"Paracelsus, a 16th-century Swiss physician and “father of toxicology” believed that to cure an ailment you needed to treat it with something similar, and many of the corpse medicine-using doctors followed this lead.
"To prevent tooth decay, someone could wear a tooth taken from a corpse and wear it around his or her neck, or touch the corpse tooth to one’s own."
Going to the dentist is much better than this solution for toothache.
"This evening, being weary of my late idle courses, and the little good I shall do the King or myself in the office, I bound myself to very strict rules till Whitsunday next."
This confirms my observations that Pepys has given up on the monthly vows with penalties payable to the poor box. He seems to have broken the theater habit, but the afternoon's off with work in the morning and evening doesn't seem to be practical, especially in war time. With the fleet afloat, he needs to be more attentive.
I wonder why Whitsun is the cut-off. That's only a few weeks away.
Historians largely agree that apple trees existed along the Nile River Delta as early as 1300 BC, but it is unclear whether cider was ever produced from the fruit.
When the Romans arrived in England in 55 BC, they were reported to have found the local Kentish villagers drinking a delicious cider-like beverage made from apples.
According to ancient records, the Romans and their leader, Julius Caesar, embraced the pleasant pursuit with enthusiasm. How long the locals had been making this apple drink prior to the arrival of the Romans is anybody's guess.
I found this story so funny I'm posting it as is, just in case the link dies:
Just off of London’s famous Fleet Street runs a small, unassuming alleyway named Cliffords Inn Passage.
In medieval times it served as the main entrance to Clifford’s Inn of Chancery, an institution for training barristers. By the 19th century, the passageway became little more than a small shadowy alleyway off of a street filled with various drinking establishments—precisely the place where those frequenting such establishments would drunkenly stagger for a pee.
In a time when sewage still filled the streets and the Thames itself ran with death, urination in a secluded alley was certainly not surprising. Over time, however, the persistent pummel of piddle began to take a toll, corroding the brick walls that made up these alleyways. To prevent further damage, urine deflectors were installed along the length of Cliffords Inn Passage. There are long strips of metal, angled to drain the urine into the gutter (or onto the shoes of its source).
Although this effectively combated the unsanitary practices of the time, many “gentlemen” were miffed at the urine deflectors introduction.
One reportedly commented in 1809: “In London a man may sometimes walk a mile before he can meet with a suitable corner; for so accommodating are the owners of doorways, passages, and angles, that they seem to have exhausted invention in the ridiculous barricades and shelves, grooves, and one fixed above another, to conduct the stream into the shoes of the luckless wight who shall dare to profane the intrenchments.”
Our current Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, has become a Utube star as the news of the Brexit crisis drags on.
On March 18, 2019, Speaker Bercow revived a parliamentary rule from 1604 to stop Prime Minister Theresa May’s government from bringing the same withdrawal agreement with the European Union back to Parliament after two earlier lopsided votes against it.
The position of Speaker was invented long before 1604; in fact, the position was created during England’s so-called 'Good Parliament' of 1376.
Even then the English parliament was more powerful than others in Europe, because the House of Commons had real power, most importantly over taxation.
In 1376, the Commons strengthened itself by electing a Speaker, so it could speak “with one voice” and not be divided or picked off by the more powerful members of the House of Lords.
England was in chaos at the time (chaos seems to be an on-going theme of British history). Edward III was senile, and his eldest son (the Black Prince) died during this parliament, leaving a nine-year-old heir.
Meanwhile, a corrupt cabal was running amok at court. The Commons asserted itself by putting forward a Speaker, emphasizing that 'what one of us says, all say and assent to.'
It then invented impeachment in order to condemn the king’s corrupt advisers and his mistress, Alice Perrers.
A Speaker and Impeachment, all in one bundle. What say you, Lady Castlemaine?
Since many Scots were present on Barbados, one way or tother, I found it interesting to see how early the University of Glasgow began to receive endowments from Scots trading families involved in the Caribbean and therefore slavery.
Cambridge and Oxford are currently reviewing their records and similar reports to this should be forthcoming during the early 2020's.
The lack of endowments during the Diary years and for decades afterwards indicates to me that income from slavery-related undertakings was at that time tenuous and formative.
FORGET the immediately-above post; the website with the picture is ambiguously written from a Diary-followers' point-of-view. https://www.londonremembers.com/s… It should says something like this:
"Located on the site of Walsingham's mansion, the Navy Office in which Samuel Pepys lived and worked survived the Great Fire, partly due to Pepys' efforts. The building was destroyed by another fire in 1673, and the one in this engraving was built 1674-5 and demolished in 1788 when the office moved to Somerset House."
