by M K Gandhi
We entered the Bay of Biscay, but I did not begin to feel the need either of meat or liquor. I had been advised to collect certificates of my having abstained from meat, and I asked the English friend to give me one. He gladly gave it and I treasured it for some time. But when I saw later that one could get such a certificate in spite of being a meat-eater, it lost all its charm for me. If my word was not to be trusted, where was the use of possessing a certificate in the matter?
However, weM5 reached Southampton,236 as far as I remember, on a Saturday. On the boat I had worn a black suit,M6 the white flannel one, which my friends had got me, having been kept especially for wearing when I landed. I had thought that white clothes would suit me better when I stepped ashore, and therefore I did so in white flannels. Those were the last days of September, and I found I was the only person wearing such clothes. I left in charge of an agent of Grindlay and Co. all my kit, including the keys, seeing that many others had done the same and I must follow suit.
I had four notes of introduction: to Dr. P.J. Mehta,237 to Sjt. Dalpatram Shukla,238 to Prince Ranjitsinhji239 and to Dadabhai Naoroji.240 Someone on board had advised us to put up at the Victoria Hotel241 in London. Sjt. Mazmudar and I accordingly went there. The shame of being the only person in white clothes was already too much for me. And when at the Hotel I was told that I should not get my things from Grindlay’s the next day, it being a Sunday, I was exasperated.M7
Dr. Mehta, to whom I had wired from Southampton,242 called at about eight o’clock the same evening. He gave me a hearty greeting.M8 He smiled at my being in flannels.243 As we were talking,244 I casually picked up his top-hat, and trying to see how smooth it was, passed my hand over it the wrong way and disturbed the fur. Dr. Mehta looked somewhat angrily245 at what I was doing and stopped me. But the mischief had been246 done. The incident was a warning for the future. This was my first lesson in European etiquette, into the details of which Dr. Mehta humorously initiated me. ‘Do not touch other people’s things,’ he said. ‘Do not ask questions as we usually do in India on first acquaintance; do not talk loudly; never address people as ‘sir’247 whilst speaking to them as we do in India;M9 only servants and sub-ordinates address their masters248 that way.’M10 And so on and so forth.249 He also told me that it was very expensive to live in a hotel and recommended that I should live with a private family. We deferred consideration of the matter until Monday.250
Sjt. Mazmudar and I found the hotel to be a trying affair. It was also very expensive. There was, however, a Sindhi fellow-passenger from Malta who had become friends with Sjt. Mazmudar, and as he was not a stranger to London, he offered to find rooms for us. We agreed, and on Monday, as soon as we got our baggage, we paid up our bills and went to the rooms rented for us by the Sindhi friend. I remember my hotel bill came to £3, an amount which shocked me. And I had practically starved in spite of this heavy bill! For I could relish nothing. When I did not like one thing, I asked for another, but had to pay for both just the same. The fact is that all this while I had depended on the provisions which I had brought with me from Bombay.
I was very uneasy even in the new rooms. I would continually think of my home and251 country. My mother’s love always haunted me. At night the tears would stream down my cheeks and home memories of all sorts made sleep out of the question. It was impossible to share my misery with anyone. And even if I could have done so, where was the use? I knew of nothing that would soothe me. Everything was strange—the people, their ways, and even their dwellings.252 I was a complete novice in the matters of English etiquette and continually had to be on my guard. There was the additional inconvenience of the vegetarian vow.M11 Even the dishes that I could eat were tasteless and insipid. I thus found myself between Scylla and Charybdis.253 England I could not bear, but to return to India was not to be thought of. Now that I had come, I must finish the three years, said the inner voice.254
XIV
MY CHOICE
Dr. Mehta went on Monday to the Victoria Hotel expecting to find me there. He discovered that we had left,255 got our new address, and met me at our rooms. Through sheer folly I had managed to get ringworm on the boat. For washing and256 bathing we used to have sea-water, in which soap is not soluble. I, however, used soap, taking its use to be a sign of civilization,M1 with the result that instead of cleaning the skin it made it greasy. This gave me ringworm. I showed it to Dr. Mehta,257 who told me to apply acetic acid. I remember how the burning acid made me cry. Dr. Mehta inspected my room and its appointments258 and shook his head in disapproval. ‘This place won’t do,’ he said. ‘We come to England not so much for the purpose of studies as for gaining experience of English life and customs.259 And for this you need to live with a family. But before you do so, I think you had better serve a period of apprenticeship with ———.260 I will take you there.’
