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George Orwell > Down and Out in Paris and London > Chapter XXVI

Down and Out in Paris and London

Chapter XXVI




In the morning after paying for the usual tea-and-two-slices and
buying half an ounce of tobacco, I had a halfpenny left. I did not care to
ask B. for more money yet, so there was nothing for it but to go to a
casual ward. I had very little idea how to set about this, but I knew that
there was a casual ward at Romton, so I walked out there, arriving at three
or four in the afternoon. Leaning against the pigpens in Romton
market-place was a wizened old Irishman, obviously a tramp. I went and
leaned beside him, and presently offered him my tobacco-box. He opened the
box and looked at the tobacco in astonishment:

'By God,' he said, 'dere's sixpennorth o' good baccy here! Where de
hell d'you get hold o' dat? YOU ain't been on de road long.'

'What, don't you have tobacco on the road?' I said.

'Oh, we HAS it. Look.'

He produced a rusty tin which had once held Oxo Cubes. In it were
twenty or thirty cigarette ends, picked up from the pavement. The Irishman
said that he rarely got any other tobacco; he added that, with care, one
could collect two ounces of tobacco a day on the London pavements.

'D'you come out o' one o' de London spikes [casual wards], eh?' he
asked me.

I said yes, thinking this would make him accept me as a fellow tramp,
and asked him what the spike at Romton was like. He said:

'Well, 'tis a cocoa spike. Dere's tay spikes, and cocoa spikes, and
skilly spikes. Dey don't give you skilly in Romton, t'ank God--leastways,
dey didn't de last time I was here. I been up to York and round Wales
since.'

'What is skilly?' I said.

'Skilly? A can o' hot water wid some bloody oatmeal at de bottom;
dat's skilly. De skilly spikes is always de worst.'

We stayed talking for an hour or two. The Irishman was a friendly old
man, but he smelt very unpleasant, which was not surprising when one
learned how many diseases he suffered from. It appeared (he described his
symptoms fully) that taking him from top to bottom he had the following
things wrong with him: on his crown, which was bald, he had eczema; he was
shortsighted, and had no glasses; he had chronic bronchitis; he had some
undiagnosed pain in the back; he had dyspepsia; he had urethritis; he had
varicose veins, bunions and flat feet. With this assemblage of diseases he
had tramped the roads for fifteen years.

At about five the Irishman said, 'Could you do wid a cup o' tay? De
spike don't open till six.'

'I should think I could.'

'Well, dere's a place here where dey gives you a free cup o' tay and a
bun. GOOD tay it is. Dey makes you say a lot o' bloody prayers after; but
hell! It all passes de time away. You come wid me.'

He led the way to a small tin-roofed shed in a side-street, rather
like a village cricket pavilion. About twenty-five other tramps were
waiting. A few of them were dirty old habitual vagabonds, the majority
decent-looking lads from the north, probably miners or cotton operatives
out of work. Presently the door opened and a lady in a blue silk dress,
wearing gold spectacles and a crucifix, welcomed us in. Inside were thirty
or forty hard chairs, a harmonium, and a very gory lithograph of the
Crucifixion.

Uncomfortably we took off our caps and sat down. The lady handed out
the tea, and while we ate and drank she moved to and fro, talking benignly.
She talked upon religious subjects--about Jesus Christ always having a
soft spot for poor rough men like us, and about how quickly the time passed
when you were in church, and what a difference it made to a man on the road
if he said his prayers regularly. We hated it. We sat against the wall
fingering our caps (a tramp feels indecently exposed with his cap off), and
turning pink and trying to mumble something when the lady addressed us.
There was no doubt that she meant it all kindly. As she came up to one of
the north country lads with the plate of buns, she said to him:

'And you, my boy, how long is it since you knelt down and spoke with
your Father in Heaven?'

Poor lad, not a word could he utter; but his belly answered for him,
with a disgraceful rumbling which it set up at sight of the food.
Thereafter he was so overcome with shame that he could scarcely swallow his
bun. Only one man managed to answer the lady in her own style, and he was a
spry, red-nosed fellow looking like a corporal who had lost his stripe for
drunkenness. He could pronounce the words 'the dear Lord Jesus' with less
shame than anyone I ever saw. No doubt he had learned the knack in prison.

Tea ended, and I saw the tramps looking furtively at one another. An
unspoken thought was running from man to man--could we possibly make off
before the prayers started? Someone stirred in his chair--not getting up
actually, but with just a glance at the door, as though half suggesting the
idea of departure. The lady quelled him with one look. She said in a more
benign tone than ever:

'I don't think you need go QUITE yet. The casual ward doesn't open
till six, and we have time to kneel down and say a few words to our Father
first. I think we should all feel better after that, shouldn't we?'

The red-nosed man was very helpful, pulling the harmonium into place
and handing out the prayerbooks. His back was to the lady as he did this,
and it was his idea of a joke to deal the books like a pack of cards,
whispering to each man as he did so, 'There y'are, mate, there's a--nap
'and for yer! Four aces and a king!' etc.

Bareheaded, we knelt down among the dirty teacups and began to mumble
that we had left undone those things that we ought to have done, and done
those things that we ought not to have done, and there was no health in us.
The lady prayed very fervently, but her eyes roved over us all the time,
making sure that we were attending. When she was not looking we grinned and
winked at one another, and whispered bawdy jokes, just to show that we did
not care; but it stuck in our throats a little. No one except the red-nosed
man was self-possessed enough to speak the responses above a whisper. We
got on better with the singing, except that one old tramp knew no tune but
'Onward, Christian soldiers', and reverted to it sometimes, spoiling the
harmony.

The prayers lasted half an hour, and then, after a handshake at the
door, we made off. 'Well,' said somebody as soon as we were out of hearing,
'the trouble's over. I thought them--prayers was never goin' to end.'

'You 'ad your bun,' said another; 'you got to pay for it.'

'Pray for it, you mean. Ah, you don't get much for nothing. They can't
even give you a twopenny cup of tea without you go down on you--knees for
it.'

There were murmurs of agreement. Evidently the tramps were not
grateful for their tea. And yet it was excellent tea, as different from
coffee-shop tea as good Bordeaux is from the muck called colonial claret,
and we were all glad of it. I am sure too that it was given in a good
spirit, without any intention of humiliating us; so in fairness we ought to
have been grateful--still, we were not.

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