Down and Out in Paris and London

1. Paris Slum Life: A Descent into Squalor and Eccentricity

Poverty is what I am writing about, and I had my first contact with poverty in this slum.

Introduction to the slum. The narrative begins in the rue du Coq d’Or, a narrow, dilapidated street in Paris packed with cheap hotels and tiny bistros. This area is a microcosm of poverty, filled with noise, dirt, and a constant undercurrent of tension and desperation. The author's hotel, the Hotel des Trois Moineaux, is a particularly squalid example, overrun with bugs and housing a transient population.

Diverse, poor lodgers. The hotel is home to a floating population of foreigners from various trades, many living in extreme poverty. They include students, laborers, prostitutes, and rag-pickers, often sharing cramped, dirty rooms. Their lives are marked by hardship, such as a mother darning socks for pennies while her son idles, or a widower sharing a bed with his consumptive daughters.

Eccentric characters abound. The slums attract and seem to foster eccentric individuals who have abandoned conventional norms due to poverty. Examples include:

• The Rougiers: An old couple selling fake pornographic postcards.
• Henri: A melancholy sewer worker haunted by a violent past.
• R.: An Englishman who drinks constantly and talks of antique furniture.
• Others: A Romanian who denies his glass eye, a miser, a rag-merchant copying his signature.

2. The Immediate Reality of Poverty: Squalid, Secretive, and Boring

It is the peculiar LOWNESS of poverty that you discover first; the shifts that it puts you to, the complicated meanness, the crust-wiping.

Sudden destitution. After being robbed, the author is left with only 47 francs, forcing him to live on about six francs a day. This sudden plunge into near-poverty reveals its true nature, which is not grandly terrible but profoundly low, squalid, and boring. It requires constant, complicated meanness just to survive.

Secrecy and lies. Poverty necessitates secrecy; one must pretend to maintain a normal life while drastically cutting expenses. This leads to a web of lies: avoiding the laundress, the tobacconist, and even friends. Meals become a performance, involving smuggling cheap food home after pretending to eat at restaurants.

Mean disasters. Living on the edge means small misfortunes have disproportionate impacts. Losing a few centimes, a shopkeeper refusing a coin, or food being spoiled by bugs can mean going hungry. These petty disasters are a constant feature of being hard up, highlighting the precariousness of existence.

3. The Desperate Search for Work: False Hopes and Constant Rejection

It was a great relief to remember that I had after all one influential friend to fall back on.

Seeking employment. With money dwindling, the author seeks work, initially hoping for a job as a guide or interpreter. However, the theft forces a more immediate search for any job, no matter how menial. He remembers his Russian friend Boris, a former waiter, as a potential source of help.

Boris's situation. Boris, a charismatic but down-on-his-luck Russian refugee, is found in even worse circumstances, starving and sleeping on the floor of a tiny attic room. Despite his own hardship, Boris maintains a surprising optimism and promises to help the author find work, particularly in the hotel industry where he has connections.

Futile search. The search for work with Boris is a series of disappointments. They visit employment bureaus, hotels, and restaurants, facing constant rejection due to Boris's lameness and the author's lack of experience. False leads, like a potential job with a mysterious "Russian secret society" (likely swindlers), add to the frustration and hunger.

4. Life as a Plongeur: The Inferno of the Hotel Basement

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 with oaths and the clanging of pots and pans.

Landing a job. Through Boris's connection, the author secures a temporary job as a plongeur (dishwasher/kitchen hand) at a large, expensive hotel, Hotel X. The service entrance leads to a labyrinthine underground world of stifling heat, dim lights, and constant noise.

The cafeterie. The author's primary post is the cafeterie, a tiny, intensely hot cellar where tea, coffee, and other drinks are prepared, and food orders are fetched. Working conditions are extreme, with temperatures often exceeding 110°F. The work is frantic during rush hours, requiring constant running and multitasking.

Demanding work. The job involves numerous tasks beyond washing up, including fetching supplies, slicing bread, boiling eggs, and polishing. The pace is relentless, especially during the breakfast and lunch rushes. The kitchen itself is a chaotic, foul-mouthed environment where cooks and waiters constantly yell and curse at the plongeurs.

5. The Hidden World of Hotel Staff: Caste, Dirt, and Efficiency

It is an instructive sight to see a waiter going into a hotel dining-room.

Hotel hierarchy. Hotels operate on a strict caste system, with prestige and pay varying greatly from managers and head cooks down to the lowest plongeurs and cafetiers. French staff hold higher positions, while foreigners fill the most menial roles. An elaborate system of signals and etiquette governs interactions.

Dirt and dishonesty. Despite the appearance of luxury upstairs, the service quarters are shockingly dirty. Food is handled unhygienically, dropped on the floor and served, and cleanliness is sacrificed for speed and presentation. The hotel also swindles customers through overpriced, low-quality food and inflated charges, especially for wealthy clients.

Pride and efficiency. Despite the harsh conditions and dishonesty, the staff maintains a surprising pride in their work and efficiency. Cooks are artists of timing, waiters are masters of servility and performance, and plongeurs pride themselves on being débrouillards—able to get any job done. This collective effort keeps the complex machine running, even if the product is often a "shoddy imitation" of luxury.

6. The Worse Depths of a Bad Restaurant: Incompetence and Endless Hours

Nevertheless, the conditions behind the kitchen door were suitable for a pigsty.