I gratefully accepted the suggestion and removed to the friend’s rooms.261 He was all kindness and attention. He treated me as his own brother, initiated me into English ways and manners,262 and accustomed me to talking the language. My food, however, became a serious question. I could not relish boiled vegetables263 cooked without salt or condiments. The landlady was at a loss to know what to prepare for me. We had oatmeal porridge for breakfast, which was fairly filling, but I always starved at lunch and dinner. The friend continually reasoned with me to eat meat, but I always pleaded my vow and then remained silent.264 Both for luncheon and dinner we had spinach and bread and jam too. I was a good eater and had a capacious stomach; but I was ashamed to ask for more than two or three slices of bread, as it did not seem correct to do so. Added to this, there was no milk either for lunch or dinner. The friend once got disgusted with this state of things, and said: ‘Had you been my own brother, I would have sent you packing. What is the value of a vow made before an illiterate mother, and in ignorance of conditions here? It is no vow at all. It would not be regarded as a vow in law. It is pure superstition to stick to such a promise. And I tell you this persistence will not help you to gain anything here.265 You confess to having eaten and relished meat. You took it where it was absolutely unnecessary, and will not where it is quite essential. What a pity!’M2
But I was adamant.
Day in and day out the friend would argue, but I had an eternal negative266 to face him with. The more he argued, the more uncompromising I became. Daily I would pray for God’s protection and get it. Not that I had any idea of God. It was faith that was at work—faith of which the seed had been267 sown by the good nurse268 Rambha.
One day the friend began to read to me Bentham’s Theory of Utility. I was at my wit’s end. The language was too difficult for me to understand. He began to expound it. I said: ‘Pray excuse me. These abstruseM3 things are beyond me. I admit it is necessary to eat meat. But I cannot break my vow. I cannot argue about it. I am sure I cannot meet you in argument. But please give me up as foolish or obstinate. I appreciate your love for me269 and I know you to be my well-wisher. I also know that you are telling me again and again about this because you feel for me. But I am helpless. A vow is a vow. It cannot be broken.’
The friend looked at me in surprise.270 He closed the book and said: ‘All right. I will not argue anymore.’ I was glad. He never discussed the subject again. But he did not cease to worry about me. He smoked and drank, but he never asked me to do so. In fact he asked me to remain away from both. His one anxiety was lest I should271 become very weak without meat, and thus be un-able to feel at homeM4 in England.
That is how I served my apprenticeship for a month. The friend’s house was in Richmond, and it was not possible to go to London more than once or twice a week. Dr. Mehta and Sjt. Dalpatram Shukla therefore decided that I should be put with some family. Sjt. Shukla hit upon an Anglo-Indian’s272 house in West Kensington273 and placed me there. The landlady was a widow. I told her about my vow. The old lady promised to look after me properly, and I took up my residence in her house. Here too I practically had to starve. I had sent for sw
eets and other eatables from home, but nothing had yet come. Everything was insipid. Every day the old lady asked me whether I liked the food,274 but what could she do? I was still as shy as ever and dared not ask for more than was put before me.275 She had two daughters. They insisted on serving me with an extra slice or two of276 bread. But little did they know that nothing less than a loaf would have filled me.
