Towards the end of Friday morning, Gavroche came and knocked at the door, explaining that he'd found the penultimate person for the pamphlet: a pea soup man, who we could go and visit before lunch while he was thickening the soup in his home. He was very pleased with himself for having been able to apply the newly learnt word "penultimate" in conversation. I scribbled a note for Enjolras, just in case he got back before I did, to let him know where I'd gone, to try and stop him worrying like he had done yesterday evening, and followed Gavroche. On the way across to where the man lived on the Ile de la Cite, we bought an early lunch at a bakery.
Having crossed onto the island in the middle of the river, we made our way along the narrow Rue Gervais Laurent, where we were met by a young girl with a piece of sacking over her shoulders as a shawl. She clearly recognised Gavroche, and took us both inside and up several flights of narrow, rickety stairs to meet her father.
"I was a coalheaver," he said, as we sat in his attic with him and his family. "I was a-going along the plank, from one barge to another, when the plank was throwed off the 'horse,' and chucked me down, and broke my knee agin the side of the barge. Before that I was yarning upon an average my 24 francs to 36 francs a week. I was seven months and four days in hospital after this. I found they was a-doing me no good there, so I come out and went to another. I was in there nineteen months altogether, and after that I was a month in a third place, and all on 'em turned me out oncurable. You see, the bone's decayed—four bits of bone have been taken from it.
"The doctor turned me out three times 'cause I wouldn't have it off. He asked my wife if she would give consent, but neither she nor my daughter would listen to it, so I was turned out on 'em all. How my family lived all this time it's hard to tell. My eldest boy did a little—got 4 francs a week as an errand-boy, and my daughter was in service, and did a little for me; but that was all we had to live upon. There was six children on my hands, and however they did manage I can't say. After I came out of the hospital I applied to the parish, and was allowed 3 francs a week and four loaves. But I was anxious to do something, so a master butcher, as I knowed, said he would get me a pitch, if I thought I could sit at a stall and sell a few things. I told him I thought I could, and would be very thankful for it.
"Well, I had heard how the man up in the market was making a fortune at the hot-eel and pea-soup line - clearing 7 livres sometimes. So I thought I'd have a touch at the same thing. But you see, I never could rise money enough to get sufficient stock to make a do of it, and never shall, I expect—it don't seem like it, however. I ought to have 6 francs to go to market with to-morrow, and I ain't got above 1 franc 16 sous; and what's that for stock-money, I'd like to know?
"Well, as I was saying, the master butcher lent me 12 francs to start in the line. He was the best friend I ever had. But I've never been able to do anything at it—not to say to get a living."
"He can't carry anything now, sir," said his wife, as the old man strove to get the bellows to warm up the large kettle of pea-soup that was on the fire.
"Aye, I can't go without my crutch. My daughter goes to the fish market for me. I've got nobody else; and she cuts up the eels. If it warn't for her I must give it up altogether, and go into the workhouse outright. I couldn't fetch 'em. My wife can't do much; she's troubled with the rheumatics in her head and limbs."
"Yes," said the old body, with a sigh, "I'm never well, and never shall be again, I know."
"Would you accept on a drop of soup, miss?" asked the man; "you're very welcome, I can assure you. You'll find it very good, miss,"
I told him I had just had lunch, and the poor old fellow proceeded with his tale.
"Last week I earned clear about 9 francs 18 sous, and that's to keep six on us. I didn't pay no rent last week nor yet this, and I don't know when I shall again, if things goes on in this way. The week before there was a fast-day, and I didn't earn above 7 francs 5 sous that week, if I did that. My boy can't go to school. He's got no shoes nor nothing to go in. The girls go to the ragged-school, but we can't send them of a Sunday nowhere."
"Other people can go," said one of the young girls nestling round the fire, and with her improvised shawl —"them as has got things to go in; but mother don't like to let us go as we are."
"She slips her mother's shoes on when she goes out. It would take 25 francs to start me well. With that I could go to market, and buy my draught of eels a franc cheaper, and I could afford to cut my pieces a little bigger; and people where they gets used well comes again—don't you see? I could have sold more eels if I'd had 'em to-day, and soup too.
