ten has put away money, invested in stocks. I
hope too, with all my heart, the man will keep his
berth, for his wife s sake. I don t dislike the gram-
pus, except when he snorts with peculiar blatancy,
antagonizing all sense and good nature. So, Peace
be with him! Thus endeth the Eleventh volume
of my Diarization. If I keep on am spared
as the righteous say, as though the Almight was
constantly on the look out to kill them! it will
grow into a Library.
Sometimes I have considerable qualms about
it. There s a passage in Lockhart s Scott, con
demnatory of such work. But I have no fine
old Sir Walten to sketch in deshabille only such
folk as one meets every day in the world. Well
God help all of us!
Then, to be sure, I can destroy these
scribblings any day I like. Somehow, though I
must cut a very poor figure in them in many
places, I don t like the thought of it. They seem
a part of my existence. So much of my life
put into them!
I m sure that the only true mode of biography
is Boswellizing. Poor Boswell! The world is
damnably ungrateful in laughing at him.
/| Page |
| Title: | Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries, Volume Nine: page two hundred and forty-nine |
| Description: | Comments on his habit of writing in his diary. |
| Date: | 1858-11-05 |
| Subject: | Gunn, Thomas Butler; Patten, Willis; Patten, Willis, Mrs. |
| 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. |
