Character Analysis
Professor Welch, "tall and weedy with limp-looking hair," (1.7) is a bumbling, foolish guy who barely ever seems to know what's going on around him. The term "absent-minded professor" could have been invented just for him. He's very forgetful and inattentive. He invites Jim for coffee, then starts to head home without him. Jim wonders if anything at all gets inside his head. For example, Jim tells him that he recently read in the TLS (Times Literary Supplement) that a guy named Caton has started a new journal that might submit his article to. Welch replies:
"Ah yes, a new journal might be worth trying. There was one advertised in the Times Literary supplement a little while ago. Paton or some such name the editor fellow was called." (1.147)
Welch's true loves are music and the medieval history of "Merrie England." He holds occasional weekends at his country house where friends and colleagues are invited to sing madrigals and put on plays. He prattles on endlessly about music, oblivious to the fact that he's boring Jim to death. He's not a bad guy, but his cluelessness frustrates Jim, who's forced to deal with him professionally.
Kingsley Amis wrote Lucky Jim while he was in the process of writing his own university thesis (which was ultimately a failure). And the guy no doubt ran into his fair share of Professor Welches along the way. The thing that Amis seems to resent most about people like Welch is that the world never forces them to be aware of other people or to develop common sense. University life forms a total bubble around them.
Despite the fact that Jim doesn't respect Welch, he still needs to stay on his good side. The problem is that it's almost impossible to get any kind of straight statement out of Welch. As the book notes, "The old man was well known for an incurable evader" (1.19). As Jim learns, it's really tough to make him look you in the eye and say something clear. Answers to questions need to be "battered out of Welch" (8.9).
Welch has a million little quirks that annoy Jim. The guy's a terrible and clueless driver; he wears a strange fishing hat to and from work; he gives his sons French names. None of these things are capital crimes, but they provide easy ammo when Jim's patience is at its thinnest, since they seem to suggest just how phony Welch's world is. And Jim is stuck living in it.
At the end of the novel, the professor shows some pity for Jim. After firing him, he tells him to forget about the bed sheet incident; he doesn't have to pay for the things he ruined.
Well that was decent of him; Dixon felt a slight stab of conscience at having rather let Welch down over the lecture and a less slight one at having spent so much of his time and energy in hating Welch. (23.10)
Our last word on the professor? Who can resist a guy who recommends an article about medieval Cwmrhydyceirw?