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Authors: George Orwell
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Paris and London
X
The Hotel X was a vast, grandiose place with a classical
facade, and at one side a little, dark doorway like a rat-
hole, which was the service entrance. I arrived at a quarter
to seven in the morning. A stream of men with greasy trou-
sers were hurrying in and being checked by a doorkeeper
who sat in a tiny office. I waited, and presently the CHEF
DU PERSONNEL, a sort of assistant manager, arrived and
began to question me. He was an Italian, with a round, pale
face, haggard from overwork. He asked whether I was an
experienced dishwasher, and I said that I was; he glanced at
my hands and saw that I was lying, but on hearing that I was
an Englishman he changed his tone and engaged me.
‘We have been looking for someone to practise our Eng-
lish on,’ he said. ‘Our clients are all Americans, and the
only English we know is——‘ He repeated something that
little boys write on the walls in London. ‘You may be useful.
Come downstairs.’
He led me down a winding staircase into a narrow pas-
sage, deep underground, and so low that I had to stoop in
places. It was stiflingly hot and very dark, with only dim,
yellow bulbs several yards apart. There seemed to be miles
of dark labyrinthine passages—actually, I suppose, a few
hundred yards in all—that reminded one queerly of the low-
er decks of a liner; there were the same heat and cramped
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space and warm reek of food, and a humming, whirring
noise (it came from the kitchen furnaces) just like the whir
of engines. We passed doorways which let out sometimes
a shouting of oaths, sometimes the red glare of a fire, once
a shuddering draught from an ice chamber. As we went
along, something struck me violently in the back. It was a
hundred-pound block of ice, carried by a blue-aproned por-
ter. After him came a boy with a great slab of veal on his
shoulder, his cheek pressed into the damp, spongy flesh.
They shoved me aside with a cry of ‘SAUVE-TOI, IDIOT!’
and rushed on. On the wall, under one of the lights, some-
one had written in a very neat hand: ‘Sooner will you find
a cloudless sky in winter, than a woman at the Hotel X who
has her maidenhead.’ It seemed a queer sort of place.
One of the passages branched off into a laundry, where
an old, skull-faced woman gave me a blue apron and a pile
of dishcloths. Then the CHEF DU PERSONNEL took me to
a tiny underground den—a cellar below a cellar, as it were—
where there were a sink and some gas-ovens. It was too low
for me to stand quite upright, and the temperature was per-
haps 110 degrees Fahrenheit. The CHEF DU PERSONNEL
explained that my job was to fetch meals for the higher ho-
tel employees, who fed in a small dining-room above, clean
their room and wash their crockery. When he had gone, a
waiter, another Italian, thrust a fierce, fuzzy head into the
doorway and looked down at me.
‘English, eh?’ he said. ‘Well, I’m in charge here. If you
work well’ —he made the motion of up-ending a bottle and
sucked noisily. ‘If you don’t’—he gave the doorpost sever-
Down and Out in Paris and London
al vigorous kicks. ‘To me, twisting your neck would be no
more than spitting on the floor. And if there’s any trouble,
they’ll believe me, not you. So be careful.’
After this I set to work rather hurriedly. Except for about
an hour, I was at work from seven in the morning till a
quarter past nine at night; first at washing crockery, then
at scrubbing the tables and floors of the employees’ dining-
room, then at polishing glasses and knives, then at fetching
meals, then at washing crockery again, then at fetching
more meals and washing more crockery. It was easy work,
and I got on well with it except when I went to the kitchen to
fetch meals. The kitchen was like nothing I had ever seen or
imagined—a stifling, low-ceilinged inferno of a cellar, red-
lit from the fires, and deafening
X
The Hotel X was a vast, grandiose place with a classical
facade, and at one side a little, dark doorway like a rat-
hole, which was the service entrance. I arrived at a quarter
to seven in the morning. A stream of men with greasy trou-
sers were hurrying in and being checked by a doorkeeper
who sat in a tiny office. I waited, and presently the CHEF
DU PERSONNEL, a sort of assistant manager, arrived and
began to question me. He was an Italian, with a round, pale
face, haggard from overwork. He asked whether I was an
experienced dishwasher, and I said that I was; he glanced at
my hands and saw that I was lying, but on hearing that I was
an Englishman he changed his tone and engaged me.
‘We have been looking for someone to practise our Eng-
lish on,’ he said. ‘Our clients are all Americans, and the
only English we know is——‘ He repeated something that
little boys write on the walls in London. ‘You may be useful.
Come downstairs.’
He led me down a winding staircase into a narrow pas-
sage, deep underground, and so low that I had to stoop in
places. It was stiflingly hot and very dark, with only dim,
yellow bulbs several yards apart. There seemed to be miles
of dark labyrinthine passages—actually, I suppose, a few
hundred yards in all—that reminded one queerly of the low-
er decks of a liner; there were the same heat and cramped
Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com
space and warm reek of food, and a humming, whirring
noise (it came from the kitchen furnaces) just like the whir
of engines. We passed doorways which let out sometimes
a shouting of oaths, sometimes the red glare of a fire, once
a shuddering draught from an ice chamber. As we went
along, something struck me violently in the back. It was a
hundred-pound block of ice, carried by a blue-aproned por-
ter. After him came a boy with a great slab of veal on his
shoulder, his cheek pressed into the damp, spongy flesh.
They shoved me aside with a cry of ‘SAUVE-TOI, IDIOT!’
and rushed on. On the wall, under one of the lights, some-
one had written in a very neat hand: ‘Sooner will you find
a cloudless sky in winter, than a woman at the Hotel X who
has her maidenhead.’ It seemed a queer sort of place.
One of the passages branched off into a laundry, where
an old, skull-faced woman gave me a blue apron and a pile
of dishcloths. Then the CHEF DU PERSONNEL took me to
a tiny underground den—a cellar below a cellar, as it were—
where there were a sink and some gas-ovens. It was too low
for me to stand quite upright, and the temperature was per-
haps 110 degrees Fahrenheit. The CHEF DU PERSONNEL
explained that my job was to fetch meals for the higher ho-
tel employees, who fed in a small dining-room above, clean
their room and wash their crockery. When he had gone, a
waiter, another Italian, thrust a fierce, fuzzy head into the
doorway and looked down at me.
‘English, eh?’ he said. ‘Well, I’m in charge here. If you
work well’ —he made the motion of up-ending a bottle and
sucked noisily. ‘If you don’t’—he gave the doorpost sever-
Down and Out in Paris and London
al vigorous kicks. ‘To me, twisting your neck would be no
more than spitting on the floor. And if there’s any trouble,
they’ll believe me, not you. So be careful.’
After this I set to work rather hurriedly. Except for about
an hour, I was at work from seven in the morning till a
quarter past nine at night; first at washing crockery, then
at scrubbing the tables and floors of the employees’ dining-
room, then at polishing glasses and knives, then at fetching
meals, then at washing crockery again, then at fetching
more meals and washing more crockery. It was easy work,
and I got on well with it except when I went to the kitchen to
fetch meals. The kitchen was like nothing I had ever seen or
imagined—a stifling, low-ceilinged inferno of a cellar, red-
lit from the fires, and deafening
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