Fifty Orwell Essays Read online

He admonished me quite severely.

  'They have to do it,' he said. 'If they made these places too pleasant

  you'd have all the scum of the country flocking into them. It's only the

  bad food as keeps all that scum away. These tramps are too lazy to work,

  that's all that's wrong with them. You don't want to go encouraging of

  them. They're scum.'

  I produced arguments to prove him wrong, but he would not listen. He kept

  repeating:

  'You don't want to have any pity on these tramps--scum, they are. You

  don't want to judge them by the same standards as men like you and me.

  They're scum, just scum.'

  It was interesting to see how subtly he disassociated himself from his

  fellow tramps. He has been on the road six months, but in the sight of

  God, he seemed to imply, he was not a tramp. His body might be in the

  spike, but his spirit soared far away, in the pure aether of the middle

  classes.

  The clock's hands crept round with excruciating slowness. We were too

  bored even to talk now, the only sound was of oaths and reverberating

  yawns. One would force his eyes away from the clock for what seemed an

  age, and then look back again to see that the hands had advanced three

  minutes. Ennui clogged our souls like cold mutton fat. Our bones ached

  because of it. The clock's hands stood at four, and supper was not

  till six, and there was nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting

  moon.

  At last six o'clock did come, and the Tramp Major and his assistant

  arrived with supper. The yawning tramps brisked up like lions at

  feeding-time. But the meal was a dismal disappointment. The bread, bad

  enough in the morning, was now positively uneatable; it was so hard that

  even the strongest jaws could make little impression on it. The older men

  went almost supperless, and not a man could finish his portion, hungry

  though most of us were. When we had finished, the blankets were served

  out immediately, and we were hustled off once more to the bare, chilly

  cells.

  Thirteen hours went by. At seven we were awakened, and rushed forth to

  squabble over the water in the bathroom, and bolt our ration of bread and

  tea. Our time in the spike was up, but we could riot go until the doctor

  had examined us again, for the authorities have a terror of smallpox and

  its distribution by tramps. The doctor kept us waiting two hours this

  time, and it was ten o'clock before we finally escaped.

  At last it was time to go, and we were let out into the yard. How bright

  everything looked, and how sweet the winds did blow, after the gloomy,

  reeking spike! The Tramp Major handed each man his bundle of confiscated

  possessions, and a hunk of bread and cheese for midday dinner, and then

  we took the road, hastening to get out of sight of the spike and its

  discipline, This was our interim of freedom. After a day and two nights

  of wasted time we had eight hours or so to take our recreation, to scour

  the roads for cigarette ends, to beg, and to look for work. Also, we had

  to make our ten, fifteen, or it might be twenty miles to the next spike,

  where the game would begin anew.

  I disinterred my eightpence and took the road with Nobby, a respectable,

  downhearted tramp who carried a spare pair of boots and visited all the

  Labour Exchanges. Our late companions were scattering north, south, cast

  and west, like bugs into a mattress. Only the imbecile loitered at the

  spike gates, until the Tramp Major had to chase him away.

  Nobby and I set out for Croydon. It was a quiet road, there were no cars

  passing, the blossom covered the chestnut trees like great wax candles.

  Everything was so quiet and smelt so clean, it was hard to realize that

  only a few minutes ago we had been packed with that band of prisoners in

  a stench of drains and soft soap. The others had all disappeared; we two

  seemed to be the only tramps on the road.

  Then I heard a hurried step behind me, and felt a tap on my arm. It was

  little Scotty, who had run panting after us. He pulled a rusty tin box

  from his pocket. He wore a friendly smile, like a man who is repaying an

  obligation.

  'Here y'are, mate,' he said cordially. 'I owe you some fag ends. You

  stood me a smoke yesterday. The Tramp Major give me back my box of fag

  ends when we come out this morning. One good turn deserves another--here

  y'are.'

  And he put four sodden, debauched, loathly cigarette ends into my hand.

  A HANGING (1931)

  It was in Burma, a sodden morning of the rains. A sickly light, like

  yellow tinfoil, was slanting over the high walls into the jail yard. We

  were waiting outside the condemned cells, a row of sheds fronted with

  double bars, like small animal cages. Each cell measured about ten feet

  by ten and was quite bare within except for a plank bed and a pot of

  drinking water. In some of them brown silent men were squatting at the

  inner bars, with their blankets draped round them. These were the

  condemned men, due to be hanged within the next week or two.

  One prisoner had been brought out of his cell. He was a Hindu, a puny

  wisp of a man, with a shaven head and vague liquid eyes. He had a thick,

  sprouting moustache, absurdly too big for his body, rather like the

  moustache of a comic man on the films. Six tall Indian warders were

  guarding him and getting him ready for the gallows. Two of them stood by

  with rifles and fixed bayonets, while the others handcuffed him, passed a

  chain through his handcuffs and fixed it to their belts, and lashed his

  arms tight to his sides. They crowded very close about him, with their

  hands always on him in a careful, caressing grip, as though all the while

  feeling him to make sure he was there. It was like men handling a fish

  which is still alive and may jump back into the water. But he stood quite

  unresisting, yielding his arms limply to the ropes, as though he hardly

  noticed what was happening.

