41
good-natured girl with that very rare charm
in Yankee femininity, a rather pleasant innocentish
voice. She knows as little as most girls, but seems
to have preserved her youth untainted by affectations.
Talks young-lady English or American (which
is worse) seems alone in the world, owns the abomi-
nable Irish name of Maguire and is just now
out of town. She came out and stood beside me
one day as I was digging away in book-closet, bor-
rowing one, which developed envy in Anna Bradbury.
Descend to next story: a Dr Kennie and wife
occupying the big front room (and maybe the little
adjoining one) once tenanted by the Levisons.
He a tall man with roughish hair of an upward ten-
dency and, I take it, a face and voice strongly
indicative of Scotch descent. A deliberate speaker,
delighting in a sort of slow irony with no great
point to it, came out once with a lot of Yankee
Anglo-phobia, being impelled by old Bradbury s
eruptive asinity. Thinks it witty and calculated
to anger Britishers, to talk about his having made
love to the Queen, to pronounce her a clean little
deutch body smelling of sour kraut &c. His wife,
very short, plump and so high shouldered as to
approach deformity, black haired, dark eyed,
good looking after her sort. Rather spiritualistic,
admires Cora Hatch, talks elaborate good in-
tentioned platitudes about war, laments that we
| Page |
| Title: | Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries, Volume Eleven: page forty-six |
| Description: | Describes the boarders at his boarding house. |
| Date: | 1859-07-09 |
| Subject: | Boardinghouses; Bradbury, Anna; Bradbury (boarder); Gunn, Thomas Butler; Kinne; Kinne, Mrs.; Maguire, Sarah Louisa; Women |
| Coverage (City/State): | [New York, New York] |
| Scan Date: | 2011-01-31 |
| Volume |
| Title: | Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries, Volume Eleven |
| Description: | Includes descriptions of boarding house living at 132 Bleecker Street, his freelance writing and drawing work, the antics of New York literary Bohemians, Fanny Fern and James Parton's marriage, visits to the Edwards family, a Fourth of July excursion with the Edwards family and other friends, letters from Frank Cahill and Bob Gun's mistresses, Jesse Haney's proposal of marriage to Sally Edwards and rejection, Charles Damoreau's return from Boston to live in New York, and attending the Edwards family's 1859 Christmas party. |
| Subject: | Boardinghouses; Bohemians; Christmas; Gunn, Thomas Butler; Marriage; Publishers and publishing; Women |
| Coverage (City/State): | New York, New York |
| 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. |
