There is to me an odd pathos in the literature of vegetarianism. I
remember the day when I read these periodicals and pamphlets with all the
zest of hunger and poverty, vigorously seeking to persuade myself that
flesh was an altogether superfluous, and even a repulsive, food. If ever
such things fall under my eyes nowadays, I am touched with a half
humorous compassion for the people whose necessity, not their will,
consents to this chemical view of diet. There comes before me a vision
of certain vegetarian restaurants, where, at a minim outlay, I have often
enough made believe to satisfy my craving stomach; where I have swallowed
"savoury cutlet," "vegetable steak," and I know not what windy
insufficiencies tricked up under specious names. One place do I recall
where you had a complete dinner for sixpence--I dare not try to remember
the items. But well indeed do I see the faces of the guests--poor clerks
and shopboys, bloodless girls and women of many sorts--all endeavouring
to find a relish in lentil soup and haricot something-or-other. It was a
grotesquely heart-breaking sight.
I hate with a bitter hatred the names of lentils and haricots--those
pretentious cheats of the appetite, those tabulated humbugs, those
certificated aridities calling themselves human food! An ounce of
either, we are told, is equivalent to--how many pounds?--of the best rump-
steak. There are not many ounces of common sense in the brain of him who
proves it, or of him who believes it. In some countries, this stuff is
eaten by choice; in England only dire need can compel to its consumption.
Lentils and haricots are not merely insipid; frequent use of them causes
something like nausea. Preach and tabulate as you will, the English
palate--which is the supreme judge--rejects this farinaceous makeshift.
Even as it rejects vegetables without the natural concomitant of meat; as
it rejects oatmeal-porridge and griddle-cakes for a mid-day meal; as it
rejects lemonade and ginger-ale offered as substitutes for honest beer.
What is the intellectual and moral state of that man who really believes
that chemical analysis can be an equivalent for natural gusto?--I will
get more nourishment out of an inch of right Cambridge sausage; aye, out
of a couple of ounces of honest tripe; than can be yielded me by half a
hundredweight of the best lentils ever grown.