Horace Walpole’s Gothic Castles, Part 1

00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

00:00:12
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. Today we are going to talk about Horace Walpole, author of The Castle of a Toronto, which is often cited as the first Gothic novel, although as is the case with everything.

00:00:29
Speaker 1: There are all.

00:00:30
Speaker 2: Kinds of precursors that a person could point to that have some elements of the Gothic. In addition to writing a novel that treated a foreboding castle almost as a character on its own, Horace Walpole also spent a chunk of his life turning the villa he bought in Twickenham into a Gothic style castle of his own. So he helped launch both Gothic literature as a genre and a Gothic revival in art architecture. This was an accidental two parter. Honestly, it was clear to me just in the bookmarking my sources process that it was probably going to wind up being two parts. A whole lot happened in his life. I found a lot of it really interesting. Most of the Gothic stuff is going to be in part two, you're in a particularly halloweeny mood. Most of that is in the next episode.

00:01:26
Speaker 1: There you Go. Horace Walpole was born on September twenty fourth, seventeen seventeen, and his parents named him Horatio, but he always liked the name Horace better. The family was not part of the nobility, but they were well established, prominent, and influential. Horace's mother, Catherine Shorter, was from a merchant family who had made their money in Baltic timber. His father has come up on the show before, in our episode on the South Sea Bubble. He was Robert Walpole, who would later be named First Earl of Orford. As the title Prime Minister was not being used in the UK at that point, Robert Walpole started carrying out what was basically that role when Horace was about three, and that continued for more than twenty years. Horace was the last of Catherine and Robert's children, and he was eleven years younger than his brother Edward, who was the next oldest sibling. I think he might have had at least.

00:02:25
Speaker 2: One sibling who was born in that period who died as a baby, but I had some trouble actually confirming that Katherine and Robert's marriage had started out happily, but in the years after Edward's birth it had become increasingly strained. By the time Horace was born, Catherine was fulfilling the basic persona of the wife of a high ranking member of the British government, but it was basically an open secret that she and Robert were living almost completely separate lives, and that both of them were having affairs.

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Speaker 1: Meanwhile, in the words of biographer Dorothy Margaret Stewart, Horace was a quote fragile, dark eyed elf of a child, and he was so thin that people were constantly commenting on it. And in that way he did not physically resemble Robert at all. So this gap between him and his older siblings, and the state of his parents' marriage, and the fact that he did not look like his father, led to rumors that he was really the son of Carr, Lord Hervey, who was a member of Parliament for Bury, Saint Edmund's. One source of this rumor was Lady Mary Wartley Montague, whose granddaughter Lady Luisa Stuart, revived it in memoirs that she wrote after Horace Walpole's death. Mary Whartley Montague was very close to Maria Scarrett, who Robert had a year's long affair with and who he married after Catherine's death.

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Speaker 2: Horace, though never really expressed any questions or doubts about his parentage, and it's not clear whether he even knew that this rumor was floating around. Robert also didn't really treat him as though he thought Horace might really be somebody else's child, and Dorothy Margaret Stewart noted that while Horace might not have looked like Robert, he did look like Lady Mary Churchill, who was Robert's daughter with Maria Scarrett, so maybe there was a family resemblance, just not the one that people were expecting.

00:04:26
Speaker 1: Sometimes jeans expressed differently in different children. As the baby of the family, whose health was described in terms like sickly and fragile, Horace was really doted on by his mother. For a while, he was tutored along with some of his cousins, and then in April of seventeen twenty seven, at the age of nine, he left home to start school at Eton College. Eaton is a prestigious school, but like other British boarding schools of the era, its culture was built on hazing and bullying. In other words, it was kind of place that could be really inhospitable to a child who was chronically ill and had spent the first years of his life being coddled by his mother.

