Down and Out: The journeys that forged Orwell’s craft

Book title: Down and Out in Paris and London

Book author: George Orwell

Geroge Orwell lived in Paris and London for a period of time when he was subjected to unemployment, poverty and hunger. This book is his account of those experiences and also his take on poverty in the modern world. If you have read Orwell’s Animal Farm or other books, you will probably nod from time to time while reading this and think, oh now I know what inspired Orwell to create his best works.

Bengali literature has many masterpieces on poverty, take Bibhutibhushan’s “Apur Shongshar” — the difference of those classics with this Englishman’s tale is—Mr. Orwell simply puts his experience with poverty into words, straightforward and without attaching too much of emotion—almost like looking into those days with a soft feeling. This experience with poverty that is not told in a tragic fashion, but matter of factly, impressed me.

The to-be-broke man, to the at-last-unemployed hungry man, to the plongeur at a big hotel—Orwell wrote his time in Paris, and also shifted the focus on the lives of those Parisians who slept in cheap shackle hotels, who worked mean jobs at the restaurants and stole hotel food and drinks. In his words, I became aware of the distant life of a whole class of population in a European city. His way of describing “a day in the life of a plongeur in Paris in 1920s” is very charming. I didn’t know what this book is about, and suddenly I am very interested to know what happened to the people of different nationalities who lived/fled the cheap hotels with beds full of bugs, how did they spend their little recess from work. I almost cheered reading their two hours of drinking and crazy time at the local bistro. Words—brings one close to strangers.

I noticed two things—Paris, the name of the city which immediately brings a sense of romance, is like any other city, with a bright, decorated side and another side with a half-lit alley with broken windowed buildings. Or like a five star hotel—its banquet hall on one side and the cooking hall on the other. Another thing I noticed, how the lowest tier of the poor's life differs from that of a Dhakayan’s. The higher order of civilization keeps Parisians eating breakfast from the workman cafes and not from the no-roof footpath stalls. Here’s Orwell account of a street—

Quarrels and the desolate cries of street hawkers, and the shouts of children chasing orange-peel over the cobbles, and at night loud singing and the sour reek of the refuse-carts, made up the atmosphere of the street.

And more accounts of life of a plongeur and life in Paris

…one does literally have to fight on the Paris Metro at six in the morning — and stood jammed in the swaying mass of passengers, nose to nose with some hideous French face, breathing sour wine and garlic. And then one descended into the labyrinth of the hotel basement, and forgot daylight till two o’clock, when the sun was hot and the town black with people and cars.

For nothing could be simpler than the life of a plongeur. He lives in a rhythm between work and sleep, without time to think, hardly conscious of the exterior world; his Paris has shrunk to the hotel, the Metro, a few bistros and his bed.

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 artists, which sent up our social standing. There were the indecent pictures in the bar, and the Norman decorations…

Life settles at once into a routine that made Hôtel X. seem like a holiday. Every morning at six I drove myself out of bed, did not shave, sometimes washed, hurried up to the Place d’Italie and fought for a place on the Metro. By seven I was in the desolation of the cold, filthy kitchen, with the potato skins and bones and fishtails littered on the floor, and a pile of plates, stuck together in their grease, waiting from overnight.

In the second part of the book, Orwell leaves Paris for London with the hope of a job and better life. But what awaited him in London was merely more experience with hunger and poverty. Paris was his life as a plongeur and London was his life as a tramp. A tramp is a homeless person in a civilized country. I had to add “in a civilized country” because in my country, a homeless person is a homeless person, they do not reach the status of tramp by earning a night’s stay at some shelters.

Here I want to mention, the book introduces a ton of phrases used in the early 2oth century in Paris and London. The words which are no longer spoken, the swearings, professions, food menu which can no longer be found, are found in this book, thanks to Orwell. ‘Spike’ is one of those words. Spike is a place where tramps stay overnight. Orwell gives us an analysis of the life of a tramp, his simplified needs and routines. He takes us on a tour of a spike, where the tramps share their stories, quite joyfully, about times when they went starving because of having no money.

Orwell makes friends with other tramps, tells us their stories. Tells us what brings a tramp to the church—the free tea, LOL. The church scene described in the book, where tramps carouse after gulping their free tea, was at the same time embarrassing, funny and thought provoking.

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.

And this one, LOL,

I imagine there are quite a lot of tramps who thank God they are not tramps.

I have always read how expensive clothes make another rich person look at someone with admiration. And this is true for cheap clothes as well. Orwell had to pawn his suit for a cheap overall and some money.

My new clothes had put me instantly into a new world. Everyone’s demeanor 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.

Some two hundred pages long book, and my copy is worn out with highlights and bookmarks, so good is this one! I just want to leave a few more quotes-

Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behavior, just as money frees people from work.

You discover that a man who has gone even a week on bread and margarine is not a man any longer, only a belly with a few accessory organs.

Two bad days followed. We had only sixty centimes left, and we spent it on half a pound bread, with a piece of garlic to rub it with. The point of rubbing garlic on bread is that the taste lingers and gives one the illusion of having fed recently.

Some people must feed in restaurants, and so other people must swab dishes for eighty hours a week. It is the work of civilisation, therefore unquestionable.

But the trouble is that intelligent, cultivated people, the very people who might be expected to have liberal opinions, never do mix with the poor. For what do the majority of educated people know about poverty? In my copy of Villon’s poems the editor has actually thought it necessary to explain the line ‘Ne pain ne voyent qu’aux fenestres’ by a footnote; so remote is even hunger from the educated man’s experience. From this ignorance s superstitious fear of the mob results quite naturally.

…

The mob is in fact loose now, and — in the shape of rich men — is using its power to set up enormous treadmills of boredom, such as ‘smart’ hotels.

It was the land of the tea urn and the Labour Exchange, as Paris is the land of the bistro and the sweatshop. 

To wrap up, leaving this account where a person, Bozo, sold his razor to earn the night’s stay and bread and tea—

Bozo got his basin of tea and sat down by the fire to dry his clothes. As he drank 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 him and starvation. With all this, he could laugh over the loss of his razor. One could not help admiring him.

This made me laugh and also sad, and it clearly illustrates the content of the book!

I am grateful for the office book club where I won this book from the lottery.

Down and Out is a unique one that gives you a tour in the lives of working people, and asks you questions with no simple answer.