David G

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David G has posted 91 annotations/comments since 22 January 2016.

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Third Reading

About Monday 2 December 1661

David G  •  Link

Reading entries like today’s, it becomes apparent how unplanned many of Sam’s days were. The painter cancelled but Sam ran into Mr Moore and spent three hours talking followed by a meal; after that, he called on his Cambridge friend and ended up at a play (again without Elizabeth) followed by supper, with a tiny bit of work in the middle.

About Tuesday 26 November 1661

David G  •  Link

Putting the day into chronological order:
(a) having drunk way too much yesterday, Sam slept very late and woke "not well";
(b) at noon, i.e., not long after waking up, he and Elizabeth went to his uncle's house, where a fairly large party ate roast beef and were "merry";
(c) "By and by," he is called to the office, which suggests that he must have spent at least a few hours at the party and that someone from the office went looking for him around the time it was getting dark (one can picture the Sir Williams glowering at Sam when he finally rolled into the office, hours late);
(d) Sam then worked a couple of hours until maybe 6:00 pm (given the amount they drank after work ceased, it's reasonable to assume that the Naval Office group spent at least three hours drinking); and
(e) in the course of that conversation, he shared "three or four bottles of wine," i.e., four bottles of wine, not finishing until 9:00 pm.

It's surprising that tomorrow's entry doesn't start once more with "not well."

About Thursday 21 November 1661

David G  •  Link

"we had a good surloyne of rost beefe, the first that ever I had of my own buying since I kept house"

This is the only instance in the Diary of use of the term "surloyne" (or even sirloin) of beef. Sam fairly frequently refers to meals where cuts of beef were served, though the other references are to "roast beef," "chine of beef" (which apparently is a form of roast beef), "leg of beef," "beef ribs," "boiled beef," etc. I assume that a surloyne was a lot more expensive than other cuts of beef, hence Sam's pride at serving it to his guest, but it might also be the case that cooking a surloyne was more complicated than cooking other cuts -- perhaps another commentator would know? -- and that might explain why, even as Sam grew wealthier, he nonetheless did not serve a surloyne of beef again.

About Monday 18 November 1661

David G  •  Link

Following on from several of the annotations on this entry, I did a word search of the Diary for "drunk" for got roughly 60 hits for "drunk" in the sense of inebriated. In one instance, Sam refers to someone who was "as drunk as a dogg, but could stand, and talk and laugh," which supports Richard Law's initial stab at distinguishing between "drunk" and "merrie" from ten years ago. Sam also occasionally uses "foxed" and "fuddled" to refer to someone who is "drunk" but I can't tell from the Diary entries whether those terms refer to different degrees of inebriation or whether Sam is just varying his prose.

About Monday 21 October 1661

David G  •  Link

Marie333, Sam makes periodic vows to stop going to plays and he’s obviously referring in this entry to a vow that he made but didn’t record in the Diary (at least not that I could find with a word search). The vow must have been recent since he saw multiple plays the prior week.

About Tuesday 25 June 1661

David G  •  Link

The commentators 20 years ago who were discussing Sam’s languages forgot to mention Greek, which he surely would have studied at St. Paul’s, if not also at Huntington Grammar.

About Friday 21 June 1661

David G  •  Link

One would think, after Sam's unfortunate purchase of paintings for the house, which Elizabeth made him return, that he would not buy curtains on his own (not even with his father, who presumably has some expertise in fabrics). I have not looked ahead in the Diary to find out whether she complains about the green curtains - and I can't remember what, if anything, happens from prior readings - but buying curtains without one's spouse seems like an invitation to domestic discord.

About Monday 13 May 1661

David G  •  Link

It is comforting to realize that even though 363 years have elapsed since the events recorded in today's entry, one thing that remains absolutely the same is that contractors working on a home remodeling project never ever finish quickly.

About Sunday 20 January 1660/61

David G  •  Link

After reading John Mathews’s question from 2017, I did a word search in the Diary and noticed that in April 1661, Pepys uses “diary” to refer to the volume in which he was recording his daily entries (that is, the usage that became more common a century later) and also uses “diarys” to refer to the entries he recorded for specific days, which is also still used occasionally, albeit most often as a verb.

About Thursday 27 December 1660

David G  •  Link

Dueling may have lasted longer in the US. For example, the original California constitution from 1849 provides as the penalty for dueling or acting as a second in a duel only the loss of the right to vote and disqualification from holding state office.

About Sunday 23 December 1660

David G  •  Link

I’m wondering whether the answer to MartinVT’s question is that the minister at St Olave’s Church has been spending his time drafting his magnum opus Christmas sermon and he therefore asked someone else (the “stranger”) to deliver the Sunday morning sermon the day before Christmas so he didn’t have to write two sermons. In fact, maybe the St Olave’s minister was previewing his Christmas sermon at the stranger’s church. We’ll never know, of course.

About Monday 26 November 1660

David G  •  Link

I have not located any verses by Robert Slingsby, but I did find a book that he published in 1660: A Discourse of the Navy, 1660, / by Sir Robert Slyngesbie. A copy is available on line at Hathitrust.org and hard copies are in the Harvard Library and the New York Public Library. When I then put "Robert Slyngesbie" into Google, I got many hits for vendors selling copies of the book, including, bizarrely, Walmart, but nothing further about poetry.

About Monday 26 November 1660

David G  •  Link

The prior commentators did not mention the Comptroller’s verses, which Sam apparently enjoyed. Curious as to what they were like, I checked some compilations of Restoration verse and ran a Google search but found nothing written by Slingsby. Before I research him at our local university library, does anyone know offhand whether any of Slingsby’s verses survived?

About Wednesday 31 October 1660

David G  •  Link

The commentators 20 years ago noted that Sam dropped the discussion of the dispute with Lady Davis about the leads after today, which is true, but a word search of the Diary reveals that he mentioned the leads in 105 diary entries, spread evenly over the diary period, and will have new disputes about the leads later on.

About Sunday 14 October 1660

David G  •  Link

San Diego Sarah makes a good point. Upper class women’s fashion included tight waists in the early 1660s so Barbara Villiers might have had trouble hiding her condition, though she was tall and only 19 in 1660, so maybe she was still able to get by at five months.

On the question posed 20 years ago about whether Sam carried writing implements when he was traveling on business, I assume that if he needed to write frequently and he couldn’t just go to an inn and request paper and ink, that’s what the boy was for. Although Sam only occasionally mentions the various boys he employed and even less occasionally the clerks who worked for him at the Navy Board, it’s likely that the boy and possibly a clerk would have accompanied him on what we now would refer to as business meetings or a business trip.

About Wednesday 26 September 1660

David G  •  Link

The Walter Raleigh model is unlikely. None of the nine references to tobacco in the Diary refers to smoking tobacco.

About Wednesday 26 September 1660

David G  •  Link

Probably not a smoke but from the occasional references to tobacco later on, maybe a worker might have had a chew. It’s a lovely image to picture the crew sitting around in the kitchen and talking with Sam while the plasterwork dries.

About Saturday 8 September 1660

David G  •  Link

Pepys’s role on the Navy Board at this point is reflected in his casual reference in today’s entry to the fact that Penn had sent for him (just as Sandwich had sent for him a few months before), as opposed to inviting him over for a glass of wine or calling on him, and that Pepys obeyed.

About Friday 10 August 1660

David G  •  Link

In response to the exchange ten years ago, Sam’s back pain could well have come from a kidney stone. I can personally attest that back pain is a symptom when a stone is passing!