00:05:09
Speaker 2: Horace may have had some protection from this thanks to the fact that his father was one of the most powerful people in the British government, but he also formed tight friendships with three other boys, Thomas Gray, Thomas Ashton, and Richard West. Horace made other friends at school too, and he was particularly close to his cousin Henry Seymour Conway, who was also at Eton, But these four boys formed a particularly close group that they called the Quadruple Alliance. They all looked after each other, they all supported each other, they cultivated their mutual love of reading and writing literature and verse. Thomas Gray would go on to be one of the most well known and important British poets of the eighteenth century. Folks may know him from elegy written in a country churchyard, which was foreshore, an English class staple when I was in high school. That's the one that starts, the curfew tolls, the knell of parting day, the lowing herd winds slowly, or the lee the plowman homeward plods his weary way and leaves the world to darkness and to me.

00:06:23
Speaker 1: Walpole's father intended for him to study law and entered him into Lincoln's Inn, one of the four inns of Court, but Horace did not care for law, so he never actually went. In seventeen thirty four, after finishing at Eton, he went on to King's College, Cambridge. Thomas Gray and Thomas Ashton both went to Cambridge as well, and they all maintained their friendships with each other and with West as he went to christ Church, Oxford. Walpole didn't really enjoy his time in Cambridge, though he mostly tolerated it thanks to the presence of his friends and some of his cousins who were also studying there. He also left Cambridge without finishing his coursework. He didn't specifically.

00:07:06
Speaker 2: Say why, but a lot of people connected it to the death of his mother, Catherine on August twentieth, seventeen thirty seven. It is possible that this was a factor, and he did take some long breaks from Cambridge, but he didn't formally withdraw until more than a year and a half after she'd died. Horace was truly devastated by his mother's death, which isn't surprising considering how close they were. Some of the people who knew him described him as never quite the same again. Another layer to this was that Horace's father really didn't seem to be affected by Catherine's death at all. Within about six months, Robert had married Maria Scaret in a lavish ceremony. As we said earlier, he and Maria had been having an affair for years, and they had already had two daughters together, one of whom died in childhood. But Maria also died in June of seventeen thirty eight following a pregnancy loss. Later on, Robert secured a patent of precedence for their one surviving daughter so that she could be recognized as the daughter of an earl. From that point she was known as Lady Maria Walpole and then Lady Maria Churchill after getting married, and that was the person people thought Horace looked like. Seventeen thirty eight was also the year Horace Walpole attained his majority, and his father arranged some sinecures for him, that is, jobs that he got a financial benefit from, but did not require him to actually do much work. He was named Usher of the Exchequer, Controller of the Pipe, and Clerk of the Streets, which were transcripts of records as an example of what kind of work these appointments involved. As Usher of the Exchequer, Horace Walpole was responsible for shutting the gates of the Exchequer building and making sure that the clerks who actually worked they had enough paper and sand and ink and scissors and stuff like that. Basically what we would consider a really low level, entry level kind of job, except it paid grown up wages. Yeah, you didn't even have to go to work every day necessarily.

00:09:16
Speaker 1: Walpole seems to have had at least some self awareness about the inequity involved in this whole setup. Later in his life there was an investigation into this system, and he wrote at length about these positions and the people who held them. He wrote, in part quote, patent places for life have existed from time immemorial, by law and under all changes of government. He who holds an ancient patent place enjoys it as much by law as any gentleman holds his estate, and by more ancient tenure than most gentlemen hold theirs. And from the same fountain only of ancient or date, than many of the nobility and gentry hold their estates, who possess them only by grants from the Crown, as I possess my places, which were not wrung from the Church and in violation of the intention of the donors, as a vast number of estates were. Nor can I think myself as a patent placement, a more useless or a less legal engrosser of part of the wealth of the nation than deans and prebendaries, who fatten on Christianity like any less holy incumbent of a fee. While there are distinctions of ranks and unequal divisions of property not acquired by personal merit, but by birth or favors, some will be more fortunate than others. The poor are most entitled to complain. But an archdeacon or a country gentleman has very little grace in complaining that any other unprofitable class is indulged by the laws in the enjoyment of more than an equal share of property with the meanest laborer or lowest mechanic. He went on to say, quote, having said this with the confidence that does not misbecome a legal possessor. I am far from protect any other plea, much less to any merit in myself. A tender parent lavished riches on me greatly beyond my dessert, of which I am so little conscious in myself that if the distress of the public require a revocation of gifts bestowed by the Crown in its splendor, I know no man who can plead fewer services to his country or less merit in himself than I can. He also seems to have tried to avoid the various ways these positions could be involved in corruption, like if some politician was suggesting he might get paid a little extra, or tried to withhold his pay to get him to do something, he generally just ignored it and went on with his very minimal work.

