File:Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries- Volume 9, page 119, April 14, 1858.jpg

Transcription:

the fever she [Mary Jewell Waud] would go to breeding, real smart”! He projects sending her to Lake Winnipissogee for the summer, and asks my opinion a to the advisability of getting a divorce for her, from her husband [Albert Brainard] on the grounds of “five years desertion.” He has “consulted with a lawyer about it,” who recommends him “to make a mistake and call it three — it is not quite there!” A fine project truly! — of course so obtained it would be illegal. Will [Waud] has taken a room in [Maturin] Ballou’s new building, at $100 per year. “As he found it impossible (!) to pay his share of our present room, a little more than half that sum, it’s rather a wise proceeding.” Here’s the rest of Will, condensed from Alf’s letter. Worked a little harder of late, board and everything in arrears, not given up loafing, “wastes his time on a little-bread-and-butter-very-silly-important-fresh-colored-short-child in curls, to whom others consider him engaged. She looks as if she ought to be spanked for not minding her lessons,” is sixteen, looks thirteen, the daughter of his landlady, he “suffers her to be affectionate, condescends to do a little himself,” is “made comfortable at the house where they think he’d be quite a catch.” Alf “had the greatest difficulty in getting some money out of Will to make a remittance home to his mother [Mary Fitzjohn Waud]. He’d “much prefer spending it in billiards, would be indignant if told so — never knew any one that had cooler and indifference to all onus or responsibility — hope it’s nothing but want of thought — though it looks rather like heartlessness.” [Charles] Damoreau is “astonished that his gentlemanly address don’t bring him the prosperity he thinks he deserves, finds it as hard to keep a customer as he used to to retain a sweetheart,” and “his head is remarkable