Describes Thomas Powell. Transcription: greeting, I thought. I've never sketched [Thomas] Powell thoroughly, so here goes. He is unquestionably the original of Micawber, though [Charles] Dicken's humanity and mirthfulness has refined him immensely. Powell is a fat, burly, man, with an egg-shaped head, bald in the forepart, massive and sensual about the double chin and jowl. The ordinary expression of his countenance indicates oily jocularity, but there's covert cunning beneath it, and he can become trunculent on occasion. He walks with his head thrust forwards and slightly bowed. He is very f
Describes Thomas Powell. Transcription: greeting, I thought. I've never sketched [Thomas] Powell thoroughly, so here goes. He is unquestionably the original of Micawber, though [Charles] Dicken's humanity and mirthfulness has refined him immensely. Powell is a fat, burly, man, with an egg-shaped head, bald in the forepart, massive and sensual about the double chin and jowl. The ordinary expression of his countenance indicates oily jocularity, but there's covert cunning beneath it, and he can become trunculent on occasion. He walks with his head thrust forwards and slightly bowed. He is very familiar in conversation, and his speech has a sort of oratund unctuousness of accent which, in conjunction with his familiar implied knowledge of everybody, might easily gull people into the belief that he was rather a witty man of the world than otherwise. He is a great mischief-maker and back-biter, and inherently a dodger. The feints and shifts he resorted to, to stave off creditors in the Lantern days were innumerable. He'd put one off for an hour, two hours ? half an hour; would get you to wait while he entered a shop 'to collect a bill' and make his exit by the back way; would ask you to drink, to take a note to somebody who wouldn ?t pay you &c Unquestionably he and family lived out of that Lantern. Mrs [Frances] Powell is a niece of [William] Wordsworth ? which is the important event of the house of Powell. She is Mrs Micawber to the life ? no mistake about it. The domestic enonomy is Micawberish. [John] Brougham saw one of the children sleeping on a tea-tray, or in a clothes-basket or something of the sort. Powell has a passion for writing letters too, even to people in the same room. Often he'd leave without getting answers. He was Title: Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries: Volume 9, page 127, April 22, 1858 . 22 April 1858. Gunn, Thomas Butler, 1826-1903
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