George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London

come, saying that churches were not his style.

Outside the church quite a hundred men were waiting,

dirty types who had gathered from far and wide at the

news of a free tea, like kites round a dead buffalo.

Presently the doors opened and a clergyman and some

girls shepherded us into a gallery at the top of the church.

It was an evangelical church, gaunt and wilfully ugly, with

texts about blood and fire blazoned on the walls, and a

hymn-book containing twelve hundred and fifty-one

hymns; reading some of the hymns, I concluded that the

book would do as it stood for an anthology of bad verse.

There was to be a service after the tea, and the regular

congregation were sitting in the well of the church below.

It was a week-day, and there were only a few dozen of

them, mostly stringy old women who reminded one of

boilingfowls. We ranged ourselves in the gallery pews and

were given our tea; it was a one-pound jam jar of tea each,

with six slices of bread and margarine. As soon as tea was

over, a dozen tramps who had stationed themselves near

the door bolted to avoid the service; the rest stayed, less

from gratitude than lacking the cheek to go.

The organ let out a few preliminary hoots and the service

began. And instantly, as though at a signal, the tramps

began to misbehave in the most outrageous way. One

would not have thought such scenes possible in a church.

All round the gallery men lolled in their pews, laughed,

chattered, leaned over and flicked pellets of bread among

the congregation; I had to re

strain the man next to me, more or less by force, from

lighting a cigarette. The tramps treated the service as a

purely comic spectacle. It was, indeed, a sufficiently

ludicrous service-the kind where there are sudden yells of

"Hallelujah!" and endless extempore prayersbut their

behaviour passed all bounds. There was one old fellow in

the congregation-Brother Bootle or some such name-who

was often called on to lead us in prayer, and whenever he

stood up the tramps would begin stamping as though in a

theatre; they said that on a previous occasion he had kept

up an extempore prayer for twenty-five minutes, until the

minister had interrupted him. Once when Brother Bootle

stood up a tramp called out, "Two to one 'e don't beat

seven minutes!" so loud that the whole church must hear.

It was not long before we were making far more noise than

the minister. Sometimes somebody below would send up

an indignant "Hush!" but it made no impression. We had

set ourselves to guy the service, and there was no

stopping us.

It was a queer, rather disgusting scene. Below were the

handful of simple, well-meaning people, trying hard to

worship; and above were the hundred men whom they had

fed, deliberately making worship impossible. A ring of

dirty, hairy faces grinned down from the gallery, openly

jeering. What could a few women and old men do against a

hundred hostile tramps? They were afraid of us, and we

were frankly bullying them. It was our revenge upon them

for having humiliated 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

congregation 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 tobacco, 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 overcoat 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 resembling 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

arrived. 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 gratitude, 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

directed 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 pennyworth of food for each ticket. Paddy and

I pooled our tickets, and received food which we could

have got for sevenpence or eightpence at most coffee-

shops. The clergyman had distributed well over a pound in

tickets, so that the proprietor was evidently swindling the

tramps to the tune of seven shillings or more a week. This

kind of victimisation 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 screening, all the

pitches under shelter being taken, and for several hours he

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

had amassed 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 halfpenny 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.

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

perseverance 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 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 ex-

hausted. Someone managed to find dry sticks and get a

fire going, and we all had milkless tea out of a tin "drum"

which was passed round.

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 navvying 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