Sense ni cinc a París i Londres (1933)

If you want to know how it is to be poor and work hard in Paris or be poor and a tramp in London in the 1930ies read this book. Makes you feel blessed. (Also you can follow up with Knut Hansum´s Hunger) ( )

This book is based, at least in part, on Orwell’s own experiences as a poor person in Paris and London. I suspect that most of which he recounts was true. I found it extremely readable but I cannot say enjoyable.

He begins by recounting his time as a washer-up in Paris.

He lived in a Paris slum where “a third of the male population of the quarter was drunk”. There were lots of fights and at night the policemen could only come through the street two together.

He stayed at a dirty hotel with thin walls, down which long lines of bugs “marched all day like columns of soldiers and at night come down enormously hungry”; one had to get up every four hours and kill them.

Some of the lodgers, mostly foreigners, were “fantastically poor”.

There were many eccentric characters, some half-mad. Some lived lives “”curious beyond words”.

Some were always half-starved and half-drunk. (If I were half-starved, I wouldn’t waste money on booze, but then I’m not an alcoholic.) The filth of one couple’s room was such that one could smell it on the floor below. According to the Madame, neither of them had taken off their clothes for four years.

Orwell tells us the stories, circumstances, etc of the various hotel occupants.

At first, he could earn a little money by giving English lessons, but this source of income did not last.

He informs us of how many francs he earned and how many francs everything cost, also how many shillings this amounted to; but all this was long ago, and how much or little, this was, means nothing to us these days, neither the value of francs or shillings.

He mostly goes hungry, existing only on bread and margarine.

He discovers that “a man who has gone even a week on bread and margarine is not a man any longer, only a belly with a few accessory organs”.

Sometimes he is obliged to sell some of his clothes in a second-hand shop but gets practically nothing for them.

He tells us that when one has almost no money left one gets “a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at feeling yourself at last genuinely down and out”.

He tells us about his close friend, Boris, a Russian, who after becoming ill, has grown immensely fat from lying in bed. He had been a dish -washer and worked his way up to becoming a waiter.

Boris warns Orwell he will never make any money at writing, but he would help him get a job in a kitchen. (I don’t know if Orwell ever earned much money from his writing, but he certainly became world famous!)

Orwell works as a “plongeur”, a dish-washer, for a minimum wage.

He later works at a hotel; the dirt here is revolting, and worse in the kitchen. Conditions are disgusting, although the hotel was one of the most expensive in Paris.

I rarely eat in restaurants, but after reading this book, I may never eat in one again.

The second half of the book is about the author’s time in London.

He found a lodging-house where he could sleep in a dormitory for 15-20 men. The beds were cold and hard but the sheets were “not more than a week from the wash, which was an improvement”.

There was a kitchen, which was hot and drowsy with coke fumes. There was a general sharing of food; men who were out of work got fed by the others.

London was “cleaner and quieter and drearier” than Paris. The crowds were better dressed and the faces “comelier and milder and more alike”.

There was less drunkenness, less dirt, less quarrelling, and more idling.

There were places called casual wards, or spikes, where tramps, or others in Orwell’s situation, could spend the night.

There were other places where you could get a free cup of tea and a bun, but you had to say “a lot of bloody prayers” afterwards.

The tea was excellent but the men were not grateful for it because of all the forced praying.

One spike was a “smoky yellow cube of brick --- in a corner of the workhouse grounds”. There was a long queue of ragged men waiting for the gates to open. They were palpably underfed but friendly and many offered O tobacco, i.e. cigarette ends.

The spikes were all different; in some you could smoke but there were bugs in the cells, in one the beds were comfortable but the porter was a bully. And so on. You were not allowed to enter any one spike or two London spikes, more than once a month.

If you had more than eight-pence you had to hand it over at the gate.

A spike consisted of a bathroom and lavatory and perhaps a hundred cells in all.

Each man got rations of a half-pound wedge of bread covered with margarine, and a pint of bitter sugarless cocoa in a tin billy.

It was a normal condition for a spike that there were no beds – you had to sleep on the floor. Though you did get a blanket. There was a chamber-pot and a hot-water pipe. You could roll up your coat and put it against the hot-water pipe.

There was only one tub of water for all the men, so on one occasion O took a look at the black scum floating on the water from the other men’s faces and went unwashed.

O made friends with some of the tramps and tells us their stories.

The men were in a poor state of health owing to living for years on bread and margarine – they were destroyed by malnutrition.

I found Orwell’s account of his impoverished life in Paris and London fascinating though depressing. It made my own diet seem like one fit for a queen and also made me in comparison feel like a millionaire.

I highly recommend that you read the book, which is in my view his best, or one of his best, of those I’ve read. ( )

My comments refer to the Prabhat e-book edition instead of the Penguin edition.

George Orwell describes his personal experiences living among the poor and homeless in Paris and in London. He describes the everyday struggles of people who often went days without anything to eat. Telling the stories of many of the people he spent time with brings their world to life. The book concludes with a short essay urging people to view tramps in a better light. ( )

Narrative of being poor in Paris and London

George Orwells Down and out in Paris and London ter sig inledningsvis som en efterföljare till Svält: berättaren finner att han knappt har pengar kvar till hyran på sitt parisiska boende, och gör allt vad han kan för att dölja detta, med underliga tankebanor som följd. Orwell är dock inte Hamsun, och detta är snarare en reportagebok än ett experiment i berättande.

Temat är således snarast överlevnad: berättaren försöker hitta småinkomster eller helst jobb, pantsätter kläder, försöker få hjälp av vänner. Han hamnar ett tag i restaurangvärlden, först på fint hotell, sedan på nystartad krog, och registrerar vad han där ser: hur man jobbar och sliter, hur skenet är viktigare än faktisk renlighet, hierarkierna. Till slut får han nog av att jobba 17 timmar i sträck i ett för litet kök som handräckning, och flyr till ett jobb i London.

Väl där märker han dock att jobbet inte kan tillträdas förrän om en månad, och pengar har han fortfarande inga. Lösningen blir ett liv som tiggare och luffare: lagarna tvingar honom att ständigt sova i nya fattighus, och även om han ibland kan skrapa ihop pengar för den enklaste formen av härbärge så räcker det sällan mer än några nätter.

Berättarens egna mödor varvas med iakttagelser av personerna runt honom: de som visar hur man kan överleva på småpengar, hur jobbet i restaurangen går till, hur man kan tigga till sig tillräckligt för nästa dag. Inskjutet finns också Orwells politiska betraktelser om hur dessa enkla arbetare utför i stort sett meningslösa uppgifter som mest verkar till för att de aldrig skall kunna stanna upp och tänka, om fattigvården och synen på luffare.

Det är knappast den mest rafflande av böcker, ej heller den politiskt mest utmanande – nästan ett sekel senare är det intressant att jämföra vad som skiljer sig och vad som är detsamma, men inget av det som sägs framstår som direkt omskakande. ( )