145.
-thing like twelve days has elapsed. Walt has been
written to sans response. It would appear there s
reason for suspecting the great Kosmos to be a great
scoundrel.
Hannah is thinking of me to-day. It s my birth-
day.
{16. Monday. Passed dully and variously.
17. Tuesday At Bellew s once or twice about
18. Wednesday drawings for my book. Down
19. Thursday.} town sending them off, purchasing
wood &c. Writing Autobiography of a Dollar, and
correcting Physiology. Not very well, and generally
nervous and low-spirited. The first two days
lovely overhead and incredibly miry under foot, the
latter informly miserable. An atmosphere of
mist, mud, murder and misery enveloping New
York of late. I feel night-mared with it. A
house burnt down just a blocks distance from
ours, and a man and woman consumed in it.
Levison lies sick as may be. He has three (or
four) homeopathic physicians, but they appear to be
of no more avail to him than to his dead child.
He suffers very much at times, and is delirious.
He was besought the physicians, pitfully, to save
him. Haney and others sit up by him each night.
Mrs L is singularly composed, though I don t doubt
she does all she can for her husband. Mrs Potter
is, also, in frequent attendance.| Page |
| Title: | Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries, Volume Eight: page one hundred and fifty-three |
| Description: | Regarding William Levison's worsening illness. |
| Date: | 1857-02-15 |
| Subject: | Bellew, Frank; Bennett, Hannah; Birthdays; Diseases; Gunn, Thomas Butler; Levison, Ellen; Levison, William; Levison, William, Mrs.; Medical care; Potter, Mrs.; Whitman, Walt |
| Coverage (City/State): | New York, [New York] |
| Scan Date: | 2011-02-02 |
| Volume |
| Title: | Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries, Volume Eight |
| Description: | Includes descriptions of the process of publishing his book, ''The Physiology of New-York Boarding Houses;'' his poor mental state upon returning to New York from England; meeting Walt Whitman; visits with Fanny Fern, James Parton, and Harriet Jacobs' daughter Louisa who is living with them; a visit to the Catskill Mountains with the Edwards family; moving into the boarding house at 132 Bleecker Street; working on the publication ''European'' with Colonel Hugh Forbes; the death of publisher William Levison and his daughter Ellen in his boarding house; visiting the scene of the murder of a dentist to get a sketch of the suspect; visiting Newport, Rhode Island, on assignment to sketch for Frank Leslie; and the death of his brother-in-law, Joseph Greatbatch. |
| Subject: | Boardinghouses; Bohemians; Gunn, Thomas Butler; Journalism; Medical care; Mental illness; Publishers and publishing; Travel; Women |
| Coverage (City/State): | New York, New York; Newport, Rhode Island |
| Note: | Thomas Butler Gunn was born February 15, 1826, in Banbury, England, and came to New York in 1849. During the Civil War he worked as a correspondent for the New York Tribune and the New York Evening Post. He returned to England in 1863, and died in Birmingham in April 1903. The collection includes twenty-one volumes of his diaries, including newspaper clippings, letters, photographs, sketches, and various other items inserted by Gunn. Diary entries date from July 7, 1849, to April 7, 1863, and include his experiences with the New York publishing and literary world, his descriptions of boarding houses, his travels throughout the United States, and his experiences traveling with the Federal army as a Civil War correspondent. |
| Publisher: | Missouri History Museum |
| Rights: | Copyright 2011 Missouri History Museum. |
| Source: | Page images, transcriptions, and metadata of the Thomas Butler Gunn diaries have been provided by the Missouri History Museum. |
