Miscellaneous times: my resume

In my twenty-two years, I have been, at various times, a:

• country schoolmaster
• salesman in a country store
• political editor of a country newspaper
• peddler, in the employment of a Connecticut manufactory of cologne water and other essences
• dentist in many of the factory towns along our inland streams
• supernumerary official, of some kind or other, aboard a packet ship
• visitor to Europe, where I found means to see Italy, and part of France and Germany  
• member for some months in a community of Fourierists
• public lecturer on Mesmerism [1]

And now, of course, I work as a daguerreotypist, amateur gardener and freelance writer for Graham’s and Godey’s

Unusual, perhaps, but not exactly unique. You might be interested to know that my varied career history resembles that of other mid-nineteenth century figures. Herman Melville, for example, worked as a banker, clerk and schoolteacher, studied surveying and civil engineering, sailed on a ship to Liverpool, took overland trip to the West (well, Illinois), became a whaleman and navy sailor before settling down as an author, a poet, and later in life, a customs official [2]. One of the OG Transcendentalists, Amos Bronson Alcott, was a self-taught country boy from Connecticut who left home at seventeen to peddle goods to wealthy families in Virginia and the Carolinas. Later he made a (spotty) career as a teacher and lecturer [3]. And then, of course, you have my comrade in fictionality, Mr. Ishmael. In addition to all the traveling he’s done as a sailor, he says, “In my miscellaneous times I have been a stone-mason, and also a great digger of ditches, canals, and wells, wine-vaults, cellars, and cisterns of all sorts [4].

It’s sort of quintessentially American, isn’t it, that all four of us were apparently largely self-taught and worked our way up into the ranks of the literary-intellectual elite? None of us inherited any property (well, more about that later), or even a family trade. “Left early to his own guidance,” Hawthorne says of me, “he had begun to be self-dependent while yet a boy; and it was a condition aptly suited to his natural force of will” [5]. Alcott, Melville, Ishmael and I are all self-reliant, independent, individual men seeking out our own destinies and always ready to try something new.   

Plus, I think I can safely say that there’s something in my character as portrayed here that lasts through today. It wouldn’t be surprising to see a similar character in 2011 who’d been some combination of a teacher, a retail worker, the political editor of an online newspaper, had backpacked around Europe, spent a couple weeks occupying Wall Street, published public lectures (aka blog posts) and made a living as a freelance photographer/journalist. 

[1] Hawthorne 122 

[2] Bryant xii-xiii

[3] Browning 

[4] Melville 401

[5] Hawthorne 122