Sasha Clarkson

Annotations and comments

Sasha Clarkson has posted 752 annotations/comments since 16 February 2013.

Comments

Second Reading

About Monday 11 January 1663/64

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

A new (to me) meaning of the word loggerhead, as a "Blockhead or fool" (Wiktionary)

Quote "Ah, you whoreson loggerhead, you were born to do me shame!"
(1590, William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost, IV. iii.)

Sir John Robinson had some cause to boast as, not only was he Captain of the Tower, but he had also been Lord Mayor in the previous year, which meant that he was also in charge of the City magistrates and militia.

About Sunday 10 January 1663/64

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

If "turned their nose up" is the correct expression in this case, it was the company that Sam & Bess were eschewing on New Year's Day, and not the dish.

Swans belong to the monarch who, as 'Seigneur of the Swans' has the right to dispose of them, hence swan is a royal dish. As Mary pointed out in the Jan 1 annotations, Sandwich was Master of the King's Swans. Will Howe, Sandwich's servant had brought the swan(s) to Pepys, presumably at his master's behest, and they were a very high status gift.

http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

About Thursday 24 December 1663

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

The "Lord Of Misrule" was an interesting old English tradition, which had almost disappeared by Commonwealth days, though it lingered in traditionalist regions far from London.

Some might suggest that Charles II had several permanent Lords of Misrule of his own in the persons of Buckingham, Rochester etc.

Anyway, let me wish Phil and all annotators a happy Christmas/Yule/Saturnalia and a 2017 in which any newly elected Lords of Misrule do as little damage as possible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lor…

Benedictus benedicat!

About Wednesday 23 December 1663

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

I'm not sure that Sandwich's coach actually did take precedence over Mrs Turner's "mourning coach". Sandwich was a Pepys on his mother's side, and was making a extravagant gesture to honour Edward Pepys, who was the senior male of the senior Pepys line. By allowing Sam to use his coach, Sandwich, was effectively marking Sam as his representative. This public mark of favour from an an important Peer of the Realm would certainly have enhanced Sam's perceived status, and was also a sign of forgiveness from m'Lord.

About Saturday 19 December 1663

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

This is the first confirmation in the diary of the connection between "Mr Turner the Draper" (no Sir William) and his brother, Jane's husband John.

As Sir William died very wealth and without issue, it was Jane's descendants* who inherited the loot!

*Via her grandson Cholmley, great-nephew of Sir Hugh Cholmley, with whom Pepys has regular dealings over the Mole in Tangier.
http://www.pepysdiary.com/encyclo…

About Tuesday 15 December 1663

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

It wasn't £300 Sarah, it was £30:10s, whose weight in silver coin would have been of the order of 3½ kg (A shilling weighed just under 6g, and other denominations' weights were proportional to their values.)

About Friday 11 December 1663

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

Although Courland had a majority population of Letts (Latvians), it was administered in German, and German speakers dominated Mitau and Libau. There was always a lot of trade/traffic between the various Baltic cities, irrespective of the states they belonged to.

In 1869, my great-great grandfather, Adolf Weinberg, set off from Königsberg to take up a post as a viola player in the Imperial Theatre (Mariinsky) in St Petersburg. (I still have his passport and contract.) On his way, he stopped in Mitau, then capital of the Russian Courland Governorate, to marry my great-great grandmother Marie Grünfeld. Her father Josef was born in Mitau in 1816 and died in Kiev in 1912, where Adolf was by then the Kapellmeister of the Lutheran church.

About Wednesday 9 December 1663

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

Re CO: it is only a danger when burning carboniferous fuels (especially damp ones) in an enclosed space with inadequate oxygen and ventilation. In a normal fireplace, dry charcoal burns efficiently and hot, (also with no sulphur fumes), and would therefore create a better updraught than coal or logs, minimising the danger of CO poisoning. With sufficient air, CO itself burns, and was an important, though potentially deadly, constituent of the 'Town Gas'* which which pre-dated modern 'Natural' gas. There is no evidence that Pepys' office did not have a fireplace or chimney. Most rooms in old houses had fireplaces, even in upstairs rooms. The 1714 engraving of the Navy Office building show lots of chimneys.
https://pepysdiary-production.s3.…

But fireplaces in those days varied between big and enormous**, and some sort of fire basket would be necessary to burn any kind of fuel efficiently; no doubt different designs of basket were available to burn different fuels. It's worth looking at the Google Image search results for "cradle fire basket":

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q…

*Water gas,or Town Gas was originally a bi-product of the manufacture of coke for iron manufacture: passing steam through coal produces gas according to the following equation:

C (s) + H2O (g) → CO + H2

** In my own cottage, I have a "small" inglenook fireplace dating to the late 1600s, which measures approximately 1.1m x1.2m x 0.5m. Instead of a basket, I have a cast iron multifuel stove with a modern chimney liner. Other, quite modest, old houses in my area have vast inglenooks in which a couple of adults could stand.

