---
title: "Down and Out in Paris and London"
author: "George Orwell"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Literature"
section: 20 of 38
url: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/20/
cite: "George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London, section 20. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/20/"
---

# 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]

## 20. Chapter XX

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/20/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/20/#p-N

[¶0] The patron had engaged me as kitchen _plongeur_; that is, my job was to
wash up, keep the kitchen clean, prepare vegetables, make tea, coffee
and sandwiches, do the simpler cooking, and run errands. The terms were,
as usual, five hundred francs a month and food, but I had no free day
and no fixed working hours. At the Hôtel X. I had seen catering at its
best, with unlimited money and good organization. Now, at the Auberge, I
learned how things are done in a thoroughly bad restaurant. It is worth
describing, for there are hundreds of similar restaurants in Paris, and
every visitor feeds in one of them occasionally.

[¶1] 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 artistic, which sent up our social standing. There were the indecent
pictures in the bar, and the Norman decorations—sham beams on the
walls, electric lights done up as candlesticks, 'peasant' pottery, even
a mounting-block at the door—and the _patron_ and the head waiter were
Russian officers, and many of the customers titled Russian refugees. In
short, we were decidedly chic.

[¶2] Nevertheless, the conditions behind the kitchen door were suitable for a
pigsty. For this is what our service arrangements were like:

[¶3] The kitchen measured fifteen feet long by eight broad, and half this
space was taken up by the stoves and tables. All the pots had to be kept
on shelves out of reach, and there was only room for one dustbin. This
dustbin used to be crammed full by midday, and the floor was normally an
inch deep in a compost of trampled food.

[¶4] For firing we had nothing but three gas-stoves, without ovens, and all
joints had to be sent out to the bakery.

[¶5] There was no larder. Our substitute for one was a half-roofed shed in
the yard, with a tree growing in the middle of it. The meat, vegetables
and so forth lay there on the bare earth, raided by rats and cats.

[¶6] There was no hot water laid on. Water for washing up had to be heated in
pans, and, as there was no room for these on the stoves when meals were
cooking, most of the plates had to be washed in cold water. This, with
soft soap and the hard Paris water, meant scraping the grease off with
bits of newspaper.

[¶7] We were so short of saucepans that I had to wash each one as soon as it
was done with, instead of leaving them till the evening. This alone
wasted probably an hour a day.

[¶8] Owing to some scamping of expense in the installation, the electric
light usually fused at eight in the evening. The _patron_ would only
allow us three candles in the kitchen, and the cook said three were
unlucky, so we had only two.

[¶9] Our coffee-grinder was borrowed from a _bistro_ near by, and our dustbin
and brooms from the concierge. After the first week a quantity of linen
did not come back from the wash, as the bill was not paid. We were in
trouble with the inspector of labour, who had discovered that the staff
included no Frenchmen; he had several private interviews with the
_patron_, who, I believe, was obliged to bribe him. The electric company
was still dunning us, and when the duns found that we would buy them off
with _apéritifs_, they came every morning. We were in debt at the
grocery, and credit would have been stopped, only the grocer's wife (a
moustachio'd woman of sixty) had taken a fancy to Jules, who was sent
every morning to cajole her. Similarly I had to waste an hour every day
haggling over vegetables in the Rue du Commerce, to save a few centimes.

[¶10] These are the results of starting a restaurant on insufficient capital.
And in these conditions the cook and I were expected to serve thirty or
forty meals a day, and would later on be serving a hundred. From the
first day it was too much for us. The cook's working hours were from
eight in the morning till midnight, and mine from seven in the morning
till half-past twelve the next morning—seventeen and a half hours,
almost without a break. We never had time to sit down till five in the
afternoon, and even then there was no seat except the top of the
dustbin. Boris, who lived near by and had not to catch the last Metro
home, worked from eight in the morning till two the next
morning—eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. Such hours, though not
usual, are nothing extraordinary in Paris.

[¶11] Life settled at once into a routine that made the 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. I could not start on the plates yet, because the water
was cold, and I had to fetch milk and make coffee, for the others
arrived at eight and expected to find coffee ready. Also, there were
always several copper saucepans to clean. Those copper saucepans are the
bane of a _plongeur_'s life. They have to be scoured with sand and
bunches of chain, ten minutes to each one, and then polished on the
outside with Brasso. Fortunately the art of making them has been lost
and they are gradually vanishing from French kitchens, though one can
still buy them second-hand.

[¶12] When I had begun on the plates the cook would take me away from the
plates to begin skinning onions, and when I had begun on the onions the
_patron_ would arrive and send me out to buy cabbages. When I came back
with the cabbages the _patron_'s wife would tell me to go to some shop
half a mile away and buy a pot of rouge; by the time I came back there
would be more vegetables waiting, and the plates were still not done. In
this way our incompetence piled one job on another throughout the day,
everything in arrears.