So it is true Pepys worked in this building. Just not in Diary times. This was built after 1673.
So I stand by my ramshackled E-shaped Tudor house idea, with his house being at the back by the gardens:
The Navy Office gardens were on the site of Lumley House, formerly belonging to the Fratres Sancta Crucis (or Crutched Friars) ... until its removal to Somerset House in the 1740’s. Latham's Companion describes its location as "the northern section of a large house on the e. side of Seething Lane, a few doors south of its junction with Crutched Friars, with a courtyard opening onto the Lane and garden stretching from the Lane to the n.-w. corner of Tower Hill."
I bet that is the front door to the official offices, fronting onto the street. Pepys talks about walking through the garden to get to the office, so I assume the living quarters were at the back. Being an Elizabethan building, it was probably E shaped, so and the "spokes" were where the "houses" were located.
As today, people renovate what can be seen from the street, and when the money runs out, they stop. There's no way Pepys would have been allowed to put an extra storey on the front of that beautiful building. Hence my theory about the E shape, and the Tudor nature of what we cannot see.
See the pictures of Lydiard Park here. All very pretty, until you see the backside of the house which is just yards from the Church. That's how the entire original house looked before the St.John family tidied it up ... and ran out of money before they finished. https://www.google.com/maps/uv?hl…
Clearly the "leads" Pepys walked and sat on were flat roof areas covered with lead sheeting, easily accessible through a door or window, which could be converted by the use of railings into a safe place for a small social gathering. Walking upon the leads implies a fairly extensive (although probably narrow) space. To know for sure, we need more information about the architecture of the Navy complex.
OED defines "Lead 1," as a noun:
7. pl. a. The sheets or strips of lead used to cover a roof; often collect. for a lead flat, a lead roof, †occas. construed as sing. b. The lead frames of the panes in lattice or stained glass windows.
"a. 1578–9 in Willis & Clark Cambridge (1886) I. 538 Mending the leddes over the librarie chambers." "1588 Bp. Andrewes Serm. Spittle (1641) 5 He looketh downe on his brethren, as if he stood on the top of a Leads." "1625 Bacon Ess., Building (Arb.) 550 A Goodly Leads upon the Top, railed with Statua's interposed." "a 1635 Corbet Iter Bor. (1647) 133 Gardens cover howses there like leades." "1726 Leoni Alberti's Archit. I. 78 Leads or Terrasses from whence the Soldiers may be molested with stones or darts." "1760 C. Johnston Chrysal (1822) I. 238 A cat+whom she used to meet in the evenings, upon the leads of the house." "1824 Scott Redgauntlet ch. xiii, Trumbull+clambered out upon the leads." "1873 Dixon Two Queens II. vii. vi. 42 A blare of trumpets from the leads told every one+that [etc.]." "1705 Hearne Collect. 8 Nov. (O.H.S.) I. 68 After the Examination of the Books, & a slight view of the Leads."
I like 1726: "Leads or Terrasses from whence the Soldiers may be molested with stones or darts." I'm surprised that didn't happen more often.
I can't get over how relaxed Pepys is being about the fleet going to sea. No panic about ropes or sails, victuling is under control, they have all the necessary flags, no impressment problems ... either he has no money so he can't do anything about the above, or he has successfully delegated everything so he can endlessly play the accountant.
Most of this story is admittedly about the current St. Paul's, but gives information about Charles II's efforts to save the old one, the priceless library of books that was lost in the Great Fire, and about Wren's design process and the incredible model he built to sell his vision for the current building to Charles II. Plus lots of lovely photos and information on how to sign up for a tour:
Food historian Barbara Santich once referred to medieval gelatin specialties as “the glamor dish offered at the end of a banquet, bejeweled with sparkling crimson pomegranate seeds or golden spices.”
By the early-14th century, recipes evolved for increasingly complex gelatin-based dishes, such as Milanese physician Maino de Maineri’s concoction of fish boiled in wine, thickened with roasted bread soaked in vinegar and cut with cinnamon, cloves, and galingale.
These elaborate takes on an older staple flowed naturally from the growth of wealth and international trade and travel in Europe. The urge to build a reputation as a chef or wealthy family resulted in increasingly complex and pricey dishes.
