"Why can't I be allowed for once to like a thing in the place where I
want to like it?" I asked, and I nearly told him that environment was
everything, but he did not like those profound statements any better
than I did. I only saw The Bradder really nasty to one man, and he had
been fool enough to say that the reason why he cut his lectures was
because the whole atmosphere of Oxford was against work, which really
was a sickening sort of excuse.
My attempts to get help from The Bradder failed, and as soon as I had
worked myself up into a rage he began to laugh.
So after one night at home I started to Germany and my people went to
Oxford for "Commem" on the same day, which was a most topsy-turvy state
of things. Nina promised to write to me, but I did not expect anything
from her except postcards. I was, however, mistaken, for she wrote me
a kind of "Oxford day by day," which I, struggling with a strange
language in a strange land, was very glad to have. I don't know
whether The Bradder taught her to refer to the Vice-Chancellor as the
"Vice-Chuggins," but in her description of the Encaenia that most
important gentleman was certainly not mentioned with the respect which
I consider that people, who don't belong to Oxford, ought to feel for
him. In fact Nina succeeded in catching the Oxford language so badly
that she told me that my father had been having "indijuggers," and I am
sure that he would have had a worse attack if he had known what Nina
called it. I am sorry to say that she treated the Encaenia in a very
light and airy way, though some most mightily distinguished men were
receiving honorary degrees at the function.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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