File:Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries- Volume 9, page 50, January 3, 1858.jpg

Transcription:

ottoman. Mrs G [Elizabeth Gouverneur] is about the silliest and most ignorant woman — for the station she has accidentally got into — that I know. She drops her H's to a three-cockney extent and — laments it! She talks of men who have fallen in love with her, alternately professing that she's very sorry and exalting in the silliest manner. She wants to learn French, to go to Paris, to read the History of France — in order to discomfit in argument, a French-musical teacher who boards in the house is in love with her, and has the national Napoleonic Anglo-phobia!) "Ah! Mr Gunn, you said very unkind things about me, but I always liked you!" quoth she. Her good qualities are entirely physical. She has a surface jollity of disposition, don't bear malice — I have said the most infernal things to her, and I know she's hated me like the devil at times — and she has been handsome and is good looking. I can well fancy her, ten or fifteen years ago, she might have fired the heart and brain of some impassioned young man — and also how meanly, how basely, how foolishly and how cruelly she'd use her power. / Well, we got along in a very lively manner, she being alternately teazed and pleased. I wanted to leave. No, I must stop till he goes" — he being Miss [Lizzie] Petit's bean — "and then she'd make me a whiskey punch." This was said quite loud enough for the man to have heard, if he hadn't been engrossed in talking to Miss Lizzie. He was a long time going, but rose, at I suppose about 10 1/2 and directly the room door closed upon him, she — Mrs Gouverneur had a little skillet on the fire for heating water. A demi-john was produced, Mrs G explaining that there wasn't enough whiskey for two, or she