Over the coming decades, chefs found they could make entirely clear gelatins. This allowed them to showcase intricately layered ingredients — such as expensive fruits and spices — or color the base for vibrant edible decor.
Gelatin primarily rose to become a status symbol because of the wealth implied by the time and effort required to make it regularly. Rounds of boiling and straining out impurities took more than a day to complete.
The 14th-century French chef Guillaume Tirel, a.k.a. Taillevent, explained in his Le Viandier that, “He who would make a gelatin is not allowed to sleep.”
Gelatin wasn’t expensive or hard to make on its own. Russian families of all classes have long prepared kholodets (savory meat cuts suspended in gelatin) as a winter holiday treat.
But serving elaborate gelatins frequently, rather than as a special holiday dish, was a sign of wealth: it showed you could hire a dedicated cooking staff to go through the arduous and smelly process of making it.
It probably would have been unthinkable for a lady to send Berowne a pair of gloves, but what was the function of the one white glove? In the next line he swears to Rosaline, "My love to thee is sound, sans crack or flaw."
The point is his swearing an oath of love on a white glove that the audience of the time would assume to have been received within the circle of his fraternity. They would automatically relate it to an initiation ceremony.
In saying, "how white the hand, God knows", Berowne is confessing that he has put in jeopardy his virtue by breaking his oath of initiation. But there is a double irony, for what is the value of a love pledge made upon such a glove?
An authority on the relationship of hands to oaths, Thomas Dekker explains it best in his play Satiro-Mastix… of 1602 when he has Sir Walter Terill say,
"An oath! why 'tis the traffic of the soul, 'Tis law within a man; the seal of faith, The lord of every conscience; unto whom We set our thoughts like hands: …" (V.i.)
Berowne's glove problem hints at Ferdinand, King of Navarre's "little academe" being a masonic lodge, and this raises fascinating possibilities.
Was Shakespeare a Freemason? Gloves indicate he may have been.
In contrast to the ample surviving records of Scottish freemasonry, little has survived about the English masonic tradition before 18th century. The Masonic historian, James Anderson says in his 1738 ‘The New Book of Constitutions’ p. 105: "… many of the Fraternity's Records of this [Charles II's] and former Reigns were lost in the next [James II's] and at the Revolution [1688]; and many of them were too hastily burnt in our Time from a Fear of making Discoveries …"
Shakespeare was a glover's son, and therefore fluently spoke the language of gloves. In Elizabethan-Jacobean England gloves had meanings hard to understand today. It was a luxury item, replete with status and complex symbolic meanings, and were highly regarded gifts.
Gloves were a customary New Year's gift, sometimes being substituted for by "glove-money". And gloves were the traditional gift of suitors to their betrothed.
In ‘Much Ado about Nothing’ Hero mentions, "these gloves, the count sent me, they are an excellent perfume" (III. iv.). The glove signified a deep reciprocal bond between giver and receiver in many situations.
The Clown, in ‘The Winter's Tale,’ remarks, "If I were not in love with Mopsa, thou shouldst take no money of me; but being enthralled as I am, it will also be the bondage of certain ribbons and gloves" (IV. iv.).
In ‘Henry V’ the King exchanges gloves with the lowly soldier, Williams (IV. i.).
An example of swearing on a glove is in The Merry Wives of Windsor (I.i.) when Slender swears to Falstaff "by these gloves" that Pistol had picked his purse.
But it’s ‘Love's Labour's Lost’ that has kept Shakespeare buffs frustrated for decades. It is his most teasing play, hinting at hidden meanings. Plus it appears to be the only play whose plot he composed himself. The basic situation is explained in Ferdinand, King of Navarre’s first speech:
"Our late edict shall strongly stand in force: Navarre shall be the wonder of the world; Our court shall be a little academe, Still and contemplative in living art. You three, Berowne, Dumain, and Longaville, Have sworn for three years' term to live with me, My fellow-scholars, and to keep those statutes That are recorded in this schedule here: Your oaths are pass'd; and now subscribe your names, That his own hand may strike his honour down That violates the smallest branch herein:" (I. i. 11-21).
Despite the scholars pledging to 3 years of celibacy, some visiting ladies led by the Princess of France subvert their resolutions by winning their hearts. The references flash by in a constantly jesting manner, but gloves only appear in the final scene -- twice:
Princess: "But, Katherine, what was sent to you from fair Dumain?" Katherine: "Madame, this glove." Princess: "Did he not send you twain?" Katherine: "Yes, Madam; and moreover, Some thousand verses of a faithful lover;" (47-50).
