Dear Sir—
I write to you from the state of Vermont, a close neighbor of Massachusetts where you spent several months lecturing, at the invitation of your friend Emerson. In a letter, you addressed your future wife as My dear child, writing that every week brings a new—disappointment, shall I say?—which is very encouraging.
As Florence Nightingale’s assistant, you folded up her papers? Did you find that work satisfying: To drudge were then sweet service. I too like mundane work, and repetition.“Solvitar abulando” means “it is solved by walking,” and that was your motto in Amours de Voyage, was it not? I too walk to think less, or think more. Ten miles yesterday, though I didn’t mean to.
I agree that one may be afraid sometimes of destroying the beauty of one’s dreams by doing anything, losing sight perhaps of anything one may not be able to recover; it need not be so, as you wrote once in a letter to your wife. Don’t be all “thought” and no “action” like Wordsworth, I tell myself.
You failed to deliver on your promise?
You were known as “Citizen Clough” in college for your radical politics; left Oxford for revolutionary France and Rome, but on your return you found “many doors of employment” had been closed to you. I can relate. I am hoping to be employed based on the strength of my critical imagination alone, not my resume.
Yours in skepticism and doubt—
-Morgan English