Down and Out in Paris and London (22 page)

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Down and Out in Paris and London

ting lost among the desolate north London slums. Our meal

tickets were directed to a coffee-shop in Ilford. When we

got there, the little chit of a serving-maid, having seen our

tickets and grasped that we were tramps, tossed her head

in contempt and for a long time would not serve us. Final-

ly she slapped on the table two ‘large teas’ and four slices

of bread and dripping—that is, eightpenny-worth of food.

It appeared that the shop habitually cheated the tramps

of twopence or so on each ticket; having tickets instead of

money, the tramps could not protest or go elsewhere.

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XXVIII

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.

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 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.

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

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Down and Out in Paris and London

of being a tramp, but he had picked up all a tramp’s ways. He

browsed the pavements unceasingly, never missing a ciga-

rette 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 nev-

er 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.

‘Christ!’ he said, ‘dere’s good food goin’ to waste. Some-

body could knock dat bottle off, eh? Knock it off easy.’

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:

‘Best leave it. It don’t do a man no good to steal. T’ank

God, I ain’t never stolen nothin’ yet.’

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.

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

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Irish voice:

‘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 about 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 Ed-

bury? 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 con-

fession for about 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.

His ignorance was limitless and appalling. He once

asked me, for instance, whether Napoleon lived before Je-

sus 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 pave-

ment. ‘No,’ he said, ‘de sight of all dat bloody print makes

me sick.’

Like most tramps, he was passionately mean about

matches. He had a box of matches when I met him, but I

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Down and Out in Paris and London

never saw him strike one, and he used to lecture me for ex-

travagance 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.

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 was 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—kee-

pin’ 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 un-

employment.

He looked at women with a mixture of longing and ha-

tred. 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; Pad-

dy’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 sweetshop 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—

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abject, envious, a jackal’s character.

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 own mind and body were com-

pounded of inferior stuff. It was malnutrition and not any

native vice that had destroyed his manhood.

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Down and Out in Paris and London

XXIX

On the way to Edbury I told Paddy that I had a friend

from whom I could be sure of getting money, and sug-

gested going straight into London rather than face another

night in the spike. But Paddy had not been in Edbury spike

recently, and, tramp-like, he would not waste a night’s free

lodging. We arranged to go into London the next morning.

I had only a halfpenny, but Paddy had two shillings, which

would get us a bed each and a few cups of tea.

The Edbury spike did not differ much from the one at

Romton. The worst feature was that all tobacco was confis-

cated at the gate, and we were warned that any man caught

smoking would be turned out at once. Under the Vagrancy

Act tramps can be prosecuted for smoking in the spike—in

fact, they can be prosecuted for almost anything; but the

authorities generally save the trouble of a prosecution by

turning disobedient men out of doors. There was no work to

do, and the cells were fairly comfortable. We slept two in a

cell, ‘one up, one down’—that is, one on a wooden shelf and

one on the floor, with straw palliasses and plenty of blan-

kets, dirty but not verminous. The food was the same as at

Romton, except that we had tea instead of cocoa. One could

get extra tea in the morning, as the Tramp Major was sell-

ing it at a halfpenny a mug, illicitly no doubt. We were each

given a hunk of bread and cheese to take away for our mid-

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day meal.

When we got into London we had eight hours to kill be-

fore the lodging-houses opened. It is curious how one does

not notice things. I had been in London innumerable times,

and yet till that day I had never noticed one of the worst

things about London—the fact that it costs money even

to sit down. In Paris, if you had no money and could not

find a public bench, you would sit on the pavement. Heaven

knows what sitting on the pavement would lead to in Lon-

don—prison, probably. By four we had stood five hours, and

our feet seemed red-hot from the hardness of the stones. We

were hungry, having eaten our ration as soon as we left the

spike, and I was out of tobacco—it mattered less to Paddy,

who picked up cigarette ends. We tried two churches and

found them locked. Then we tried a public library, but there

were no seats in it. As a last hope Paddy suggested trying

a Rowton House; by the rules they would not let us in be-

fore seven, but we might slip in unnoticed. We walked up

to the magnificent doorway (the Rowton Houses really are

magnificent) and very casually, trying to look like regular

lodgers, began to stroll in. Instantly a man lounging in the

doorway, a sharp-faced fellow, evidently in some position of

authority, barred the way.

‘You men sleep ‘ere last night?’

‘No.’

‘Then—off.’

We obeyed, and stood two more hours on the street

corner. It was unpleasant, but it taught me not to use the ex-

pression ‘street corner loafer’, so I gained something from

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Down and Out in Paris and London

it. At six we went to a Salvation Army shelter. We could

not book beds till eight and it was not certain that there

would be any vacant, but an official, who called us ‘Brother’,

let us in on the condition that we paid for two cups of tea.

The main hall of the shelter was a great white-washed barn

of a place, oppressively clean and bare, with no fires. Two

hundred decentish, rather subdued-looking people were

sitting packed on long wooden benches. One or two offi-

cers in uniform prowled up and down. On the wall were

pictures of General Booth, and notices prohibiting cooking,

drinking, spitting, swearing, quarrelling, and gambling. As

a specimen of these notices, here is one that I copied word

for word:

Any man found gambling or playing cards will be ex-

pelled and will not be admitted under any circumstances.

A reward will be given for information leading to the

discovery of such persons.

The officers in charge appeal to all lodgers to assist them

in keeping this hostel free from the DETESTABLE EVIL OF

GAMBLING.

‘Gambling or playing cards’ is a delightful phrase. To

my eye these Salvation Army shelters, though clean, are

far drearier than the worst of the common lodging-hous-

es. There is such a hopelessness about some of the people

there—decent, broken-down types who have pawned their

collars but are still trying for office jobs. Coming to a Sal-

vation Army shelter, where it is at least clean, is their last

clutch at respectability. At the next table to me were two

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foreigners, dressed in rags but manifestly gentlemen. They

were playing chess verbally, not even writing down the

moves. One of them was blind, and I heard them say that

they had been saving up for a long time to buy a board, price