George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London

   "'Ere y'are, the best rig-out you ever 'ad. A tosheroon

[half a crown] for the coat, two 'ogs for the trousers, one

and a tanner for the boots, and a 'og for the cap and scarf.

That's seven bob."

   "You got a 'ope! I'll give yer one and a tanner for the

coat, a 'og for the trousers, and two 'ogs for the rest.

That's four and a tanner."

   "Take the 'ole lot for five and a tanner, chum."

"Right y'are, off with 'em. I got to get out to sell my late

edition."

   The clothed man stripped, and in three minutes their

positions were reversed; the naked man dressed, and the

other kilted with a sheet of the Daily Mail.

   The dormitory was dark and close, with fifteen beds in

it. There was a horrible hot reek of urine, so beastly that at

first one tried to breathe in small, shallow puffs, not filling

one's lungs to the bottom. As I lay down in bed a man

loomed out of the darkness, leant over me and began

babbling in an educated, half-drunken voice:

   "An old public school boy, what? [He had heard me

say something to Paddy.] Don't meet many of the old

school here. I am an old Etonian. You know-twenty years

hence this weather and all that." He began to quaver out

the Eton boating-song, not untunefully:

            "Jolly boating weather,

            And a hay harvest---"

   "Stop that----

noise!" shouted several lodgers.

   "Low types," said the old Etonian, "very low types. Funny

sort of place for you and me, eh? Do you know what my

friends say to me? They say, 'M-, you are past

redemption.' Quite true, I am past redemption.

I've come down in the world; not like these-----

      s here,

who couldn't come down if they tried. We chaps who

have come down ought to hang together a bit. Youth will

be still in our faces-you know. May I offer you a drink?"

   He produced a bottle of cherry brandy, and at the same

moment lost his balance and fell heavily across my legs.

Paddy, who was undressing, pulled him upright.

   "Get back to yer bed, you silly ole-----

     !"

   The old Etonian walked unsteadily to his bed and

crawled under the sheets with all his clothes on, even his

boots. Several times in the night I heard him murmuring,

"M-, you are past redemption," as though the phrase

appealed to him. In the morning he was

lying asleep fully dressed, with the bottle clasped in his

arms. He was a man of about fifty, with a refined, worn

face, and, curiously enough, quite fashionably dressed. It

was queer to see his good patent-leather shoes sticking out

of that filthy bed. It occurred to me, too, that the cherry

brandy must have cost the equivalent of a fortnight's

lodging, so he could not have been seriously hard up.

Perhaps he frequented common lodginghouses in search of

the "nancy boys."

   The beds were not more than two feet apart. About

midnight I woke up to find that the man next to me was

trying to steal the money from beneath my pillow. He was

pretending to be asleep while he did it, sliding his hand

under the pillow as gently as a rat. In the morning I saw

that he was a hunchback, with long, apelike arms. I told

Paddy about the attempted theft. He laughed and said:

   "Christ! You got to get used to dat. Dese lodgin'

houses is full o' thieves. In some houses dere's notlain'

safe but to sleep wid all yer clo'es on. I seen 'em steal a

wooden leg off a cripple before now. Once I see a man-

fourteen stone man he was-come into a lodgin'-house wid

four pound ten. He puts it under his mattress. 'Now,' he

says, 'any dat touches dat money does it over my body,'

he says. But dey done him all de same. In de mornin' he

woke up on de floor. Four fellers had took his mattress by

de corners an' lifted him off as light as a feather. He never

saw his four pound ten again."

                      XXX

THE next morning we began looking once more for

Paddy's friend, who was called Bozo, and was a screever-

that is, a pavement artist. Addresses did

not exist in Paddy's world, but he had a vague idea that

Bozo might be found in Lambeth, and in the end we ran

across him on the Embankment, where he had established

himself not far from Waterloo Bridge. He was kneeling on

the pavement with a box of chalks, copying a sketch of

Winston Churchill from a penny note-book. The likeness

was not at all bad. Bozo was a small, dark, hook-nosed

man, with curly hair growing low on his head. His right

leg was dreadfully deformed, the foot being twisted heel

forward in a way horrible to see. From his appearance one

could have taken him for a Jew, but he used to deny this

vigorously. He spoke of his hook-nose as "Roman," and

was proud of his resemblance to some Roman Emperor-it

was Vespasian, I think.

   Bozo had a strange way of talking, Cockneyfied and

yet very lucid and expressive. It was as though he had

read good books but had never troubled to correct his

grammar. For a while Paddy and I stayed on the

Embankment, talking, and Bozo gave us an account of the

screeving trade. I repeat what he said more or less in his

own words.