  Eight o'clock struck and a bugle call, desolately thin in the wet air,

  floated from the distant barracks. The superintendent of the jail, who

  was standing apart from the rest of us, moodily prodding the gravel with

  his stick, raised his head at the sound. He was an army doctor, with a

  grey toothbrush moustache and a gruff voice. "For God's sake hurry up,

  Francis," he said irritably. "The man ought to have been dead by this

  time. Aren't you ready yet?"

  Francis, the head jailer, a fat Dravidian in a white drill suit and gold

  spectacles, waved his black hand. "Yes sir, yes sir," he bubbled. "All

  iss satisfactorily prepared. The hangman iss waiting. We shall proceed."

  "Well, quick march, then. The prisoners can't get their breakfast till

  this job's over."

  We set out for the gallows. Two warders marched on either side of the

  prisoner, with their rifles at the slope; two others marched close

  against him, gripping him by arm and shoulder, as though at once pushing

  and supporting him. The rest of us, magistrates and the like, followed

  behind. Suddenly, when we had gone ten yards, the procession stopped

  short without any order or warning. A dreadful thing had
happened--a

  dog, come goodness knows whence, had appeared in the yard. It came

  bounding among us with a loud volley of barks, and leapt round us wagging

  its whole body, wild with glee at finding so many human beings together.

  It was a large woolly dog, half Airedale, half pariah. For a moment it

  pranced round us, and then, before anyone could stop it, it had made a

  dash for the prisoner, and jumping up tried to lick his face. Everyone

  stood aghast, too taken aback even to grab at the dog.

  "Who let that bloody brute in here?" said the superintendent angrily.

  "Catch it, someone!"

  A warder, detached from the escort, charged clumsily after the dog, but

  it danced and gambolled just out of his reach, taking everything as part

  of the game. A young Eurasian jailer picked up a handful of gravel and

  tried to stone the dog away, but it dodged the stones and came after us

  again. Its yaps echoed from the jail wails. The prisoner, in the grasp of

  the two warders, looked on incuriously, as though this was another

  formality of the hanging. It was several minutes before someone managed

  to catch the dog. Then we put my handkerchief through its collar and

  moved off once more, with the dog still straining and whimpering.

  It was about forty yards to the gallows. I watched the bare brown back of

  the prisoner marching in front of me. He walked clumsily with his bound

  arms, but quite steadily, with that bobbing gait of the Indian who never

  straightens his knees. At each step his muscles slid neatly into place,

  the lock of hair on his scalp danced up and down, his feet printed

  themselves on the wet gravel. And once, in spite of the men who gripped

  him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the

  path.

  It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means

  to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside

  to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of

  cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he

  was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were

  working--bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing,

  tissues forming--all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would

  still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through

  the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel

  and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw,

  reasoned--reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men

  walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same

  world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be

  gone--one mind less, one world less.

  The gallows stood in a small yard, separate from the main grounds of the

  prison, and overgrown with tall prickly weeds. It was a brick erection

  like three sides of a shed, with planking on top, and above that two

  beams and a crossbar with the rope dangling. The hangman, a grey-haired

  convict in the white uniform of the prison, was waiting beside his

  machine. He greeted us with a servile crouch as we entered. At a word

  from Francis the two warders, gripping the prisoner more closely than

  ever, half led, half pushed him to the gallows and helped him clumsily up

  the ladder. Then the hangman climbed up and fixed the rope round the

  prisoner's neck.

  We stood waiting, five yards away. The warders had formed in a rough

  circle round the gallows. And then, when the noose was fixed, the

  prisoner began crying out on his god. It was a high, reiterated cry of

  "Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!", not urgent and fearful like a prayer or a cry for

  help, but steady, rhythmical, almost like the tolling of a bell. The dog

  answered the sound with a whine. The hangman, still standing on the

  gallows, produced a small cotton bag like a flour bag and drew it down

  over the prisoner's face. But the sound, muffled by the cloth, still

  persisted, over and over again: "Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!"

  The hangman climbed down and stood ready, holding the lever. Minutes

  seemed to pass. The steady, muffled crying from the prisoner went on and

  on, "Ram! Ram! Ram!" never faltering for an instant. The superintendent,

  his head on his chest, was slowly poking the ground with his stick;

  perhaps he was counting the cries, allowing the prisoner a fixed

  number--fifty, perhaps, or a hundred. Everyone had changed colour. The

  Indians had gone grey like bad coffee, and one or two of the bayonets

  were wavering. We looked at the lashed, hooded man on the drop, and

  listened to his cries--each cry another second of life; the same thought

  was in all our minds: oh, kill him quickly, get it over, stop that

  abominable noise!

  Suddenly the superintendent made up his mind. Throwing up his head he

  made a swift motion with his stick. "Chalo!" he shouted almost fiercely.

  There was a clanking noise, and then dead silence. The prisoner had

  vanished, and the rope was twisting on itself. I let go of the dog, and

  it galloped immediately to the back of the gallows; but when it got there

  it stopped short, barked, and then retreated into a corner of the yard,

  where it stood among the weeds, looking timorously out at us. We went

  round the gallows to inspect the prisoner's body. He was dangling with

  his toes pointed straight downwards, very slowly revolving, as dead as a

  stone.

