176
night funny!
2. Tuesday. Drawing cuts for Stomach Au-
tobiography all the morning. Down town by 4. Met,
severally Davis and little Mrs Dobson. (She spake
of Damoreau and Alf Waud still owing her money.)
To Radaway s, and Post Office. Met Edwards pere.
Called unsuccessfully at Bellews in the evening, and
subsequently dropped into Latto s store, where I found
Leslie. / Mrs Gouverneur and her family
the three dropped in after dinner on Mrs Potter and
sponged a dinner, subsequently disputing what sum was owing
by her. I never met a woman more exquisitely mean,
and capable of more shabby doings. She takes interest
on little sums of money advanced to Mrs Potter; always
sponges for meals on her visits, and even when boarding
at other houses. If she have purchased anything which
she aftwards dislikes, it is always Mrs Potter who
ought to take it off her hands. She sends the boys
to borrow quarters, forgetting to repay the loans. I
remember her referring a porter who had conveyed her
baggage from the railroad dep t, to the hotel she was
going to for a shilling or so indubitably in the hope
that the clerks would cash up and forget to remind
her of so small a sum. She wanted to know if Les-
lie couldn t supply a cheaper tea than thirty cent tea
for her servants. (He meditated putting Latto up
to sprinkling the execrable trash with cayenne pepper, or
coffee, so that the slaveys would revolt, and the
| Page |
| Title: | Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries, Volume Eight: page one hundred and eighty-five |
| Description: | Regarding Mrs. Gouverneur's penny pinching. |
| Date: | 1857-06-01 |
| Subject: | Bellew, Frank; Boardinghouses; Damoreau, Charles (Brown); Davis; Dobson, Mrs.; Edwards, George; Gill, Rawson; Gouverneur, Adolphus (""Gladdy""); Gouverneur, May; Gouverneur, Mrs. (Gill, Griffin); Gunn, Thomas Butler; Leslie, William; Potter, Mrs.; Waud, Alfred; Women |
| 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. |