   "I'm what they call a serious screever. I don't draw in

blackboard chalks like these others, I use proper colours

the same as what painters use; bloody expensive they are,

especially the reds. I use five bobs' worth of colours in a

long day, and never less than two bobs' worth.' Cartoons

is my line-you know, politics and cricket and that. Look

here"-he showed me his notebook-"here's likenesses of all

the political blokes, what I've copied from the papers. I

have a different cartoon every day. For instance, when the

Budget was on I had one of Winston trying to push an

elephant

1

Pavement artists buy their colours in the form of powder,

and work them into cakes with condensed milk

.

marked 'Debt,' and underneath I wrote, 'Will he budge

it?' See? You can have cartoons about any of the parties,

but you mustn't put anything in favour of Socialism,

because the police won't stand it. Once I did a cartoon of

a boa constrictor marked Capital swallowing a rabbit

marked Labour. The copper came along and saw it, and

he says, 'You rub that out, and look sharp about it,' he

says. I had to rub it out. The copper's got the right to

move you on for loitering, and it's no good giving them a

back answer."

   I asked Bozo what one could earn at screeving. He

said:

   "This time of year, when it don't rain, I take about three

quid between Friday and Sunday-people get their wages

Fridays, you see. I can't work when it rains; the colours

get washed off straight away. Take the year round, I make

about a pound a week, because you can't do much in the

winter. Boat Race day, and Cup Final day, I've took as

much as four pounds. But you have to cut it out of them,

you know; you don't take a bob if you just sit and look at

them. A halfpenny's the usual drop [gift], and you don't

get even that unless you give them a bit of backchat.

Once they've answered you they feel ashamed not to give

you a drop. The best thing's to keep changing your

picture, because when they see you drawing they'll stop

and watch you. The trouble is, the beggars scatter as soon

as you turn round with the hat. You really want a nobber

[assistant] at this game. You keep at work and get a crowd

watching you, and the nobber comes casual-like round the

back of them. They don't know he's the nobber. Then

suddenly he pulls his cap off, and you got them between

two fires like. You'll never get a drop off real toffs. It's

shabby sort of blokes you get most off, and foreigners.

I've had even sixpences off Japs, and blackies, and that.

They're not so bloody mean as what an Englishman is.

Another thing to remember is to keep your money

covered up, except perhaps a penny in the hat. People

won't give you anything if they see you got a bob or two

already."

   Bozo had the deepest contempt for the other screevves

on the Embankment. He called them "the salmon

platers." At that time there was a screever almost every

twenty-five yards along the Embankmenttwenty-five

yards being the recognised minimum between pitches.

Bozo contemptuously pointed out an old white-bearded

screever fifty yards away.

   "You see that silly old fool? He's bin doing the same

picture every day for ten years. 'A faithful friend' he calls

it. It's of a dog pulling a child out of the water. The silly

old bastard can't draw any better than a child of ten. He's

learned just that one picture by rule of thumb, like you

learn to put a puzzle together. There's a lot of that sort

about here. They come pinching my ideas sometimes; but

I don't care; the silly s can't think of anything for

themselves, so I'm always ahead of them. The whole

thing with cartoons is being up to date. Once a child got

its head stuck in the railings of Chelsea Bridge. Well, I

heard about it, and my cartoon was on the pavement

before they'd got the child's head out of the railings.

Prompt, I am."

   Bozo seemed an interesting man, and I was anxious to see

more of him. That evening I went down to the

Embankment to meet him, as he had arranged to take

Paddy and myself to a lodging-house south of the river.

Bozo washed his pictures off the pavement and counted

his takings-it was about sixteen shillings, of which he said

twelve or thirteen would be profit. We

walked down into Lambeth. Bozo limped slowly, with a

queer crablike gait, half sideways, dragging his smashed

foot behind him. He carried a stick in each hand and slung

his box of colours over his shoulder. As we were crossing

the bridge he stopped in one of the alcoves to rest. He fell

silent for a minute or two, and to my surprise I saw that he

was looking at the stars. He touched my arm and pointed

to the sky with his stick.

   "Say, will you look at Aldebaran! Look at the colour.

Like a ------------

     great blood orange!"

   From the way he spoke he might have been an art critic

in a picture gallery. I was astonished. I confessed that I

did not know which Aldebaran was, indeed, I had never

even noticed that the stars were of different colours. Bozo

began to give me some elementary hints on astronomy,

pointing out the chief constellations. He seemed

concerned at my ignorance. I said to him, surprised:

   "You seem to know a lot about stars."

   "Not a great lot. I know a bit, though. I got two letters

from the Astronomer Royal thanking me for writing about

meteors. Now and again I go out at night and watch for

meteors. The stars are a free show; it don't cost anything

to use your eyes."

   "What a good idea! I should never have thought of it."

   "Well, you got to take an interest in something. It don't

follow that because a man's on the road he can't think of

anything but tea-and-two-slices."

   "But isn't it very hard to take an interest in things-

things like stars-living this life?"

   "Screeving, you mean? Not necessarily. It don't need

turn you into a bloody rabbit-that is, not if you set your

mind to it."

   "It seems to have that effect on most people."

   "Of course. Look at Paddy-a tea-swilling old moocher,

only fit to scrounge for fag-ends. That's the way most of

them go. I despise them. But you don't need to get like that.