George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London

starving, but so long as he could read, think and watch for

meteors, he was, as he said, free in his own mind.

He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who

does not so much disbelieve in God as personally

dislike Him), and took a sort of pleasure in thinking that

human affairs would never improve. Sometimes, he said,

when sleeping on the Embankment, it had consoled him

to look up at Mars or Jupiter and think that there were

probably Embankment sleepers there. He had a curious

theory about this. Life on earth, he said, is harsh because

the planet is poor in the necessities of existence. Mars,

with its cold climate and scanty water, must be far

poorer, and life correspondingly harsher. Whereas on

earth you are merely imprisoned for stealing sixpence,

on Mars you are probably boiled alive. This thought

cheered Bozo, I do not know why. He was a very

exceptional man.

XXXI

THE charge at Bozo's lodging-house was ninepence a

night. It was a large, crowded place, with accommodation

for five hundred men, and a well-known rendezvous of

tramps, beggars and petty criminals. All races, even black

and white, mixed in it on terms of equality. There were

Indians there, and when I spoke to one of them in bad

Urdu he addressed me as "tum"-a thing to make one

shudder, if it had been in India. We had got below the

range of colour prejudice. One had glimpses of curious

lives. Old "Grandpa," a tramp of seventy who made his

living, or a great part of it, by collecting cigarette ends and

selling the tobacco at threepence an ounce. " The Doctor"-

he was a real doctor, who had been struck off the register

for some offence, and besides selling newspapers gave

medical advice at a few pence a time. A little Chittagonian

lascar, barefoot and starving, who had deserted his ship

and wandered for days through London, so

vague and helpless that he did not even know the name of

the city he was in-he thought it was Liverpool, until I told

him. A begging-letter writer, a friend of Bozo's, who

wrote pathetic appeals for aid to pay for his wife's funeral,

and, when a letter had taken effect, blew himself out with

huge solitary gorges of bread and margarine. He was a

nasty, hyena-like creature. I talked to him and found that,

like most swindlers, he believed a great part of his own

lies. The lodging-house was an Alsatia for types like

these.

While I was with Bozo he taught me something about

the technique of London begging. There is more in it than

one might suppose. Beggars vary greatly, and there is a

sharp social line between those who merely cadge and

those who attempt to give some value for money. The

amounts that one can earn by the different "gags" also

vary. The stories in the Sunday papers about beggars who

die with two thousand pounds sewn into their trousers are,

of course, lies; but the better-class beggars do have runs of

luck, when they earn a living wage for weeks at a time.

The most prosperous beggars are street acrobats and street

photographers. On a good pitch-a theatre queue, for

instance-a street acrobat will often earn five pounds a

week. Street photographers can earn about the same, but

they are dependent on fine weather. They have a cunning

dodge to stimulate trade. When they see a likely victim

approaching, one of them runs behind the camera and

pretends to take a photograph. Then as the victim reaches

them, they exclaim:

"There y'are, Sir, took yer photo lovely. That'll be a

bob."

"But I never asked you to take it," protests the victim.

"What, you didn't want it took? Why, we thought

you signalled with your 'and. Well, there's a plate wasted!

That's cost us sixpence, that 'as."

At this the victim usually takes pity and says he will

have the photo after all. The photographers examine the

plate and say that it is spoiled, and that they will take a

fresh one free of charge. Of course, they have not really

taken the first photo; and so, if the victim refuses, they

waste nothing.

Organ-grinders, like acrobats, are considered artists

rather than beggars. An organ-grinder named Shorty, a

friend of Bozo's, told me all about his trade. He and his

mate "worked" the coffee-shops and public-houses round

Whitechapel and the Commercial Road. It is a mistake to

think that organ-grinders earn their living in the street;

nine-tenths of their money is taken in coffee-shops and

pubs-only the cheap pubs, for they are not allowed into

the good-class ones. Shorty's procedure was to stop

outside a pub and play one tune, after which his mate,

who had a wooden leg and could excite compassion, went

in and passed round the hat. It was a point of honour

with Shorty always to play another tune after receiving

the "drop"an encore, as it were; the idea being that he

was a genuine entertainer and not merely paid to go

away. He and his mate took two or three pounds a week

between them, but, as they had to pay fifteen shillings a

week for the hire of the organ, they only averaged a

pound a week each. They were on the streets from eight

in the morning till ten at night, and later on Saturdays.

Screevers can sometimes be called artists, sometimes

not. Bozo introduced me to one who was a "real" artist-

that is, he had studied art in Paris and submitted

pictures to the Salon in his day. His line was copies of

Old Masters, which he did marvellously,

considering that he was drawing on stone. He told me

how he began as a screever:

"My wife and kids were starving. I was walking home

late at night, with a lot of drawings I'd been taking round

the dealers, and wondering how the devil to raise a bob

or two. Then, in the Strand, I saw a fellow kneeling on

the pavement drawing, and people giving him pennies. As

I came past he got up and went into a pub. 'Damn it,' I

thought, 'if he can make money at that, so can L' So on

the impulse I knelt down and began drawing with his

chalks. Heaven knows how I came to do it; I must have

been lightheaded with hunger. The curious thing was

that I'd never used pastels before; I had to learn the

technique as I went along. Well, people began to stop and

say that my drawing wasn't bad, and they gave me nine-

pence between them. At this moment the other fellow

came out of the pub. 'What in are you doing on my

pitch?' he said. I explained that I was hungry and had to

earn something. 'Oh,' said he, 'come and have a pint with

me.' So I had a pint, and since that day I've been a

screever. I make a pound a week. You can't keep six kids

on a pound a week, but luckily my wife earns a bit taking

in sewing.

"The worst thing in this life is the cold, and the next

worst is the interference you have to put up with. At

first, not knowing any better, I used sometimes to copy a

nude on the pavement. The first I did was outside St.

Martin's-in-the-Fields church. A fellow in blackI suppose

he was a churchwarden or somethingcame out in a

tearing rage. 'Do you think we can have that obscenity

outside God's holy house?' he cried. So I had to wash it

out. It was a copy of Botticelli's Venus. Another time I

copied the same picture on the Embankment. A

policeman passing looked at it, and

then, without a word, walked on to it and rubbed it out

with his great flat feet."

Bozo told the same tale of police interference. At the