIMAE NOCTIS (he believed it had really existed); also

of the Great Rebellion, which he thought was a rebellion

of poor against rich—perhaps he had got it mixed up with

the peasant rebellions. I doubt whether the old man could

read, and certainly he was not repeating newspaper articles.

His scraps of history had been passed from generation to

generation of tramps, perhaps for centuries in some cases.

It was oral tradition lingering on, like a faint echo from the

Middle Ages.

Paddy and I went to the spike at six in the evening, get-

ting out at ten in the morning. It was much like Romton

and Edbury, and we saw nothing of the ghost. Among the

casuals were two young men named William and Fred, ex-

fishermen from Norfolk, a lively pair and fond of singing.

They had a song called ‘Unhappy Bella’ that is worth writ-

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ing down. I heard them sing it half a dozen times during the

next two days, and I managed to get it by heart, except a line

or two which I have guessed. It ran:

Bel a was young and Bel a was fair

With bright blue eyes and golden hair,

O unhappy Bel a!

Her step was light and her heart was gay,

But she had no sense, and one fine day

She got herself put in the family way

By a wicked, heartless, cruel deceiver.