Todd Bernhardt

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Todd Bernhardt has posted 946 annotations/comments since 8 January 2003.

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First Reading

About Wednesday 4 May 1664

Todd Bernhardt  •  Link

"The plague increases at Amsterdam."

Uh oh.

"Only in the afternoon comes Mr. Peter Honiwood to see me and gives me 20s., his and his friends' pence for my brother John"

Why is Sam loathe to take this? Is it a collection that Honiwood and his friends have taken up upon John's death to help his next of kin, and well-off Sam doesn't want to accept their charity?

Sorry 'bout the shotgun posts...

About Wednesday 4 May 1664

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"I perceive I labour in a business will bring me little pleasure; but no matter, I shall do the King some service."

I hope Charles appreciates this...

About Monday 2 May 1664

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"and she, poor wretch, would fain have kept them to look on, without any other design but a simple love to them"

Given Bess's upbringing and her parents' current circumstances, I can see why she'd want to admire the gold. What a great scene, revealing so much about the couple and their characters...

About Saturday 30 April 1664

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re: dread

Today -- the fourth anniversary of "Mission Accomplished" -- is a good day to remember all of the reasons one should dread war. I'm sure Sam, as an expert insider, realizes better than most the hubris and insuffiencies in the administration's war "plan" -- as well as (as others have pointed out) the potential for loss of life and capital. And for what? Nothing.

As Santayana said, those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Mission accomplished!

About Saturday 30 April 1664

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"We all seem to desire it, as thinking ourselves to have advantages at present over them; for my part I dread it."

Smart man, our Sam.

About Tuesday 26 April 1664

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"and yet less I could not do"

I'm still a little puzzled why Sam feels such obligation to the Joyces, especially given his other feelings for them (annoyance, primarily). Yes, they're related, but somewhat distantly ... I know that this meant more then than it typically does now (at least 'round these parts), but still -- am I missing something here?

About Thursday 21 April 1664

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"I perceive by my dear Lady blushing that in my dining-room she was doing something upon the pott, which I also was ashamed of, and so fell to some discourse, but without pleasure through very pity to my Lady"

How awkward for both of them! I guess Sam's house didn't have a separate "house of office" for guests...?

About Wednesday 20 April 1664

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re: books at Oxford

Just to be a pedant, Carl, the Pepys collection is in Cambridge, but you couldn't be more right about how stunning the Library is. I recently visited, and could have spent hours there (as it was, I closed the place down, the attendant patiently answering some questions then shuffling me out of there).

Sam's attempts to rein in his desire to collect books remind me of my days as a poor student, when I haunted used-records stores (yes, LPs in those days) around my university, looking for the best bargains and bargaining with myself about what necessary I could trade to be able to afford my newest find...

About Wednesday 20 April 1664

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"(when, God knows! it is only our owne negligence and laziness that hath done us the wrong)"

Well, I guess we know Sam's position on the war pretty well now...

A highly entertaining entry. I love it when he works the chinks in his vows, especially at the expense of King and Country...

About Monday 18 April 1664

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"Purely medicinal reasons, I'm sure."

Well, Sam *has* been having eye troubles ... could be a touch of the ol' glaucoma, I s'pose... 8-)

About Friday 15 April 1664

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"where I met with Mr. Hill, the little merchant, with whom, I perceive, I shall contract a musical acquaintance; but I will make it as little troublesome as I can"

Sure, man, I'm up for jamming occasionally, but my life is just too busy to be in a band right now, you know?

About Clocks and watches

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Estimable entymologist Michael Quinion had this to say about the source of the word "watch" for a time-keeping device in his 30 March newsletter (yes, I'm that far behind on my reading):

Q. I was thinking about my wristwatch the other evening and started wondering why we call small timepieces watches. Is it because we look at them to tell the time, or were they originally intended to tell the watches of the night? I was tempted to give up on the question by saying that we call them watches because "forks" was already in use, but that lacked the intellectual satisfaction I have come to enjoy from your columns. [Fred Roth]

A. The watches of the night is pretty much bang on as an answer.

A watch related to people before it became a mechanical device. The job of the watch was - obviously enough - to watch, to stay alert during the night hours to keep guard and maintain order. It turned up especially in the phrase "watch and ward", as a legal term that summarised the duties of the watchmen - to keep watch and ward off trouble. Sailors' watches come from the same idea.

"Watch" started to be applied to clocks in the fifteenth century, in the first instance to a form of mechanical alarm, presumably either to wake the watchmen for their hours of duty, or to mark the passage of the hours of a watch.

By the latter part of the following century it had become applied to what we would now call a clock-face or dial (early mechanical clocks often lacked both a dial and hands, the time being told by bells, which explains the derivation of "clock" from the French "cloche", a bell; the first clock with a minute hand is recorded as late as 1475, which shows you how hard it was to make these early clocks keep reasonable time).

The first time "watch" is applied to a complete timekeeper, not just to an alarm bell, is in Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost of 1588. Watches steadily became smaller in size down the centuries until they could be fitted into a pocket.

But it took until the end of the nineteenth century for them to be made small enough that they could be worn on the wrist and for the term "wrist watch" to be created as a term for them. At first they were a purely female accessory. A report in a Rhode Island paper in May 1888 remarked "I was not surprised to see that nearly all the fair sex were wearing the wrist watches which are now so entirely the fashion in London, but which I believe are very little worn as yet in America." They also became known as wristlet watches from about 1910. Men didn't regularly start to wear them until the 1920s, the associations of effeminacy only being dispelled as a result of soldiers and airmen finding them convenient during the First World War.

About Monday 11 April 1664

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No Monday meeting with the Duke? I wonder if it was because Sam's still not feeling himself, or if the Duke had gone away for the Easter holiday?

About Sunday 10 April 1664

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"for she had put on her new best gowns"

Interesting that he puts this as plural ... would this usage be akin to "pants"?

About Inventory of the tailor shop

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Let me add my thanks to those above, Jeannine! The thing that I find so fascinating about the variable spelling is the insight it provides into pronunciation...