This is plain: the suitor Dumain has sent a pair of gloves, which Katharine has accepted.
More complex is the case of the love-stricken Berowne, who proclaims:
"and I here protest, By this white glove (how white the hand, God knows), Henceforth my wooing mind shall be express'd In russet yeas and honest kersey noes." (410-13)
Today I was reading an article on dentistry which had a few facts of interest. I include the link, but it isn't an historical read. https://www.theatlantic.com/magaz…
"The phrase “evidence-based medicine” was coined in 1991, but the concept began taking shape in the 1960s, if not earlier (some scholars trace its origins all the way back to the 17th century)." [A nod to the Royal Society, or ...?]
"In medieval Europe, barbers didn’t just trim hair and shave beards; they were also surgeons, performing a range of minor operations including bloodletting, the administration of enemas, and tooth extraction. Barber-surgeons, and the more specialized “tooth drawers,” would wrench, smash, and knock teeth out of people’s mouths with an intimidating metal instrument called a dental key: Imagine a chimera of a hook, a hammer, and forceps. Sometimes the results were disastrous.
"In the 1700s, Thomas Berdmore, George III’s “Operator for the Teeth,” described one woman who lost “a piece of jawbone as big as a walnut and three neighboring molars” at the hands of a local barber.
"Barber-surgeons came to America as early as 1636.
"By the 18th century, dentistry was firmly established in the colonies as a trade akin to blacksmithing (Paul Revere was an early American craftsman of artisanal dentures). Itinerant dentists moved from town to town by carriage with carts of dreaded tools in tow, temporarily setting up shop in a tavern or town square. They yanked teeth or bored into them with hand drills, filling cavities with mercury, tin, gold, or molten lead. For anesthetic, they used arsenic, nutgalls, mustard seed, leeches. Mixed in with the honest tradesmen — who genuinely believed in the therapeutic power of bloodsucking worms — were swindlers who urged their customers to have numerous teeth removed in a single sitting or charged them extra to stuff their pitted molars with homemade gunk of dubious benefit."
Charming.
nutgall -- noun Medical Definition of nutgall: a gall that resembles a nut especially: a gall produced on an oak (especially Quercus infectoria) and used as a source of tannic acid First Known Use of nutgall 15th century, in the meaning defined above https://www.merriam-webster.com/d…
"... and so home, and there find a girl sent at my desire by Mrs. Michell of Westminster Hall, to be my girl under the cook-maid, Susan. But I am a little dissatisfied that the girl, though young, is taller and bigger than Su, and will not, I fear, be under her command, ..."
I confess I've lost track of the maids. But seems to me that his little girl ("Su" above), is not the same person as the cook-maid "Susan" (above). Little Su sounded as if she was about 9 when she arrived a couple of years ago, and I don't think the Pepys would have a now-13-year-old in charge of the food. If this was one and the same person, I don't think he would have used two versions of the same name in two sentences.
Seniority counts, and Pepys needs "Su" who has been working for "Susan" to teach this new girl the ropes. If the new girl is taller than "Su" it may be hard for her to do this.
I wondering if this might be the same Susan last heard from in August 1663 who seems to have worked for the Pepys a few times: https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
Comments
Second Reading
About Barber-Surgeons' Company
San Diego Sarah • Link
"Paracelsus, a 16th-century Swiss physician and “father of toxicology” believed that to cure an ailment you needed to treat it with something similar, and many of the corpse medicine-using doctors followed this lead.
"To prevent tooth decay, someone could wear a tooth taken from a corpse and wear it around his or her neck, or touch the corpse tooth to one’s own."
Going to the dentist is much better than this solution for toothache.
See:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/arti…
About Friday 4 May 1666
San Diego Sarah • Link
"This evening, being weary of my late idle courses, and the little good I shall do the King or myself in the office, I bound myself to very strict rules till Whitsunday next."
This confirms my observations that Pepys has given up on the monthly vows with penalties payable to the poor box. He seems to have broken the theater habit, but the afternoon's off with work in the morning and evening doesn't seem to be practical, especially in war time. With the fleet afloat, he needs to be more attentive.
I wonder why Whitsun is the cut-off. That's only a few weeks away.
About Cider
San Diego Sarah • Link
The History of Apple Cider
Historians largely agree that apple trees existed along the Nile River Delta as early as 1300 BC, but it is unclear whether cider was ever produced from the fruit.
