Down and Out in Paris and London was first published in Jannuary 1933 by the Victor Gollancz Ltd and by Harpner & and Brothers (NY) five months later. The original version of Down And Out entiteled "A Scullion's Diary" was completed in October 1930 and came to only 35,000 words for Orwell has used only a part of his material. 1931 the London Chapters were added. In 1932 the title was first changed to "Confeesion of a Down and Out in Paris and London", and then to it's actual name. In the original manuscript Orwell used an 'X' for his name before he finally adopted his pen-name, 'George Orwell'.
Summary
Down and Out in Paris and London is a documentary
of the life of lower class people in Paris and London. Orwell shows up
the social conditions of the so-called plongeurs (cheap and unqualified
workers in restaurants, hotels etc.) in Paris, and of the tramps in London.
By joining these people, and living amongst them, Orwell generates a very
realistic view. It was even more than that, Orwell wasn't only living amongst
them, for these months he was even one of them.
The book consists of 38 chapters. The fist 25 chapters
deal about Orwell's experience as a plongeur in Paris, whereas the next
chapters describe his experience as a tramp in England.
His narration starts in the Rue Du Coq D'Or, a steeet in one of the Paris slums. It was a very busy street, and so Orwell wrote, "Quarrels and the desolate cries of street hawkers, and the shouts of children [...], and the sour reek of the refuse-carts, made up the athmosphere of the street". There were many foreingers, mostly Poles, Arabs and Italians living in the countless cheap hotels. The quater attracted eccentric people-people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of lives and given up to be normal or decent.Nevertheless, despite the dirt and the social problems there were also some respectable French people living in this quater, and piling up small fortunes with their shops. At night nearly everyone went to the tiny bistros. The bristros, were very cheer places, where the people were drinking, talking, singing and laughing.Orwell described the quater around the Rue Coq D'Or as a "quite representative Paris slum".
Orwell was living in the Hôtel des Trois Moineaux, a inveterately dirty place full of bugs. The lodgers in the hotel were mostly foreigners, of every trade, navvies,artists, bricklayers, prostitutes, students, rag-pickers, and many more. Orwell earned his living by giving English lessons ocassionally. The money he earned with the lessons wasn't enough, and one month before his savings came to an end he started looking for a job. He intended to become a tourist guide or something similar. But a piece of bad luck prevented this. A young Italian has robbed nearly all his savings (Later Orwell admitted to a friend that he wasn't robbed by an Italian, but stripped of all his money by a girl. He did't want to admit a relation becauce of his conservative parents). This was the time when Orwell's real poverty begun. From this time on Orwell had to live on six francs a day.
He describes that poverty isn't the way we expect it to be. We, who have never experienced real poverty, think that it must be terrible, it isn't, it happens to be squalid and boring. Another problem is that you don't dare to admit it, you have to pretend that you are living quite well. You have to waste desperately needed money on things you can't afford, just to make people think that you are well off. These lies are expensive lies. He also describes that poverty and in consequence hunger degrade a man to "a belly with some additional organs". Orwell lived three weeks like this, until his last savings were gone. From this point on, he had to live on his money that he earned with english lessons, this were thirty-six francs a week. He had no experience of being poor, and so he often handled the money bad and was a day without food. Sometimes he smuggled out some clothes to bring them to the pawn-shop, to get some money.
One day even the english lessons ceased abruptly. At this point Orwell decided to pawn all his clothes, and to stop pretending being well of. At the pawn-shop he didn't get the money he had expected, and so he left dissapointed, with no clothes, except what he stood in, and only little money left. Luckily some days later he recieved two hundred francs for a newspaper article he wrote, and so could afford to pay another months rent. Now Orwell realized that he had to look for a job. He went to visit an old friend, a Russian called Boris, who had promised him some help. Boris had fleed from Russia after the revolution , and has worked his way up to be a waiter. Boris was a former officer at the Russian army and therefore pleased about everything that had to do with spldiers. Boris often used to talk about the army and his dream of saving enough money as a waiter, in order to open an own restaurant.
So Owell went to visit Boris. But what he found there
didn't make him expect too much. The address Boris has given him was a
tiny dirty little hotel in a narrow back-street. Orwell was very dissappointed
when he saw that Boris was even worse off than himself. Boris was in this
situation because he was injured at his leg, and therefore he was still
a bit lame. In the afternoon Boris and Orwell went out to search a job.
They went to a café which was used as an employment bureau. Young
waiters, dishwashers, cooks and many more were sitting in the café
with an untouched cup of coffee. Once in a while a restauranteur would
come in and talk to the barman. The barman then would call a person. Boris
and Orwell sat there for two hours (that was the maximum one could stay
there) but they were never called. Later they heard that one had to give
the barman twenty francs to get a job. They went to some other restaurants
and cafés, without result. In the next weeks they went around in
Paris looking for a job. Everything went as bad as possible, and it seemed
that they missed jobs by half an hour. Orwell wrote: "All this was worse
for Boris than for me. The constant walking and sleeping on the floor kept
his leg and back in constant pain, and with his vast Russian appetite he
suffered torments of hunger,.." Boris sometimes collapsed in the most utter
despair. Then he would lie the whole day in bed cursing.
The situation became worse and worse. In his despair
Orwell even went fishing in the Seine, but he didn't fish anything, that
could feed him. At this point even Boris was completely out of money. He
even had to flee form his room, because he couldn't afford to pay the months'
rent. Boris pawned all his clothes, and so they could afford their first
meal after having been three days without food.
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