Taille means to cut, so a tailor/tailleur cut the cloth to size, a couturier (from coudre) sewed it. Taille is also used to mean to cut/sculpt stone, so a more literal translation of "a fine taille" might be "well sculpted", i.e. a fine shape. see http://portail.atilf.fr/cgi-bin/d…
"..the greatest shower of rain of a sudden and the greatest and most continued thunder that ever I heard I think in my life." This in the week that parts of Britain had 1 month's worth of rain in a few hours. http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/…
Shuffleboard: It is evident from Wheatley's annotations that the game he describes is what we now call shove ha'penny and Shakespeare called shove-groat shilling. The game described with pucks and sticks is completely foreign to me, so if that is what Pepys played, it somehow got lost from the English compendium of games between then and the 1950's, when I played traditional games at playtime.
Re: "Pressing. This went on for centuries." Isn't it called conscription / the draft, nowadays? Now, instead of being "pressed" into service, one is euphemistically "drawn" in, though still without the option of declining. Just as Patricia's SiL's ancestor hid in Newfoundland to escape the press, so many Vietnam era draftees went there and to other parts of Canada to escape the draft. Plus ça change...
"This day Mrs. Turner did lend me, as a rarity, a manuscript of one Mr. Wells...", but it is now in the Magdalene Pepys collection, so he never returned it; a very long "lend".
Miss Ann: Re, "I know I will get better in 7 days to a week" reminds me of the old saying: "Treat a cold and you will be rid of it in seven days; leave it alone and it will drag on for a week. ;-)
Tripes de Caen: a delicacy of Northern France, available - canned - in all good French Supermarchés. The accompanying sauce and vegetables giving it its flavour, and the tripe the texture. I remember butchers in northern England having several grades of tripe in their shop windows, when I was younger. Traditionally eaten as Tripe-and-Onions.
The pub has taken over from the coffee house. Every Saturday night throughout the British Isles, all the problems of the world and all the intractable philosophical questions are solved over several pints of beer. I, myself have solved Fermat's last theorum on the back of a beermat. Unfortunately, by Sunday morning, no one can remember what the solutions were. As DesCartes said, according to Monty Python, (see Susan's link above) "I drink, therefore I am."
1660: This day it is two years since it pleased God that I was cut of the stone at Mrs. Turner's in Salisbury Court. And did resolve while I live to keep it a festival, as I did the last year at my house, and for ever to have Mrs. Turner and her company with me.
1661: This is my great day that three years ago I was cut of the stone, and, blessed be God, I do yet find myself very free from pain again.
1662: This being, by God's great blessing, the fourth solemn day of my cutting for the stone this day four years, and am by God's mercy in very good health, and like to do well, the Lord's name be praised for it.
1663: This day is five years since it pleased God to preserve me at my being cut of the stone, of which I bless God I am in all respects well. Only now and then upon taking cold I have some pain, but otherwise in very good health always.
1664: ...and so home, and there found Madam Turner, her daughter The., Joyce Norton, my father and Mr. Honywood, and by and by come my uncle Wight and aunt. This being my solemn feast for my cutting of the stone, it being now, blessed be God! this day six years since the time; and I bless God I do in all respects find myself free from that disease or any signs of it, more than that upon the least cold I continue to have pain in making water, by gathering of wind and growing costive, till which be removed I am at no ease, but without that I am very well. One evil more I have, which is that upon the least squeeze almost my cods begin to swell and come to great pain, which is very strange and troublesome to me, though upon the speedy applying of a poultice it goes down again, and in two days I am well again.