00:11:48
Speaker 2: While Paul's appointments to these positions also did not prevent him from spending a couple of years traveling around Western Europe while still being paid starting in seventeen thirty nine. Have more on that after a sponsor break. It's possible that Horace Walpole was motivated to get away from England in seventeen thirty nine because he had just been through some kind of a breakup Thomas Gray wrote him a letter the year before in which he expressed surprise about Walpole's news. He doesn't say specifically what the news was, but it's really clear from the language that it was a relationship with a woman. Gray frames all of this as quote of all likely things the last I should have believed would come to pass, and in the letter he also wishes his friend joy. It is not clear who this relationship might have been with. There's some speculation that it was one of his cousins on the Conway side. When Horace set out for his grand tour of the continent in seventeen thirty nine, Thomas Gray went with him. While these two men had been friends for years, there was a huge disparity between them in terms of their family's wealth and position. Horace's father was essentially the Prime Minister, and Horace had been given positions that were providing him with an income of about nine hundred pounds a year, which was enough for him to live on and to travel on his own money. These kinds of comparisons are always really messy and inexact, but this would be an equivalent to very approximately one hundred and six thousand pounds or one hundred and forty thousand dollars today. Meanwhile, Thomas's father was a scrivener and his mother and aunt owned a millinery business together. They weren't poor by any stretch, but Thomas was one of twelve children and they had to be frugal. Thomas was able to go to Eton because two of his mother's brothers worked there, and his education at Cambridge was paid for with scholarship and his mother's earnings from the millinery shop. Before leaving, Walpole secretly wrote out a will that would leave everything to Gray if he died during their journey. This disparity in their financial positions caused some tension during their travels. There was no way not to notice that Walpole was the one who was paying for everything, and that started to bother Gray after a while. They also just had very different temperaments. Walpole was enjoying himself, he was going to dinners and parties, but over and over, Gray's letters say that he's writing to whoever he's corresponding with from their rooms alone while Walpole was out, and that Gray had not gone out with him even though he had been invited to. Gray was also a lot more interested in taking in all of the artwork and the cultural sites of the continent than Walpole really was.

00:14:58
Speaker 1: Walpole and Gray spent two w months in Paris and then traveled around Reims de Jean Leon and into the French Alps. From there, they decided to spend the winter in Italy. Pope Clement the twelfth died on February sixth, seventeen forty, and the two men made their way toward Rome with the thought that they might be there when the new pope was elected. That didn't wind up happening, though, Clement's successor, Benedict the fourteenth, wasn't elected until July, and by that point they had decided to move on. They had some discussions about this which were like, well, what if we leave and then the new pope is elected like tomorrow. For Walpole's part, the idea of seeing the new pope elected really was not about religion. It was about the spectacle that would be involved with that. Walpole had a number of pretty anti Catholic views. Some of that came through in his writing on patent places that we read before the break. Of course, France and Italy were both dominantly Catholic countries, but since Rome is also home to the Vatican, Catholicism was seemingly inescapable there.

00:16:09
Speaker 2: Walpole did not really like that.

