Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries- Volume 7, page 131, August 4, Alfred Waud, 4 August 1855

Regarding learning from alf waud that his brother will left england because he had seduced a girl at sydenham and gotten her pregnant. Transcription: a wall street insurance office, and dwells in grand street, boarding with the little nova-scotian washerwoman. The picayune is moderately prosperous, (the pick having been bought out. ) [a. F. ] banks, one evening brought up a certain o'mana to see me, who proved to be the individual whom i had known as the younger manning, on board the wenham, six years ago. He says he is a virginian, and accounts for his then assuming a brother and a name, intimating he was a sort of supercargo aboard the vessel. / will waud, i learn from his brother, left england in consequence of having seduced the girl at sydenham. She was, when with her sister, she called at vassall place about to become a mother. He wrote her in adieu, promising to send her money from the u. S. They went to his residence to ascertain whether his departure were fact or no, — money, the sister said, they did not want, — her friends would take care of her. So then his spleen at everything proceeds but from internal jaundice, and justly deserved self discontent. With his morbid self esteem venting itself in ill-nature and intolerant speech, never i think was there mortal more unendurable, — ever trying as he is to impale his soul on the nil admirari point, ever stretching his little heighth to look to the almighty and say of his work "it is not good!" / alf too, has engaged in a sorry enterprise, of which after some half hints, partly dogged, partly sorrowful he gave me the particulars, one evening as we sat in his fulton street room, his brother being only present. Becoming acquainted at dobsons boarding house with the young and newly wed wife [mary jewell brainard] of an engineer [albert brainard], (whose avocations lay on ocean steamers,) intimacy, passion and sin followed, — platonism, sentiment, sympathy and all the pander-title: thomas butler gunn diaries: volume 7, page 131, august 4, 1855. Date: 4 August 1855.