Down and Out in London and Paris

by Orwell, George

  razor in my pocket. It gives one a very strange feeling to be

  wearing such clothes. I had worn bad enough things

  before, but nothing at all like these; they were not merely

  dirty and shapeless, they had - how is one to express it?-a

  gracelessness, a patina of antique filth, quite different

  from mere shabbiness.

  They were the sort of clothes you see on a bootlace seller,

  or a tramp. An hour later, in Lambeth, I saw a hang-dog

  man, obviously a tramp, coming towards me, and when I

  looked again it was myself, reflected in a shop window.

  The dirt was plastering my face already. Dirt is a great

  respecter of persons; it lets you alone when you are well

  dressed, but as soon as your collar is gone it flies towards

  you from all directions.

  I stayed in the streets till late at night, keeping on the

  move all the time. Dressed as I was, I was half afraid that

  the police might arrest me as a vagabond, and I dared not

  speak to anyone, imagining that they must notice a

  disparity between my accent and my clothes. (Later I

  discovered that this never happened.) My new clothes had

  put me instantly into a new world. Everyone's demeanour

  seemed to have changed abruptly. I helped a hawker pick

  up a barrow that he had upset. "Thanks, mate," he said

  with a grin. No one had called me mate before in my life-it

  was the clothes that had done it. For the first time I

  noticed, too, how the attitude of women varies with a

  man's clothes. When a badly dressed man passes them

  they shudder away from him with a quite frank movement

  of disgust, as though he were a dead cat. Clothes are

  powerful things. Dressed in a tramp's clothes it is very

  difficult, at any rate for the first day, not to feel that you

  are genuinely degraded. You might feel the same shame,

  irrational but very real, your first night in prison.

  At about eleven I began looking for a bed. I had read

  about doss-houses (they are never called dosshouses, by

  the way), and I supposed that one could get a bed for

  fourpence or thereabouts. Seeing a man, a navvy or

  something of the kind, standing on the kerb in the

  Waterloo Road, I stopped and questioned him.

  I said that I was stony broke and wanted the cheapest

  bed I could get.

  "Oh," said he, "you go to that 'ouse across the street

  there, with the sign 'Good Beds for Single Men.' That's a

  good kip [sleeping place], that is. I bin there myself on and

  off You'll find it cheap and clean."

  It was a tall, battered-looking house, with dim lights in

  all the windows, some of which were patched with brown

  paper. I entered a stone passage-way, and a little etiolated

  boy with sleepy eyes appeared from a door leading to a

  cellar. Murmurous sounds came from the cellar, and a

  wave of hot air and cheese. The boy yawned and held out

  his hand.

  "Want a kip? That'll be a 'og, guv'nor."

  I paid the shilling, and the boy led me up a rickety

  unlighted staircase to a bedroom. It had a sweetish reek of

  paregoric and foul linen; the windows seemed to be tight

  shut, and the air was almost suffocating at first. There

  was a candle burning, and I saw that the room measured

  fifteen feet square by eight high, and had eight beds in it.

  Already six lodgers were in bed, queer lumpy shapes with

  all their own clothes, even their boots, piled on top of

  them. Someone was coughing in a loathsome manner in

  one corner.

  When I got into the bed I found that it was as hard as a

  board, and as for the pillow, it was a mere hard cylinder

  like a block of wood. It was rather worse than sleeping on

  a table, because the bed was not six feet long, and very

  narrow, and the mattress was convex, so that one had to

  hold on to avoid falling out. The sheets stank so horribly

  of sweat that I could not bear them near my nose. Also,

  the bedclothes only consisted of the sheets and a cotton

  counterpane, so that though stuffy it was none too warm.

  Several noises recurred throughout the night. About once

  in an hour the man on my left a sailor, I think-woke up,

  swore vilely, and lighted a cigarette. Another man, victim

  of a bladder disease, got up and noisily used his chamber-pot

  half a dozen times during the night. The man in the corner

  had a coughing fit once in every twenty minutes, so regularly

  that one came to listen for it as one listens for the next

  yap when a dog is baying the moon. It was an unspeakably

  repellent sound; a foul bubbling and retching, as though the

  man's bowels were being churned up within him. Once when he

  struck a match I saw that he was a very old man, with a grey,

  sunken face like that of a corpse, and he was wearing his

  trousers wrapped round his head as a nightcap, a thing

  which for some reason disgusted me very much. Every

  time he coughed or the other man swore, a sleepy voice

  from one of the other beds cried out:

  "Shut up! Oh, for Christ's ------sake shut up!"

