Describes a visit to Mr. and Mrs. Barth, William Barth's parents. Transcription: nient &c. Buxell presented me with an African made, grass-woven hammock. Through the rain to [Matthew] Whitelaws, making a useless call at Hepburn ?s by the way. And at Whitelaws till 8 1/2. 18. Sunday. To the ?ǣYork and Albany ? by omnibus, and thence to Barth ?s. I was received by the boy ?Georgey, ? who shewed me into a small, plainly furnished outhouse room, used as Mr B ?s smoking apartment. Mrs [Sarah Wheeler] Barth came in about fifteen minutes, and presently her husband. We, adjourning to the fronteparlo
Describes a visit to Mr. and Mrs. Barth, William Barth's parents. Transcription: nient &c. Buxell presented me with an African made, grass-woven hammock. Through the rain to [Matthew] Whitelaws, making a useless call at Hepburn ?s by the way. And at Whitelaws till 8 1/2. 18. Sunday. To the ?ǣYork and Albany ? by omnibus, and thence to Barth ?s. I was received by the boy ?Georgey, ? who shewed me into a small, plainly furnished outhouse room, used as Mr B ?s smoking apartment. Mrs [Sarah Wheeler] Barth came in about fifteen minutes, and presently her husband. We, adjourning to the fronteparlour, find the two domesticated ladies there, Miss Perkins and Miss , and dinner is served, the children being at a seperate table in the adjoining room. The dinner was very good, Mrs B magniloquent, pretentious, and extensive; Mr B bluff, good humored and vulgar, and the damsels assenting and admiring. Mrs B is, I think the spur which prompts the little man to strive upwards; he, spite of his active, pushing nature would be content with plenty of mesmeric patients, and their guineas, over-much of eating and drinking, and his ?ǣyard of clay; ? ? but she has ambition. His time is closely ob occupied, though like [Geoffrey] Chaucer ?s Man of Law, he always seems busier than he is. Meantime they are neither so happy as when they were poorer. She, dressed in black-satin has to receive the patients from morn till night, sympathize with them, wheedle them, flatter them, and prepare them for mesmeric manipulations. He scarcely stirs out, and, I think, over-eats himself. When she kept stall in the Soho Bazaar, returning of evenings to the quiet two floors in University Street, there to read the current number of ?Bentley, ? or one of [Charles] Dicken ?s serials, (borrowed from the ?ǣlibrary ? opposite, at the rate of a penny each,) she was a jollier, happier, truer woman. What Title: Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries: Volume 7, page 35, March 17-18, 1855 . 17 March 1855. Gunn, Thomas Butl
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