144
O Brien s Decadence and Origin.
he occupied a room and is now on town in
every sense. He looked deplorably shaky and
wandered in talk, on visiting Haney, to-day.
The Clover Hill party was to have consisted of
Gayler, its getter-up, George Arnold, O Brien,
Nordhoff, one of the young Harpers and Frank
Wood. Shepherd received an invitation, but de-
clined, anticipating that the expense would fall on
one or two, and that the party would terminate
in drunkenness. Young Wood, formerly a
mild-spoken six-feet of vapidity, has become
a good deal of a drunkard and more of an
habitual swearer, his mildest exclamation
being the utterance of the name of the second
person in the Trinity. If O Brien continue
his present career, he ll die miserably enough;
nor do I suppose he ll ever re-cross the Atlantic.
The talk about his patrician kins-folk is all
Blatherskite and Erin go Brag; money has
never been sent to him during his sorest need.
His father is said to be a Cork lawyer, one
in struggling circumstances, one Bryan, for
the Fitz as well as the O is assumed by
his son, who first, as I recollect, called him-
self James Fitzjames O Brien, subsequently
sinking the first James. It was then that
he pretended to cousinship with Smith O Brien| Page |
| Title: | Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries, Volume Twelve: page one hundred and fifty-eight |
| Description: | Regarding Fitz James O'Brien's habits and roots. |
| Date: | 1860-04-14 |
| Subject: | Arnold, George; Bohemians; Gayler, Charles; Gunn, Thomas Butler; Haney, Jesse; Nordhoff; O'Brien, Fitz James; O'Brien, Smith; Shepherd, N.G.; Wood, Frank |
| Coverage (City/State): | [New York, New York] |
| Scan Date: | 2011-01-29 |
| Volume |
| Title: | Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries, Volume Twelve |
| Description: | Includes descriptions of boarding house living, his freelance writing and drawing work, antics of the New York literary Bohemians, visits to the Edwards family, the activities of London detective Arthur Ledger who is staying in his boarding house, Thomas Nast's courtship of Sally Edwards, two masked balls at his boarding house, a visit to Lotty Granville at Fordham, the state of Charles Damoreau's marriage, and a visit to the ''Phalanx'' in New Jersey with George Boweryem. |
| Subject: | Boardinghouses; Bohemians; Detectives; Gunn, Thomas Butler; Journalism; Marriage; Publishers and publishing; Travel; Women |
| Coverage (City/State): | New York, New York; Fordham, New York; New Jersey |
| 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. |