A new opportunity? Boris secures jobs for himself and the author at a new Russian restaurant, the Auberge de Jehan Cottard, where Boris is to be head waiter and the author kitchen plongeur. Leaving the relative stability of Hotel X, they find the Auberge far from ready, a sign of the owner's lack of capital and incompetence.

Chaotic conditions. The restaurant is run on insufficient funds, leading to primitive working conditions. The kitchen is tiny, lacks basic equipment like ovens and hot water, and is infested with rats. Supplies are stored unhygienically in a yard. The staff is overworked and constantly quarreling due to fatigue and the chaotic environment.

Endless hours. The working hours are brutal, far exceeding those at Hotel X. The author works seventeen and a half hours a day, the cook even longer, and Boris eighteen hours, seven days a week. This relentless schedule leaves no time for rest or personal life, leading to constant exhaustion and frayed tempers among the staff.

7. Poverty's Psychological Toll: Boredom, Degradation, and Loss of Identity

Hunger reduces one to an utterly spineless, brainless condition, more like the after-effects of influenza than anything else.

Beyond physical hardship. While hunger and physical discomfort are central to poverty, the psychological effects are equally profound. The constant struggle for survival leaves no time or energy for thought or intellectual pursuits. Life is reduced to a simple rhythm of work, drink, and sleep.

Boredom and inertia. A significant aspect of poverty is crushing boredom and inertia. Without money or energy, there is nothing to do but wait. Hunger, in particular, leads to a state of apathy and listlessness, making it difficult to rouse oneself for anything, including looking for work.

Loss of self. The degrading nature of menial work and the constant focus on basic needs strip away one's sense of identity and self-respect. Wearing rags, being treated with contempt, and living in squalor contribute to a feeling of being genuinely degraded, like an outcast.

8. Encounters with Fellow Outcasts: Resilience, Philosophy, and Despair

He might be ragged and cold, or even starving, but so long as he could read, think, and watch for meteors, he was, as he said, free in his own mind.

Diverse companions. The journey through poverty introduces the author to a range of fellow outcasts, each with their own story and coping mechanisms. From the eccentric characters in the Paris slum to the tramps and beggars in London, these individuals offer glimpses into different ways of enduring hardship.

Boris's optimism. Boris, despite his dire circumstances, maintains a remarkable, if sometimes delusional, optimism. His past as a soldier and waiter fuels his belief in changing fortunes and his ability to charm his way through difficulties, providing a source of hope, however unreliable.

Bozo's philosophy. In London, the author meets Bozo, a pavement artist with a deformed leg. Bozo represents a different kind of resilience, maintaining intellectual curiosity and a cynical philosophy despite his beggary. He believes that true freedom lies in one's mind and that poverty cannot touch it if one chooses not to let it.

9. The English Tramp System: Spikes, Lodging-Houses, and Charity

An old hand will tell you the peculiarities of every spike in England, as: at A you are allowed to smoke but there are bugs in the cells; at B the beds are comfortable but the porter is a bully; at C they let you out early in the morning but the tea is undrinkable; at D the officials steal your money if you have any—and so on interminably.

London's poor. Arriving in London, the author finds a different landscape of poverty, centered around lodging-houses and casual wards ("spikes"). These institutions house a transient population of unemployed men, tramps, and beggars, offering cheap, often squalid, accommodation.

Life in the spike. Casual wards are grim, prison-like places with strict rules, uncomfortable beds (sometimes just the floor), and meager food. Trumps navigate the system by knowing the specific conditions and rules of each spike. The experience is dehumanizing, involving searches, compulsory bathing in dirty water, and confinement.

Lodging-house community. Common lodging-houses, while often dirty and crowded, offer a sense of community among the poor. Men share food, talk, and play games in communal kitchens. However, they are also havens for petty crime, and theft among lodgers is common.

10. Society's View of Beggars: Contempt for Unprofitable Work

If one could earn even ten pounds a week at begging, it would become a respectable profession immediately.

Beggary as a trade. The author observes that begging in London is a complex activity with various techniques and levels of profitability. From street artists and musicians to those selling matches or simply asking for money, beggars employ different "gags" to elicit charity.

Legal absurdity. English law paradoxically criminalizes direct begging while permitting activities like selling trivial items or performing poorly, which are merely thinly veiled forms of asking for money. This forces beggars into absurd performances to avoid prosecution.

Contempt for the poor. Society views beggars with universal contempt, seeing them as lazy parasites fundamentally different from "working" people. The author argues this is based on a false premise: the only real difference is income. Society values work not for its usefulness, but for its profitability, and beggars are despised simply because they fail this test.

11. The Unnecessary Nature of Much Drudgery: Slavery for Show

Essentially, a ‘smart’ hotel is a place where a hundred people toil like devils in order that two hundred may pay through the nose for things they do not really want.

Useless labor. Reflecting on his time as a plongeur, the author questions the necessity of such grueling, unpleasant work. He argues that much of the labor in expensive hotels and restaurants is not essential but serves only to create a superficial appearance of luxury for wealthy customers.

Luxury as a sham. The "smartness" of hotels is often a facade, achieved through the intense, often dishonest, labor of the staff. Customers pay exorbitant prices for an experience that is often unhygienic and based on low-quality materials, benefiting only the proprietor.

Fear of the mob. The author posits that the perpetuation of such useless, degrading work is rooted in a fear of the poor. The wealthy and educated classes, ignorant of the reality of poverty, fear that if the "mob" had leisure, they would be dangerous. This fear leads them to support systems that keep the poor overworked and subdued, even if the work is pointless.

Last updated: May 7, 2025