40
ottoman. Mrs G is about the silliest and most ignorant
woman for the station she has accidentally got into that
I know. She drops her H s to a three-cockney extent and
laments it! She talks of men who have fallen in love with
her, alternately professing that she s very sorry and exalting
in the silliest manner. She wants to learn French, to go to
Paris, to read the History of France in order to discomfit in
argument, a French-musical teacher who boards in the house
is in love with her, and has the national Napoleonic Anglo-
phobia!) Ah! Mr Gunn, you said very unkind things
about me, but I always liked you! quoth she. Her good
qualities are entirely physical. She has a surface jollity of
disposition, don t bear malice I have said the most infernal
things to her, and I know she s hated me like the devil at
times and she has been handsome and is good looking. I
can well fancy her, ten or fifteen years ago, she might have
fired the heart and brain of some impassioned young man
and also how meanly, how basely, how foolishly and how
cruelly she d use her power. / Well, we got along in
a very lively manner, she being alternately teazed and
pleased. I wanted to leave. No, I must stop till he
goes he being Miss Petit s bean and then she d make
me a whiskey punch. This was said quite loud enough for
the man to have heard, if he hadn t been engrossed in talking
to Miss Lizzie. He was a long time going, but rose, at
I suppose about 10 1/2 and directly the room door closed upon
him, she Mrs Gouverneur had a little skillet on the fire
for heating water. A demi-john was produced, Mrs G ex-
plaining that there wasn t enough whiskey for two, or she
| Page |
| Title: | Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries, Volume Nine: page fifty |
| Description: | Describes a visit to Mrs. Gouverneur at her boarding house. |
| Date: | 1858-01-03 |
| Subject: | Gouverneur, Mrs. (Gill, Griffin); Gunn, Thomas Butler; Pettit, Lizzie (Cutler); Women |
| Coverage (City/State): | [New York, New York] |
| Scan Date: | 2011-02-02 |
| Volume |
| Title: | Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries, Volume Nine |
| Description: | Includes descriptions of boardinghouse living, a picnic at Hoboken with other New York artists and journalists, his drawing and writing work in New York, attending a lecture by Lola Montez, visits to James Parton and Fanny Fern and the Edwards family, a controversy over Fitz James O'Brien's story ''The Diamond Lens,'' artist Sol Eytinge's relationship with writer Allie Vernon, the suicide of writer Henry William Herbert, antics of the New York Bohemians, the interest of people living in his boarding house in spiritualism, a visit to his friend George Bolton's farm in Canada, a visit to Niagara Falls, and a scandal involving Harbormaster Willis Patten, who lives in his boarding house. |
| Subject: | Boardinghouses; Bohemians; Farms; Gunn, Thomas Butler; Publishers and publishing; Suicide; Travel; Women |
| Coverage (City/State): | New York, New York; Rochester, New York; Elmira, New York; Paris, Ontario, Canada |
| 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. |