Tuberculosis - Consumption - TB - The King's evil - the White Plague. TB is one of the most ancient of diseases, evidence of it being found in neolithic graves dating back to 5000 BC Currently, one in three of the Earth's population carry the TB bacteria (WHO estimate 2004), and it was probably more in 17th century London. We, and the 17th century London population, only survive this because our immune system has evolved to hold the infection at bay, though it doesn't kill the bateria. It is only when the immune system is suppressed by, for instance, malnutrition or an immuno-deficiency (like HIV/AIDS in modern times) that the consumption can take hold. Hence its reputation as a disease of poverty. Having said that, one in 5 deaths in mid 17th Century London were caused by consumption - the white plague, as recorded in the Bills of Mortality. It is a very virulent disease because the bacteria can be spread through the air from coughs, sneezes and evaporating spittle, and through consuming infected food and drink. Milk from TB infected cows was a very common vector before pasteurisation. The bacteria is also resistant to being frozen, so can lay dormant in frozen spittle on the ground to flare up again once a thaw arrives. Once this was realised, it led to anti-spitting laws in 19th century Britain, still evidenced by "No Spitting" signs on the buses, though there is little sign that it is now upheld in the streets. Poor Tom Pepys died of consumption on 15th March 1663/4, and Samuel Pepys' description of his demise - "About 8 o'clock my brother began to fetch his spittle with more pain, and to speak as much but not so distinctly, till at last the phlegm getting the mastery of him, and he beginning as we thought to rattle ... and at last his breath broke out bringing a flood of phlegm and stuff out with it, and so he died." - is fairly typical of a TB death. Because the tubercules reduce the efficiency of the lungs to absorb oxygen, cause the lungs to produce phlegm, and also often cause bleeding, in effect the sufferer drowns in his own phlegm and blood. The symtom that gives it its common name consumption, is the wasting away of the body of the sufferer and the skin pallor. Pepys doesn't report these symptoms with Tom, so maybe his infection was particularly virulent and fast acting. See: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/fa… http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/jou…
It seems Powell is a quack who, having made his unfounded diagnosis of pox, then invents symptoms to prove it. No wonder Sam threatens him with a duel.
"she is full now of the disease ... and talks of it mightily" I, like andy, had taken this all too literally. The "and" made me think she had the disease and talked about it too.
The pox was the latter-day equivalent of AIDS, it being a killer disease until half way through the last century. (my grandfather died of it in 1935) I would have thought the chancres and ulcers that characterise syphilis, would have been easily differentiated from the spots of smallpox, and the coughing up of blood that indicates T.B. As a prime witness, Sam's diagnosis (especially as he is talking to Tom's doctor) is probably quite trustworthy.
Jane Turner: Although Pepys says "I find that she is full now of the disease which my brother is troubled with..." She lives until 1686, according to the Encyclopedia, so apparently it is a survivable illness.
"...best the most cheape, instancing in French guns, which in France you may buy for 4 pistoles, as good to look to as others of 16, but not the service." I took this to mean that the best is cheapest in the long run. The French guns may look as good as ones costing 4 times the price, but they don't have the service life.
I *think* I like it. I did like the old, clean, layout with its Google like simple style, but this is OK too. I would prefer to see the text window a bit wider - the longer passages look very daunting when squeezed down the page. Everything seems to work OK: Firefox 2.0.0.2 on Windows XP Pro.
Re: Who could gain from ships being allowed to travel empty? The ship itself is an asset. If it is moored in the Indies waiting for possible cargo, it can't be used elsewhere. Also the skeleton crew would be paid for babysitting the empty ship. Better all round, if no cargo is forthcoming, to sail it home empty where it can pick up a freight earning cargo. I work for a shipping company and we have exactly the same decisions to make nowadays with containers from and to China: in full, back empty as the Chinese don't buy many manufactured goods from Europe or the US.
A less fanciful translation of L&M: ...there did see Mrs. Lane and from there she and I went to the tavern at the Bell in King's Street; and there, after some caresses I came twice under the chair(?), and the last to my great pleasure; but I greatly feared that she also came. But after I had done, she started to talk as before and I did perceive that I had done nothing to endanger her.
I wonder if sous de la chaise (sous la chaise in modern French) is some 17th century sexual slang, as it doesn't make much sense, unless it is describing coitus interruptus!
The official blue plaque marking the site of the old Bethlem hospital is on the Liverpool street side of Great Eastern Hotel, to the south of Liverpool Street Station, here: http://uk.multimap.com/map/browse… The later hospital rebuilt after the great fire formed the southern edge of Moorfields, now Finsbury Circus, seen quite clearly here: http://www.motco.com/map/81002/Se…
Comments
First Reading
About Tuesday 14 June 1664
GrahamT • Link
Taille means to cut, so a tailor/tailleur cut the cloth to size, a couturier (from coudre) sewed it.
Taille is also used to mean to cut/sculpt stone, so a more literal translation of "a fine taille" might be "well sculpted", i.e. a fine shape.
see http://portail.atilf.fr/cgi-bin/d…
It isn't anything to do with tails or taxes.
About Sunday 19 June 1664
GrahamT • Link
"..the greatest shower of rain of a sudden and the greatest and most continued thunder that ever I heard I think in my life."
