125
and Fanny were in the middle of the
audience as we heard, not seeing them.
We sat in front. Perhaps five or six hundred
persons present. Mort has been dandified to
extremity by the women, sported a trim suit
of black and such a tie to his cravat that
Mattie whispered an inquiry to wonder as
to its origin. It wasn t feminine and it was
n t masculine so it must have been Ed Wells
doing, I said, getting a laugh for my libel.
(He really does such services for Mort.) The
only good thing in the lecture was about Old
Brown Ossawattamie Brown which moved
Haney and I to applause to which Mort owed
More than half of his success. For their were
some hisses heard on Old Brown s introduc-
tion, and we were determined to have him em-
phatically recognized. And we did it. The
contest was quite exciting for awhile. I had
two hissers beside me, another behind. Finally
we triumphed. Most of the lecture was awful
bosh, old puns, old stale satire, irrele-
vance and what not, with here and there
a bit of strong truth, but nothing that hasn t been
said a hundred times better. Haney hung
down his head and laughed silently sometimes,
I looked on amused and cynical, Matty laughed
when the people laughed, settled her bonnet-ribbons,
| Page |
| Title: | Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries, Volume Eleven: page one hundred and thirty-three |
| Description: | Regarding attending a lecture by Mort Thomson as Doesticks. |
| Date: | 1859-11-13 |
| Subject: | Brown, John; Clothing and dress; Edwards, Martha; Fern, Fanny; Gunn, Thomas Butler; Haney, Jesse; Lectures and lecturing; Thomson, Mortimer (Doesticks); Welles, Edward; 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. |
