jeannine

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jeannine has written 14 articles:

Encyclopedia topics

jeannine has written summaries for eight topics:

Annotations and comments

jeannine has posted 1,236 annotations/comments since 16 June 2004.

Comments

First Reading

About Thursday 22 October 1663

jeannine  •  Link

"This morning, hearing that the Queen grows worse again, I sent to stop the making of my velvet cloake, till I see whether she lives or dies"
Terry I believe that the cloak was for vanity and he did not want to be seen wearing it if Queen Catherine died as he'd be too "flashy". That's why he sent to Tom to stop making it.

About Monday 19 October 1663

jeannine  •  Link

Michael

Thanks -the poem was really quite interesting and rather creative in it's presentation for the time too.

About Tuesday 20 October 1663

jeannine  •  Link

"Could the queen have the measles?"
Todd, None of Catherine's biographers/historians have given this fever a definitive diagnosis. Some have thought that it was the result of a miscarriage (puerperal fever, like what killed Jane Seymour -Henry VII's wife)while some have thought perhaps a more general "spotted fever" which might have been the lingo of the day for a variety of illnesses. It easily could have been a typhus as A. De Araujo suggests too. I would think that somewhere in history there would be more concrete notes about this as it was clearly a critical period in her life (and that of Charles), but if so, apparently nobody has discovered that yet.

About Saturday 4 April 1663

jeannine  •  Link

Kevin,
I recently bought a book called "Pepys At Table" which takes recipes from Sam's time and "modernizes" them to today. What surprised me is reading the recipes from Sam's days was how much butter was used in some recipes. For instance in the modern version of a sweet potato pudding recipe there was a notation that read "The original proportion of butter to potato would make a richer dish than most people could cope with today" (p. 82). It made me think that butter was a cheap commodity and that cholesterol wasn't an issue (and it couldn't be as it was discovered back then)!

About Monday 19 October 1663

jeannine  •  Link

"pidgeons put to her feet"?

(Spoiler after diary ends) In addition to the background in the article Todd refers to, Tomalin refers to this folk custom when she describes Elizabeth's illness and death, "Elizabeth's struggle lasted for three weeks. Two desperate remedies for severe illness were to cut off the hair and to put pigeons at the patient's feet, and both had been used for the queen in 1663. She had recovered, but if they were tried in Elizabeth's case they did her no good." (p 276).

The association to pigeons as a means to prevent death must have survived beyond the Restoration as it also pops up in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights in regards to Catherine Linton, although these pigeons were just the feathers and had not been slaughtered for the occasion:
"she seemed to find childish diversion in pulling the feathers from the rents she had just made, and ranging them on the sheet according to their different species: her mind had strayed to other associations.

'That's a turkey's,' she murmured to herself; 'and this is a wild duck's; and this is a pigeon's. Ah, they put pigeons' feathers in the pillows - no wonder I couldn't die! Let me take care to throw it on the floor when I lie down."
http://www.worldwideschool.org/li… Chapter XII

About Friday 16 October 1663

jeannine  •  Link

Oh thank goodness, an entry without any of the Wheatley ..... and no complaints from Sam about his health. Hopefully this means he is on the mend!(of course the .... are always great fun, but not when the poor guy is feeling so miserable)
Also, seeing him out and about with Elizabeth is a nice change of pace.

About Wednesday 14 October 1663

jeannine  •  Link

Thanks to all today for the interesting and informative dialogue. It's highly appreciated, as always, and enjoyable to see a team effort adding such value on many assorted subjects.

About Monday 12 October 1663

jeannine  •  Link

Thanks Pedro, I think you've summed it up perfectly. I'm sure we'll open up the Diary in another 5 years and find the same cast of characters arguing about the same things!
"But then again, we all know how men can be"......she slips into the annotation hoping it will stir up a little fun discourse as we head into the weekend......

About Monday 12 October 1663

jeannine  •  Link

"Anon, about 8 o’clock, my wife did give me a clyster"
Going forward we shall all have to refer to her as St. Elizabeth....

About Saturday 10 October 1663

jeannine  •  Link

Were prunes available then?"

Not sure if prunes were “dried” at that time, but did find the following quote from “Pepys At Table.” (The book also had a contemporary recipe for Pea Soup, which would have most surely done the trick!)

The authors (Driver & Johnson) explain that
"One puzzle about the diet of the prosperous English people in the second half of the seventeenth century is its relative neglect of vegetables and salad stuffs, even after a half a century of intensive development in the craft of gardening (much of it learnt from the Dutch). Evelyn, again, who wrote a whole book on the topic (Acetaria, a Discourse on Sallets) was far more enthusiastic then Pepys. The latter's frequent Diary references to food seldom mention greenstuffs, and his set-piece dinners often sound rather like the all-meat meals which travellers in the Périgord still sometimes encounter at old-fashioned country restaurants.

It is quite possible that Pepys ate roots and greens without caring about them enough to mention them. It is equally possible that he thought them bad for him. His digestion, though otherwise robust, was noticeable subject to wind and colic, and this was precisely the effect expected at the time from vegetables, not just from the tubers such as the Jerusalem artichokes and sweet potatoes (which preceded into English diet the types of potatoes now familiar). It is also considered inadvisable to eat vegetables and even much raw fruit.

