---
title: "Down and Out in Paris and London"
author: "George Orwell"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Literature"
section: 10 of 38
url: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/10/
cite: "George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London, section 10. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/10/"
---

# Down and Out in Paris and London

*George Orwell*

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> Title: Down and Out in Paris and London
Date of first publication: 1933
Author: George Orwell (1903-1950)
Date first posted: Mar. 14, 2018
Date last updated: Mar. 14, 2018
Faded Page eBook #20180314

> This eBook was produced by: Delphine Lettau, Howard Ross
& the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

> GEORGE ORWELL

> _Down and Out_
    _in Paris and London_

> O scathful harm, condicion of poverte!
       CHAUCER

> PENGUIN BOOKS

> First published by Victor Gollancz 1933

> Copyright 1933 by Eric Blair

> [The end of _Down and Out in Paris and London_ by George Orwell]

## 10. Chapter X

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/10/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/10/#p-N

[¶0] The Hôtel X. was a vast grandiose place with a classical façade, and at
one side a little dark doorway like a rat-hole, which was the service
entrance. I arrived at a quarter to seven in the morning. A stream of
men with greasy trousers were hurrying in and being checked by a
doorkeeper who sat in a tiny office. I waited, and presently the _chef
du personnel_, a sort of assistant manager, arrived and began to
question me. He was an Italian, with a round, pale face, haggard from
overwork. He asked whether I was an experienced dishwasher, and I said
that I was; he glanced at my hands and saw that I was lying, but on
hearing that I was an Englishman he changed his tone and engaged me.

[¶1] 'We have been looking for someone to practise our English on,' he said.
'Our clients are all Americans, and the only English we know is —' He
repeated something that little boys write on the walls in London. 'You
may be useful. Come downstairs.'

[¶2] He led me down a winding staircase into a narrow passage, deep
underground, and so low that I had to stoop in places. It was stiflingly
hot and very dark, with only dim yellow bulbs several yards apart. There
seemed to be miles of dark labyrinthine passages—actually, I suppose, a
few hundred yards in all—that reminded one queerly of the lower decks
of a liner; there were the same heat and cramped space and warm reek of
food, and a humming, whirring noise (it came from the kitchen furnaces)
just like the whir of engines. We passed doorways which let out
sometimes a shouting of oaths, sometimes the red glare of a fire, once a
shuddering draught from an ice chamber. As we went along, something
struck me violently in the back. It was a hundred-pound block of ice,
carried by a blue-aproned porter. After him came a boy with a great slab
of veal on his shoulder, his cheek pressed into the damp, spongy flesh.
They shoved me aside with a cry of '_Range-toi, idiot!_' and rushed on.
On the wall, under one of the lights, someone had written in a very neat
hand: 'Sooner will you find a cloudless sky in winter, than a woman at
the Hôtel X. who has her maidenhead.' It seemed a queer sort of place.

[¶3] One of the passages branched off into a laundry, where an old skull-face
woman gave me a blue apron and a pile of dishcloths. Then the _chef du
personnel_ took me to a tiny underground den—a cellar below a cellar,
as it were—where there were a sink and some gas-ovens. It was too low
for me to stand quite upright, and the temperature was perhaps 110
degrees Fahrenheit. The _chef du personnel_ explained that my job was to
fetch meals for the higher hotel employees, who fed in a small
dining-room above, clean their room and wash their crockery. When he had
gone, a waiter, another Italian, thrust a fierce fuzzy head into the
doorway and looked down at me.

[¶4] 'English, eh?' he said. 'Well, I'm in charge here. If you work well'—he
made the motion of up-ending a bottle and sucked noisily. 'If you
don't'—he gave the doorpost several vigorous kicks. 'To me, twisting
your neck would be no more than spitting on the floor. And if there's
any trouble, they'll believe me, not you. So be careful.'

[¶5] After this I set to work rather hurriedly. Except for about an hour, I
was at work from seven in the morning till a quarter-past nine at night;
first at washing crockery, then at scrubbing the tables and floors of
the employees' dining-room, then at polishing glasses and knives, then
at fetching meals, then at washing crockery again, then at fetching more
meals and washing more crockery. It was easy work, and I got on well
with it except when I went to the kitchen to fetch meals. The kitchen
was like nothing I had ever seen or imagined—a stifling, low-ceilinged
inferno of a cellar, red-lit from the fires, and deafening with oaths
and the clanging of pots and pans. It was so hot that all the metal-work
except the stoves had to be covered with cloth. In the middle were
furnaces, where twelve cooks skipped to and fro, their faces dripping
sweat in spite of their white caps. Round that were counters where a mob
of waiters and _plongeurs_ clamoured with trays. Scullions, naked to the
waist, were stoking the fires and scouring huge copper saucepans with
sand. Everyone seemed to be in a hurry and a rage. The head cook, a fine
scarlet man with big moustachios, stood in the middle booming
continuously, '_Ça marche, deux œufs brouillés! Ça marche, un
Chateaubriand pommes sautées!_' except when he broke off to curse at a
_plongeur_. There were three counters, and the first time I went to the
kitchen I took my tray unknowingly to the wrong one. The head cook
walked up to me, twisted his moustaches, and looked me up and down. Then
he beckoned to the breakfast cook and pointed at me.

