TRIBUTE ABDUL - Perdana Library

JAMES F. AUGUSTIN
His Mother, Che Menyelara, a gracious lady in advance of
her age, sent him to the school, and as it was not meet
that the Sultan's son should walk, he was daily carried pickaback
by an attendant named Idris.
CAMBRIDGE
In 1924 I met the Tunku at Cambridge where he was
an undergraduate at St. Catharine's College. It was my first
visit to England and I had written to say that I would like
to visit him.
On the appointed day he met me at the railway-station,
and in his two-seater car he took me round the University
town and showed me the Colleges and the sights - the river,
the "Backs", "the Bridge of Sighs", Clare College Bridge, the
Great Court and King's Gateway of Trinity College, and
King's College Chapel.
We lunched at his digs and after lunch he took me to
call on Mr. P. W. Wood, Senior Tutor of Mathematics, who
lived at Emmanuel College, to whom I had a letter of introduction.
We also dropped in at Christ's College to see Chua
Sin Kah who had been a classmate of mine at St. Xavier's in
Penang.
As luck would have it, I missed the evening train back to
London; but as usual, the Tunku solved the difficulty with the
facility which was to distinguish him in later years. He took
me to hall (dinner) with him. I thus had the opportunity of
dining with the undergraduates for whom attendance at hall
was compulsory.
In the following year the Tunku came home after
graduating at Cambridge, prior to returning to England to
resume studies for the Bar. Even at that time he was
a strong believer in the advantages of higher education for
Malayans, and he urged his elder brother, Tunku Ibrahim, the
then Regent, to send more Kedah boys to England. He cited
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