Annotations and comments

john has posted 352 annotations/comments since 14 March 2013.

Comments

Second Reading

About Monday 15 September 1662

john  •  Link

"Did they not take into account [...]?" I daresay that they did -- there were several linguists among them. Part of the pleasure of reading Pepys is seeing how the language changed and discussing it.

About Saturday 13 September 1662

john  •  Link

Loss of Leades should not be taken lightly if we go by the number of times that he and Elizabeth walked upon them for pleasure. Presumably, only one access point exists.

About Friday 12 September 1662

john  •  Link

If the swordstrike were reported accurately, Ferrars would have lost the use of those fingers. Remember, these are the days before antibiotics and micro-surgery.

About Tuesday 9 September 1662

john  •  Link

Castles had their garderobes and London had night-soil men emptying the pits (in the basement), those of his neighbour's occasionally overflowing (viz. entry of 20 Oct 1660).

About Thursday 28 August 1662

john  •  Link

"Is it normal for people to be so lenient with their servants back then?" No -- corporal punishment was the norm and Pepys has doled out his fair share to Will. But Will has become more than servant and closer to son. (I would recommend obtaining a copy of Lisa Picard's wonderful summary of Pepys.)

About Monday 25 August 1662

john  •  Link

"Thirty absentees were dismissed on the following day." We are beginning to see why naval business was in such a mess -- thirty workers absent and probably not the first time.

About Saturday 23 August 1662

john  •  Link

"to see what is done and design more." Design as you go, presumably once the framework is done. Do any construction manuals of thie era survive?

About Saturday 23 August 1662

john  •  Link

Carmichael: There have been several discussions over this (most of which I cannot find). The work week is described in the annotations of 12 July 1662 but Pepys was an "executive" with little distinction between work and non-work. Remember that his lodgings were at pleasure and he was expected to be on call all the time.

About Friday 22 August 1662

john  •  Link

tc wrote: "a not-so-subtle hint to get the busybody fops out of the Storehouse so some work can get done..."
Some work or some thievery?

About Monday 18 August 1662

john  •  Link

Bill, I still have my slide rules, though idle for the past several decades.

Napier is noted in the slide rule entry but not his "bones", his log-based analogue calculator. It is unknown to me whether Pepys ever used "Napier's Bones".

About Saturday 16 August 1662

john  •  Link

Ah, the continual frustration of not having a good description of the work on his house. Having done a fair bit of work on century-old houses, I would love to read of this work.

About Saturday 2 August 1662

john  •  Link

"I was afeard to ride, because of my paine in my cods" (L&M) I do not think that they rode two-point then, probably because their stirrups were so far ahead of the girth (as one sees from paintings of the day).

About Thursday 31 July 1662

john  •  Link

I do not find Sam's entry today to be priggish or self-satisfying but rather expressing exasperation at finding a project so out of sorts. Things are no longer "business as usual".

About Friday 25 July 1662

john  •  Link

In these days of easy photocopying, we ought not forget that copying back then meant copying by hand. (Copiers were well established when I was a student, of course, but some of the older faculty recounted how they copied information from journals by hand.)

About Thursday 10 July 1662

john  •  Link

"that, every man minding a several business, we dispatch nothing." Then, as now, multi-tasking redueces productivity.

About Friday 4 July 1662

john  •  Link

Pepys, Imprimatur of Principia: I am tickled pink learning this -- I remember looking at Principia as a graduate student long before I knew of the diary.

About Monday 30 June 1662

john  •  Link

There is the matter of how these holes would have been drilled. One would need a hefty wimble and a long bit to drill through the oak-panelled walls. This is not something Pepys would have on him or even easilly available. I do not really think that he drilled the holes himself.