00:16:12
Speaker 1: Aside from that, Pope Clement had given James Francis Edward Stewart, also known as the Old Pretender, a place to live in Rome, and the Jacobite court in exile was a popular stop on tours of the continent, regardless of a person's religion, So as a quick recap, James Edward was the son of deposed King of England, James the Second of the House of Stuart, and the Jacobites wanted to restore the Stewarts to the throne of England. Not long after this, James Edward's son, Charles Edward Stewart, known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, would lead an uprising in an effort to overthrow King George the Second and put his father on the throne. We covered this on the show on July fourth of twenty sixteen. Of course, Walpole's father was King George's Prime minister. While Walpole had some sympathies for the plight of James supporters, especially as they faced political oppression, he did not agree with the Jacobites goals, and he did not like how many Jacobites there were in Rome. Walpole was definitely at some of the same social events as James Edward and his sons, but it isn't clear whether he actually spoke to any of them.

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Speaker 2: Later on, in Tuscany, Walpole met thirty four year old British diplomat Sir Horace Mann, and they would be close for the rest of Man's life. They maintained this friendship for more than forty years, entirely through letter writing, because while Walpole made several trips to France later on, he never went back to Florence in Italy. When Walpole and Gray left Florence, Mann wrote Walpole a letter in which he said, quote, I am more miserable than I wish you to conceive, and therefore will not attempt to describe it to you. Neither would I willingly give you a moment's uneasiness. One thing alone makes me really happy, which is that I am sure you love me and are convinced of my most sincere and tender affection for you. This is all I can say on this subject, though it employs every moment of my thoughts. Italy had a reputation for being more sexually liberated and unrestrained than England, and it was common for upper class English visitors to take advantage of that. Walpole had various flirtations while he was there, including with Elizabeta Capponi, the wife of Marquees Graffoni. Their speculation about whether any of these relationships were physical, with different historians coming to different conclusions they could be emotionally very intense, though Elizabetha Capponi is described as weeping over Horace Walpole long after he left her behind. Walpole and Gray stops traveling together in May of seventeen forty one. It might have been that the diffrences and their finances and their temperament and interest just gradually led to a breach in their relationship, or there could have been some kind of incident that led to a falling out that neither of them explicitly documented. We don't really know at the time, though Gray's letters made it sound like he was just kinda tired of this whole experience, including all of the socializing and the travel.

00:19:24
Speaker 1: Walpole, on the other hand, took responsibility for it, writing quote it arose from Gray being too serious a companion. Gray was for antiquities. I was for perpetual balls and plays. The fault was mine. But later on Walpole wrote a letter to his friend George Montague that was pretty harsh toward Gray. Quote, he is the worst company in the world, from a melancholy turn, from living reclusely, and from a little too much dignity. He never converses easily. All his words are measured and chosen and formed into sentences. His writings are admirable. He himself is not agreeable. Whatever his feelings were.

00:20:05
Speaker 2: Walpole made arrangements for all of Gray's expenses to be covered, once again doing this in secret. I have various questions about how whether Gray would have just thought this was obvious that somebody was paying all of his bills. But regardless, Gray left for Venice, Walpole stayed behind in Reggio. It is possible that Walpole thought this was just kind of a temporary disagreement and he'd be able to go to Venice and catch up with Gray. But he got sick and that became impossible. It started out with an attack of tom solitis, and from there Walpole became very ill and nearly died. He had gone without medical care for some time. This was probably a combination of underestimating how sick he really was and also not trusting the local doctors. Eventually, Henry Pelham Clinton, the Earl of Lincoln, and his tutor Joseph Spence got help for Walpole, including sending for a doctor they personally knew and could vouch for.

00:21:06
Speaker 1: Once he had recovered, Walpole started making his way back to England. He arrived in London on September fourteenth, seventeen forty one, and we'll talk more about that after we pause for a sponsor break.