[¶13] Till ten, things went comparatively easily, though we were working fast,
and no one lost his temper. The cook would find time to talk about her
artistic nature, and say did I not think Tolstoi was _épatant_, and sing
in a fine soprano voice as she minced beef on the board. But at ten the
waiters began clamouring for their lunch, which they had early, and at
eleven the first customers would be arriving. Suddenly everything became
hurry and bad temper. There was not the same furious rushing and yelling
as at the Hôtel X., but an atmosphere of muddle, petty spite and
exasperation. Discomfort was at the bottom of it. It was unbearably
cramped in the kitchen, and dishes had to be put on the floor, and one
had to be thinking constantly about not stepping on them. The cook's
vast buttocks banged against me as she moved to and fro. A ceaseless,
nagging chorus of orders streamed from her:

[¶14] 'Unspeakable idiot! How many times have I told you not to bleed the
beetroots? Quick, let me get to the sink! Put those knives away; get on
with the potatoes. What have you done with my strainer? Oh, leave those
potatoes alone. Didn't I tell you to skim the _bouillon_? Take that can
of water off the stove. Never mind the washing up, chop this celery. No,
not like that, you fool, like this. There! Look at you letting those
peas boil over! Now get to work and scale these herrings. Look, do you
call this plate clean? Wipe it on your apron. Put that salad on the
floor. That's right, put it where I'm bound to step in it! Look out,
that pot's boiling over! Get me down that saucepan. No, the other one.
Put this on the grill. Throw those potatoes away. Don't waste time,
throw them on the floor. Tread them in. Now throw down some sawdust;
this floor's like a skating-rink. Look, you fool, that steak's burning!
_Mon Dieu_, why did they send me an idiot for a _plongeur_? Who are you
talking to? Do you realize that my aunt was a Russian countess?' etc.
etc. etc.

[¶15] This went on till three o'clock without much variation, except that
about eleven the cook usually had a _crise de nerfs_ and a flood of
tears. From three to five was a fairly slack time for the waiters, but
the cook was still busy, and I was working my fastest, for there was a
pile of dirty plates waiting, and it was a race to get them done, or
partly done, before dinner began. The washing up was doubled by the
primitive conditions—a cramped draining-board, tepid water, sodden
cloths, and a sink that got blocked once in an hour. By five the cook
and I were feeling unsteady on our feet, not having eaten or sat down
since seven. We used to collapse, she on the dustbin and I on the floor,
drink a bottle of beer, and apologize for some of the things we had said
in the morning. Tea was what kept us going. We took care to have a pot
always stewing, and drank pints during the day.

[¶16] At half-past five the hurry and quarrelling began again, and now worse
than before, because everyone was tired out. The cook had a _crise de
nerfs_ at six and another at nine; they came on so regularly that one
could have told the time by them. She would flop down on the dustbin,
begin weeping hysterically, and cry out that never, no, never had she
thought to come to such a life as this; her nerves would not stand it;
she had studied music at Vienna; she had a bedridden husband to support,
etc. etc. At another time one would have been sorry for her, but, tired
as we all were, her whimpering voice merely infuriated us. Jules used to
stand in the doorway and mimic her weeping. The _patron_'s wife nagged,
and Boris and Jules quarrelled all day, because Jules shirked his work,
and Boris, as head waiter, claimed the larger share of the tips. Only
the second day after the restaurant opened, they came to blows in the
kitchen over a two-franc tip, and the cook and I had to separate them.
The only person who never forgot his manners was the _patron_. He kept
the same hours as the rest of us, but he had no work to do, for it was
his wife who really managed things. His sole job, besides ordering the
supplies, was to stand in the bar smoking cigarettes and looking
gentlemanly, and he did that to perfection.

[¶17] The cook and I generally found time to eat our dinner between ten and
eleven o'clock. At midnight the cook would steal a packet of food for
her husband, stow it under her clothes, and make off, whimpering that
these hours would kill her and she would give notice in the morning.
Jules also left at midnight, usually after a dispute with Boris, who had
to look after the bar till two. Between twelve and half-past I did what
I could to finish the washing up. There was no time to attempt doing the
work properly, and I used simply to rub the grease off the plates with
table-napkins. As for the dirt on the floor, I let it lie, or swept the
worst of it out of sight under the stoves.

[¶18] At half-past twelve I would put on my coat and hurry out. The _patron_,
bland as ever, would stop me as I went down the alley-way past the bar.
'_Mais, mon cher monsieur_, how tired you look! Please do me the favour
of accepting this glass of brandy.'

[¶19] He would hand me the glass of brandy as courteously as though I had been
a Russian duke instead of a _plongeur_. He treated all of us like this.
It was our compensation for working seventeen hours a day.

[¶20] As a rule the last Metro was almost empty—a great advantage, for one
could sit down and sleep for a quarter of an hour. Generally I was in
bed by half-past one. Sometimes I missed the train and had to sleep on
the floor of the restaurant, but it hardly mattered, for I could have
slept on cobblestones at that time.