Comments on the Alfred and William Waud's discontentedness in life. Transcription: outwards, which jars harshly in social intercourse. He [William Waud] affects to believe that the world grows no better, and that all thought lands you in a desolate waste of 'don't care-ism.' All of this, (which is also every whit applicable to his brother Alf [Waud],) springs, I take it, from a conciousness that each of them is not in his proper place in life; a self tormenting knowledge that they have talents, without the continuity and fixedness of purpose to achieve anything; thus begetting a bitter, listl
Comments on the Alfred and William Waud's discontentedness in life. Transcription: outwards, which jars harshly in social intercourse. He [William Waud] affects to believe that the world grows no better, and that all thought lands you in a desolate waste of 'don't care-ism.' All of this, (which is also every whit applicable to his brother Alf [Waud],) springs, I take it, from a conciousness that each of them is not in his proper place in life; a self tormenting knowledge that they have talents, without the continuity and fixedness of purpose to achieve anything; thus begetting a bitter, listless impatience with everything around them. On my suggesting that we'd get George Clarke's company for the theatre, Will Waud burst forth in condemnatory strain at George's way of avoiding such pleasures, 'finding he had something to do, that he did'nt want to get a liking for 'em &c.' / He, however, did full half justice to the steady worth of George's character.) But the steady persistence, and un-ostentatious industry of Clarke stirred his spleen. And George's good-humor and pleasant tempered way of looking at the cheery side of things, which I can admire and envy, would, I think, irk Waud. 'How he gets through his work' says he 'I don't know!' And then, with a humiliating sense of self failure he'll own to having been 'humbugging about,' doing little. The Waud family are, indeed, anxious instances of clever unamiability. And yet there's a laugh in them, and a sort of frankness which sets you thinking that good humor must be latent in them, could the key note be struck. It may be the parental touch has damaged all irreparably. I mind, in the earlier days of our acquaintanceship, when I liked Alf better than I shall ever do so again. Even now, I know I like him better than he me. For kindly George Clarke, why I find indeed that 'my withers are not unwrung' in contrast Title: Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries: Volume 7, page 71, May 16, 1855 . 16 May 1855. Gunn, Thomas Butler, 1826-
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