When the Romans arrived in England in 55 BC, they were reported to have found the local Kentish villagers drinking a delicious cider-like beverage made from apples.
According to ancient records, the Romans and their leader, Julius Caesar, embraced the pleasant pursuit with enthusiasm. How long the locals had been making this apple drink prior to the arrival of the Romans is anybody's guess.
About Fleet Street
San Diego Sarah • Link
I found this story so funny I'm posting it as is, just in case the link dies:
Just off of London’s famous Fleet Street runs a small, unassuming alleyway named Cliffords Inn Passage.
In medieval times it served as the main entrance to Clifford’s Inn of Chancery, an institution for training barristers. By the 19th century, the passageway became little more than a small shadowy alleyway off of a street filled with various drinking establishments—precisely the place where those frequenting such establishments would drunkenly stagger for a pee.
In a time when sewage still filled the streets and the Thames itself ran with death, urination in a secluded alley was certainly not surprising. Over time, however, the persistent pummel of piddle began to take a toll, corroding the brick walls that made up these alleyways.
To prevent further damage, urine deflectors were installed along the length of Cliffords Inn Passage. There are long strips of metal, angled to drain the urine into the gutter (or onto the shoes of its source).
Although this effectively combated the unsanitary practices of the time, many “gentlemen” were miffed at the urine deflectors introduction.
One reportedly commented in 1809: “In London a man may sometimes walk a mile before he can meet with a suitable corner; for so accommodating are the owners of doorways, passages, and angles, that they seem to have exhausted invention in the ridiculous barricades and shelves, grooves, and one fixed above another, to conduct the stream into the shoes of the luckless wight who shall dare to profane the intrenchments.”
https://www.atlasobscura.com/plac…
So be careful of your intrenchments, gentlemen.
About The Speaker
San Diego Sarah • Link
Our current Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, has become a Utube star as the news of the Brexit crisis drags on.
On March 18, 2019, Speaker Bercow revived a parliamentary rule from 1604 to stop Prime Minister Theresa May’s government from bringing the same withdrawal agreement with the European Union back to Parliament after two earlier lopsided votes against it.
The position of Speaker was invented long before 1604; in fact, the position was created during England’s so-called 'Good Parliament' of 1376.
Even then the English parliament was more powerful than others in Europe, because the House of Commons had real power, most importantly over taxation.
In 1376, the Commons strengthened itself by electing a Speaker, so it could speak “with one voice” and not be divided or picked off by the more powerful members of the House of Lords.
England was in chaos at the time (chaos seems to be an on-going theme of British history). Edward III was senile, and his eldest son (the Black Prince) died during this parliament, leaving a nine-year-old heir.
Meanwhile, a corrupt cabal was running amok at court. The Commons asserted itself by putting forward a Speaker, emphasizing that 'what one of us says, all say and assent to.'
It then invented impeachment in order to condemn the king’s corrupt advisers and his mistress, Alice Perrers.
A Speaker and Impeachment, all in one bundle. What say you, Lady Castlemaine?
For more information (mostly about Chaucer, who was alive at the time) see
https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019…
About Barbados
San Diego Sarah • Link
Since many Scots were present on Barbados, one way or tother, I found it interesting to see how early the University of Glasgow began to receive endowments from Scots trading families involved in the Caribbean and therefore slavery.
Cambridge and Oxford are currently reviewing their records and similar reports to this should be forthcoming during the early 2020's.
The lack of endowments during the Diary years and for decades afterwards indicates to me that income from slavery-related undertakings was at that time tenuous and formative.
https://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media…
About Friday 27 April 1666
San Diego Sarah • Link
FORGET the immediately-above post; the website with the picture is ambiguously written from a Diary-followers' point-of-view.
https://www.londonremembers.com/s…
It should says something like this:
"Located on the site of Walsingham's mansion, the Navy Office in which Samuel Pepys lived and worked survived the Great Fire, partly due to Pepys' efforts. The building was destroyed by another fire in 1673, and the one in this engraving was built 1674-5 and demolished in 1788 when the office moved to Somerset House."
So it is true Pepys worked in this building. Just not in Diary times. This was built after 1673.
So I stand by my ramshackled E-shaped Tudor house idea, with his house being at the back by the gardens:
The Navy Office gardens were on the site of Lumley House, formerly belonging to the Fratres Sancta Crucis (or Crutched Friars) ... until its removal to Somerset House in the 1740’s.