But I had found my feetM5 now. I had not yet started upon my regular studies. I had just begun reading newspapers, thanks to Sjt. Shukla. In India I had never read a newspaper. But here I succeeded in cultivating a liking for them by regular reading. I always glanced over The Daily News, The Daily Telegraph, and The Pall Mall Gazette.277 This took me hardly an hour. I therefore began to wander about. I launched out in search of a vegetarian278 restaurant. The landlady had told me that there were such places in the city. I would trot ten or twelve miles each day, go into a cheap restaurant and eat my fill of bread, but would never be satisfied. During these wanderings I once hit on a vegetarian restaurant in Farringdon Street.279 The sight of it filled me with the same joy that a child feels on getting a thing after its own heart. Before I entered I noticed books for sale exhibited under a glass window near the door. I saw among them Salt’s Plea for Vegetarianism.280 This I purchased for a shilling and went straight to the dining-room. This was my first hearty meal since my arrival in England. God had come to my aid.M6
I read Salt’s book from cover to cover281 and was very much impressed by it. From the date of reading this book, I may claim to have become a vegetarian282 by choice. I blessed the day on which I had taken the vow before my mother. I had all alongM7 abstained from meat in the interests of truth and283 of the vow I had taken, but had wished at the same time that every Indian should be a meat-eater,M8 and had looked forward to being one my-self freely and openly someday, and to enlisting others in the cause. The choice was now made in favour of vegetarianism, the spread of which henceforward became my mission.M9
XV
PLAYING THE ENGLISH GENTLEMANM1
My faith in vegetarianism grew on me from day to day. Salt’s book whetted my appetite for dietetic studies. I went in for all books available on vegetarianism and read them. One of these, Howard Williams’s284 The Ethics of Diet285 was a ‘biographical history of the literature of humane dietetics from the earliest period to the present day’. It tried to make out, that all philosophers and prophets from Pythagoras and Jesus down to those of the present age were vegetarians.M2 Dr. Anna Kingsford’s286 The Perfect Way in Diet was also an attractive book. Dr. Allinson’s287 writings on health and hygiene were likewise very helpful. He advocated a curative system based on regulation of the dietary of patients. Himself a vegetarian, he prescribed for his patients also a strictly vegetarian diet. The result of reading all this literature was that dietetic experiments came to take an important place in my life. Health was the principal consideration of these experiments to begin with. But later on religion became the supreme motive.M3
Meanwhile my friend had not ceased to worry about me. His love for me led him to think that, if I persisted in my objections to meat-eating, I should not only develop a weak constitution, but should remain a duffer, because I should never feel at home inM4 English society. When he came to know that I had begun to interest myself in books on vegetarianism, he was afraid lest these studies should muddle my head; that I should fritter my life away in experiments, forgetting my own work, and become a crank. He therefore made one last effort to reform me. He one day invited me to go to the theatre. Before the play we were to dine together at the Holborn Restaurant,288 to me a palatial place and the first big restaurant I had been to since leaving the Victoria Hotel. The stay at that hotel had scarcely been a helpful experience, for I had not lived there with my wits about me. The friend had planned to take me to this restaurant evidently imagining that modesty would forbid any questions.289 And it was a very big company of diners in the midst of whichM5 my friend and I sat sharing a table between us. The first course was soup.290 I wondered what it might be made of, but durst not ask the friend about it. I therefore summoned the waiter. My friend saw the movement and sternly asked across the table what was the matter. With considerable hesitation I told him that I wanted to inquire if the soup was a vegetable soup. ‘You are too clumsy for decent society,’ he passionately exclaimed. ‘If you cannot be-have yourself,M6 you had better go. Feed in some otherM7 restaurant and await me outside.’ This delighted me. Out I went. There was a vegetarian restaurant close by, but it was closed.291 So I went without food that night. I accompanied my friend to the theatre, but he never said a word about the scene I had created.M8 On my part of course there was nothing to say.
That was the last friendly tussle we had. It did not affect our relations in the least.M9 I could see and appreciate the love by292 which all my friend’s efforts were actuated, and my respect for him was all the greater on account of our differences in thought and action.
