Phil Gyford

Articles

Phil Gyford has written four articles:

Annotations and comments

Phil Gyford has posted 773 annotations/comments since 27 December 2002.

Comments

First Reading

About John Hawley

Phil  •  Link

Hawly/Hawley was a clerk to George Downing (as was Pepys) between 1658 and 1660. He also lived in Axe Yard, where Pepys did when he began the diary.

About Tuesday 17 January 1659/60

Phil  •  Link

Thanks for the clarification about Mrs Jane and Mrs Jem, Glyn! That makes much more sense. I should have noticed that, but I don't always get the chance to read Latham & Matthews prior to posting entries.

About Tuesday 17 January 1659/60

Phil  •  Link

If a person doesn't have a page for annotations, this doesn't necessarily mean they're not important or they don't appear very often. A person gets a page to themselves if the 1893 edition of the text had footnotes about them and these tended to be erratic. If anyone wants to annotate a person I'm happy to create new pages as desired!

About Should entries display the weekday?

Phil  •  Link

I know what you mean Jason. One alternative would be to shift the entries so we get a Monday entry on our Monday. But this would have other problems, like not getting his Christmas on our Dec 25th. In a way, while it was easier to believe the events were happening right now, it was just a cover-up, an illusion, and rather misleading; you'd get Pepys going to Church on what seemed like a Thursday for example.

About Saturday 14 January 1659/60

Phil  •  Link

Location of Pepys' office and Will's

Pepys' office at this time was in Westminster, as he said on Jan 3rd "so went to Westminster, where I found soldiers in my office."

I got confused a few posts back -- Will's isn't a coffee house in Covent Garden, but a "place of entertainment" in Westminster. Sorry! All very convenient for getting to and from home though!

About Saturday 14 January 1659/60

Phil  •  Link

"Why does our diary introduction say 'unabridged' if it is censored?"

Tim, that's a good question! I guess the Victorian compilers considered this version unabridged compared to previous versions which were much more condensed. Even so, they obviously couldn't bring themselves to print *quite* everything! No doubt myself or others will attempt to fill in any such gaps.

About Charing Cross

Phil  •  Link

But the fact it isn't one of the original Eleanor Crosses, is a couple of hundred years newer, and is in a different location means it's correct to say that one of the 12 crosses is not at Charing Cross.

About Saturday 14 January 1659/60

Phil  •  Link

I agree that he wasn't really walking far, except for people who are used to travelling everywhere by car. In fact his walk to Westminster from his home is only about 5 minutes (not 30). Walking to Will's coffee shop in Covent Garden would be perhaps 15 minutes, little more. And walking to the Guildhall or Tower of London (30 mins or more from Covent Garden) would no doubt be perfectly normal and reasonable in those days.

About Want more people/place footnotes?

Phil  •  Link

Maybe it's just a case of marking the Place pages as to whether something still exists or not. Or this might be obvious by reading the annotations. I'm planning on taking some photos of the locations before too long.

About Saturday 14 January 1659/60

Phil  •  Link

I think we'd be making a mistake to apply our 21st century standards of what makes a day's work to the 17th century. It was only relatively recently that it became the norm to work 9-5 (or whatever). Before that it was far more irregular, probably in part due to the fact that clocks were rarer and less accurate items.

About Friday 13 January 1659/60

Phil  •  Link

Re: old maps.

I'm going to see if I can find any old reproduction maps to buy this week and scan in. If not I'll try and mark up that 1642/43 map at the weekend. I think pre-Great Fire maps would be best given how much was destroyed then, and such maps don't seem to have much detail unfortunately.

About Want more people/place footnotes?

Phil  •  Link

As I say, if anyone has something to say about a location, they just have to ask me for a place to post annotations! I fear the problem with some of the locations, such as pubs, might be that no one knows anything about them these days.

About Friday 13 January 1659/60

Phil  •  Link

You should be able to get some idea from looking at the Streetmap links on the Place pages, but I realise this could be tricky without an existing knowledge of London! I haven't had much luck finding a decent online period map with streetnames; one problem is that it's a lot of information to display on screen. However, there are quite a few maps here http://makeashorterlink.com/?E339… and I'll mark up a suitable map (perhaps the 1642/43 one) with some of the most important locations. Stay tuned...

About Should entries display the weekday?

Phil  •  Link

Thanks for all the thoughts everyone! As you may already have noticed, I've decided to add the day of the week above each entry, so as to make things clearer. On the few occasions where Pepys wrote this in himself, I've also included this in the diary entry itself, for completeness sake. I hope this makes the diary clearer!