  The superintendent reached out with his stick and poked the bare body; it

  oscillated, slightly. "HE'S all right," said the superintendent. He

  backed out from under the gallows, and blew out a deep breath. The moody

  look had gone out of his face quite suddenly. He glanced at his

  wrist-watch. "Eight minutes past eight. Well, that's all for this

  morning, thank God."

  The warders unfixed bayonets and marched away. The dog, sobered and

  conscious of having misbehaved itself, slipped after them. We walked out

  of the gallows yard, past the condemned cells with their waiting

  prisoners, into the big central yard of the prison. The convicts, under

  the command of warders armed with lathis, were already receiving their

  breakfast. They squatted in long rows, each man holding a tin pannikin,

  while two warders with buckets marched round ladling out rice; it seemed

  quite a homely, jolly scene, after the hanging. An enormous relief had

  come upon us now that the job was done. One felt an impulse to sing, to

  break into a run, to snigger. All at once everyone began chattering

  gaily.

  The Eurasian boy walking beside me nodded towards the way we had come,

  with a knowing smile: "Do you know, sir, our friend (he meant the dead

  man), when he heard his appeal had been dismissed, he pissed on the floor

  of his cell. From fright.--Kindly take one of my cigarettes, sir. Do you

  not admire my new silver case, sir? From the boxwallah, two rupees eight

  annas. Classy European style."

  Several people laughed--at what, nobody seemed certain.

  Francis was walking by the superintendent, talking garrulously. "Well,

  sir, all hass passed off with the utmost satisfactoriness. It wass all

&nbs
p; finished--flick! like that. It iss not always so--oah, no! I have known

  cases where the doctor wass obliged to go beneath the gallows and pull

  the prisoner's legs to ensure decease. Most disagreeable!"

  "Wriggling about, eh? That's bad," said the superintendent.

  "Ach, sir, it iss worse when they become refractory! One man, I recall,

  clung to the bars of hiss cage when we went to take him out. You will

  scarcely credit, sir, that it took six warders to dislodge him, three

  pulling at each leg. We reasoned with him. 'My dear fellow,' we said,

  'think of all the pain and trouble you are causing to us!' But no, he

  would not listen! Ach, he wass very troublesome!"

  I found that I was laughing quite loudly. Everyone was laughing. Even the

  superintendent grinned in a tolerant way. "You'd better all come out and

  have a drink," he said quite genially. "I've got a bottle of whisky in

  the car. We could do with it."

  We went through the big double gates of the prison, into the road.

  "Pulling at his legs!" exclaimed a Burmese magistrate suddenly, and burst

  into a loud chuckling. We all began laughing again. At that moment

  Francis's anecdote seemed extraordinarily funny. We all had a drink

  together, native and European alike, quite amicably. The dead man was a

  hundred yards away.

  BOOKSHOP MEMORIES (1936)

  When I worked in a second-hand bookshop--so easily pictured, if you

  don't work in one, as a kind of paradise where charming old gentlemen

  browse eternally among calf-bound folios--the thing that chiefly struck

  me was the rarity of really bookish people. Our shop had an exceptionally

  interesting stock, yet I doubt whether ten per cent of our customers knew

  a good book from a bad one. First edition snobs were much commoner than

  lovers of literature, but oriental students haggling over cheap textbooks

  were commoner still, and vague-minded women looking for birthday presents

  for their nephews were commonest of all.

  Many of the people who came to us were of the kind who would be a

  nuisance anywhere but have special opportunities in a bookshop. For

  example, the dear old lady who 'wants a book for an invalid' (a very

  common demand, that), and the other dear old lady who read such a nice

  book in 1897 and wonders whether you can find her a copy. Unfortunately

  she doesn't remember the title or the author's name or what the book was

  about, but she does remember that it had a red cover. But apart from

  these there are two well-known types of pest by whom every second-hand

  bookshop is haunted. One is the decayed person smelling of old

  bread-crusts who comes every day, sometimes several times a day, and tries

  to sell you worthless books. The other is the person who orders large

  quantities of books for which he has not the smallest intention of

  paying. In our shop we sold nothing on credit, but we would put books

  aside, or order them if necessary, for people who arranged to fetch them

  away later. Scarcely half the people who ordered books from us ever came

  back. It used to puzzle me at first. What made them do it? They would

  come in and demand some rare and expensive book, would make us promise

  over and over again to keep it for them, and then would vanish never to

  return. But many of them, of course, were unmistakable paranoiacs. They

  used to talk in a grandiose manner about themselves and tell the most

  ingenious stories to explain how they had happened to come out of doors

  without any money--stories which, in many cases, I am sure they

  themselves believed. In a town like London there are always plenty of not

  quite certifiable lunatics walking the streets, and they tend to

  gravitate towards bookshops, because a bookshop is one of the few places

  where you can hang about for a long time without spending any money. In

  the end one gets to know these people almost at a glance. For all their