P defends V. ...

[alice wellintown]

> But the phrasing— "thought I'd learned a thing or two"— boils down to "I
> didn't learn a damned thing."

No. It means, I still had much to learn. The quote about not learning
a thing is an allusion to Henry Adams you can't get unless you read
_The Education_; and in both uses it's ironic. Henry gets the best
education of anyone in his generation, but he still knows "not a
thing."