[¶6] 'Do you see _that_? That is the type of _plongeur_ they send us
nowadays. Where do you come from, idiot? From Charenton, I suppose?'
(There is a large lunatic asylum at Charenton.)

[¶7] 'From England,' I said.

[¶8] 'I might have known it. Well, _mon cher monsieur l'Anglais_, may I
inform you that you are the son of a whore? And now, _fous-moi le camp_
to the other counter, where you belong.'

[¶9] I got this kind of reception every time I went to the kitchen, for I
always made some mistake; I was expected to know the work, and was
cursed accordingly. From curiosity I counted the number of times I was
called _maquereau_ during the day, and it was thirty-nine.

[¶10] At half-past four the Italian told me that I could stop working, but
that it was not worth going out, as we began again at five. I went to
the lavatory for a smoke; smoking was strictly forbidden, and Boris had
warned me that the lavatory was the only safe place. After that I worked
again till a quarter-past nine, when the waiter put his head into the
doorway and told me to leave the rest of the crockery. To my
astonishment, after calling me pig, mackerel, etc., all day, he had
suddenly grown quite friendly. I realized that the curses I had met with
were only a kind of probation.

[¶11] 'That'll do, _mon p'tit_,' said the waiter. '_Tu n'es pas débrouillard_,
but you work all right. Come up and have your dinner. The hotel allows
us two litres of wine each, and I've stolen another bottle. We'll have a
fine booze.'

[¶12] We had an excellent dinner from the leavings of the higher employees.
The waiter, grown mellow, told me stories about his love-affairs, and
about two men whom he had stabbed in Italy, and about how he had dodged
his military service. He was a good fellow when one got to know him; he
reminded me of Benvenuto Cellini, somehow. I was tired and drenched with
sweat, but I felt a new man after a day's solid food. The work did not
seem difficult, and I felt that this job would suit me. It was not
certain, however, that it would continue, for I had been engaged as an
'extra' for the day only, at twenty-five francs. The sour-faced
doorkeeper counted out the money, less fifty centimes which he said was
for insurance (a lie, I discovered afterwards). Then he stepped out into
the passage, made me take off my coat, and carefully prodded me all
over, searching for stolen food. After this the _chef du personnel_
appeared and spoke to me. Like the waiter, he had grown more genial on
seeing that I was willing to work.

[¶13] 'We will give you a permanent job if you like,' he said. 'The head
waiter says he would enjoy calling an Englishman names. Will you sign on
for a month?'

[¶14] Here was a job at last, and I was ready to jump at it. Then I remembered
the Russian restaurant, due to open in a fortnight. It seemed hardly
fair to promise working a month, and then leave in the middle. I said
that I had other work in prospect—could I be engaged for a fortnight?
But at that the _chef du personnel_ shrugged his shoulders and said that
the hotel only engaged men by the month. Evidently I had lost my chance
of a job.

[¶15] Boris, by arrangement, was waiting for me in the Arcade of the Rue de
Rivoli. When I told him what had happened, he was furious. For the first
time since I had known him he forgot his manners and called me a fool.

[¶16] 'Idiot! Species of idiot! What's the good of my finding you a job when
you go and chuck it up the next moment? How could you be such a fool as
to mention the other restaurant? You'd only to promise you would work
for a month.'

[¶17] 'It seemed more honest to say I might have to leave,' I objected.

[¶18] 'Honest! Honest! Who ever heard of a _plongeur_ being honest? _Mon
ami_'—suddenly he seized my lapel and spoke very earnestly—'_mon ami_,
you have worked here all day. You see what hotel work is like. Do you
think a _plongeur_ can afford a sense of honour?'

[¶19] 'No, perhaps not.'

[¶20] 'Well, then, go back quickly and tell the _chef du personnel_ you are
quite ready to work for a month. Say you will throw the other job over.
Then, when our restaurant opens, we have only to walk out.'

[¶21] 'But what about my wages if I break my contract?'

[¶22] Boris banged his stick on the pavement and cried out at such stupidity.
'Ask to be paid by the day, then you won't lose a sou. Do you suppose
they would prosecute a _plongeur_ for breaking his contract? A
_plongeur_ is too low to be prosecuted.'

[¶23] I hurried back, found the _chef du personnel_, and told him that I would
work for a month, whereat he signed me on. This was my first lesson in
_plongeur_ morality. Later I realized how foolish it had been to have
any scruples, for the big hotels are quite merciless towards their
employees. They engage or discharge men as the work demands, and they
all sack ten per cent or more of their staff when the season is over.
Nor have they any difficulty in replacing a man who leaves at short
notice, for Paris is thronged by hotel employees out of work.