Latham's Companion describes its location as "the northern section of a large house on the e. side of Seething Lane, a few doors south of its junction with Crutched Friars, with a courtyard opening onto the Lane and garden stretching from the Lane to the n.-w. corner of Tower Hill."
See our own encyclopedia for further descriptions:
https://www.pepysdiary.com/indept…
About Friday 27 April 1666
San Diego Sarah • Link
I bet that is the front door to the official offices, fronting onto the street. Pepys talks about walking through the garden to get to the office, so I assume the living quarters were at the back. Being an Elizabethan building, it was probably E shaped, so and the "spokes" were where the "houses" were located.
As today, people renovate what can be seen from the street, and when the money runs out, they stop. There's no way Pepys would have been allowed to put an extra storey on the front of that beautiful building. Hence my theory about the E shape, and the Tudor nature of what we cannot see.
See the pictures of Lydiard Park here. All very pretty, until you see the backside of the house which is just yards from the Church. That's how the entire original house looked before the St.John family tidied it up ... and ran out of money before they finished.
https://www.google.com/maps/uv?hl…
About At home with Mr and Mrs Pepys
San Diego Sarah • Link
In the Navy Office part of our Encyclopedia there is a link to a picture of the complex ... not at all how I pictured it:
https://www.londonremembers.com/s…
I had something much more Tudor and ramshackled in mind.
About Leads
San Diego Sarah • Link
In the Navy Office part of our Encyclopedia there is a link to a picture of the complex ... not at all how I pictured it:
https://www.londonremembers.com/s…
I had something much more Tudor and ramshackled in mind.
About Friday 27 April 1666
San Diego Sarah • Link
In the Navy Office part of our Encyclopedia there is a link to a picture of the complex ... not at all how I pictured it:
https://www.londonremembers.com/s…
I had something much more Tudor and ramshackled in mind.
About Sunday 2 September 1666
San Diego Sarah • Link
An article about Pepys with woodcuts of the fire:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/trave…
About Leads
San Diego Sarah • Link
Clearly the "leads" Pepys walked and sat on were flat roof areas covered with lead sheeting, easily accessible through a door or window, which could be converted by the use of railings into a safe place for a small social gathering.
Walking upon the leads implies a fairly extensive (although probably narrow) space. To know for sure, we need more information about the architecture of the Navy complex.
OED defines "Lead 1," as a noun:
7. pl. a. The sheets or strips of lead used to cover a roof; often collect. for a lead flat, a lead roof, †occas. construed as sing.
b. The lead frames of the panes in lattice or stained glass windows.
"a. 1578–9 in Willis & Clark Cambridge (1886) I. 538 Mending the leddes over the librarie chambers."
"1588 Bp. Andrewes Serm. Spittle (1641) 5 He looketh downe on his brethren, as if he stood on the top of a Leads."
"1625 Bacon Ess., Building (Arb.) 550 A Goodly Leads upon the Top, railed with Statua's interposed."
"a 1635 Corbet Iter Bor. (1647) 133 Gardens cover howses there like leades."
"1726 Leoni Alberti's Archit. I. 78 Leads or Terrasses from whence the Soldiers may be molested with stones or darts."
"1760 C. Johnston Chrysal (1822) I. 238 A cat+whom she used to meet in the evenings, upon the leads of the house."
"1824 Scott Redgauntlet ch. xiii, Trumbull+clambered out upon the leads."
"1873 Dixon Two Queens II. vii. vi. 42 A blare of trumpets from the leads told every one+that [etc.]."
"1705 Hearne Collect. 8 Nov. (O.H.S.) I. 68 After the Examination of the Books, & a slight view of the Leads."
I like 1726: "Leads or Terrasses from whence the Soldiers may be molested with stones or darts."
I'm surprised that didn't happen more often.
About Friday 27 April 1666
San Diego Sarah • Link
I can't get over how relaxed Pepys is being about the fleet going to sea. No panic about ropes or sails, victuling is under control, they have all the necessary flags, no impressment problems ... either he has no money so he can't do anything about the above, or he has successfully delegated everything so he can endlessly play the accountant.
About St Paul's Cathedral
San Diego Sarah • Link
Most of this story is admittedly about the current St. Paul's, but gives information about Charles II's efforts to save the old one, the priceless library of books that was lost in the Great Fire, and about Wren's design process and the incredible model he built to sell his vision for the current building to Charles II. Plus lots of lovely photos and information on how to sign up for a tour:
https://londontopia.net/anglotopi…
About Desserts
San Diego Sarah • Link
Food historian Barbara Santich once referred to medieval gelatin specialties as “the glamor dish offered at the end of a banquet, bejeweled with sparkling crimson pomegranate seeds or golden spices.”
