Page 205 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

Then, in the Strand, I saw a fellow kneeling on the pavement
drawing, and people giving him pennies. As I came past he
got up and went into a pub. ‘Damn it,’ I thought, ‘if he can
make money at that, so can I.’ So on the impulse I knelt
down and began drawing with his chalks. Heaven knows
how I came to do it; I must have been lightheaded with hun-
ger. The curious thing was that I’d never used pastels before;
I had to leam the technique as I went along. Well, people be-
gan to stop and say that my drawing wasn’t bad, arid they
gave me ninepence between them. At this moment the oth-
er fellow came out of the pub. ‘What in —are you doing on
my pitch?’ he said. I explained that I was hungry and had to
earn something. ‘Oh,’ said he, ‘come and have a pint with
me.’ So I had a pint, and since that day I’ve been a screever. I
make a pound a week. You can’t keep six kids on a pound a
week, but luckily my wife earns a bit taking in sewing.
‘The worst thing in this life is the cold, and the next
worst is the interference you have to put up with. At first,
not knowing any better, I used sometimes to copy a nude
on the pavement. The first I did was outside St Martin’s-
in-the-Fields church. A fellow in black—I suppose he was
a churchwarden or something—came out in a tearing rage.
‘Do you think we can have that obscenity outside God’s
holy house?’ he cried. So I had to wash it out. It was a copy
of Botticelli’s Venus. Another time I copied the same pic-
ture on the Embankment. A policeman passing looked at it,
and then, without a word, walked on to it and rubbed it out
with his great flat feet.’
Bozo told the same tale of police interference. At the time

0 Down and Out in Paris and London