Strike the Father Dead [antikvár]

Alfred I AM the last man to be suspicious of a colleague, but on thinking it over I have the distinct feeling that the Vice-Chancellor's motives, in button-holing me as he did this afternoon, were at least partly feigned. We had had a meeting of the Senate. I am an abstemious man, and Senate meetings at 2.30 in the afternoon have never been the trial to me that they have been, manifestly, to some of my fellow-professors. I am aware that there is a deep-rooted tradition connecting academic life, like monastic life before it, with a certain affection for the bottle and the knife and fork. But, in my opinion, such a tradition belongs, if it belongs anywhere nowadays, to the older universities with their more hospitable and bibulous atmosphere. At a foundation like ours, established in the nineteenth century with the object of bringing the light, or some of it, to the inhabitants of an industrial city, we are bound to remember that our particular traditions are those of austerity, industry, and an honourable poverty. Our salaries, to put it bluntly, have never encouraged the laying down of vintage port, and our mores in general are scarcely framed to provide the atmosphere within which an occasional over-indulgence seems logical and to be pardoned. Ours is the life of crowded lecture rooms, of long tram-rides to and from our homes, of the stern battle to impart, if not culture, at least the accurate knowledge that can make a basis for culture, to students who do not come from privileged homes. 'Not here, O Apollo, are haunts meet for thee.' Mercury, perhaps. But in any event, not Bacchus. With this kind of thought in mind, it has afforded me a slightly grim amusement, through the years, to witness the manful struggle which some of my colleagues were forced to put up if they wished to remain awake, let alone reasonably alert, at afternoon Faculty and Senate meetings. Parker, 8