00:21:27
Speaker 2: When he got back to England, Horace Walpole lived with his father, Robert, including at Robert's neoclassical estate of Houghton Hall in Norfolk. Horace had already been elected to serve as MP for Callington in Cornwall, which was a borough that his family had connections to but which he had personally never visited. Then he was elected to represent Castle Rising in seventeen fifty four. This, like Callington, was known as a rotten borough. Basically, these were boroughs that still had to MP's in the House of Commons, but they had almost no voters actually living there, both to vote for these MPs, and for the MPs to represent MPs from these boroughs were a lot of the times pretty much handpicked by people in power. Then in seventeen fifty seven, Horace Walpole followed his uncle and namesake, also named Horace Walpole, to represent King's Lynn, and he served as MP for kings Lynn until seventeen sixty nine.

00:22:30
Speaker 1: We're putting all of Horace Walpole's time in the House of Commons together because there really isn't all that much to say about it. He served in Parliament through a series of notable historical events in England, including the Jacobite Rising, the Seven Years' War, and rising tensions between England and its colonies in the Americas. He left extensive documentation of a lot of these events through his correspondence with other people as they were happening. But he wasn't all that acting or visible as an MP, and he did more of his work kind of behind the scenes. In his words, he was a quote person who loves to write history better than to act in it. His first speech before Parliament was on March twenty third of seventeen forty two. His father had become increasingly unpopular and had lost a lot of power. Younger politicians were also starting to see Robert Walpole as too old and too out of touch to be in the position that he was in. The Walpoles were Whigs, and Robert eventually lost the support of that party. He was forced to resign on February second, seventeen forty two. Trus's speech the following month was in defense of his father and critical of a proposal to investigate Robert's last ten years in office. Meanwhile, the King named Robert Walpole Earl of Orford and granted him an annual pension of four thousands. We do have a sense of some of Walpole's opinions based on correspondence around what was happening in Parliament. In February of seventeen fifty, the Royal African Company was under attack and had sought reinforcement. The company had a monopoly on trade in West Africa and was also a major part of the Transatlantic slave trade. After these debates, Walpole wrote in a letter quote we the British Senate that Temple of Liberty and bulwark of Protestant Christianity have this fortnight been considering methods to make more effectual that horrid traffic of selling negroes. It has appeared to us that six and forty thousand of these wretches are sold every year to our plantations alone. It chills one's blood. I would not have to say I voted for it. For the continent of America. The destruction of the miserable inhabitants by the Spaniards was but a momentary misfortune that followed from the discovery of the New World, compared with the lasting havoc which it brought upon Africa.

00:25:05
Speaker 2: After returning to England, Horace Walpole spent his time either in parliament or at home with his father or socializing, and he also devoted more and more time to reading and writing, and studying art and acquiring items for what would become extensive personal collections. In the words of Leonard Benton seely in a collection of Walpole's letters, quote Walpole found in art and literature the chief employment of his serious hours. His reading was extensive, the most solid portion of it being in the regions of history and archaeology. More engrossing than his love of books was his passion for collecting and imitating antiquities and curiosities of all kinds. His ample fortune furnished him with the means of indulging these expensive pursuits. In seventeen forty three, Walpole wrote Eighties Walpole, which was a catalog of his father's art collection, along with his own opinions and judgments about what that collection contained, although this wasn't published until much later. In seventeen seventy nine, Walpole's nephew sold much of this art collection to Catherine the Great, something that the British Museum tried to stop, and many of the paintings are still part of the collection at the Hermitage Museum. Robert Walpole died on March eighteenth, seventeen forty five, and Horace's brother Robert inherited the title of Earl of Orford. Horace inherited a house and some property, as well as a lot of debt. Once all of that was settled, though he had a total income of roughly three thousand pounds a year. With all of those same caveats as before, you can imagine this as being roughly equivalent to three hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year or four hundred and fifty six thousand dollars a year. That amount changed at various points for various reasons, but it was always enough for Horace Walpole to basically be very comfortable and do whatever he wanted. In seventeen forty five, he also reconciled with Thomas Gray. The Jacobite Rising of seventeen forty five started later that year, something that Walpole chronicled in his letters, although since he wasn't personally involved, he was getting his information from the same sources as everyone else, so his letters were often behind what was actually happening and reflected whatever misinformation was floating around. A lot of his own fears during this time were about what would happen to him if the Jacobites were successful, since his own position and income were tied to the monarch and the government they were trying to overthrow. We said earlier that.