  I had about an hour's sleep in all. In the morning I was

  woken by a dim impression of some large brown thing

  coming towards me. I opened my eyes and saw that it was

  one of the sailor's feet, sticking out of bed close to my

  face. It was dark brown, quite dark brown like an Indian's,

  with dirt. The walls were leprous, and the sheets, three

  weeks from the wash, were almost raw umber colour. I got

  up, dressed and went downstairs. In the cellar were a row

  of basins and two slippery roller towels. I had a piece of

  soap in my pocket, and I was going to wash, when I

  noticed that every basin was streaked with grime-solid,

  sticky filth as black as boot-blacking. I went out

  unwashed. Altogether, the lodging-house had not come up

  to its description as cheap and clean. It was however, as I

  found later, a fairly representative lodging-house.

  I crossed the river and walked a long way eastward,

  finally going into a coffeeshop on Tower Hill. Anfinally

  going into a coffee-shop on Tower Hill. An

  ordinary London coffee-shop, like a thousand others, it

  seemed queer and foreign after Paris. It was a little stuffy

  room with the high-backed pews that were fashionable in

  the 'forties, the day's menu written on a mirror with a

  piece of soap, and a girl of fourteen handling the dishes.

  Navvies were eating out of newspaper parcels, and

  drinking tea in vast saucerless mugs like china tumblers.

  In a corner by himself a Jew, muzzle down in the plate,

  was guiltily wolfing bacon.

  "Could I have some tea and bread and butter?" I said to

  the girl.

  She stared. "No butter, only marg," she said, surprised.

  And she repeated the order in the phrase that is to London

  what the eternal coup de rouge is to Paris: "Large tea and

  two slices!"

  On the wall beside my pew there was a notice saying

  "Pocketing the sugar not allowed," and beneath it some

  poetic
customer had written:

  He that takes away the sugar,

  Shall be called a dirty---

  but someone else had been at pains to scratch out the last

  word. This was England. The tea-and-two-slices cost

  threepence halfpenny, leaving me with eight and

  twopence.

  XXV

  THE eight shillings lasted three days and four nights. After

  my bad experience in the Waterloo Road'. I moved

  eastward, and spent the next night in a lodginghouse in

  Pennyfields. This was a typical lodging-house, like scores

  of others in London. It had accommo-

  1 It is a curious but well-known fact that bugs are much commoner in

  south than north London. For some reason they have not yet crossed the

  river in any great numbers.

  dation for between fifty and a hundred men, and was

  managed by a "deputy"-a deputy for the owner, that is, for

  these lodging-houses are profitable concerns and are

  owned by rich men. We slept fifteen or twenty in a

  dormitory; the beds were again cold and hard, but the

  sheets were not more than a week from the wash, which

  was an improvement. The charge was ninepence or a

  shilling (in the shilling dormitory the beds were six feet

  apart instead of four) and the terms were cash down by

  seven in the evening or out you went.

  Downstairs there was a kitchen common to all lodgers,

  with free firing and a supply of cooking-pots, tea-basins,

  and toasting-forks. There were two great, clinker fires,

  which were kept burning day and night the year through.

  The work of tending the fires, sweeping the kitchen and

  making the beds was done by the lodgers in rotation. One

  senior lodger, a fine Norman-looking stevedore named

  Steve, was known as "head of the house," and was arbiter

  of disputes and unpaid chuckerout.

  I liked the kitchen. It was a low-ceiled cellar deep

  underground, very hot and drowsy with coke fumes, and

  lighted only by the fires, which cast black velvet shadows

  in the corners. Ragged washing hung on strings from the

  ceiling. Red-lit men, stevedores mostly, moved about the

  fires with cooking-pots; some of them were quite naked,

  for they had been laundering and were waiting for their

  clothes to dry. At night there were games of nap and

  draughts, and songs"I'm a chap what's done wrong by my

  parents," was a favourite, and so was another popular song

  about a shipwreck. Sometimes late at night men would

  come in with a pail of winkles they had bought cheap, and

  share them out. There was a general sharing of food, and it

  was taken for granted to feed men who were out

  of work. A little pale, wizened creature, obviously

  dying, referred to as "pore Brown, bin under the doctor

  and cut open three times," was regularly fed by the

  others.

  Two or three of the lodgers were old-age pensioners.

  Till meeting them I had never realised that there are

  people in England who live on nothing but the oldage

  pension of ten shillings a week. None of these old men

  had any other resource whatever. One of them was

  talkative, and I asked him how he managed to exist. He

  said:

  "Well, there's ninepence a night for yer kip-that's five

  an' threepence a week. Then there's threepence on

  Saturday for a shave-that's five an' six. Then say you 'as

  a 'aircut once a month for sixpence-that's another

  three'apence a week. So you 'as about four an' fourpence

  for food an' bacca."

  He could imagine no other expenses. His food was

  bread and margarine and tea-towards the end of the week

  dry bread and tea without milk-and perhaps he got his

  clothes from charity. He seemed contented, valuing his

  bed and fire more than food. But, with an income of ten

  shillings a week, to spend money on a shave-it is awe-

  inspiring.

  All day I loafed in the streets, east as far as Wapping,

  west as far as Whitechapel. It was queer after Paris;

  everything was so much cleaner and quieter and drearier.

