Manuscript, “Etching, from the French of Maurice de Mauny”, Page One

Charles Hammond Gibson Jr. (1874-1954); Boston, 1895; Ink and paper; Charles Hammond Gibson Jr Collection, Archives of Gibson House Museum.

In the winter of 1894-95, it was Gibson’s affair with Maurice de Mauny-Talvande, a traveling lecturer claiming to be a French Count, that scandalized his social set; as Codman declares in this letter to his mother, “all Boston has been talking about them in a horrid way.” At the height of the affair, Gibson wrote the essay “Etching.” Claiming to be the work’s translator rather than its author, Gibson “records” his lover’s breathless account of their “first kiss, sealed by a thunderbolt.”

Zoom into the manuscript and letters and read the transcripts below.