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'
The Ethics of Diet, 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. Dr. Anna Kingsford's
The Perfect Way in Diet was also an
attractive book. Dr. Allinson's 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.
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 in 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, 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. And it was
a very big company of diners in the midst of which my friend and I sat
sharing a table between us. The first course was soup. I wondered what
it might be made of, but dared 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
behave yourself, you had better go. Feed in some other restaurant and
await me outside.' This delighted me. Out I went. There was a vegetarian
restaurant close by, but it was closed. 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. 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. I could see and appreciate the love by 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
clumsy 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.
The 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. I also
went in for a chimney-pot hat costing nineteen shillings – an
excessive price in those days. Not content with this, I wasted ten pounds on an
evening suit made in Bond Street, the centre of fashionable life in
London; and got my good and noble-hearted brother to send me a double
watch-chain of gold. It was not correct 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. 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 brush to keep it in position. Each time the hat was
put on and off, the hand would automatically move towards the head to
adjust the 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. 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. What then was I to do? 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. So I invested
£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 Elocutionist as the
text-book, which I purchased. And I began with a speech of Pitt's.
But Mr. Bell 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? 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. If
my character made a gentleman of me, so much the better. Otherwise I
should forego the ambition.
These and similar thoughts possessed me, and I expressed them in a letter 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, 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 ideal. She encouraged me in the determination to make a
complete change.
This infatuation must have lasted about three months. The punctiliousness in
dress persisted for years. But henceforward I became a student.