George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London

care for a lay-up of seven days?" etc. etc.

It seemed that his whole life was this-a round of

mooching, drunks and lay-ups. He laughed as he talked of

it, taking it all for a tremendous joke. He looked as though

he made a poor thing out of begging, for he wore only a

corduroy suit, scarf and capno socks or linen. Still, he was

fat and jolly, and he even smelt of beer, a most unusual

smell in a tramp nowadays.

Two of the tramps had been in Cromley spike recently,

and they told a ghost story connected with it. Years

earlier, they said, there had been a suicide there.

A tramp had managed to smuggle a razor into his cell, and

there cut his throat. In the morning, when the Tramp

Major came round, the body was jammed against the door,

and to open it they had to break the dead man's arm. In

revenge for this, the dead man haunted his cell, and

anyone who slept there was certain to die within the year;

there were copious instances, of course. If a cell door

stuck when you tried to open it, you should avoid that cell

like the plague, for it was the haunted one.

Two tramps, ex-sailors, told another grisly story. A

man (they swore they had known him) had planned to

stow away on a boat bound for Chile. It was laden with

manufactured goods packed in big wooden crates, and

with the help of a docker the stowaway had managed to

hide himself in one of these. But the docker had made a

mistake about the order in which the crates were to be

loaded. The crane gripped the stowaway, swung him aloft,

and deposited him-at the very bottom of the hold, beneath

hundreds of crates. No one discovered what had happened

until the end of the voyage, when they found the

stowaway rotting, dead of suffocation.

Another tramp told the story of Gilderoy, the Scottish

robber. Gilderoy was the man who was condemned to be

hanged, escaped, captured the judge who had sentenced

him, and (splendid fellow!) hanged him. The tramps liked

the story, of course, but the interesting thing was to see

that they had got it all wrong. Their version was that

Gilderoy escaped to America, whereas in reality he was

recaptured and put to death. The story had been amended,

no doubt deliberately; just as children amend the stories of

Samson and Robin Hood, giving them happy endings

which are quite imaginary.

This set the tramps talking about history, and a very

old man declared that the "one bite law" was a survival

from days when the nobles hunted men instead of deer.

Some of the others laughed at him, but he had the idea

firm in his head. He had heard, too, of the Corn Laws,

and the

jus primae noctis (he believed it had really

existed); also of the Great Rebellion, which he thought

was a rebellion of poor against rich-perhaps he had got it

mixed up with the peasant rebellions. I doubt whether

the old man could read, and certainly he was not

repeating newspaper articles. His scraps of history had

been passed from generation to generation of tramps,

perhaps for centuries in some cases. It was oral tradition

lingering on, like a faint echo from the Middle Ages.

Paddy and I went to the spike at six in the evening,

getting out at ten in the morning. It was much like

Romton and Edbury, and we saw nothing of the ghost.

Among the casuals were two young men named William

and Fred, ex-fishermen from Norfolk, a lively pair and

fond of singing. They had a song called "Unhappy Bella"

that is worth writing down. I heard them sing it half a

dozen times during the next two days, and I managed to

get it by heart, except a line or two which I have guessed.

It ran:

Bella was young and Bella was fair With

bright blue eyes and golden hair, O

unhappy Bella!

Her step was light and her heart was gay, But

she had no sense, and one fine day She got

herself put in the family way

By a wicked, heartless, cruel deceiver.

Poor Bella was young, she didn't believe That

the world is hard and men deceive, 0 unhappy

Bella!

She said, "My man will do what's just, He'll

marry me now, because he must"; Her heart

was full of loving trust

In a wicked, heartless, cruel deceiver.

She went to his house; that dirty skunk Had

packed his bags and done a bunk, O unhappy

Bella!

Her landlady said, "Get out, you whore,

I won't have your sort a-darkening my door." Poor

Bella was put to affliction sore

By a wicked, heartless, cruel deceiver.

All night she tramped the cruel snows, What she

must have suffered nobody knows, O unhappy

Bella!

And when the morning dawned so red, Alas,

alas, poor Bella was dead,

Sent so young to her lonely bed

By a wicked, heartless, cruel deceiver.

So thus, you see, do what you will, The

fruits of sin are suffering still, O unhappy

Bella!

As into the grave they laid her low, The men

said, "Alas, but life is so," But the women

chanted, sweet and low, "It's all the men, the

dirty bastards!"

Written by a woman, perhaps.

William and Fred, the singers of this song, were

thorough scallywags, the sort of men who get tramps a

bad name. They happened to know that the Tramp Major

at Cromley had a stock of old clothes, which were to be

given at need to casuals. Before going in William and

Fred took off their boots, ripped the seams and cut

pieces off the soles, more or less ruining them. Then they

applied for two pairs of boots, and the Tramp Major,

seeing how bad their boots were, gave them almost new

pairs. William and Fred were scarcely

outside the spike in the morning before they had sold

these boots for one and ninepence. It seemed to them

quite worth while, for one and ninepence, to make their

own boots practically unwearable.

Leaving the spike, we all started southward, a long

slouching procession, for Lower Binfield and Ide Hill. On

the way there was a fight between two of the tramps.

They had quarrelled overnight (there was some silly

casus

belli

about one saying to the other, "Bull shit," which was

taken for Bolshevik-a deadly insult), and they fought it

out in a field. A dozen of us stayed to watch them. The

scene sticks in my mind for one thing -the man who was

beaten going down, and his cap falling off and showing

that his hair was quite white. After that some of us

intervened and stopped the fight. Paddy had meanwhile

been making inquiries, and found that the real cause of

the quarrel was, as usual, a few pennyworth of food.

We got to Lower Binfield quite early, and Paddy filled

in the time by asking for work at back doors. At one

house he was given some boxes to chop up for firewood,

and, saying he had a mate outside, he brought me in and

we did the work together. When it was done the

householder told the maid to take us out a cup of tea. I

remember the terrified way in which she brought it out,

and then, losing her courage, set the cups down on the

path and bolted back to the house, shutting herself in

the kitchen. So dreadful is the name of "tramp." They

paid us sixpence each, and we bought a threepenny loaf

and half an ounce of tobacco, leaving fivepence.

Paddy thought it wiser to bury our fivepence, for the

Tramp Major at Lower Binfield was renowned as a tyrant

and might refuse to admit us if we had any money at all.

It is quite a common practice of tramps