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dirty and unpicturesque enough, with her leaky tar barrels
fastened on deck and small, cramped cabin. The men had mostly
red flannel shirts, striped pants and caps some looked half-
mulattos. The day was sunny and breezy. There was an hour or
more of delay, the ricketty looking steam tug not being powerful enough
to tour the ship off, she fouling against another vessel so I left.
Post & Pic Offices. Gun not been at the latter all the morning.
(He didn t come home last night, and seems to have been in a bust
since Sunday morning. Paper will go to the devil and serve it
right. ( The Mejor was present, but embraced an opportunity
to clear our with most amusing celerity on my appearance being
evidently afraid he d be called upon to tell some fresh lie by way
of excusing himself for not refunding my bowie-knife. Gun s
canine acquisition of last night proves to be blind of one eye!
The old woman, Mrs Cooper, with equal folly and cruelty, had
him driven forth into the streets again . . It would have been truer
kindness to have killed the poor starved beast. This mother
of our landlady s is an example how unvenerable and hideous old
age can be. I believe she s eighty. She has a large, coarse, com-
mon, intensely Irish face, is touched by paralysis as one can
see by the nodding of her head, troubled by a cough, but otherwise
unusually healthy considering her age. (She takes shower-baths
almost every morning throughout the winter.) She is grossly
ignorant, talks vulgar-old-woman s grammar, a tyrant
and slave-driver to the Biddies, a sycophant and toady to the
boarders especially to Leslie and such as have money. He
uses very little ceremony with her and once requested her to
shut up, by the title of you miserable old wretch. She is
a flatterer and an eaves-dropper used to carry and invent
| Page |
| Title: | Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries, Volume Nine: page one hundred and forty-four |
| Description: | Describes Mrs. Cooper, Mrs. Potter's mother. |
| Date: | 1858-05-12 |
| Subject: | Boardinghouses; Cooper, Mrs.; Dogs; Gun, Robert; Gunn, Thomas Butler; Leslie, William; New York picayune.; Piercy; Potter, Mrs.; Sailors; 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. |
