George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London

was a Magyar, a little dark, sharp-featured fellow in spec-

tacles, and very talkative; he had been a medical

student, but had abandoned his training for lack of

money. He had a taste for talking while other people

were working, and he told me all about himself and his

ideas. It appeared that he was a Communist, and had

various strange theories (he could prove to you by

figures that it was wrong to work), and he was also,

like most Magyars, passionately proud. Proud and lazy

men do not make good waiters. It was Jules's dearest

boast that once when a customer in a restaurant had

insulted him, he had poured a plate of hot soup down

the customer's neck, and then walked straight out

without even waiting to be sacked.

As each day went by Jules grew more and more en-

raged at the trick the

patron had played on us. He had a

spluttering, oratorical way of talking. He used to walk

up and down shaking his fist, and trying to incite me

not to work:

"Put that brush down, you fool! You and I belong to

proud races; we don't work for nothing, like these

damned Russian serfs. I tell you, to be cheated like

this is torture to me. There have been times in my life,

when someone has cheated me even of five sous, when

I have vomited-yes, vomited with rage.

"Besides,

mon vieux , don't forget that I'm a Commu-

nist. A

bas la bourgeoisie ! Did any man alive ever see me

working when I could avoid it? No. And not only I don't

wear myself out working, like you other fools, but I

steal, just to show my independence. Once I was in a

restaurant where the

patron thought he could treat me

like a dog. Well, in revenge I found out a way to steal

milk from the milk-cans and seal them up again so

that no one should know. I tell you I just swilled that

milk down night and morning. Every day I drank four

litres of milk, besides half a litre of cream. The patron

was at his wits' end to know where the milk was going.

It wasn't that I wanted milk, you understand, because I

hate the stuff, it was principle, just principle.

"Well, after three days I began to get dreadful pains

in my belly, and I went to the doctor. 'What have you

been eating?' he said. I said: 'I drink four litres of milk

a day, and half a litre of cream.' 'Four litres!' he said.

'Then stop it at once. You'll burst if you go on.' 'What

do I care?' I said. 'With me principle is everything. I

shall go on drinking that milk, even if I do burst.'

"Well, the next day the

patron caught me stealing

milk. 'You're sacked,' he said; 'you leave at the end of

the week.'

'Pardon, monsieur ,' I said, 'I shall leave this

morning.' 'No, you won't,' he said, 'I can't spare you till

Saturday.' 'Very well,

mon patron ,' I thought to myself,

'we'll see who gets tired of it first.' And then I set to

work to smash the crockery. I broke nine plates the

first day and thirteen the second; after that the

patron

was glad to see the last of me.

« Ah, I'm not one of your Russian

moujiks . . ."

Ten days passed. It was a bad time. I was absolutely at

the end of my money, and my rent was several days

overdue. We loafed about the dismal empty restaurant,

too hungry even to get on with the work that remained.

Only Boris now believed that the restaurant would

open. He had set his heart on being

maitre d'hôtel , and

he invented a theory that the

patron's money was tied

up in shares and he was waiting a favourable moment

for selling. On the tenth day I had nothing to eat or

smoke, and I told the

patron that I could not continue

working without an advance on my wages. As blandly

as usual, the

patron promised the advance, and then,

according to his custom, vanished. I walked part of

the way home, but I did not feel equal to a scene with

Madame F. over the rent, so I passed the night on a

bench on the boulevard. It was very uncomfortable-the

arm of the seat cuts into your back-and much colder

than I had expected. There was plenty of time, in the

long boring hours between dawn and work, to think

what a fool I had been to deliver myself into the hands

of these Russians.

Then, in the morning, the luck changed. Evidently

the

patron had come to an understanding with his

creditors, for he arrived with money in his pockets, set

the alterations going, and gave me my advance. Boris

and I bought macaroni and a piece of horse's liver, and

had our first hot meal in ten days.

The workmen were brought in and the alterations

made, hastily and with incredible shoddiness. The

tables, for instance, were to be covered with baize, but

when the

patron found that baize was expensive he

bought instead disused army blankets, smelling incor-

rigibly of sweat. The table-cloths (they were check, to go

with the "Norman" decorations) would cover them, of

course. On the last night we were at work till two in the

morning, getting things ready. The crockery did not

arrive till eight, and, being new, had all to be washed.

