Valenti
The fourth-floor waiter at the Hôtel X. Twenty-four, looks eighteen, and has been earning his own living since he was twelve.
To be near money, and one day to have it. He describes a banquet he once served at as though he had been a guest, and when the narrator points out that he was only there to wait, he agrees and says it was splendid all the same.
The book
At a glance
- Valenti, waiter on the fourth floor of the Hôtel X
- Twenty-four, and looks eighteen
- Twelve
- Fifty days in a London prison for working without a permit
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeValenti waits on the fourth floor of the Hôtel X, and the days George Orwell's narrator spends helping him are the best time he has in the hotel. They work in a small pantry, cool after the cellars, polishing silver and glasses. Valenti treats him almost as an equal when the two of them are alone, though he speaks roughly when anyone else is there, since it does not do for a waiter to be friendly with a dishwasher. He tips him five francs after a good day.
Orwell describes him as a comely youth of twenty-four who looks eighteen and knows how to wear his clothes; in his black tail coat and white tie he could pass for an Eton boy. He has earned his living since he was twelve and worked his way up from the gutter. Crossing the Italian frontier without a passport, selling chestnuts from a barrow on the northern boulevards, and fifty days in a London prison for working without a permit are all in his account of himself.
How the book draws them
- How the book describes himA comely youth of twenty-four who looked eighteen. Like most waiters, Orwell says, he carried himself well and knew how to wear his clothes; in a black tail coat and white tie, with a fresh face and sleek brown hair, he could have passed for an Eton boy.
- The change at the dining-room doorOrwell calls it an instructive sight. A waiter crossing out of the scullery alters the set of his shoulders as he passes the door, and the dirt and hurry and irritation drop off him in an instant; he glides over the carpet with a solemn, priest-like air. There was a mirror and a coco-nut mat outside the door for the last check.
- How he looked starvingIn his own account of the five days without food, three of them had passed since he had washed or shaved. The woman who found him said he looked more like a corpse than a man.
- Down the lift shaftThe narrator enjoys talking to him at slack times, when the two of them sit smoking down the lift shaft. More of what the book knows about a working waiter's life comes out of those conversations than from anyone else in the hotel.
- Ten per cent of salt and waterAn American guest on a diet asks for nothing but salt and hot water for his breakfast. Valenti is furious about what that leaves of his percentage, and charges twenty-five francs for it. The customer pays without a murmur.
- The banquet at NiceHe describes a dinner he once served on the Riviera that cost two hundred thousand francs and was talked about for months: the champagne, the silver, the orchids. Orwell uses him to argue that a waiter tends to identify with the people he serves rather than resent them.
- Five days without foodAt a slack time he tells the narrator about a stretch out of work when he went five days without eating. His rent was paid in advance and he had nothing else. He could not go to the cafés where proprietors hire waiters, having not the price of a drink, so he lay in bed getting weaker and watching the bugs run about the ceiling.
- The prayerOn the fifth day, by his own account, he went half mad. A faded print of a woman's head hung on his wall, and he settled on the idea that it was Sainte Éloise, patron saint of the quarter. He is an atheist and expected nothing, but he knelt down, asked her for three or four francs and promised her a candle.