"Dear Sir,
* * * * *
"I deliberately prefer the rule of our Society and by preference adhere to it. But I have never interpreted it as severely as I find some to do. On some occasions, in early years, when I could get no proper vegetarian food, I have eaten some small bit of ham fat (as I remember on one occasion) to aid dry potato from sticking in my throat. I do not interpret our rule as forbidding exceptional action under stress of difficulty. But when I found what a fuss was made about this, and saw that many people took the opportunity of inferring that a simple act implied a habit, I saw that it was unwise to give anyone a handle of attack….
"I can only say that I interpret our rules conscientiously, and obey them according to my interpretation faithfully. I do not see in our profession any vow or engagement comparable to that about never tasting intoxicating drink. If my wife, who is not a professed vegetarian (though in practice she is all but one), asks me to taste a bit of flesh and see… whether it is good, I find nothing in our rules to forbid my gratifying her curiosity. In that case I do not take it as diet to nourish me nor to gratify me. My words of adhesion simply declared that I had abstained from such food for half a year, and I intended to abstain in the future. Of course this forbids my habit or any intention to the contrary; but I deprecate interpreting this as a vow or as a trap and a superstition. One who feels and believes as I do the vast superiority of our vegetarian food, never can desire, unless perhaps in some abnormal state of illness, the inferior food….
"Faithfully yours,
"F. W. Newman."
"1st Oct., 1883.
"Dear Sir,
"… On reading yours anew after some ten days or less, I think I ought to notice what you say of an unknown publisher.
"I cannot remember that for twenty years I have ever eaten in the company of any well-known publisher (anyone known to me as a publisher) except Mr. Nicolas Trübner before I joined the Vegetarians, and one other more recently. The latter was in the house of a lady friend who always anxiously humoured me by providing a special dish for me.