But I decided that I should put him at ease, that I should assure him that I would be clumsyM10 no more, but try to become polished and make up for my vegetarianism by cultivating other accomplishments which fitted one for polite society. And for this purpose I undertook the all too impossible task of becoming an English gentleman.M11
The293 clothes after the Bombay cut that I was wearing were, I thought, unsuitable for English society, and I got new ones at the Army and Navy Stores.294 I also went in for a chimney-pot295 hat costing nineteen shillings—an excessive price in those days. Not content with this, I wasted ten pounds onM12 an evening suit made in Bond Street, the centre of fashionable life in London;M13 and got my good and noble-hearted brother to send me a double watch-chain of gold. It was not correct296 to wear a ready-made tie and I learnt the art of tying one for myself. While in India, the mirror had been a luxury permitted on the days when the family barber gave me a shave.M14 Here I wasted ten minutes every day before a huge mirror, watching myself arranging my tie and parting my hair in the correct fashion. My hair was by no means soft, and every day it meant a regular struggle with the brush297 to keep it in position. Each time the hat was put on and off, the hand would automatically move towards the head to adjust the298 hair, not to mention the other civilized habit of the hand every now and then operating for the same purpose when sitting in polished society.
As if all this were not enough to make me look the thing, I directed my attention to other details that were supposed to go towards the making of an English gentleman. I was told it was necessary for me to take lessons in dancing, French and elocution. French was not only the language of neighbouring France, but it was the lingua franca of the Continent over which I had a desire to travel.M15 I decided to take dancing lessons at a class and paid down £3 as fees for a term. I must have taken about six lessons in three weeks. But it was beyond me to achieve anything like rhythmic motion. I could not follow the piano and hence found it impossible to keep time.299 What then was I to do?300 The recluse in the fable kept a cat to keep off the rats, and then a cow to feed the cat with milk, and a man to keep the cow and so on. My ambitions also grew like the family of the recluse. I thought I should learn to play the violin in order to cultivate an ear for Western music.M16 So I investedM17 £3 in a violin and something more in fees. I sought a third teacher to give me lessons in elocution and paid him a preliminary fee of a guinea. He recommended Bell’s Standard Elocutionist301 as the text-book, which I purchased. And I began with a speech of Pitt’s.302
But Mr. Bell M18 rang the bell of alarm in my ear and I awoke.
I had not to spend a lifetime in England, I said to myself. What then was the use of learning elocution? And how could dancing make a gentleman of me?M19 The violin I could learn even in India. I was a student and ought to go on with my studies. I should qualify myself to join the Inns of Court.M20 If my character made a gentleman of me,M21 so much the better. Otherwise I should forgo the ambition.
These and similar thoughts possessed me, and I expressed them in a lett
er which I addressed to the elocution teacher, requesting him to excuse me from further lessons. I had taken only two or three. I wrote a similar letter to the dancing teacher,303 and went personally to the violin teacher with a request to dispose of the violin for any price it might fetch. She was rather friendly to me, so I told her how I had discovered that I was pursuing a false idea.M22 She encouraged me in the determination to make a complete change.M23
This infatuation must have lasted about three months. The punctiliousnessM24 in dress persisted for years. But henceforward I became a student.
XVI
CHANGES
Let no one imagine that my experiments in dancing and the like marked a stage of indulgence in my life. The reader will have noticed that even then I had my wits about me. That period of infatuation was not unrelieved by a certain amount of self-introspection on my part. I kept account of every farthing I spent, and my expenses were carefully calculated.304 Every little item, such as omnibus fares or postage or a couple of coppers spent on news-papers,305 would be entered, and the balance struck every evening before going to bed. That habit has stayed with me ever since, and I know that as a result, though I have had to handle public fundsM1 amounting to lakhs, I have succeeded in exercising strict economy in their disbursement and, instead of outstanding debts, have had invariably a surplus balance in respect of all the movements I have led. Let every youth take a leaf out of my book and make it a point to account for everything that comes into and goes out of his pocket, and like me he is sure to be a gainer in the end.M2
As I kept strict watch over my way of living,306 I could see that it was necessary to economize.M3 I therefore decided to reduce my expenses by half. My accounts showed numerous items spent on fares. Again my living with a family meant the payment of a regular weekly bill. It also included the courtesy of occasionally taking members of the family out to dinner, and likewise attending parties with them. All this involved heavy items for conveyances, especially as, if the friend was a lady, custom required that the man should pay all the expenses.M4 Also dining out meant extra cost, as no deduction could be made from the regular weekly bill for meals not taken. It seemed to me that all these items could be saved, as likewise the drain on my purse caused through a false sense of propriety.