Annotations and comments

Terry Foreman has posted 16,447 annotations/comments since 28 June 2005.

Comments

First Reading

About Saturday 2 August 1662

Terry F.  •  Link

Ah! the pleasure of a bed-time horror-story: "we soon went to bed, before we slept I telling [as we talked]...the manner of my being cut of the stone, which pleased [Captain Cocke] much. So to sleep."

When they were 9 and 11, they in bed, I read [by torch] E.A. Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum," dramatizing it as much as I could, as I suppose S.P. did his story, which pleased my sons Sam (!) and Alan so much that they remember it now, at 29 and 27.

About Saturday 2 August 1662

Terry F.  •  Link

Robert, was Cocke pleased at the telling, or the pain, or the possible en-tail (sterility of the teller) of the tale?

Hmmm. Yes: some trinket.

About Hill House, Chatham

Terry F.  •  Link

"A large house used for official business and for the accommodation of offical visitors." (L&M, iii.153.n.4.)

About Friday 1 August 1662

Terry F.  •  Link

Persons and property (chattel)

It's become popular to blur the difference between these when speaking of women in a society* in which men are "superior" in a legal/customary sense. But though what Australian Susan, says about the "scene" Tomalin depicts be true, the other side -- the reciprocal obligations of the men -- also need be noted: there was a cost on both sides: God help the man who would not provide his maid bread and board!

But with Australian Susan, I should think that times have changed: indeed, the current employer/employee relationship in advanced societies would have been literally inconceivable in the 17c.

*I stipulate [that's legalese] the validity of the argument of Gerda Lerner's superb *The Creation of Patriarchy" (Oxford, 1986), i.e., that there was a time before which it did/or may not have prevailed.

About Friday 1 August 1662

Terry F.  •  Link

Being 'in the control' of [a man] does not = being his 'property.'

Jeannine, what you or someone says: "By law [{uneducated?) women] were considered a man's "property" as in daughter, sister, wife, or (stretched definition) a maid” is a rhetorical stretch, as though a person were a piece of furniture: one has no obligations to the latter!

Moreover, marriage put the wife in a distinctive legal relation to the man, and vice-versa.

About Friday 1 August 1662

Terry F.  •  Link

"wonder how much of the pain was due to the coach..."
Xjy, the first time Sam's Codds were discussed, there was a Coach-ride
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
Last month the day after moving stuff in the house "Having by some mischance hurt my cods. I had my old pain..."
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
(A search shows “my old pain” occurs 24 times before today, but just those ellipses, or at least “cods” were discussed just these times — don’t know what to do with those data.)

There is this: Late last year there was an ellipsis where a man who called the King of Portugal a cuckhold “was run into the cods with a sword and had been killed,"
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

Do you suppose Wheatley had a problem with HIS cods that was too painful for words?

About Friday 1 August 1662

Terry F.  •  Link

By his cods! The Sunday Oaths fail to mention lust, do they? Sam's a man knows himself a bit: he would not want to eschew an opportunity to pray for God's forgiveness, would he?!

About Thursday 31 July 1662

Terry F.  •  Link

Compare today's Coventry-dinner with Tuesday's: day before yesterday,"being invited [Sam explained] I went with Sir George and Mr. Coventry to Sir W. Batten's to dinner, and there merry, and very friendly to Sir Wm. and he to me, and complies much with me, but I know he envies me, and I do not value him.” Is there perhaps a leitmotif here? That, I gather, is somewhat under discussion here.

(PS: Robert Gertz, I found the “fan fic” a great enjoyment and plausible: cf. Miriam’s post; perhaps we need a PepysDiary SmartGroups poll?)

About Thursday 31 July 1662

Terry F.  •  Link

I take it that the "we" who "resolved of eating a bit together, which we did at the Ship behind the Exchange," are the Dynamic Duo. ?! Currying favor with Coventry, who is a welcome cover for Sam's own agenda!?

About Thursday 31 July 1662

Terry F.  •  Link

Robert Gertz, Brown exonerated, Sam hugs Coventry; is it because he -- or was it also Coventry or them both --engaged in "frightening the officers there"?

About Thursday 31 July 1662

Terry F.  •  Link

Aye Xjy, Coventry was angry at Browne, threatening to appeal to the Duke to get him turned out because he hadn't sailed; but he had not sailed in good part because the yard was in a mess because of the state of the staff. (BTW, for the dismissal of the timber measurers, L&M reference Duke of York, Mem. (naval) pp. 61-2.) Thanks to you and Paul Chapin, we will get this straight.

About Thursday 31 July 1662

Terry F.  •  Link

Thankd you Paul Chapin, for resolving who was "cruel angry" = Coventry: that makes sense of that passage. Good read!

About Thursday 31 July 1662

Terry F.  •  Link

"I drank but two glasses of wine this day, and yet it makes my head ake all night, and indisposed me all the next day, of which I am glad." Mayhap mañana I will stick by my Sunday Oaths. [If at first he thought to pass of his drinking as a function of the happy mtg. with Capt. Browne, as an afterthought on a day when he was a busy-body/control-freak, begun with ordering his house remodeled, when Sam records this [next day?], the “ake” has brought him a tad of humility (?) ended with reviewing the order of his “house” (family) beyond his control.]