147
Vanity and Honesty.
could find room. We had Boweryem s bewail-
ment or anger every morning, and Cahill s semi-
objurgations. At last Boweryem goes and asks
Dana whether his poem will appear and gets I
think not, in reply. Then he is to the last degree
mortified and indignant, and vows, at least a score
of times that, the Tribune shall, in future, be
obliged to copy his productions from other papers! I
think the thing was good enough to have gone in, but
the little man evidently dreams that it might have
attained celebrity akin to Scot s wha hoe &c. Like
Putnam Smif, who wrote to Martin Chuzzlewit, he
yearns for Fame; it is his aspiration and his
thirst. He talks sometimes about his hopes of
leaving a name to posterity; he said, this evening, that
he would be content to forfeit all those hopes (!) for
an opportunity of assassinating Louis Napoleon! He
has on reticence whatever; will propose to recite his
poems, or sing a stave of some little mellady, which he
has composed, at the most inappropriate times. He
will confide his tendresse for this or that girl
to Mrs. Boley, or an acquaintance of a weeks stand-
ing. He reveals all his affairs, talks immeasurably
about himself; trumpets the snubbings his egotism
subjects him to. Withal he is one of the kindliest
of little men, honest and honorable, officious
| Page |
| Title: | Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries, Volume Sixteen: page one hundred and sixty-six |
| Description: | Regarding George Boweryem's hopes for fame. |
| Date: | 1861-05-10 |
| Subject: | Boley, Susan; Boweryem, George; Cahill, Frank; Dana, Charles A.; Gunn, Thomas Butler; Napoleon III, Emperor of the French; New York tribune.; Poetry; Publishers and publishing |
| Coverage (City/State): | [New York, New York] |
| Scan Date: | 2010-06-07 |
| Volume |
| Title: | Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries, Volume Sixteen |
| Description: | Includes Gunn's descriptions of the scene in New York at the commencement of the Civil War, boarding house living, visits to the Edwards family, Mort Thomson's engagement to Fanny Fern's daughter Grace Eldredge, Frank Cahill's return to New York from London, Frank Bellew's dissatisfaction with living in England, Thomas Nast's engagement to Sally Edwards, the scene in New York during the departure of the 7th New York Regiment for Washington, attending the wedding of Olive Waite and Hamilton Bragg, a visit with Frank Cahill to the camp of the 1st Regiment of New York Volunteers and the 2nd Regiment of New York State Militia on Staten Island, the death of Charles Welden, and his reporting work. |
| Subject: | Boardinghouses; Bohemians; Civil War; Gunn, Thomas Butler; Journalism; Marriage; Military; 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 2010 Missouri History Museum. |
| Source: | Page images, transcriptions, and metadata of the Thomas Butler Gunn diaries have been provided by the Missouri History Museum. |
