An arrival in London
On September 29, 1888, a few days before his 19th birthday, Mohandas Gandhi set foot in London. He had traveled from India through the Suez Canal, across the Mediterranean, and around Europe to reach the capital of the British Empire, saving a white flannel suit to wear for the occasion. Alas, it was after Labor Day, and he was the only one wearing white. He left instructions that his luggage be sent to the Victoria Hotel.
Gandhi’s description of the Victoria Hotel is the last surviving entry in his London Diary. He was “quite dazzled” by the place, which had electric lights everywhere, just eight years after Thomas Edison began marketing the first practical incandescent bulb. Their room was on the second floor, and when a boy escorted them to an elevator, Gandhi thought “we were to sit for some time. But to my great surprise we were brought to the second floor.”1 The room itself was amazing: he wrote, “I thought I could pass a lifetime in that room.”2
He carried four letters of introduction, and sent a telegram to a Dr. P.J. Mehta, whose visit to the hotel that evening marked the “beginning of a life-long relationship.”3 Since living in a hotel was impractical (Gandhi was shocked by the bill of £3 for two nights) and the young man was too inexperienced to take a room with an English family, Mehta suggested a friend that he might “apprentice” himself with, until he learned more about how to behave in Victorian London.
Although Gandhi intentionally omits the friend’s name in his Autobiography, other sources give it as “Dalpatram Shukla, another intended barrister.”4 This living arrangement gave him the opportunity to learn new things, like how to use a fork and knife. However, Gandhi’s diet was a point of contention.
In India, he had vowed to his mother that he would avoid alcohol, women, and meat. Shukla insisted that Gandhi eat meat, that it was essential. Indeed, Gandhi was frequently left hungry after their landlady’s meals, in part because he was too shy and polite to ask for more than a few slices of bread and found the boiled vegetables bland. Still, he refused meat, pleading his vow to his mother did not permit it.
After a month, he took a room in the house of an Anglo-Indian widow, but still went hungry. Finally, his fortunes turned. While out walking, he came across a vegetarian restaurant. He wrote, “This was my first hearty meal since my arrival in England.” Equally important, the London Vegetarian Society would become a new source of friends and ideas. More on that later.
Have you found yourself in a situation where your inexperience prevented you from fitting in?
Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (London Diary, November 12, 1888) p. 16
CWMG (Guide to London, 1893-94) p. 83
Gandhi in London (James D. Hunt, 2012) p. 8
Ibid.