"The man in the market can give more than we can. He gives what is called the lumping centime's worth — that is, seven or eight pieces; ah, that I daresay he does; indeed, some of the boys has told me he gives as many as eight pieces. And then the more eels you biles up, you see, the richer the liquor is, and in our little tin-pot way it's like biling up a great jint of meat in a hocean of water. In course we can't compete agin the man in the market, and so we're being ruined entirely. The boys very often comes and asks me if I've got a centime's-worth of heads. Some women, they tells me, sells 'em at four a sous and a drop of liquor, but we chucks 'em away, there's nothing to eat on them; the boys though will eat anything."
After the usual Thénardier question and payment, I headed home, while Gavroche headed in the opposite direction to his usual haunts on the other side of the river. On my way through the Latin quarter, I bought myself a quire of paper and a small bottle of ink from a stationery shop. Having got a decent number of interviews, it would be necessary to write them out neatly and without any mistakes before they went off to be printed.
As I was in the process of writing up the neat copies, Enjolras returned.
"You're writing up the interviews?" he asked, putting the books he had under his arm down on the bed, and taking off his hat.
"Yes - I've got the time to do so, and I thought it might be useful. Apart from anything else, we'll be able to play around with what order to put the stories in."
"That would be good. Combeferre and I have been playing around with words for an introduction-forward-frontispiece-preface type thing - it'd be useful to have your thoughts on it this evening. I don't know whether we want something that takes up several pages, or something short so that the stories can speak for themselves."
"I suppose something longer at the beginning, and then no conclusion could work well, in leaving the memory of those interviewed in the reader's mind, rather than our own words."
He pulled my box closer to the desk, and sat down next to me.
"A longer introduction to this pamphlet could also speak for any others we manage to produce - this needn't be the only one of its kind. Any other pamphlets could have a shorter introduction, possibly referring the reader back to the first one," he suggested. "We'll have to see how easy it is to fit each of the stories onto each page: some of them might need to be abridged. I've noticed that your more recent ones have been getting longer as you've got more practised at what you're doing."
"So long as we cut out the right bits. Though it might be better just to get rid of some of the stories altogether, and print them in the next one, if there is to be a next one. Were you wanting to use your desk? I can carry this on later at the Musain, if you've work to be doing."
"This is work just as much as any of what I have to do is work."
"Yes, but I won't be barred from the university if I don't get this done. I'm already barred from the university, through no fault of my own that I can see," I couldn't help adding.
"For now, at least. Things will change."
"I admire your optimism. As it is, I should really be finishing off the shirt I was working on earlier."
"Don't feel you have to."
"You might have parents to support you financially. I don't have such a luxury. Work is a necessity for me, regardless of your generosity."
"I'm sorry - I didn't mean - "
"I know. I shouldn't have been so harsh. What should be done about the sketches? One of them could be used on the front cover, but I don't know which. And I don't know enough about printing to know if it should be redrawn in any particular way before it gets engraved."
"If Combeferre doesn't know, I'm sure we can find out. And one of them as the front cover sounds like a good idea - if we can't decide, we can always put it to a vote."
"As it is, I should probably go back to sewing while there's still daylight. Writing can be done more easily by the lamplight than sewing."
"Well, if you're sure, then I'll take advantage of my desk being empty," he smiled.
As I sat in the window, felling over the seams that I'd sewn that morning, I couldn't help but take the occasional glance at him. The May sunshine through the window made his blond hair glow like a halo as he bent over his books and writing.