By the early-14th century, recipes evolved for increasingly complex gelatin-based dishes, such as Milanese physician Maino de Maineri’s concoction of fish boiled in wine, thickened with roasted bread soaked in vinegar and cut with cinnamon, cloves, and galingale.
These elaborate takes on an older staple flowed naturally from the growth of wealth and international trade and travel in Europe. The urge to build a reputation as a chef or wealthy family resulted in increasingly complex and pricey dishes.
Over the coming decades, chefs found they could make entirely clear gelatins. This allowed them to showcase intricately layered ingredients — such as expensive fruits and spices — or color the base for vibrant edible decor.
Gelatin primarily rose to become a status symbol because of the wealth implied by the time and effort required to make it regularly. Rounds of boiling and straining out impurities took more than a day to complete.
The 14th-century French chef Guillaume Tirel, a.k.a. Taillevent, explained in his Le Viandier that, “He who would make a gelatin is not allowed to sleep.”
Gelatin wasn’t expensive or hard to make on its own. Russian families of all classes have long prepared kholodets (savory meat cuts suspended in gelatin) as a winter holiday treat.
But serving elaborate gelatins frequently, rather than as a special holiday dish, was a sign of wealth: it showed you could hire a dedicated cooking staff to go through the arduous and smelly process of making it.
For more information, see https://www.atlasobscura.com/arti…
About Gloves
San Diego Sarah • Link
PART 2 -- Shakespeare's language of gloves:
It probably would have been unthinkable for a lady to send Berowne a pair of gloves, but what was the function of the one white glove? In the next line he swears to Rosaline, "My love to thee is sound, sans crack or flaw."
The point is his swearing an oath of love on a white glove that the audience of the time would assume to have been received within the circle of his fraternity. They would automatically relate it to an initiation ceremony.
In saying, "how white the hand, God knows", Berowne is confessing that he has put in jeopardy his virtue by breaking his oath of initiation. But there is a double irony, for what is the value of a love pledge made upon such a glove?
An authority on the relationship of hands to oaths, Thomas Dekker explains it best in his play Satiro-Mastix… of 1602 when he has Sir Walter Terill say,
"An oath! why 'tis the traffic of the soul,
'Tis law within a man; the seal of faith,
The lord of every conscience; unto whom
We set our thoughts like hands: …" (V.i.)
Berowne's glove problem hints at Ferdinand, King of Navarre's "little academe" being a masonic lodge, and this raises fascinating possibilities.
Was Shakespeare a Freemason? Gloves indicate he may have been.
In contrast to the ample surviving records of Scottish freemasonry, little has survived about the English masonic tradition before 18th century. The Masonic historian, James Anderson says in his 1738 ‘The New Book of Constitutions’ p. 105: "… many of the Fraternity's Records of this [Charles II's] and former Reigns were lost in the next [James II's] and at the Revolution [1688]; and many of them were too hastily burnt in our Time from a Fear of making Discoveries …"
For more information on the Impact of Freemasonry on Elizabethan Literature see http://www.levity.com/alchemy/h_f…
About Gloves
San Diego Sarah • Link
Shakespeare was a glover's son, and therefore fluently spoke the language of gloves. In Elizabethan-Jacobean England gloves had meanings hard to understand today. It was a luxury item, replete with status and complex symbolic meanings, and were highly regarded gifts.
Gloves were a customary New Year's gift, sometimes being substituted for by "glove-money". And gloves were the traditional gift of suitors to their betrothed.
In ‘Much Ado about Nothing’ Hero mentions, "these gloves, the count sent me, they are an excellent perfume" (III. iv.).
The glove signified a deep reciprocal bond between giver and receiver in many situations.
The Clown, in ‘The Winter's Tale,’ remarks, "If I were not in love with Mopsa, thou shouldst take no money of me; but being enthralled as I am, it will also be the bondage of certain ribbons and gloves" (IV. iv.).
In ‘Henry V’ the King exchanges gloves with the lowly soldier, Williams (IV. i.).
An example of swearing on a glove is in The Merry Wives of Windsor (I.i.) when Slender swears to Falstaff "by these gloves" that Pistol had picked his purse.