This in the week that parts of Britain had 1 month's worth of rain in a few hours.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/…
About Saturday 11 June 1664
GrahamT • Link
Shuffleboard: It is evident from Wheatley's annotations that the game he describes is what we now call shove ha'penny and Shakespeare called shove-groat shilling. The game described with pucks and sticks is completely foreign to me, so if that is what Pepys played, it somehow got lost from the English compendium of games between then and the 1950's, when I played traditional games at playtime.
About Saturday 4 June 1664
GrahamT • Link
Re: "Pressing. This went on for centuries."
Isn't it called conscription / the draft, nowadays?
Now, instead of being "pressed" into service, one is euphemistically "drawn" in, though still without the option of declining.
Just as Patricia's SiL's ancestor hid in Newfoundland to escape the press, so many Vietnam era draftees went there and to other parts of Canada to escape the draft. Plus ça change...
About Saturday 7 May 1664
GrahamT • Link
"This day Mrs. Turner did lend me, as a rarity, a manuscript of one Mr. Wells...", but it is now in the Magdalene Pepys collection, so he never returned it; a very long "lend".
About Monday 2 May 1664
GrahamT • Link
Miss Ann: Re, "I know I will get better in 7 days to a week" reminds me of the old saying: "Treat a cold and you will be rid of it in seven days; leave it alone and it will drag on for a week. ;-)
About Saturday 9 April 1664
GrahamT • Link
Tripes de Caen: a delicacy of Northern France, available - canned - in all good French Supermarchés. The accompanying sauce and vegetables giving it its flavour, and the tripe the texture.
I remember butchers in northern England having several grades of tripe in their shop windows, when I was younger. Traditionally eaten as Tripe-and-Onions.
About Saturday 2 April 1664
GrahamT • Link
The pub has taken over from the coffee house. Every Saturday night throughout the British Isles, all the problems of the world and all the intractable philosophical questions are solved over several pints of beer. I, myself have solved Fermat's last theorum on the back of a beermat. Unfortunately, by Sunday morning, no one can remember what the solutions were.
As DesCartes said, according to Monty Python, (see Susan's link above) "I drink, therefore I am."
About Stone feast
GrahamT • Link
1660:
This day it is two years since it pleased God that I was cut of the stone at Mrs. Turner's in Salisbury Court. And did resolve while I live to keep it a festival, as I did the last year at my house, and for ever to have Mrs. Turner and her company with me.
1661:
This is my great day that three years ago I was cut of the stone, and, blessed be God, I do yet find myself very free from pain again.
1662:
This being, by God's great blessing, the fourth solemn day of my cutting for the stone this day four years, and am by God's mercy in very good health, and like to do well, the Lord's name be praised for it.
1663:
This day is five years since it pleased God to preserve me at my being cut of the stone, of which I bless God I am in all respects well. Only now and then upon taking cold I have some pain, but otherwise in very good health always.
1664:
...and so home, and there found Madam Turner, her daughter The., Joyce Norton, my father and Mr. Honywood, and by and by come my uncle Wight and aunt. This being my solemn feast for my cutting of the stone, it being now, blessed be God! this day six years since the time; and I bless God I do in all respects find myself free from that disease or any signs of it, more than that upon the least cold I continue to have pain in making water, by gathering of wind and growing costive, till which be removed I am at no ease, but without that I am very well. One evil more I have, which is that upon the least squeeze almost my cods begin to swell and come to great pain, which is very strange and troublesome to me, though upon the speedy applying of a poultice it goes down again, and in two days I am well again.
About Other illnesses
GrahamT • Link
Tuberculosis - Consumption - TB - The King's evil - the White Plague.
TB is one of the most ancient of diseases, evidence of it being found in neolithic graves dating back to 5000 BC
Currently, one in three of the Earth's population carry the TB bacteria (WHO estimate 2004), and it was probably more in 17th century London. We, and the 17th century London population, only survive this because our immune system has evolved to hold the infection at bay, though it doesn't kill the bateria. It is only when the immune system is suppressed by, for instance, malnutrition or an immuno-deficiency (like HIV/AIDS in modern times) that the consumption can take hold. Hence its reputation as a disease of poverty. Having said that, one in 5 deaths in mid 17th Century London were caused by consumption - the white plague, as recorded in the Bills of Mortality.
It is a very virulent disease because the bacteria can be spread through the air from coughs, sneezes and evaporating spittle, and through consuming infected food and drink. Milk from TB infected cows was a very common vector before pasteurisation. The bacteria is also resistant to being frozen, so can lay dormant in frozen spittle on the ground to flare up again once a thaw arrives. Once this was realised, it led to anti-spitting laws in 19th century Britain, still evidenced by "No Spitting" signs on the buses, though there is little sign that it is now upheld in the streets.
