Jules, the second waiter
The second waiter at the Auberge de Jehan Cottard: a Magyar, a former medical student, a Communist who said he could prove by figures that working was wrong, and the one member of the staff who never did any. Not the Monsieur Jules of Chapter I, who is a different man.
In Orwell's account, Jules wants never to be taken for a servant. "You and I belong to proud races," he tells him, trying to talk him into stopping work, and every story he offers about himself ends with an employer who found him more trouble than he was worth.
The book
At a glance
- Second waiter at the Auberge de Jehan Cottard
- A Magyar; the book says nothing more precise
- Medical student, until the money ran out
- Communist, by his own description
- Small, dark, sharp-featured, in spectacles
- Leaves at midnight, usually after a row with the head waiter
- Chapters XIX to XXI
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeJules waited tables at the Auberge de Jehan Cottard, the small Russian restaurant in the rue du Commerce where George Orwell worked as plongeur. He is the book's second Jules. The first, Monsieur Jules, appears once in Chapter I among the eccentrics of Orwell's lodging street: a Roumanian with a glass eye who would not admit that he had one. The two never meet and have nothing else in common. Orwell describes him as a Magyar, the name Hungarians use of themselves, and gives no further detail about where he came from. He was little, dark, sharp-featured, wore spectacles and talked constantly. He had been a medical student and had given up his training because he could not pay for it. During the weeks before the restaurant opened, when nobody was being paid, he was also the one lending money: Boris, the head waiter, borrowed three francs a day from him and spent it on bread.
He told Orwell he was a Communist, and among his theories was one that proved by figures that it was wrong to work. What enraged him was not the hours but the insult of them. The owner had hired the staff early in order to use them as unpaid labourers on the building work, and Jules walked up and down the empty restaurant shaking his fist and trying to get Orwell to put down his brush, on the grounds that the two of them belonged to proud races and did not work for nothing. He said that being cheated even of five sous had made him vomit with rage.
Once the restaurant opened he did as little as the job allowed. He stole food constantly, which he said he did from a sense of duty, and he called the others jaune, blackleg, when they would not steal with him. He told Orwell as a point of pride that he had sometimes wrung a dirty dishcloth into a customer's soup before carrying it in, to be revenged on a member of the middle class. Orwell calls the spirit malignant, and also notes that after a week of seventeen-hour days everyone in the kitchen was worn out except Jules, who had gone on skulking throughout.
How the book draws them
- How the book describes himA little dark, sharp-featured man in spectacles, and very talkative. He talked in a spluttering, oratorical style, and made his points walking up and down the empty restaurant shaking his fist.
- Where he stoodHis usual position in the afternoons was the kitchen doorway, jeering at the others for working too hard. His account of the trade: you drop a chicken on the floor, you apologize, you leave, and five minutes later you come back through another door with the same chicken.
- Milk on principleAt an earlier restaurant, where the owner treated him badly, he worked out how to steal milk from the cans and reseal them. He drank four litres of milk and half a litre of cream a day until a doctor told him he would burst, and kept going after that. He said he hated milk and was doing it for the principle.
- Nine plates, then thirteenCaught stealing the milk, he was told he could leave at the end of the week. He began smashing crockery instead: nine plates the first day and thirteen the second, until the owner was glad to see him go early.
- The soup boastHis favourite story about himself was the time a customer insulted him, so he poured a plate of hot soup down the man's neck and walked out without waiting to be sacked.
- The one errand he ranThe restaurant's grocery credit was kept open by the grocer's wife, a woman of sixty who had taken a fancy to him. Jules was sent round every morning to charm her, and did.
- Two francsBoris, as head waiter, claimed the larger share of the tips. On the second day after the restaurant opened the two of them came to blows in the kitchen over a two-franc tip, and the cook and Orwell had to pull them apart.
- In the doorwayWhen the cook broke down and cried, which happened several times a day, Jules would stand in the kitchen doorway and mimic her weeping.