---
title: "Down and Out in Paris and London"
author: "George Orwell"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Literature"
section: 28 of 38
url: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/28/
cite: "George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London, section 28. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/28/"
---

# 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]

## 28. Chapter XXVIII

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/28/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/28/#p-N

[¶0] Paddy was my mate for about the next fortnight, and, as he was the first
tramp I had known at all well, I want to give an account of him. I
believe that he was a typical tramp and there are tens of thousands in
England like him.

[¶1] He was a tallish man aged about thirty-five, with fair hair going
grizzled and watery blue eyes. His features were good, but his cheeks
had lanked and had that greyish, dirty-in-the-grain look that comes of a
bread and margarine diet. He was dressed, rather better than most
tramps, in a tweed shooting-jacket and a pair of very old evening
trousers with the braid still on them. Evidently the braid figured in
his mind as a lingering scrap of respectability, and he took care to sew
it on again when it came loose. He was careful of his appearance
altogether, and carried a razor and bootbrush that he would not sell,
though he had sold his 'papers' and even his pocket-knife long since.
Nevertheless, one would have known him for a tramp a hundred yards away.
There was something in his drifting style of walk, and the way he had of
hunching his shoulders forward, essentially abject. Seeing him walk, you
felt instinctively that he would sooner take a blow than give one.

[¶2] He had been brought up in Ireland, served two years in the war, and then
worked in a metal polish factory, where he had lost his job two years
earlier. He was horribly ashamed of being a tramp, but he had picked up
all a tramp's ways. He browsed the pavements unceasingly, never missing
a cigarette-end, or even an empty cigarette packet, as he used the
tissue paper for rolling cigarettes. On our way into Edbury he saw a
newspaper parcel on the pavement, pounced on it, and found that it
contained two mutton sandwiches, rather frayed at the edges; these he
insisted on my sharing. He never passed an automatic machine without
giving a tug at the handle, for he said that sometimes they are out of
order and will eject pennies if you tug at them. He had no stomach for
crime, however. When we were in the outskirts of Romton, Paddy noticed a
bottle of milk on a doorstep, evidently left there by mistake. He
stopped, eyeing the bottle hungrily.

[¶3] 'Christ!' he said, 'dere's good food goin' to waste. Somebody could
knock dat bottle off, eh? Knock it off easy.'

[¶4] I saw that he was thinking of 'knocking it off' himself. He looked up
and down the street; it was a quiet residential street and there was
nobody in sight. Paddy's sickly, chap-fallen face yearned over the milk.
Then he turned away, saying gloomily:

[¶5] 'Best leave it. It don't do a man no good to steal. T'ank God, I ain't
never stolen nothin' yet.'

[¶6] It was funk, bred of hunger, that kept him virtuous. With only two or
three sound meals in his belly, he would have found courage to steal the
milk.

[¶7] He had two subjects of conversation, the shame and come-down of being a
tramp, and the best way of getting a free meal. As we drifted through
the streets he would keep up a monologue in this style, in a whimpering,
self-pitying Irish voice:

[¶8] 'It's hell bein' on de road, eh? It breaks yer heart goin' into dem
bloody spikes. But what's a man to do else, eh? I ain't had a good meat
meal for above two months, an' me boots is getting bad, an'—Christ!
How'd it be if we was to try for a cup o' tay at one o' dem convents on
de way to Edbury? Most times dey're good for a cup o' tay. Ah, what'd a
man do widout religion, eh? I've took cups o' tay from de convents, an'
de Baptists, an' de Church of England, an' all sorts. I'm a Catholic
meself. Dat's to say, I ain't been to confession for above seventeen
year, but still I got me religious feelin's, y'understand. An' dem
convents is always good for a cup o' tay . . .' etc. etc. He would keep
this up all day, almost without stopping.

[¶9] His ignorance was limitless and appalling. He once asked me, for
instance, whether Napoleon lived before Jesus Christ or after. Another
time, when I was looking into a bookshop window, he grew very perturbed
because one of the books was called _Of the Imitation of Christ_. He
took this for blasphemy. 'What de hell do dey want to go imitatin' of
_Him_ for?' he demanded angrily. He could read, but he had a kind of
loathing for books. On our way from Romton to Edbury I went into a
public library, and, though Paddy did not want to read, I suggested that
he should come in and rest his legs. But he preferred to wait on the
pavement. 'No,' he said, 'de sight of all dat bloody print makes me
sick.'

[¶10] Like most tramps, he was passionately mean about matches. He had a box
of matches when I met him, but I never saw him strike one, and he used
to lecture me for extravagance when I struck mine. His method was to
cadge a light from strangers, sometimes going without a smoke for half
an hour rather than strike a match.

[¶11] Self-pity was the clue to his character. The thought of his bad luck
never seemed to leave him for an instant. He would break long silences
to exclaim, apropos of nothing, 'It's hell when yer clo'es begin to go
up de spout, eh?' or 'Dat tay in de spike ain't tay, it's piss', as
though there were nothing else in the world to think about. And he had a
low, worm-like envy of anyone who was better off—not of the rich, for
they were beyond his social horizon, but of men in work. He pined for
work as an artist pines to be famous. If he saw an old man working he
would say bitterly, 'Look at dat old — keepin' able-bodied men out o'
work'; or if it was a boy, 'It's dem young devils what's takin' de bread
out of our mouths.' And all foreigners to him were 'dem bloody
dagoes'—for, according to his theory, foreigners were responsible for
unemployment.

[¶12] He looked at women with a mixture of longing and hatred. Young, pretty
women were too much above him to enter into his ideas, but his mouth
watered at prostitutes. A couple of scarlet-lipped old creatures would
go past; Paddy's face would flush pale pink, and he would turn and stare
hungrily after the women. 'Tarts!' he would murmur, like a boy at a
sweet-shop window. He told me once that he had not had to do with a
woman for two years—since he had lost his job, that is—and he had
forgotten that one could aim higher than prostitutes. He had the regular
character of a tramp—abject, envious, a jackal's character.

[¶13] Nevertheless he was a good fellow, generous by nature and capable of
sharing his last crust with a friend; indeed he did literally share his
last crust with me more than once. He was probably capable of work too,
if he had been well fed for a few months. But two years of bread and
margarine had lowered his standards hopelessly. He had lived on this
filthy imitation of food till his whole mind and body were compounded of
inferior stuff. It was malnutrition and not any native vice that had
destroyed his manhood.