Annotations and comments

Paul Chapin has posted 849 annotations/comments since 17 January 2003.

Comments

First Reading

About Friday 14 July 1665

Paul Chapin  •  Link

Why, Mr. Wheatley - an editorial comment?!? Some temptations are beyond resisting, it seems.

—[All government’s business have been and are yet conducted in the same wasteful and desultory way. D.W.]

About Monday 10 July 1665

Paul Chapin  •  Link

"a servant of his, out of his horse"

Should this be "out of his house"? If not, what does "out of his horse" mean?

About Wine

Paul Chapin  •  Link

Reposting Mary's annotation from the diary for 8 July:

A tierce is a third part of a pipe of wine and equals 35 Imperial gallons
(= 42 US gallons).

Note: this is also the volume of a barrel of oil

About Tuesday 27 June 1665

Paul Chapin  •  Link

I've just returned from a couple of weeks in Mexico (Zacatecas), where we boarded with a family. It was quite common for folks to show up at mealtimes unannounced, and there was always some more food in the pot to put on their plates, or our landlady would quickly heat up some tortillas and some sauce to fill them with. I suspect that's more common worldwide than our hyperscheduled lives in the U.S.

About Friday 2 June 1665

Paul Chapin  •  Link

"which I doubt will fall"
Just a reminder, in case it's needed, that here "doubt" means "suspect."

About Friday 2 June 1665

Paul Chapin  •  Link

"the misfortune of having his name used by one, without his knowledge or privity"
Identity theft, 17th century style (credit Susan Chapin for that observation)

About Tuesday 30 May 1665

Paul Chapin  •  Link

Pedro, good catch. Today's entry is the first attested use of the word. Here's what the OED says:

[Found first after 1660. According to Skinner 1671 ‘vox academica’, i.e. a term of university or college slang. No connexion with "crone" has been traced.]
An intimate friend or associate; a ‘chum’.
1665 Pepys Diary 30 May, Jack Cole, my old school-fellow+who was a great chrony of mine. 1678 Butler Hud. iii. ii. 1269 The Scots, your constant Cronies, Th' Espousers of your Cause, and Monies. 1710 Steele Tatler No. 266 32 This is from Mrs. Furbish+an old School-Fellow and great Crony of her Ladyship's. 1818 Scott Old Mort. xi, The poor lad—my old cronie's son! 1857 W. Collins Dead Secret iii. ii. (1861) 78 Her father and the doctor had been old cronies. 1864 Thackeray D. Duval vi. (1869) 85 My schoolfellow+became a great crony of mine.

About Sunday 28 May 1665

Paul Chapin  •  Link

Sjoerd, I'd say you've got it just about right, with one small correction. The culprit is already in jail (the Tower). Lady S is hoping that the trauma and crudity of the abduction will make Elizabeth Mallet decide not to marry Rochester. As Jeannine's 2005 annotation on Mallet shows, it didn't work; she married him a couple of years later. So any of you young men hoping to win fair (and affluent) lady, now you know how to go about it.

About Wednesday 17 May 1665

Paul Chapin  •  Link

variation of the needle (from the Hooke folio, provided by Terry)

This was a magnetized needle, as used in a compass. It had been known at least since the time of Columbus that the compass needle did not point to true north, as indicated by the position of the North Star, but deviated from it a certain amount, which varied according to the compass's position on earth, and also through the course of the day for a stationary compass. This was a matter of intense interest to scientists of the time, not least because it was thought that this might provide a method of determining longitude at sea (that turned out not to work). Hooke and Halley devoted particular attention to the matter.

[Taken from various sources; a good (but old) one is
http://books.google.com/books?id=… ]

About Sunday 14 May 1665

Paul Chapin  •  Link

Thanks to Dirk for providing us occasional glimpses of Rev. Josselin's exasperating (to me) ruminations. Today he observes people dying of the plague, the drought continuing, the heat growing, but unfailingly begins by declaring "God good in manifold outward mercies." I wonder what it would take for him to decide that his God wasn't being so good after all.

