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dolevalanTitle: Five professions Richard Carstone could have pursued (but abandoned)
Fandom/original: Bleak House
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Through the end of the novel
AN: For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
abnormal_sea
1) When he was a boy, he once thought he would make a good teacher. He would run a school for boys that would give them proper time to play, and very few lines to copy, and all his pupils would love him a great deal.
Then a boy several forms above him bore the unhappy news that it would require even more and more years of lessons with shorter and shorter intervals of outdoor exercise. Richard’s enthusiasm was substantially lessened.
2) Now that the war with America was over, he’d daydream about going over to explore. Wide swaths of territory untouched by human hand or eye, forests where a man could prove his worth. Surely the Americans could use able-bodied young men of any sort.
And then he met his first American, and his appetite for the entire continent was summarily dashed.
3) Medicine had, indeed, seemed the ticket when he mentioned it. It had been half idle, but only half, as he did like to help people, and Dr Woodcourt had always seemed a respectable sort of chap. But now, now he was up to his elbows in mixing compounds. Metaphorically, at least, as in the literal sense, he was paging through a medical text with a mixture of fascination and skepticism.
At the first excuse, he was gone, and considered that perhaps medicine wasn’t quite the tack to take after all.
4) He could not help but note, when Mr. Jarndyce exhorted him once again to make something of himself, that the old man followed no profession at all, other than that of a wealthy gentleman. But though it was a profession that appealed to Richard infinitely, it was never presented as an option. In his heart of hearts, however, he knew it was an inevitability. Everything else was simply a placeholder.
5) He would have never tired of being a father. He was more sure of it than he had ever been sure of anything. It was his biggest regret, as he could feel himself slipping away, that he would never get the opportunity to attempt the only occupation he might not have mucked up horribly.
Fandom/original: Bleak House
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Through the end of the novel
AN: For
abnormal_sea1) When he was a boy, he once thought he would make a good teacher. He would run a school for boys that would give them proper time to play, and very few lines to copy, and all his pupils would love him a great deal.
Then a boy several forms above him bore the unhappy news that it would require even more and more years of lessons with shorter and shorter intervals of outdoor exercise. Richard’s enthusiasm was substantially lessened.
2) Now that the war with America was over, he’d daydream about going over to explore. Wide swaths of territory untouched by human hand or eye, forests where a man could prove his worth. Surely the Americans could use able-bodied young men of any sort.
And then he met his first American, and his appetite for the entire continent was summarily dashed.
3) Medicine had, indeed, seemed the ticket when he mentioned it. It had been half idle, but only half, as he did like to help people, and Dr Woodcourt had always seemed a respectable sort of chap. But now, now he was up to his elbows in mixing compounds. Metaphorically, at least, as in the literal sense, he was paging through a medical text with a mixture of fascination and skepticism.
At the first excuse, he was gone, and considered that perhaps medicine wasn’t quite the tack to take after all.
4) He could not help but note, when Mr. Jarndyce exhorted him once again to make something of himself, that the old man followed no profession at all, other than that of a wealthy gentleman. But though it was a profession that appealed to Richard infinitely, it was never presented as an option. In his heart of hearts, however, he knew it was an inevitability. Everything else was simply a placeholder.
5) He would have never tired of being a father. He was more sure of it than he had ever been sure of anything. It was his biggest regret, as he could feel himself slipping away, that he would never get the opportunity to attempt the only occupation he might not have mucked up horribly.