00:27:47
Speaker 1: In some ways he was sympathetic to the Jacobites, and that continued to be true as the leaders of the uprising were tried and hanged in seventeen forty six.

00:27:56
Speaker 2: We will leave off this part of our two parter with this inscription of the adult Horus Walpole by Letitia Matilda Hawkins, who was a novelist who also published volumes and volumes of biography and gossip quote. His figure was not merely tall, but more properly long and slender to excess his complexion, and particularly his hands of a most unhealthy paleness. His eyes were remarkably bright and penetrating, very dark and lively. His voice was not strong, but his tones were extremely pleasant, and, if I may say so, highly gentlemanly. I do not remember his common gait. He always entered a room in that style of affected delicacy which fashion had then made almost natural. Chapeaubride between his hands, as if he wished to compress it, or under his arm, knees bent, and feet on tiptoe, as if afraid of a wet floor. His dress and visiting was most usually in summer, when I most saw him, a lavender, the waistcoat embroidered with a little silver or of white silk worked in the timber, partridge, silk, stockings and gold buckles, ruffles and frill, generally lace. I remember, when a child, thinking him very much under dressed. If at any time except in mourning, he wore hemmed cambric in summer, no powder, but his wig combed straight and showing his very smooth pale forehead and cued behind in winter powder. I love the distinction of whether he had powder or not. So yeah, that's where we're going to leave off on Horace Walpole today. We will get to all of the castles next time and all of the Gothic literature and all.

00:29:46
Speaker 1: Of that in the meantime. Do you have a bit of listener mail for us? I do.

00:29:51
Speaker 2: I have listener mail from Annabelle, and I'm not going to read the actual email because it does include a lot of, you know, sort of personal and professional detail.

00:29:59
Speaker 1: But it is on a SME.

00:30:01
Speaker 2: That we get emails about fairly often, so I just kind of wanted to speak more generally about it. Animal wrote about being a freelance historian who's just graduated and wanting to know about basically job opportunities. So, first of all, on our show, Holly and I do not hire like interns or research assistance or positions like that. We get a lot of resumes and stuff like that from folks who are interested in possibly researching, or writing or otherwise working for the show. iHeart sometimes does have like production internships, but those would not necessarily be working with our show specifically in any way. They would be folks who are doing sort of audio production, editing, stuff like that, possibly for a lot of different shows across the network. Not necessarily ours in terms of things a person can do with a history degree. Annabelle wrote from the UK, and I'm just going to confess, boy, do I have no idea of how to get a job in the UK. I think at this point I barely know how to get a job in the United States because I have been doing this job for so long that I have not tried to find a job in almost twenty years. But I will say that the field of history and the study of history, in my opinion, does set people up to do a lot of different work depending on your interest what you're interested in, So the path to becoming like an academic historian, my first advice would be to like make connections with other people who are doing that kind of work, to both, you know, be connected within the field, but also to really find out whether that is what you actually want to do. When I was in college, I did not study history. I studied literature. But I was absolutely convinced that what I wanted to do with my life was to go to graduate school and get a PhD and then teach at the college level. And in hindsight twenty years later, boy am I glad that is not what I did. I do not think I actually would have liked that. So there are a lot of historical sites, museums, libraries, all kinds of institutions who work with history and with historians in some way, and you know, there are sometimes these are jobs that are really creative that involve in some way explaining history to the general public, or explaining the institution's historical mission to the general public, or stuff like that. So there, I think are a lot of ways to bring the study of history and the pursuit of history to a lot of different jobs, and what it takes to get those jobs is really going to depend on the field, whether it's in academia or not, whether it is a government position or not, any of that. Holly and I both sort of fell into this show by accident. We've told that story before, but as a recap, we were doing a completely different podcast together. Prior hosts of this show, Sarah and Doblina, one had gotten another job and the other had said it is time for me to also step away from this. And so since Holly and I were already working together, were already interested in history, already had a little podcast experience, and this is again our job. We got moved over onto this show, and now that has been more than a decade ago, which is a little hard to believe. So yeah, I feel like that was kind of a very general discussion of jobs in the field of history.

