The Story of My Life / История моей жизни. Махатма Карамчанд Ганди
for luncheon and dinner we had spinach and bread and jam too. I was a good eater and had a big appetite; 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 away. 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. You confess to having eaten and liked meat. You took it where it was absolutely unnecessary, and will not where it is quite essential. What a pity!”
But I was unyielding.
Day in and day out the friend would argue, but I had an eternal no to face him with. The more he argued, the firmer 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 been sown by the good nurse Rambha.
I had not yet started upon regular studies. In India I had never read a newspaper. But here I succeeded in cultivating a liking for them by regular reading. This took me hardly an hour. I therefore began to wander about. I went out in search of a vegetarian restaurant. I hit on one in Farringdon Street.
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. 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. I read Salt's book from cover to cover and was very much impressed by it. From the date of reading this book, I may claim to have become a vegetarian by choice. I blessed the day on which I had taken the vow before my mother. The choice was now made in favour of vegetarianism, the spread of which henceforward became my mission.
11. Playing the English Gentleman
Meanwhile my friend had not ceased to worry about me. He one day invited me to go to the theatre. Before the play we were to dine together at the Holborn Restaurant.
The friend had planned to take me to this restaurant evidently imagining that modesty would prevent me from asking 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 did not dare 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 angrily 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 quarrel we had. It did not affect our relations in the least. I could see and appreciate the love underlying all my friend's efforts, 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 readymade 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 doing the same thing 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 or speechmaking.
French was not only the language of neighbouring France, but it was a language understood all over Europe where 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 textbook, which I purchased. And I began with a speech of Pitt's.
But soon I began to ask myself what the purpose of all this was.
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 become a barrister. If my character made a gentleman of me, so much the better. Otherwise I should give up 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 idea. She encouraged me in my decision to make a complete change.
This infatuation must have lasted about three months. Being particular about dress persisted for years. But henceforward I became a student.
12. 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 knew what I was doing and my expenses were carefully calculated.
As I kept strict watch over my way of living, I could see that it was necessary to economize. So I decided to take rooms on my own account, instead of living any longer in a family, and also to remove from place to place according to the work I had to do, thus gaining expereince at the same time. The rooms were so selected as to enable me to reach the place of business on foot in half an hour, and so save fares. Before this I had always taken some kind of conveyance whenever I went anywhere, and had to find extra time for walks. The new arrangement combined walks and economy, as it meant a saving of fares and gave me walks of eight or ten miles a day. It was mainly this habit of long walks that kept me practically free from illness throughout my stay in England and gave me a fairly strong body.
Thus I rented a suite of rooms; one for a sitting room