*
At the Musain that evening, Gavroche and Navet continued to be occupied by reading plays with Jehan, so I was able to take advantage of that to wrangle an introduction to the pamphlet into shape with Enjolras and Combeferre. A title still eluded us: I was always terrible at naming things, while the other two had too many ideas, but eventually we had an introduction that pleased all of us. I wasn't entirely convinced about having my gender so obviously writ down, for fear that with the author being known to be female, the likelihood of the pamphlet being taken seriously would be far smaller, but the other two insisted. The introduction went as follows:
"The present small volume is the beginning of what we hope shall become a cyclopaedia of the industry, the want, and the vice of the great city that is Paris. It surely may be considered curious as being the first attempt to publish the stories of individuals from their own lips — giving a literal description of their labour, their earnings, their trials, and their sufferings, in their own 'unvarnished' language; and to portray the condition of some of their homes and their families by personal observation of the places, and direct communion with the individuals.
"That one half of the world does not know how the other half lives is an axiom of antiquity, but the truthful revelations and descriptions of the Parisian street folk, workers and non-workers, and the means by which they exist, will go a great way to enlighten the educated classes respecting matters which have hitherto been involved in mystery and uncertainty.
"Be the faults of the present volume what they may, assuredly they are rather short-comings than exaggerations, for in every instance the author and her coadjutors have sought to understate, and most assuredly never to exceed the truth. For the omissions, the author would merely remind the reader of the entire novelty of the task—there being no other similar work in the language by which to guide or check her inquiries.
"That there is every day a greater difficulty for working men to live by their labour—either from the paucity of work, or from the scanty remuneration given for it—surely no one will be disposed to question when every one is crying out that the country is over-populated. Such being the case, it is evident that the number of mechanics in the streets must be daily augmenting, for street-trading is the last shift of an unemployed artizan to keep himself and his family from the 'Union.' The workman out of work, sooner than starve or go to the parish for relief, takes to making up and vending on his own account the articles of his craft, whilst the underpaid workman, sooner than continue toiling from morning till midnight for a bare subsistence, resorts to the easier trade of buying and selling.
"Again, even among the less industrious of the working classes, the general decline in wages has tended, and is continually tending, to make their labour more and more irksome to them. There is a cant abroad at the present day, that there is a special pleasure in industry, and hence we are taught to regard all those who object to work as appertaining to the class of natural vagabonds; but where is the man among us that loves labour? for work or labour is merely that which is irksome to perform, and which every man requires a certain amount of remuneration to induce him to perform. If men really loved work they would pay to be allowed to do it rather than require to be paid for doing it. That occupation which is agreeable to us we call amusement, and that and that only which is disagreeable we term labour, or drudgery, according to the intensity of its irksomeness. Hence as the amount of remuneration given by way of inducement to a man to go through a certain amount of work becomes reduced, so does the stimulus to work become weakened, and this, through the decline of wages, is what is daily taking place among us.
"Our operatives are continually ceasing to be producers, and passing from the creators of wealth into the exchangers or distributors of it; becoming mere tradesmen, subsisting on the labour of other people rather than their own, and so adding to the very non-producers, the great number of whom is the main cause of the poverty of those who make all our riches. To teach a people the difficulty of living by labour is to inculcate the most dangerous of all lessons, and this is what we are daily doing. Our trading classes are increasing at a most enormous rate, and so giving rise to that exceeding competition, and consequently, to that continual reduction of prices—all of which must ultimately fall upon the working man. This appears to me to be the main cause of the increase of the Parisian street people, and one for which I candidly confess I see no remedy.
"It is right that I should make special mention of the assistance I have received in the compilation of the present volume from the first gamin spoken to, who provided much assistance in providing introductions to many of the others interviewed.
"My earnest hope is that the book may serve to give the rich a more intimate knowledge of the sufferings, and the frequent heroism under those sufferings, of the poor—that it may teach those who are beyond temptation to look with charity on the frailties of their less fortunate brethren—and cause those who are in "high places," and those of whom much is expected, to bestir themselves to improve the condition of a class of people whose misery, ignorance, and vice, amidst all the immense wealth and great knowledge of Paris is, to say the very least, a national disgrace to us.
"Élise Aubert."
After some argument, I had both Enjolras and Combeferre sign their names too, in the hope than having some male co-authors might lend the short work a little more weight. With the night drawing on, we decided to leave the title and cover illustration for another day.