Bill

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Bill has posted 2,777 annotations/comments since 9 March 2013.

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Second Reading

About Elizabeth Dickons

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Elizabeth Dekins or Dickins, sometimes styled Morena (or brunette), daughter of John Dekins. She died in October, 1662.
---Wheatley, 1899.

About Sunday 6 October 1661

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"and the most zealous people that ever I saw in my life, even to admiration, if it were true zeal"

I see SP as expressing a little disapproval here. Zeal can be a good thing, of course, but until recently zeal was most often associated with puritans.

About Sunday 6 October 1661

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"should take in snuffe [anger] that my wife not come"

SNUFF ...
5 Resentment expressed by snifting; perverse resentment
---A Dictionary Of The English Language. Samuel Johnson, 1756.

About Saturday 17 August 1661

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"to speak loud of the lewdness and beggary of the Court" Don't forget that 3 days ago SP wrote "the condition of the Navy for lack of money, and how our own very bills are offered upon the Exchange, to be sold at 20 in the 100 loss"

BEGGARY, Indigence
---A Dictionary Of The English Language. Samuel Johnson, 1756.

About Monday 9 September 1661

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Wheatley, in his annotation of the diary (1899), gives us the footnote below for 14 March 1662/63. And this footnote is included in Phil's current version of the diary for that date. Wheatley should have given it earlier.

"The distinction of the two words ingenious and ingenuous by which the former indicates mental and the second moral qualities was not made in Pepys's day."

About Friday 16 August 1661

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"a very ingenious, and a likely young man to live"

Wheatley, in his annotation of the diary (1899), gives us the footnote below for 14 March 1662/63. And this footnote is included in Phil's current version of the diary for that date. He should have given it earlier.

"The distinction of the two words ingenious and ingenuous by which the former indicates mental and the second moral qualities was not made in Pepys's day."

About The White Devil (John Webster)

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"The White Devil; or, the Tragedie of Paulo Giordano Ursini, Duke of Brachiano, with the Life and Death of Vittoria Corombona, the famous Venetian Courtezan," by John Webster. Acted at the Phoenix, in Drury Lane, and first printed in 1612.

About Tuesday 29 October 1661

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"and with my beaver"

Doubtless the same mentioned June 27, 1661. It was a "chapeau de poil" a mark of some distinction in those days, and which gave name to Rubens's famous picture now in Sir Robert Peel's collection, of a lady in a beaver hat or "chapeau de poil." This having been corrupted into "chapeau de paille," has led to much ignorant conjecture.
---Diary and correspondence of Samuel Pepys, the diary deciphered by J. Smith. 1854.

Le Chapeau de Paille by Peter Paul Rubens: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki…

About Friday 4 October 1661

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Suffolk-bang Cheese.—There are cases in which dairy-farmers skim the milk before they begin to make cheese. These cheeses arc remarkable for their hardness, because cascine, independently of the butter, is an exceedingly hard substance; and these cheeses are sometimes brought into the market, and they are so hard that they are the subject of many a joke. Of such are the Suffolk-bang cheeses made by frugal housewives in that county, who first take the butter and send it to market, and then make their cheese. It is said of it in derision that "dogs bark at it, pigs grunt at it, but neither of them can bite it."
---Cassell's dictionary of cookery. 1883.

About Friday 4 October 1661

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(Dang, nobody liked Suffolk cheese!)

Fine ladies, when they write,
Nor scold nor keep a splutter;
Their verses give delight,
As soft and sweet as butter.

But Satan never saw
Such haggard lines as these;
They stick athwart my maw,
As bad as Suffolk cheese.
---The works of dr. Jonathan Swift. 1765.

About Friday 4 October 1661

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"grumbling to eat Suffolk cheese"

In Aukward Plenty slovenly I Dine:
And nappy Ale supplies the want of Wine.
No nice Disserts my learned Palate please.
To fill up Chinks—a Slice of Suffolk-Cheese.
---Miscellanies in Verse and Prose. R. Pack, 1719.

About Chelsea

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Chelsea, a manor and village on the banks of the Thames. In a Saxon charter of Edward the Confessor it is written "Cealchylle," in Doomsday Book "Cercehede" and "Chelched," and in documents of a later though an early date, "Chelcheth" or "Chelcith." In the City Books a John de Chelse is entered in 1283. Sir Thomas More, writing to King Henry VIII., subscribes his letter "at my pore howse in Chelcith," and in his indictment he is described as "Thomas More, nuper de Chelchithe, in comitatu Midd., Miles." Norden's etymology is supported by Lysons. "It is so called," he says, "of the nature of the place, whose strand is like the chesel [ceosel or cesol] which the sea casteth up of sand and pebble stones, thereof called Cheselsey, briefly Chelsey, as is Chelsey [Selsey] in Sussex."
---London, Past and Present. H.B. Wheatley, 1891.

About St Martin's Lane

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Martin's (St.) Lane, Charing Cross, a street extending from Long Acre to Trafalgar Square; built circ. 1613, and then called "the West Church Lane." It is written "St. Martin's Lane" for the first time in the rate-book of St. Martin's in the year 1617-1618; but in 1608 a Treasury Warrant was issued to pay £100 towards making a vault [or sewer] for draining, etc., from St. Martin's Lane as far as St . Giles, so that the King's passage "through these fields shall be both sweeter and more commodious." The upper part was originally called the Terrace.
---London, Past and Present. H.B. Wheatley, 1891.

About Charing Cross

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Charing Cross, opposite the west end of the Strand, is so denominated from a village called Charing, in which Edward I. caused a magnificent cross to be erected in commemoration of his beloved Queen Eleanor, part of which continued till the civil wars in the reign of Charles I. when it was entirely destroyed by the populace, as a monument of popish superstition.
---London and Its Environs Described. R. Dodsley, 1761.