Poor Tom Pepys died of consumption on 15th March 1663/4, and Samuel Pepys' description of his demise -
"About 8 o'clock my brother began to fetch his spittle with more pain, and to speak as much but not so distinctly, till at last the phlegm getting the mastery of him, and he beginning as we thought to rattle ... and at last his breath broke out bringing a flood of phlegm and stuff out with it, and so he died."
- is fairly typical of a TB death. Because the tubercules reduce the efficiency of the lungs to absorb oxygen, cause the lungs to produce phlegm, and also often cause bleeding, in effect the sufferer drowns in his own phlegm and blood. The symtom that gives it its common name consumption, is the wasting away of the body of the sufferer and the skin pallor. Pepys doesn't report these symptoms with Tom, so maybe his infection was particularly virulent and fast acting.
See:
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/fa…
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/jou…
About Tuesday 15 March 1663/64
GrahamT • Link
It seems Powell is a quack who, having made his unfounded diagnosis of pox, then invents symptoms to prove it. No wonder Sam threatens him with a duel.
About Monday 14 March 1663/64
GrahamT • Link
"she is full now of the disease ... and talks of it mightily"
I, like andy, had taken this all too literally. The "and" made me think she had the disease and talked about it too.
The pox was the latter-day equivalent of AIDS, it being a killer disease until half way through the last century. (my grandfather died of it in 1935)
I would have thought the chancres and ulcers that characterise syphilis, would have been easily differentiated from the spots of smallpox, and the coughing up of blood that indicates T.B.
As a prime witness, Sam's diagnosis (especially as he is talking to Tom's doctor) is probably quite trustworthy.
About Monday 14 March 1663/64
GrahamT • Link
Jane Turner:
Although Pepys says "I find that she is full now of the disease which my brother is troubled with..." She lives until 1686, according to the Encyclopedia, so apparently it is a survivable illness.
About Friday 4 March 1663/64
GrahamT • Link
"...best the most cheape, instancing in French guns, which in France you may buy for 4 pistoles, as good to look to as others of 16, but not the service."
I took this to mean that the best is cheapest in the long run. The French guns may look as good as ones costing 4 times the price, but they don't have the service life.
About New design launched
GrahamT • Link
I *think* I like it. I did like the old, clean, layout with its Google like simple style, but this is OK too. I would prefer to see the text window a bit wider - the longer passages look very daunting when squeezed down the page.
Everything seems to work OK: Firefox 2.0.0.2 on Windows XP Pro.
About Monday 25 January 1663/64
GrahamT • Link
Re: Who could gain from ships being allowed to travel empty?
The ship itself is an asset. If it is moored in the Indies waiting for possible cargo, it can't be used elsewhere. Also the skeleton crew would be paid for babysitting the empty ship. Better all round, if no cargo is forthcoming, to sail it home empty where it can pick up a freight earning cargo.
I work for a shipping company and we have exactly the same decisions to make nowadays with containers from and to China: in full, back empty as the Chinese don't buy many manufactured goods from Europe or the US.
About Saturday 16 January 1663/64
GrahamT • Link
A less fanciful translation of L&M:
...there did see Mrs. Lane and from there she and I went to the tavern at the Bell in King's Street; and there, after some caresses I came twice under the chair(?), and the last to my great pleasure; but I greatly feared that she also came. But after I had done, she started to talk as before and I did perceive that I had done nothing to endanger her.
I wonder if sous de la chaise (sous la chaise in modern French) is some 17th century sexual slang, as it doesn't make much sense, unless it is describing coitus interruptus!
About Bethleham ("Bedlam") precinct
GrahamT • Link
The official blue plaque marking the site of the old Bethlem hospital is on the Liverpool street side of Great Eastern Hotel, to the south of Liverpool Street Station, here: http://uk.multimap.com/map/browse…
The later hospital rebuilt after the great fire formed the southern edge of Moorfields, now Finsbury Circus, seen quite clearly here:
http://www.motco.com/map/81002/Se…
About Friday 8 January 1663/64
GrahamT • Link
Make a dog laugh...
Still in use (see http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.a…)
and according to Wikipedia (which is never wrong!) dogs can laugh - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog#…
About Twas the night before New Years!
GrahamT • Link
Thank you Jeanine. Another wonderful New Year poem.
A belated Happy new Year to all