About Tuesday 9 May 1665

Paul Chapin  •  Link

For Pedro, here's the OED entry for "roadstead":

A place where ships may conveniently or safely lie at anchor near the shore.
[1351 Cartul. Whitby (Surtees) II. 425 Deinz mesme la vile ou en la mere pres jongnaunts, apelle Radestede.]
1556 Borough in Hakluyt (1886) III. 120 Our barke did ride such a roadsted thet it was to be marueiled+how she was able to abide it. 1600 R. Carr tr. Mahumetan Hist. 57 Perceiuing that they had not a safe rodested there, they remoued from thence to an other rodested of that Island, called Maiaro. 1633 Sir J. Borough Sovereignty Brit. Seas (1651) 153 We stay till the Herring come home to our roade steads. 1774 Hull Dock Act 49 The roadstead near the haven mouth. 1795 in H. Tooke Purley (1829) I. 410 It+has no good Roadsted, and is not tenable, if not protected by a fleet. 1820 W. Scoresby Acc. Arctic Reg. I. 155 The coast affords several road-steads. 1856 Stanley Sinai & Pal. vi. (1858) 265 Caipha, at the opposite corner of the bay+, served as a roadstead. 1899 F. T. Bullen Log Sea-waif 47 We came to an anchor near the middle of the roadstead.

The 1351 reference is evidently from a French source, an unusual citation for the OED, but apropos here because it refers to a (presumably English) name. But we have English references from 1556 on.

About Tuesday 2 May 1665

Paul Chapin  •  Link

More lobster memories
When I was a grad student in Boston in the 60s, live lobsters (typically 2-3 pounds) were 79 cents a pound. We lived on them. When the price abruptly shot up out of reach, it was all right, because we were sated with them, like the prisoners Carl tells about.

Now Carl finds them cheap again, at about $6 a pound, and I guess that's right, after 40+ years of inflation, although I suspect the northeast coast of North America is the only place in the world you can get them at that price.

About Monday 1 May 1665

Paul Chapin  •  Link

"noble discourse all day long did please me"
I can imagine - or maybe I can't. Sam's days are often interesting, but this one I truly envy. A day spent in discourse and experiment with founders of the Royal Society, including Robert Hooke. Sam is in on the beginnings of one of the greatest eras of science the world has ever known.

About Thursday 27 April 1665

Paul Chapin  •  Link

"I always find the spelling differences between the Diary and Sam’s formal writing interesting"

A delayed response to Todd - correct me if I'm wrong, but I have the impression that Sam's shorthand was not a letter-for-letter cipher, but more of a kind of phonetic syllabary, like 20th century stenographers used to use. If that's the case, then the spelling in the Diary (as we see it) was imposed by Wheatley, which would account for how much closer it seems to be to modern orthography than are the transcriptions from Sam's letters. Of course, that leaves the question of why some archaic spellings persist, such as "warr".

About Wednesday 26 April 1665

Paul Chapin  •  Link

The mind of Margaret Pepys
We have agreed to disagree on the question of whether Margaret showed signs of dementia, the subject of a rather heated discussion some while back. Pace LH, there certainly were "indications" that she did, inconclusive ones to be sure, but enough to convince some of us that that was the case. It won't do for those on one side of that argument to come back and insist that the matter is settled in their favor, with no new evidence.

About Monday 24 April 1665

Paul Chapin  •  Link

"Creed had broke his desire to her ..."
Cf. OED definition 22a for 'break':
22. a. [...] to break news, a matter, a secret: to make it known, disclose, divulge it; now implying caution and delicacy.
c1450 Lonelich Grail xxxvi. 274 Al Šowre herte thanne to me breke. 1474 Sir J. Paston Lett. 747 III. 118 To whom she brake hyr harte and tolde hyr yt she sholde have hadde Mastr Paston. 1525 Ld. Berners Froiss. II. lxii. [lxv.] 212 A squyer of Bretayne, to whome he had broken his mynde. 1528 Gardiner in Pocock Rec. Ref. I. 101 His holiness demanded whether the king's highness had at any time broken this matter to the queen. 1683 Penn. Archives I. 83, I broke ye bussiness to Pr. Aldrix. 1712 Steele Spect. No. 455 33 She began to break her Mind very freely+to me. 1712 Arbuthnot John Bull 102 With a design to break the matter gently to his partners. 1759 Dilworth Pope 64 After a short acquaintance+he broke his mind to him upon that subject. a1779 G. Colman in G. Colman (Jun.) Posth. Lett. (1820) 339 Here it may be resolved+that she shall break the secret of their marriage to the old Earl. 1840 Hood Up Rhine 1 Now, however, I have some news to break.

About Monday 24 April 1665

Paul Chapin  •  Link

“and it is strange how he will preserve his constant humour of delaying all business that comes before him"

Todd, I took the reference to be to Povy, mostly because Sam complains constantly about Povy's business acumen, while his complaints about Creed relate to other matters entirely.