However in Pepys time social cachet was attracted to exotic fruit rather then to vegetables. …One bill from Leonard Gurles’ nursery in Whitechapel lists twelve varieties of peach, two of nectarine, eight of plum, eight of pear, three of cherry, three of apple, two of apricot, and one of quince. …Fruit of this kind was a highly acceptable present, because –like venison and other game that so many of Pepys; feasts depend upon –it did not normally reach the main London markets.” (pages 9-10)

About Friday 9 October 1663

jeannine  •  Link

"My great fit of Collique"

(“Anent that, L&M claim that the entries 5-13 October, 1663, are "one of the best-documented attacks of flatulence in history." ~~thanks Terry!)

What a lovely delight for L&M to exclaim
That Sam will make history with his colic’s great pain!
He’ll bring forth unpleasant details and reveal every mystery
With the best-documented attack of flatulence in history!
Sam is famous for writing of his fun and his frolic
And now our hero will tackle the case of his colic!
These entries are not to be read by those who are thin skinned
As Sam writes boldly of his stool and his passing of wind!
Those daring among us will read with guarded delight
But when it comes to annotating what dare we to write?

Distinguished doctors amongst us take the medical route
Explaining with dignity what is blocking Sam’s chute.
The fiber content Sam eats our nutritionists will compute
With insightful lines about the attributes of eating fruit.
From these indelicate entries the polite will quietly scoot
On the subject of Sam’s gas we’ll find them entirely mute!
Of course there will always be those that just don’t give a hoot
Writing bawdy jests about Sam and his polluting toots!
When all has been written we owe our Sam a steadfast tribute
For his honesty about his farts there is no substitute!

About Thursday 8 October 1663

jeannine  •  Link

"my pain coming again by breaking no wind nor having any stool. So to Mr. Holliard"
Gee,I've been away for a few days and have to catch up-have we already come to the Diary entry where during Mr. Holliards medical examination of Sam's rectum he discovers the missing bell????

About Monday 5 October 1663

jeannine  •  Link

"and then of my Lord Sandwich sending a messenger to know whether the King intends to come to Newmarket, as is talked, that he may be ready to entertain him at Hinchingbroke."

I can't imagine the preparation for having the King "drop by". I am sure that it would entail him arriving with all of his "groupies" of the day, which could be quite a crowd. In Carteret's biography it details Charles' time in exile in Jersey under Carteret's care. The entourage that accompanied Charles was overwhelming and the pomp and pagentry that gets dumped on the host to the King is mind boggling, so I can imagine that even a simple 'dinner" could involve untold preparation, let alone the stress!

About Friday 2 October 1663

jeannine  •  Link

"but I will make a little use of it first, and then give it him."
Gotta love it! This truly is a line for one's diary-I doubt he'd tell anyone he'd be playing with the gift destined for Sandwich first and then pass it on to him. Perhaps if he really enjoys playing with it, he'll avoid Sandwich for awhile so he can keep it longer.

About Wednesday 30 September 1663

jeannine  •  Link

a leprechaun or a hobbit?
I think (?) I remember reading somewhere that Sam was about 5 feet tall. I'm not sure of where or how accurate this is. Have we ever figured out his stature before?

About Monday 28 September 1663

jeannine  •  Link

So Robert -the way you see it is like this...

Off to Mr. Holliard who gives me some pills
Then off to Mrs. Lane, who gives me some thrills!

About Sunday 27 September 1663

jeannine  •  Link

"It is a cold, which God Almighty in justice did give me while I sat lewdly sporting with Mrs. Lane the other day with the broken window in my neck. I went to bed with a posset, being very melancholy in consideration of the loss of my hearing."
If God really was doing justice here she would have given Sam a case of laryngitis and have him make his own damn posset! At least Elizabeth and the rest of the household would be "rewarded" in the process and most likely enjoying his illness!
I can just picture Sam whining like a wimp and having Elizabeth wait on him hand and foot for his little "cold" when he should consider himself lucky that he didn't get some sort of venereal disease (and then sadly pass it on to his innocent wife as so many of the Libertines of the day did).

About Thursday 24 September 1663

jeannine  •  Link

This is off topic, but a general comment. One of the more unfortunate things about Diary entries such as this is that they are often the type entries that Sam is "known" for in the general public. Plays written about him often reflect his womanizing, etc. and Sam as a whole person is often lost in the shuffle. I read an essay on Sam awhile ago (Edwin Chappell) and it was noted that it's such a shame that people looking back on Sam's life often interpret his entire person around a limited number of his diary entries. Chappell goes on to remind us that "You must remember that the Diary ended when he was thirty-six and he lived to be seventy. A man's character cannot be assessed on the first half of his life only. In the Diary you see a young man suddenly led into great temptation, and he mainly yielded to it, but you cannot help seeing that his wrong-doing troubled him. He was not the hardened sinner who goes from bad to worse; on the contrary, he lived to be a respected friend of some of the most upright men of his time."
Perhaps, is some sad strange way, the "punishment" for his sins with the likes of Betty and other ladies to come, will be that this is what so many people will remember him for as opposed to the incredible work he will do for the Navy throughout his lifetime.

About Thursday 24 September 1663

jeannine  •  Link

"His money, or his seed, or both???"
In the context of the sentence I understood it to be his seed. I don't think he pays Betty Lane. Also, if it was just his money our "polite" editor Wheatley would not have supplied us with "........."

Perhaps I'm not reading this passage correctly, but what struck me in this incident with Betty Lane is it seems to show premeditation and Sam's full intent to deceive his wife. In other incidents with Betty often Elizabeth was away, or Sam just "happened" to see Betty, etc. This time it seems that he told Elizabeth a lie about where he intented to go and then took off to find Betty. Not a nice relflection on our hero.