Batch
Annotations and comments
Batch has posted 51 annotations/comments since 23 October 2019.
The most recent first…
Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
Batch has posted 51 annotations/comments since 23 October 2019.
The most recent first…
Comments
Second Reading
About Tuesday 30 June 1668
Batch • Link
Did they actually eat "stinking" meat?
About House of office
Batch • Link
I once read an answer given by a very important person (whose name I have forgotten) to the question "What is the most inportant invention?"
His answer: "the toilet."
To that I would add "the sewer system to which toilets are connected."
About Tuesday 23 June 1668
Batch • Link
Nice to have you back, Australian Susan. I was wondering what happened to you.
Lisa L. Thanks for the eye news.
About Sunday 3 May 1668
Batch • Link
Re "cast away," see also San Diego Sarah entry for May 16.
About Saturday 16 May 1668
Batch • Link
San Diego Sarah: Sorry, I should have mentioned that I am referring to a post I made at the end of the May 3 entry.
About Saturday 16 May 1668
Batch • Link
San Diego Sarah, regarding
"The carpenter of the Dragon cast himself away because he could not receive things needful for the use of the ship, and wrote the cause of his doing so on his rule, before he went into the water,"
I believe that "cast himself away" means here is that what he did was comparable to the meaning of "cast away" in the May 3 entry as "foundered" (as one would say of a ship), and he accordingly was lost beneath the water, drowned like a foundered ship. So yes, what he wrote on his rule was a suicide note.
About Thursday 14 May 1668
Batch • Link
It has been suggested elsewhere (pardon, but I don't have the source at hand) that Sam is a bass. If so, I feel that he must be a bass-baritone because a baritone voice and baritone parts are more likely to harmonize with sopranos like Mercer (or mezzos, if she is a mezzo). A baritone voice is just more versatile than a bass voice, and Sam definitely has shown versatility in his singing with Knepp, Mercer, his "boy," and others.
About Thursday 7 May 1668
Batch • Link
"I was a little moved at my offering it and nor having it."
"Nor" should be "not." Perhaps it is in L&M.
About Sunday 3 May 1668
Batch • Link
I notice several uses of "cast away" where in reference to a ship we would definitely use the term "founder" today, since "cast away" now means only "[for a person] to be stranded after a shipwreck."
About Wednesday 22 April 1668
Batch • Link
Wash day! We haven't heard that mentioned in a great while.
About Saturday 4 April 1668
Batch • Link
Said in every era: " . . . so slightly are all things in this age done."
About Friday 3 April 1668
Batch • Link
I've always felt that music and math were there a priori, and we humans were left with the task of divining them.
I therefore find Pepys's excited pursuit of musical theory very thrilling. To me, he is an example of someone inspired, gifted with the realization that it is out there just beyond reach, waiting to be found, and he feels he is on the cusp of breaking through into comprehension of it.
About Tuesday 3 March 1668
Batch • Link
Clement, thanks for the genealogical info on the Shish name and that Scot's fate of "transportation," i.e., he was deported to America.
About Saturday 8 February 1667/68
Batch • Link
He's not the first or the last to lament
"the base proceedings (just the epitome of all our publick managements in this age) . . . ."
Insert the present or any age.
About Thursday 6 February 1667/68
Batch • Link
Mercer's "coats": her petticoat, or her "slip," as we would say today (if any woman still wears a slip under her skirt today). When one of Evelyn's toddler sons died, Evelyn was very distraught that he had died so young that he was still in his "long coats," the dress-like floor-length garments that very young boys wore (allegedly from ancient times to thwart evil spirits, who were believed to search for little boys in order to snatch them away from life, by making the evil spirits think the toddler was a girl).
About Monday 27 January 1667/68
Batch • Link
Lady Peterborough: "She loves to be taken dressing . . . ."
Taken = caught in the act.
When King Arthur's knights reported Queen Guinevere's adultery to him and asked if they should go find her and bring her before him, he said, "No, I want her taken."
About Saturday 25 January 1667/68
Batch • Link
The English renaissance scholar and poet Gabriel Harvey (c.1550-1630) had to endure jibes and ridicule from nonproductive aristocrats and nobles at Cambridge because his family were "in business" as ropemakers.
About Friday 24 January 1667/68
Batch • Link
"a very great rabble of four or five hundred people of mean condition" -- the deceased appears to have had many friends. I am a person of mean condition and can't imagine that I would have even 50 persons at my wake, much less 400.
About Wednesday 22 January 1667/68
Batch • Link
" . . . though I can find she can, as all other women, cry, and yet talk of other things all in a breath." How else have underdog women been able to keep going through the millennia?
And yes, I thought Elizabeth was on the verse of trilling too. But I think he was always just being a good sport when he recently mentioned singing with her, poor girl. He was condescending in doing that. Nothing can be done if the gift of a voice just isn't there.
About Tuesday 21 January 1667/68
Batch • Link
I'm very surprised that it was DEAD pigeons that were laid to the sick person's feet. I've read about this before, and I always assumed it was LIVE (very tame, or trussed!) pigeons laid to the soles of the feet (which, like the top of the head, are areas through which the body very rapidly loses heat), in order for the pigeons' live, warm, feathered bodies to stop the loss of body heat and provide warmth to this region.
Silly me!