Hopkins at the Crossroads

Dear Bridges,--Your note limited me really to but one time for calling, namely noon yesterday, and then my aunt kept me. I am now at Croydon and shall not be able to see you therefore before you go. I am very sorry indeed for this: it is the great inconvenience of my invitations and that comes of the short holidays.

This note accordingly is to say goodbye. The year you will be away I have no doubt will make a great difference in my position though I cannot know exactly what. But the uncertainty I am in about the future is so very unpleasant and so breaks my power of applying to anything that I am resolved to end it, which I shall do by going into a retreat at Easter at the latest and deciding whether I have a vocation to the priesthood. Do not repeat this.

You will write, I hope, from abroad. Believe me always your affectionate friend,--

Gerard M. Hopkins.

You asked a little time ago about W_______. I believe he is gone to India: he said he was going but I have not heard since. His lapse is a most dreadful thing but I have nothing new to say about it: he suffered terrible pain before he finally gave up his belief.

Blunt House, Croydon, S. Jan. 9, 1868.

-from The Letters of Gerard Manley Hopkins to Robert Bridges edited with notes & an introduction by Claude Colleer Abbott (London: Oxford University Press, 1935) p.22

Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Robert Bridges.