---
title: "Down and Out in Paris and London"
author: "George Orwell"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Literature"
section: 9 of 38
url: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/9/
cite: "George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London, section 9. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/9/"
---

# 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]

## 9. Chapter IX

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/9/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/9/#p-N

[¶0] For three more days we continued traipsing about looking for work,
coming home for diminishing meals of soup and bread in my bedroom. There
were now two gleams of hope. In the first place, Boris had heard of a
possible job at the Hôtel X., near the Place de la Concorde, and in the
second, the _patron_ of the new restaurant in the Rue du Commerce had at
last come back. We went down in the afternoon and saw him. On the way
Boris talked of the vast fortunes we should make if we got this job, and
of the importance of making a good impression on the _patron_.

[¶1] 'Appearance—appearance is everything, _mon ami_. Give me a new suit and
I will borrow a thousand francs by dinner-time. What a pity I did not
buy a collar when we had money. I turned my collar inside out this
morning; but what is the use, one side is as dirty as the other. Do you
think I look hungry, _mon ami_?'

[¶2] 'You look pale.'

[¶3] 'Curse it, what can one do on bread and potatoes? It is fatal to look
hungry. It makes people want to kick you. Wait.'

[¶4] He stopped at a jeweller's window and smacked his cheeks sharply to
bring the blood into them. Then, before the flush had faded, we hurried
into the restaurant and introduced ourselves to the _patron_.

[¶5] The _patron_ was a short, fattish, very dignified man with wavy grey
hair, dressed in a smart double-breasted flannel suit and smelling of
scent. Boris told me that he was an ex-colonel of the Russian Army. His
wife was there too, a horrid fat Frenchwoman with a dead-white face and
scarlet lips, reminding me of cold veal and tomatoes. The _patron_
greeted Boris genially, and they talked together in Russian for a few
minutes. I stood in the background, preparing to tell some big lies
about my experience as a dishwasher.

[¶6] Then the _patron_ came over towards me. I shuffled uneasily, trying to
look servile. Boris had rubbed it into me that a _plongeur_ is a slave's
slave, and I expected the _patron_ to treat me like dirt. To my
astonishment, he seized me warmly by the hand.

[¶7] 'So you are an Englishman!' he exclaimed. 'But how charming! I need not
ask, then, whether you are a golfer?'

[¶8] '_Mais certainement_,' I said, seeing that this was expected of me.

[¶9] 'All my life I have wanted to play golf. Will you, my dear _monsieur_,
be so kind as to show me a few of the principal strokes?'

[¶10] Apparently this was the Russian way of doing business. The _patron_
listened attentively while I explained the difference between a driver
and an iron, and then suddenly informed me that it was all _entendu_;
Boris was to be _maître d'hôtel_ when the restaurant opened, and I
_plongeur_, with a chance of rising to lavatory attendant if trade was
good. When would the restaurant open? I asked. 'Exactly a fortnight from
today,' the _patron_ answered grandly (he had a manner of waving his
hand and flicking off his cigarette ash at the same time, which looked
very grand), 'exactly a fortnight from today, in time for lunch.' Then,
with obvious pride, he showed us over the restaurant.

[¶11] It was a smallish place, consisting of a bar, a dining-room, and a
kitchen no bigger than the average bathroom. The _patron_ was decorating
it in a trumpery 'picturesque' style (he called it '_normand_'; it was a
matter of sham beams stuck on the plaster, and the like) and proposed to
call it the Auberge de Jehan Cottard, to give a medieval effect. He had
had a leaflet printed, full of lies about the historical associations of
the quarter, and this leaflet actually claimed, among other things, that
there had once been an inn on the site of the restaurant which was
frequented by Charlemagne. The _patron_ was very pleased with this
touch. He was also having the bar decorated with indecent pictures by an
artist from the Salon. Finally he gave us each an expensive cigarette,
and after some more talk we went home.

[¶12] I felt strongly that we should never get any good from this restaurant.
The _patron_ had looked to me like a cheat, and, what was worse, an
incompetent cheat, and I had seen two unmistakable duns hanging about
the back door. But Boris, seeing himself a _maître d'hôtel_ once more,
would not be discouraged.

[¶13] 'We've brought it off—only a fortnight to hold out. What is a
fortnight? Food? _Je m'en fous._ To think that in only three weeks I
shall have my mistress! Will she be dark or fair, I wonder? I don't
mind, so long as she is not too thin.'

[¶14] Two bad days followed. We had only sixty centimes left, and we spent it
on half a pound of bread, with a piece of garlic to rub it with. The
point of rubbing garlic on bread is that the taste lingers and gives one
the illusion of having fed recently. We sat most of that day in the
Jardin des Plantes. Boris had shots with stones at the tame pigeons, but
always missed them, and after that we wrote dinner menus on the backs of
envelopes. We were too hungry even to try and think of anything except
food. I remember the dinner Boris finally selected for himself. It was:
a dozen oysters, borscht soup (the red, sweet, beetroot soup with cream
on top), crayfishes, a young chicken _en casserole_, beef with stewed
plums, new potatoes, a salad, suet pudding and Roquefort cheese, with a
litre of Burgundy and some old brandy. Boris had international tastes in
food. Later on, when we were prosperous, I occasionally saw him eat
meals almost as large without difficulty.

[¶15] When our money came to an end I stopped looking for work, and was
another day without food. I did not believe that the Auberge de Jehan
Cottard was really going to open, and I could see no other prospect, but
I was too lazy to do anything but lie in bed. Then the luck changed
abruptly. At night, at about ten o'clock, I heard an eager shout from
the street. I got up and went to the window. Boris was there, waving his
stick and beaming. Before speaking he dragged a bent loaf from his
pocket and threw it up to me.

[¶16] '_Mon ami, mon cher ami_, we're saved! What do you think?'

[¶17] 'Surely you haven't got a job!'

[¶18] 'At the Hôtel X., near the Place de la Concorde—five hundred francs a
month, and food. I have been working there today. Name of Jesus Christ,
how I have eaten!'

[¶19] After ten or twelve hours' work, and with his game leg, his first
thought had been to walk three kilometres to my hotel and tell me the
good news! What was more, he told me to meet him in the Tuileries the
next day during his afternoon interval, in case he should be able to
steal some food for me. At the appointed time I met Boris on a public
bench. He undid his waistcoat and produced a large, crushed newspaper
packet; in it were some minced veal, a wedge of Camembert cheese, bread
and an éclair, all jumbled together.

[¶20] '_Voilà!_' said Boris, 'that's all I could smuggle out for you. The
doorkeeper is a cunning swine.'

[¶21] It is disagreeable to eat out of a newspaper on a public seat,
especially in the Tuileries, which are generally full of pretty girls,
but I was too hungry to care. While I ate, Boris explained that he was
working in the _cafeterie_ of the hotel—that is, in English, the
stillroom. It appeared that the _cafeterie_ was the very lowest post in
the hotel, and a dreadful come-down for a waiter, but it would do until
the Auberge de Jehan Cottard opened. Meanwhile I was to meet Boris every
day in the Tuileries, and he would smuggle out as much food as he dared.
For three days we continued with this arrangement, and I lived entirely
on the stolen food. Then all our troubles came to an end, for one of the
_plongeurs_ left the Hôtel X., and on Boris's recommendation I was given
a job there myself.