About Monday 7 December 1663

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

If one adds 10 days to Pepys' dates to convert to Gregorian, it turns out that the moon phases in 1663 were very similar to those of 2016.

It turn out that December 4th/14th in 1663 was a perigeal full moon (a Supermoon), which would result in very high tidal ranges, the highest being two days after the full moon, which means that the highest tide in London would have been "last night" (for Sam) at 9-10pm. Given that it's frosty, not wet suggests that there was also an east/north-east wind which would have increased the Thames' tidal surge.

More info:
http://www.astropixels.com/epheme…
http://www.fourmilab.ch/earthview…
http://www.ukho.gov.uk/easytide/E…

About Saturday 5 December 1663

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

Charcoal burns hotter than coal or wood, so its easier to get an updraught in a chimney if the weather conditions are encouraging the smoke to blow back down.

About Friday 4 December 1663

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

14th December Gregorian. Although there's no standardised time, local time in London will be close enough to modern GMT, so sunrise will be around 7:59am, and sunset at about 15:51. Sam's earliest sunset would have been about 4 days ago, but sunrise will continue to get later until 31st December Gregorian, 21st (Sam's) Julian Calendar, when it will rise around 8:06am.

http://sunrisesunsetmap.com/

Although Earth's Perihelion is about six days earlier in Sam's day, the (Gregorian) sunset/sunrise times would be almost the same as those today

About Monday 30 November 1663

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

Pepys is understandably anxious about Sandwich's attitude still. Whatever his public demeanour, at time Sam delights in torturing himself with his worries. However, he is worrying too much. Sandwich has spoken to Pepys about the matter, and that's the end of it, whatever annoyance inevitably lingers.

Sam's defence is that he was reporting public gossip back to his patron, as he felt it was damaging to him. Will Howe however has had it in the neck, because he is a member of Sandwich's household, and M'Lord (rightly) suspects that Howe has been talking of his own private matters and movements to Pepys, and maybe others too, a breach of trust in a servant. Howe may well be somewhat aggrieved because Pepys did *not* discuss the letter with him, or warn him, before he sent it, and hence the subsequent fallout was an unwelcome surprise. So Howe is passing some of his own misery on to Pepys with a version of the conversation, no doubt edited to exclude Sandwich's supplementary questions on the lines of: "Who else did you tell?"

About Friday 27 November 1663

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

"Elizabeth probably did as much as the maydes did"

There's no evidence for this, and it's doubtful.

1) You don't keep dogs and bark yourself - and I doubt Sam would permit it: It would look bad if he brought visitors home.
2) Elizabeth is ill and in pain at the moment.
3) Her difficult relations with female staff don't suggest a preference for solidarity with the sisterhood!

About Sunday 29 November 1663

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

SPOILER

Despite Batten's "good estate", he still lives above his means, and dies broke, leaving Lady B in some straits. Of course, this might be because Sam, Coventry & Carteret limit his corruption.

£770 would not last Elizabeth long if Sam died, nor would it provide a marriage portion for Pall, nor help keep young John at Cambridge or give him a start in life.

BTW, it's been my "poor" wife this last week or so because she's ill. She's either not well enough yet to go to church, and/OR, she's heard via the servants' grapevine that Lady B is going. Elizabeth detests Lady B, and avoids her, to avoid giving her the respect Lady B thinks she's due, because of her social position as wife of a knight.

About Tuesday 24 November 1663

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

It was 46-47 years ago, reading Robert Heinlein's 'The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress', that I first discovered that an insurer is fundamentally the same as a bookie. As a young teenager, I was somewhat outraged at the thought, but I could not find a counter-argument.

The practices which helped cause the 2008 financial crisis provided yet more corroboration of Heinlein's hypothesis.