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This bored Mrs. Thompson very much and she soon left me there because she didn't think I needed a chaperone anymore. I made friends with a very attractive American girl called Vesta Wood, who knew everything, who had graduated from Vassar, and knew all about how Oxford was organized in those days. This term was the term described in Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, and it was very much as it's described.
Had this been on your agenda or was this something that developed during your stay in Europe?
No, I was always going to Oxford. I was interested in the history of etching and engraving, for what reason I can't imagine now, because I don't like black and white anymore. I had taken a course in etching and engraving, and I knew there was a good one given at Oxford by a man called Professor Hines. I went to the Oxford registrar and asked when the course was being given and he said it wasn't being given this term. I said, “Why not? I've come from the United States to take it.” He said, “Well, it isn't being given. There's too much rowing to be done on the river.” That was the end of that.
So I went to listen to Gilbert Murray on the subject of Greek sculpture instead from time to time. That was fine. And there was a marvelous professor of English, called Wilson, who talked about Bacon and about Raleigh and Sir Philip Sidney superbly. I had a marvelous tutor called Leroy Ribley at Balliol, and I was supposed to read the books of Hardy and Mecedith, which
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