Dear Uncle Jack:

Second year at Oxford is a great improvement. One knows where the things are that one is likely to want and where the people are one is certain not to want. The nice thing about being at Corpus is that it is so small. But that means that only first-year men and a few specials can live in college, so I am in digs, and have secured a very nice set of rooms virtually on the college doorstep. Canterbury House the place is called, because it’s by the Canterbury Gate of Christ Church. I have the top floor; big living room and small bedroom; superb view down Merton Street, which must be the prettiest street in Oxford, and the only drawback is that when Great Tom gets off his 101 peal at 9 P.M. it is almost as if he were in my bedroom. I am thinking of writing to the Dean and suggesting that this ancient custom be discontinued. Do you suppose he would listen?

Have met a few new people. The ground-floor set of rooms here—most expensive, worst view—is occupied by a man called Basil Buys-Bozzaris, which is a name to conjure with, don’t you think? He conjures a bit; a few days ago as I was running up the stairs beside his door he popped his head out and said, “A Virgo; I know him by his tread!” which was arresting enough to make me stop and chat, and he waffled a bit about astrology; rather interestingly, as a matter of fact. I don’t go for astrology by any means, but I have found that sometimes it provides useful broad clues about people. Anyhow, he wanted me to come to tea with him, and yesterday I did.

In the interim I made a few inquiries about BBB. Our landlord was very forthcoming: rich, he said, and a count, and a Bulgarian. He entertains a lot, and whenever he is having people to lunch, he has the same lunch served to himself the day before, wines and all, and then edits it for errors of cooking or choice! This impresses the landlord no end, as well it might.

Somebody else who knew a bit about him said he was an oddity. Probably thirty-five, and is here ostensibly studying international law; I am sure you know what a vague area that can be, if somebody wants to hang around a university. BBB seems to be interested in Conflict of Laws, which is of course an even more tangled briar-patch. My informant says he is one of those hangers-on all universities attract. As for being a count, I don’t know whether Bulgaria has them or has ever had them, but it is a vague title roughly indicative of some distance from the peasant class. So I knew a bit about him before going to tea.

Usual polite questions, to establish the ground. What was I studying? Flattery about some sketches I did last spring for the Isis of Oxford people who are in the eye of the University. Velvety request for my birth date and hour, as he would be delighted to cast my horoscope. I yielded; no reason not to, and I cannot resist horoscopes. And what are you interested in, I said. I am a connoisseur, said he, and this surprised me, because the room was not that of a connoisseur; just the landlord’s perfectly good, dull furniture, and a few photographs framed in silver of Middle-European-looking people—choker collars and fancy whiskers on the men, and the women with an awful lot of hair and that kind of fat that is kindly referred to as “opulence”. Not a good object anywhere, and across one corner an ikon of the Virgin in the most offensively sweet nineteenth-century taste, with a riza in decidedly not sterling silver covering all but the face and hands. BBB smiled, for he must have seen my surprise. Not a connoisseur of art, he said, but of ideas, of attitudes, of politics in the broad sense. Then he talked a bit about the present European situation, about this man Hitler in Germany, about the misery in Spain, all in a distant, removed fashion, as if only ideas and not people were involved. Asked me to come back, to play cards, and I said I would, not because I like him but because I didn’t.

The card-playing, when I went back, was interesting enough to repay me for an evening I would not ordinarily have chosen to spend in such uncomfortable circumstances. Lots to drink and expensive cigars for the grabbing, but the concentration was on two tables of bridge—all the room would comfortably hold. The atmosphere was very serious for a friendly game. BBB was the leader at one and a rather scruffy fellow called Roskalns, who coaches first-year men in Latin and does a variety of languages for others who want them (not employed by the University, an independent coach), took care of the other. The rest of us changed tables from time to time but these two remained where they were. Brisk play, and the stakes were substantially above what is usual here, where anybody who loses a pound in an evening feels he has been living dangerously. I was particularly interested in another man—in his second year at Christ Church—named Fremantle, because he is a Canadian though he has lived a good deal in England.

Fremantle had the real wild gambler’s eye. Life with my mother and grandmother and great-grandmother has taught me quite a bit about cards, and the first rule is—keep calm, don’t want to win, because the cards, or the gods, or whatever rules the table will laugh at you and take your last penny. Only what my mother calls “intelligent, watchful indifference” will carry you through. If you see that look in somebody’s eye—that hot, craving gleam—you see somebody who has lost himself first, and will probably lose his money so long as he sits at the table. When the time came to settle up at the end of the evening Fremantle was in hock to BBB about twelve quid, and he didn’t look happy about it. I came out exactly seven shillings to the good, which was part luck and part my fourth-generation skill with the pasteboards. Anybody who has played skat with my gran and great-gran knows at least how to shuffle without dropping the cards.

Knows a few other things, too, and I kept my eye open for those. Nothing to be seen except that Roskalns has just the teeniest inclination to deal from the bottom of the deck now and then, though not very injuriously, so far as I could tell. I enjoy a mild flutter, and shall go to BBB’s evening game from time to time, though I can play cards more comfortably in several other places.

Why go, then? You know how inquisitive I am, godfather. Why has BBB one Dutch name as well as his genuine Bulgarian one? Does he float his heavy hospitality on what he makes at the table? Is Charles Fremantle really as hellbent on ruin as he seems to be? And why, as I was leaving, did BBB give me an envelope that contained a pretty good horoscope which said, among other things, “You are very shrewd at piercing through what is hidden from others”? Sounds like a come-on. I have never found anything in my horoscope that suggested unusual perception—beyond what a caricaturist might have, of course.

Obedient to your advice, I am not writing this on College stationery, as you see. I swiped this paper the other day when I visited the Old Palace to pay my yearly respects to the R.C. chaplain, Monsignor Knollys, as my Aunt Mary-Benedetta strictly charged me to do. The chaplain is a queer bird and rather dismissive to Canadians, whom he merrily terms “colonials”. I’ll colonial him if I get the chance.

Yr. affct. godson,