00:34:03
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean we have had some guests on in the past, and I always try to seek out people who maybe are dealing with history in ways you wouldn't have thought of before. Like we've had people that work at like the Atlanta History Center and they literally focus on their historical plant collection, you know, and manage their trees and also their animal collection, like making sure they have heritage breeds that make sense. There are things like that, but I think there are a lot of interesting spaces where people can kind of find unique jobs that relate to history, but they are kind of tricky to suss out, right, Like some places, like you know, some film studios will have a historian who literally manages their stuff, or some you know, like large corporations will have a corporate historian that keeps track of the history of the company. Like there are a lot of interesting spaces that are not at all what you might initially think of when you think of I want a job working in history, But as Tracy said, it has to be ideally something interesting to you. I'm a big fan of people liking their jobs. It's not easy to do. There are lots of jobs that are not fun that we have all taken. And even a job you love, you know is going to come with some moments where you're like, I do not enjoy this. But I had a I had a great boss many many years ago when I was working in cable television, and in my interview, she said to me, my goal is always if we can have only ten percent of anybody's job, be the sucky part that they don't like, I feel pretty good about it. And that is a great way to think about it as a boss, right, Like, I only want you to have I can't promise you you're going to love every part of it, but if I can promise ten percent or less of it will be the stuff that you hate, then I feel like I'm doing an okay job. And I was like, this is a great way to look at a career. So that has stuck with me for a long time, So look for jobs. We're only ten percent of it looks yucky.

00:36:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, when I when what I thought I was going to be doing was like taking a year or so off and then try again to go to graduate school, I was really looking for jobs that I was going to be writing, because my you know, my degree was in literature with a focus in creative writing. I did the literature track and the creative writing track, and I wound up finding jobs where writing was my job. But like I was writing the instructions on how to clean the restaurant for a company that made cleaning chemicals. And it turned out that even though that job did involve writing and occasionally there were things involved that were more creative, like, I just found it to be not mentally stimulating in a way that I thought it would be. And so for a while I took a break from that entire field, and I got a license to practice massage, and I was a licensed massage therapist for a few years, and then I circled back around to writing and wound up here where I research and write about history all the time and then say all that into a microphone. So, yeah, it's tough to give like broad, concrete job advice, but that's sort of where we are.

00:37:25
Speaker 1: It is it is.

00:37:27
Speaker 2: And then again, I definitely appreciate all the people who write in are like I would love to work on your show. It is very flattering to hear that from so many people, But like Holly and I are not hiring people to do those kinds of roles, which I'm sure is a disappointment to folks to hear that, but like the reality that we're living in.

00:37:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, I also always feel like I'm a bad person to give job advice in general because I have never had a clear vision. I'm a brass ringer. I see an opportunity that's interesting, and I'll jump on it. But I've never been like my next step is my five year plan. I'm like, I'm going to do this until I don't like doing this anymore, and then we'll see what's up.

00:38:12
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:38:12
Speaker 1: And also I think that's informed because there have been jobs that I had that I thought were going to be amazing, right, and I hated them. Yeah, Yeah, and vice versa. There have been jobs I thought I'm getting this job just to like subsist while I figure out what my next step is and then I'm like, oh, I actually am pretty happy in this job, and I actually really like this stuff that I do, and maybe make a life here, so you know what changes you never know. Yeah. So yeah, that's the worst career advice anybody could ever give a thing. I just kind of hang out. Wait.

00:38:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, So anyway, if you'd like to send us a note about this, if you have job advice you want us to read on the air, maybe we will, maybe won't. We'll see. But you can send that to us at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app or wherever else you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.