The cutlery did not arrive till the next morning, nor the

linen either, so that we had to dry the crockery with a

shirt of the

patron's and an old pillowslip belonging to

the concierge. Boris and I did all the work. Jules was

skulking, and the

patron and his wife sat in the bar with

a dun and some Russian friends, drinking success to

the restaurant. The cook was in the kitchen with her

head on the table, crying, because she was expected to

cook for fifty people, and there were not pots and pans

enough for ten. About midnight there was a fearful

interview with some duns, who came intending to

seize eight copper saucepans which the

patron had

obtained on credit. They were bought off with half a

bottle of brandy.

Jules and I missed the last Metro home and had to

sleep on the floor of the restaurant. The first thing we

saw in the morning were two large rats sitting on the

kitchen table, eating from a ham that stood there. It

seemed a bad omen, and I was surer than ever that the

Auberge de Jehan Cottard would turn out a failure.

XX

THE

patron had engaged me as kitchen

plongeur ; that is,

my job was to wash up, keep the kitchen clean, prepare

vegetables, make tea, coffee and sandwiches, do the

simpler cooking, and run errands. The terms were, as

usual, five hundred francs a month and food, but I had

no free day and no fixed working hours. At the Hôtel X. I

had seen catering at its best, with unlimited money and

good organisation. Now, at the Auberge, I learned how

things are done in a thoroughly bad restaurant. It is

worth describing, for there are hundreds of similar

restaurants in Paris, and every visitor feeds in one of

them occasionally.

I should add, by the way, that the Auberge was not

the ordinary cheap eating-house frequented by students

and workmen. We did not provide an adequate meal at

less than twenty-five francs, and we were picturesque

and artistic, which sent up our social standing. There

were the indecent pictures in the bar, and the Norman

decorations-sham beams on the walls, electric lights

done up as candlesticks, "peasant" pottery, even a

mounting-block at the door-and the

patron and the head

waiter were Russian officers, and many of the

customers titled Russian refugees. In short, we were

decidedly chic.

Nevertheless, the conditions behind the kitchen door

were suitable for a pigsty. For this is what our service

arrangements were like.

The kitchen measured fifteen feet long by eight

broad, and half this space was taken up by the stoves

and tables. All the pots had to be kept on shelves out of

reach, and there was only room for one dustbin. This

dustbin used to be crammed full by midday, and the

floor was normally an inch deep in a compost of

trampled food.

For firing we had nothing but three gas-stoves,

without ovens, and all joints had to be sent out to the

bakery.

There was no larder. Our substitute for one was a

half-roofed shed in the yard, with a tree growing in the

middle of it. The meat, vegetables and so forth lay there

on the bare earth, raided by rats and cats.

There was no hot water laid on. Water for washing up

had to be heated in pans, and, as there was no room for

these on the stoves when meals were cooking, most of

the plates had to be washed in cold water. This, with

soft soap and the hard Paris water, meant scraping the

grease off with bits of newspaper.

We were so short of saucepans that I had to wash

each one as soon as it was done with, instead of leaving

them till the evening. This alone wasted probably an

hour a day.

Owing to some scamping of expense in the installa-

tion, the electric light usually fused at eight in the

evening. The patron would only allow us three candles

in the kitchen, and the cook said three were unlucky, so

we had only two.

Our coffee-grinder was borrowed from a

bistro near

by, and our dustbin and brooms from the concierge.

After the first week a quantity of linen did not come back

from the wash, as the bill was not paid. We were in

trouble with the inspector of labour, who had discovered

that the staff included no Frenchmen; he had several

private interviews with the

patron , who, I believe, was

obliged to bribe him. The electric company was still

dunning us, and when the duns found that we would

buy them off with

apéritifs , they came every morning. We

were in debt at the grocery, and credit would have been

stopped, only the grocer's wife (a moustachio'd woman of

sixty) had taken a fancy to Jules, who was sent every

morning to cajole her. Similarly I had to waste an hour

every day haggling over vegetables in the Rue du

Commerce, to save a few centimes.

These are the results of starting a restaurant on in-

sufficient capital. And in these conditions the cook and I

were expected to serve thirty or forty meals a day, and

would later on be serving a hundred. From the first day

it was too much for us. The cook's working hours were

from eight in the morning till midnight, and mine from

seven in the morning till half-past twelve the next

morning-seventeen and a half hours, almost without a

break. We never had time to sit down till five in the

afternoon, and even then there was no seat except the

top of the dustbin. Boris, who lived near by and had not

to catch the last Metro home, worked from eight in the

morning till two the next morning-eighteen hours a day,

seven days a week. Such hours, though not usual, are

nothing extraordinary in Paris.

Life settled at once into a routine that made the Hôtel

X. seem like a holiday. Every morning at six I drove

myself out of bed, did not shave, sometimes washed,