---
title: "Down and Out in Paris and London"
author: "George Orwell"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Literature"
section: 21 of 38
url: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/21/
cite: "George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London, section 21. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/21/"
---

# 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]

## 21. Chapter XXI

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/21/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/21/#p-N

[¶0] This life went on for about a fortnight, with a slight increase of work
as more customers came to the restaurant. I could have saved an hour a
day by taking a room near the restaurant, but it seemed impossible to
find time to change lodgings—or, for that matter, to get my hair cut,
look at a newspaper, or even undress completely. After ten days I
managed to find a free quarter of an hour, and wrote to my friend B. in
London asking him if he could get me a job of some sort—anything, so
long as it allowed more than five hours' sleep. I was simply not equal
to going on with a seventeen-hour day, though there are plenty of people
who think nothing of it. When one is overworked, it is a good cure for
self-pity to think of the thousands of people in Paris restaurants who
work such hours, and will go on doing it, not for a few weeks, but for
years. There was a girl in a _bistro_ near my hotel who worked from
seven in the morning till midnight for a whole year, only sitting down
to her meals. I remember once asking her to come to a dance, and she
laughed and said that she had not been further than the street corner
for several months. She was consumptive, and died about the time I left
Paris.

[¶1] After only a week we were all neurasthenic with fatigue, except Jules,
who skulked persistently. The quarrels, intermittent at first, had now
become continuous. For hours one would keep up a drizzle of useless
nagging, rising into storms of abuse every few minutes. 'Get me down
that saucepan, idiot!' the cook would cry (she was not tall enough to
reach the shelves where the saucepans were kept). 'Get it down yourself,
you old whore,' I would answer. Such remarks seemed to be generated
spontaneously from the air of the kitchen.

[¶2] We quarrelled over things of inconceivable pettiness. The dustbin, for
instance, was an unending source of quarrels—whether it should be put
where I wanted it, which was in the cook's way, or where she wanted it,
which was between me and the sink. Once she nagged and nagged until at
last, in pure spite, I lifted the dustbin up and put it out in the
middle of the floor, where she was bound to trip over it.

[¶3] 'Now, you cow,' I said, 'move it yourself.'

[¶4] Poor old woman, it was too heavy for her to lift, and she sat down, put
her head on the table and burst out crying. And I jeered at her. This is
the kind of effect that fatigue has upon one's manners.

[¶5] After a few days the cook had ceased talking about Tolstoi and her
artistic nature, and she and I were not on speaking terms, except for
the purposes of work, and Boris and Jules were not on speaking terms,
and neither of them was on speaking terms with the cook. Even Boris and
I were barely on speaking terms. We had agreed beforehand that the
_engueulades_ of working hours did not count between times; but we had
called each other things too bad to be forgotten—and besides, there
were no between times. Jules grew lazier and lazier, and he stole food
constantly—from a sense of duty, he said. He called the rest of us
_jaune_—blackleg—when we would not join with him in stealing. He had a
curious, malignant spirit. He told me, as a matter of pride, that he had
sometimes wrung a dirty dishcloth into a customer's soup before taking
it in, just to be revenged upon a member of the bourgeoisie.

[¶6] The kitchen grew dirtier and the rats bolder, though we trapped a few of
them. Looking round that filthy room, with raw meat lying among the
refuse on the floor, and cold, clotted saucepans sprawling everywhere,
and the sink blocked and coated with grease, I used to wonder whether
there could be a restaurant in the world as bad as ours. But the other
three all said that they had been in dirtier places. Jules took a
positive pleasure in seeing things dirty. In the afternoon, when he had
not much to do, he used to stand in the kitchen doorway jeering at us
for working too hard:

[¶7] 'Fool! Why do you wash that plate? Wipe it on your trousers. Who cares
about the customers? _They_ don't know what's going on. What is
restaurant work? You are carving a chicken and it falls on the floor.
You apologize, you bow, you go out; and in five minutes you come back by
another door—with the same chicken. That is restaurant work,' etc.

[¶8] And, strange to say, in spite of all this filth and incompetence, the
Auberge de Jehan Cottard was actually a success. For the first few days
all our customers were Russians, friends of the _patron_, and these were
followed by Americans and other foreigners—no Frenchmen. Then one night
there was tremendous excitement, because our first Frenchman had
arrived. For a moment our quarrels were forgotten and we all united in
the effort to serve a good dinner. Boris tiptoed into the kitchen,
jerked his thumb over his shoulder and whispered conspiratorially:

[¶9] '_Sh! Attention, un Français!_'

[¶10] A moment later the _patron_'s wife came and whispered:

[¶11] '_Attention, un Français!_ See that he gets a double portion of all
vegetables.'

[¶12] While the Frenchman ate, the _patron_'s wife stood behind the grille of
the kitchen door and watched the expression of his face. Next night the
Frenchman came back with two other Frenchmen. This meant that we were
earning a good name; the surest sign of a bad restaurant is to be
frequented only by foreigners. Probably part of the reason for our
success was that the _patron_, with the sole gleam of sense he had shown
in fitting out the restaurant, had bought very sharp table-knives. Sharp
knives, of course, are _the_ secret of a successful restaurant. I am
glad that this happened, for it destroyed one of my illusions, namely,
the idea that Frenchmen know good food when they see it. Or perhaps we
_were_ a fairly good restaurant by Paris standards; in which case the
bad ones must be past imagining.

[¶13] In a very few days after I had written to B. he replied to say that
there was a job he could get for me. It was to look after a congenital
imbecile, which sounded a splendid rest cure after the Auberge de Jehan
Cottard. I pictured myself loafing in the country lanes, knocking
thistle-heads off with my stick, feeding on roast lamb and treacle tart,
and sleeping ten hours a night in sheets smelling of lavender. B. sent
me a fiver to pay my passage and get my clothes out of pawn, and as soon
as the money arrived I gave one day's notice and left the restaurant. My
leaving so suddenly embarrassed the _patron_, for as usual he was
penniless, and he had to pay my wages thirty francs short. However, he
stood me a glass of Courvoisier '48 brandy, and I think he felt that
this made up the difference. They engaged a Czech, a thoroughly
competent _plongeur_, in my place, and the poor old cook was sacked a
few weeks later. Afterwards I heard that, with two first-rate people in
the kitchen, the _plongeur_'s work had been cut down to fifteen hours a
day. Below that no one could have cut it, short of modernizing the
kitchen.