  One missed the scream of the trams, and the noisy,

  festering life of the back streets, and the armed men

  clattering through the squares. The crowds were better

  dressed and the faces comelier and milder and more

  alike, without that fierce individuality and malice of the

  French. There was less drunkenness, and less dirt, and

  less quarrelling, and more idling. Knots of men stood at

  all the corners, slightly underfed, but kept

  going by the tea-and-two-slices which the Londoner

  swallows every two hours. One seemed to breathe a less

  feverish air than in Paris. It was the land of the tea urn

  and the Labour Exchange, as Paris is the land of the bistro

  and the sweatshop.

  It was interesting to watch the crowds. The East

  London women are pretty (it is the mixture of blood,

  perhaps), and Limehouse was sprinkled with Orientals -

  Chinamen, Chittagonian lascars, Dravidians selling silk

  scarves, even a few Sikhs, come goodness knows how.

  Here and there were street meetings. In Whitechapel

  somebody called The Singing Evangel undertook to save

  you from hell for the charge of sixpence. In the East

  India Dock Road the Salvation Army were holding a

  service. They were singing "Anybody here like sneaking

  Judas?" to the tune of "What's to be done with a drunken

  sailor?" On Tower Hill two Mormons were trying to

  address a meeting. Round their platform struggled a mob

  of men, shouting and interrupting. Someone was

  denouncing them for polygamists. A lame, bearded man,

  evidently an atheist, had heard the word God and was

  heckling angrily. There was a confused uproar of voices.

  "My dear friends, if you would only let us finish what

  we were saying-!-That's right, give 'em a say. Don't get

  on the argue!-No, no, you answer me. Can you show me

  God? You show 'im me, then I'll believe in 'im.-Oh, shut

  up, don't keep interrupting of 'em!Interrupt yourself!-

  polygamists!-Well, there's a lot to be said for polygamy.

  Take the women out of industry, anyway.-My dear

  friends, if you would just -No, no, don't you slip out

  of it. 'Ave you seen God? 'Ave you touched 'im? 'Ave you

  shook 'ands with 'im?-Oh, don't get on the argue, for

  Christ's sake don't get on the argue!" etc. etc. I listened

  for twenty minutes, anxious to learn something about

  Mormonism, but the meeting never got beyond shouts. It

  is the general fate of street meetings.

  In Middlesex Street, among the crowds at the market, a

  draggled, down-at-heel woman was hauling a brat of five

  by the arm. She brandished a tin trumpet in its face. The

  brat was squalling.

  "Enjoy yourself!" yelled the mother. "What yer think I

  brought yer out 'ere for an' bought y'a trumpet an' all?

  D'ya want to go across my knee? You little bastard, you

  shall enjoy yerself!"

  Some drops of spittle fell from the trumpet. The mother

  and the child disappe
ared, both bawling. It was all very

  queer after Paris.

  The last night that I was in the Pennyfields lodginghouse

  there was a quarrel between two of the lodgers, a vile

  scene. One of the old-age pensioners, a man of about

  seventy, naked to the waist (he had been laundering), was

  violently abusing a short, thickset stevedore, who stood

  with his back to the fire. I could see the old man's face in

  the light of the fire, and he was almost crying with grief

  and rage. Evidently something very serious had happened.

  The old-age pensioner: "You---!"

  The stevedore: "Shut yer mouth, you ole---, afore I

  set about yer!"

  The old-age pensioner: "Jest you try it on, you--!

  I'm thirty year older'n you, but it wouldn't take much to

  make me give you one as'd knock you into a bucketful of

  piss!"

  The stevedore: « Ah, an' then p'raps I wouldn't smash

  you up after, you ole---!"

  Thus for five minutes. The lodgers sat round, unhappy,

  trying to disregard the quarrel. The stevedore looked

  sullen, but the old man was growing more and

  more furious. He kept making little rushes at the other,

  sticking out his face and screaming from a few inches

  distant like a cat on a wall, and spitting. He was trying to

  nerve himself to strike a blow, and not quite suc

  ceeding. Finally he burst out:

  "A--, that's what you are, a---! Take that

  in your dirty gob and suck it, you--! By--, I'll

  smash you afore I've done with you. A---, that's

  what you are, a son of a --- whore. Lick that, you---!

  That's what I think of you, you---, you---, you---

  you BLACK BASTARD!"

  Whereat he suddenly collapsed on a bench, took his

  face in his hands, and began crying. The other man seeing

  that public feeling was against him, went out.

  Afterwards I heard Steve explaining the cause of the

  quarrel. It appeared that it was all about a shilling's worth

  of food. In some way the old man had lost his store of

  bread and margarine, and so would have nothing to eat

  for the next three days, except what the others gave him

  in charity. The stevedore, who was in work and well fed,

  had taunted him; hence the quarrel.

  When my money was down to one and fourpence I went

  for a night to a lodging house in Bow, where the charge

  was only eightpence. One went down an area and through