But it’s ‘Love's Labour's Lost’ that has kept Shakespeare buffs frustrated for decades. It is his most teasing play, hinting at hidden meanings. Plus it appears to be the only play whose plot he composed himself. The basic situation is explained in Ferdinand, King of Navarre’s first speech:
"Our late edict shall strongly stand in force:
Navarre shall be the wonder of the world;
Our court shall be a little academe,
Still and contemplative in living art.
You three, Berowne, Dumain, and Longaville,
Have sworn for three years' term to live with me,
My fellow-scholars, and to keep those statutes
That are recorded in this schedule here:
Your oaths are pass'd; and now subscribe your names,
That his own hand may strike his honour down
That violates the smallest branch herein:" (I. i. 11-21).
Despite the scholars pledging to 3 years of celibacy, some visiting ladies led by the Princess of France subvert their resolutions by winning their hearts. The references flash by in a constantly jesting manner, but gloves only appear in the final scene -- twice:
Princess: "But, Katherine, what was sent to you from fair Dumain?"
Katherine: "Madame, this glove."
Princess: "Did he not send you twain?"
Katherine: "Yes, Madam; and moreover,
Some thousand verses of a faithful lover;" (47-50).
This is plain: the suitor Dumain has sent a pair of gloves, which Katharine has accepted.
More complex is the case of the love-stricken Berowne, who proclaims:
"and I here protest,
By this white glove (how white the hand, God knows),
Henceforth my wooing mind shall be express'd
In russet yeas and honest kersey noes." (410-13)
About Barber-Surgeons' Company
San Diego Sarah • Link
Today I was reading an article on dentistry which had a few facts of interest. I include the link, but it isn't an historical read.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magaz…
"The phrase “evidence-based medicine” was coined in 1991, but the concept began taking shape in the 1960s, if not earlier (some scholars trace its origins all the way back to the 17th century)."
[A nod to the Royal Society, or ...?]
"In medieval Europe, barbers didn’t just trim hair and shave beards; they were also surgeons, performing a range of minor operations including bloodletting, the administration of enemas, and tooth extraction. Barber-surgeons, and the more specialized “tooth drawers,” would wrench, smash, and knock teeth out of people’s mouths with an intimidating metal instrument called a dental key: Imagine a chimera of a hook, a hammer, and forceps. Sometimes the results were disastrous.
"In the 1700s, Thomas Berdmore, George III’s “Operator for the Teeth,” described one woman who lost “a piece of jawbone as big as a walnut and three neighboring molars” at the hands of a local barber.
"Barber-surgeons came to America as early as 1636.
"By the 18th century, dentistry was firmly established in the colonies as a trade akin to blacksmithing (Paul Revere was an early American craftsman of artisanal dentures). Itinerant dentists moved from town to town by carriage with carts of dreaded tools in tow, temporarily setting up shop in a tavern or town square. They yanked teeth or bored into them with hand drills, filling cavities with mercury, tin, gold, or molten lead. For anesthetic, they used arsenic, nutgalls, mustard seed, leeches. Mixed in with the honest tradesmen — who genuinely believed in the therapeutic power of bloodsucking worms — were swindlers who urged their customers to have numerous teeth removed in a single sitting or charged them extra to stuff their pitted molars with homemade gunk of dubious benefit."
Charming.
nutgall -- noun
Medical Definition of nutgall: a gall that resembles a nut
especially: a gall produced on an oak (especially Quercus infectoria) and used as a source of tannic acid
First Known Use of nutgall
15th century, in the meaning defined above
https://www.merriam-webster.com/d…
About Monday 23 April 1666
San Diego Sarah • Link
"... and so home, and there find a girl sent at my desire by Mrs. Michell of Westminster Hall, to be my girl under the cook-maid, Susan. But I am a little dissatisfied that the girl, though young, is taller and bigger than Su, and will not, I fear, be under her command, ..."
I confess I've lost track of the maids. But seems to me that his little girl ("Su" above), is not the same person as the cook-maid "Susan" (above). Little Su sounded as if she was about 9 when she arrived a couple of years ago, and I don't think the Pepys would have a now-13-year-old in charge of the food. If this was one and the same person, I don't think he would have used two versions of the same name in two sentences.
Seniority counts, and Pepys needs "Su" who has been working for "Susan" to teach this new girl the ropes. If the new girl is taller than "Su" it may be hard for her to do this.
I wondering if this might be the same Susan last heard from in August 1663 who seems to have worked for the Pepys a few times:
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
Of course, we will never know for sure ...