The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 6/Epistles - Second Series/LXXXI Mother
LXXXI
C/O E. T. STURDY, ESQ.,
HIGH VIEW, CAVERSHAM, READING,
ENGLAND,
October, 1895.
DEAR MOTHER, (Mrs. F. H. Leggett)
You have not forgotten your son? Where are you now? And Tante and the
babies? What about our saintly worshipper at your shrine? Joe Joe is not
entering "Nirvana" so soon, but her deep silence almost seems to be a big
"Samadhi".
Are you on the move? I am enjoying England very much. I am living with my friend on philosophy, leaving a little margin for eating and smoking. We are getting nothing else but Dualism and Monism and all the rest of them.
Hollister has become very manly, I suppose, in his long trousers; and
Alberta is studying German.
The Englishmen here are very friendly. Except a few Anglo-Indians, they do
not hate black men at all. Not even do they hoot at me in the streets.
Sometimes I wonder whether my face has turned white, but the mirror tells
the truth. Yet they are all so friendly here.
Again, the English men and women who love India are more Hindu than the
Hindus themselves. I am getting plenty of vegetables cooked, you will be
surprised to hear, à la Indienne perfectly. When an Englishman takes up a
thing, he goes to its very depths. Yesterday I met a Prof. Fraser, a high
official here. He has been half his life in India; and he has lived so much
in ancient thought and wisdom that he does not care a fig for anything out
of India!! You will be astonished to hear that many of the thoughtful
English men and women think that the Hindu caste is the only solution of the
social problem. With that idea in their head you may imagine how they hate
the socialists and other social democrats!! Again, here the men — and the
most highly educated — take the greatest interest in Indian thought, and
very few women. The woman's sphere is narrower here than in America. So far
everything is going very well with me. I shall let you know any further
developments.
With my love to paterfamilias, to the Queen Mother, to Joe Joe (no title),
and to the babies,
Ever yours with love and blessings,
VIVEKANANDA.