87
Mary Scoville and her Mother.
acceptable. He told me he considered a war with
England inevitable, talked familiarly of this and
that public man, was loud, hospitable, shrewd,
violent in conversation in short, the old Joe Scoville
of the Pick and Herald. We supped down stairs,
returning to the front parlor for the evening, partly
in company with another visitor I think a relative
of Mrs Scoville at any rate a Southerner. I got
very friendly with little Mary Scoville, the daughter,
who sat on my knee, prattling, and busying herself
plaiting my beard and curling my hair. She is a
pretty, sharp child, and recognized me immediately
on at first sight. Scoville s wife is thorough-
ly Southern in manner and speech, local, clan-
nish, frank, wilful, demonstrative: I noti-
ced her expressions of partisanship took a de-
fiant form even, to those whose cause she espou-
sed, as thus, she thought that the Charlestonians
themselves ought to be drowned, hanged, if they did
not burn their city rather than let the Yankees get
it! She repeated this once or twice. I liked her
pluck and good-looks and, wearied with the eter-
nal onesidedness of the question and vilification of
England, could in some measure sympathize with
her. Oddly enough, friendly as they were to me,
I ascertained that both husband and wife suspected
me of being the Charleston correspondent of the
| Page |
| Title: | Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries, Volume Eighteen: page ninety-eight |
| Description: | Describes a visit to Joe Scoville and his wife. |
| Date: | 1861-12-15 |
| Subject: | Children; Civil War; Gunn, Thomas Butler; Schaub, Carolina Uniana (Scoville); Scoville, Joe; Scoville, Mary |
| Coverage (City/State): | [New York, New York]; Charleston, [South Carolina] |
| Coverage (Street): | Beach Street |
| Scan Date: | 2010-06-14 |
| Volume |
| Title: | Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries, Volume Eighteen |
| Description: | Includes Gunn's descriptions of the scene in New York at the commencement of the Civil War, his visits to military camps in and around New York City as a reporter for ""The New York Evening Post,"" boarding house life, the shooting of Sergeant Davenport by Captain Fitz James O'Brien for insubordination, and Frank Bellew's marital troubles. |
| 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. |
