The Story of My Life / История моей жизни

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 ВЈ3 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 ВЈ3 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.