Arthur Clough marvels at the vision of a man who could cross the Atlantic without knowing there was a farther shore.
In August 1492, Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) of Genoa set out across the Atlantic in ships provided to him by Queen Isabella I and King Ferdinand II of Spain, reaching the Bahamas the following October. Europeans of his day had only the unproven theory of a round globe to guide them, and nearly four hundred years later Arthur Clough was still in awe of Columbus’s daring.
Though Arthur Clough had discovered that to be your own man was a long and toilsome path, it was not a path without hope.
In 1848, Arthur Hugh Clough resigned a desirable Fellowship at Oxford owing to his doubts about the Church of England. Shortly afterwards he was appointed Principal of University Hall in London, an ecumenical and supposedly more open-minded institution, but here too Clough found he was expected to think as his new colleagues did. Lonely, silent and depressed, he nevertheless clung on to hope.