Friday 7 October 1664

Lay pretty while with some discontent abed, even to the having bad words with my wife, and blows too, about the ill-serving up of our victuals yesterday; but all ended in love, and so I rose and to my office busy all the morning. At noon dined at home, and then to my office again, and then abroad to look after callicos for flags, and hope to get a small matter by my pains therein and yet save the King a great deal of money, and so home to my office, and there came Mr. Cocker, and brought me a globe of glasse, and a frame of oyled paper, as I desired, to show me the manner of his gaining light to grave by, and to lessen the glaringnesse of it at pleasure by an oyled paper. This I bought of him, giving him a crowne for it; and so, well satisfied, he went away, and I to my business again, and so home to supper, prayers, and to bed.

30 Annotations

First Reading

Robert Gertz  •  Link

"...having bad words with my wife, and blows too, about the ill-serving up of our victuals yesterday; but all ended in love..."

But for the black eyes and broken arms...True romance.
I guess all we can do is hope Bess landed a few good ones.

Sounds like a episode of "The Honeymooners" gone bad.

***

"Ill-serving up?" You said yesterday it was a very pleasant time.

***

Globe of glass and frame of oiled paper...Hmmn. Presumably the candle went into a globe, open at one end, making a sort of lamp with the oiled paper wrapped round outside diffusing the light?

I would say have Cocker patent it and start mass-production, Sam, but for the danger of fire when the globe gets heated...Assuming I've got it right.

Robert Gertz  •  Link

"Whatdya mean I can't control my servants like a proper lady?! Sam'l!! You said this morning you didn't mean it!"

"Well...That was when I saw I was likely to benefit. Heh, heh." arch rising on toes.

"Bess!! Put my glass globe from Mr. Cocker down!!"

"Why, sure!"

Clung.

Hmmn...Where's the...'Crash'? Oooh.

"Sam'l? You alright? Honey?"

Oh-oh.

Geesh. That was a thick globe. Thought it would just shatter on his thick skull.

Australian Susan  •  Link

I assumed the frame of oiled paper was separate and could be moved about to best effect. Presumably the globe magnified the light source and protected it from draught flicker.

Patricia  •  Link

"and blows too" I hope Bess slapped him good! What a way to begin the day, listening to a litany of his complaints about the day before.

jeannine  •  Link

Hmm, I don't get it. Yesterday Sam said

"At noon by promise Mr. Pierce and his wife and Madam Clerke and her niece came and dined with me to a rare chine of beefe and spent the afternoon very pleasantly all the afternoon" so all looked pretty pleasant and he didn't have any complaints.

Today his comment about "Lay pretty while with some discontent abed, even to the having bad words with my wife, and blows too, about the ill-serving up of our victuals yesterday" seems totally unrelated to yesterday's report. Also, I am assuming that "blows" means what it does today (actually stiking her?), but if I'm misinterpreting it can someone please clear that up. Hard to think of Sam hitting Elizabeth as it's not clear that anything went wrong yesterday. If things did end up with actual hits being delivered I'll naively be believing that they were delivered from Elizabeth to Sam! It would be nice to have him show up at the office with 2 blacks eyes and have to tell the men it was because he was such a "horse's arse"!

Cum grano salis  •  Link

"...brought me a globe of glasse, and a frame of oyled paper, as I desired..."
In my mind's eye it could have the look of a 19/20 c paraffin lamp [ no genie], oiled paper be the wicke and orb of glass to protect it from the draugh of wind that poor old Samuell complains of. not tank for the paper to wicke up used oil. In other words an oil lamp.

Cum grano salis  •  Link

"...brought me a globe of glasse, and a frame of oyled paper, as I desired..."
In my mind's eye it could have the look of a 19/20 c paraffin lamp [ no genie], oiled paper be the wicke and orb of glass to protect it from the draugh of wind that poor old Samuell complains of. not tank for the paper to wicke up used oil. In other words an oil lamp.

Cum grano salis  •  Link

Lamp oil was available :
OED
1579 [see LAMP n.1 1b]. 1705 HICKERINGILL Priest-cr. I. (1721) 53 Juglers play their Tricks..by Candle-light, or dim Lamp-light Oil used for burning in a lamp; also fig. nocturnal labour or study.

1581 SIDNEY Apol. Poetrie (1595) Hb, Some of my
Maisters the Phylosophers, spent a good deale of theyr Lamp-oyle, in setting foorth the excellencie of it.
1598 BARRET Theor. Warres 135 Common lampe oyle.

1657 W. COLES Adam in Eden cli. 231 The Countrey-man..that had eaten Fish fryed with Lamp-Oyl.

lamp was seen by the Greeks as lampgs lgmpein to shine. L lampas.

The success of this form of light was obliterated by all that stinking smoke.

Mary  •  Link

Mr. Cocker's 'globe'

There was speculation on this article in the entry for August 10th 1664. Some variation on the 'shoemaker's window' now sounds even more likely, since we have reference to a globe.

I too see the frame of oiled paper as something separate from the globe itself.

andy  •  Link

at pleasure

this implies to me that Sam can move the frame when he wants to, to illuminate some area evenly "to lessen the glaringnesse of it" ie of the light emenating from the globe or bouncing off the page.

I think it's something like the device my aged great aunt used and nwhiuch is common tin the shops today - a magnifying glass with a torch built in and mounted laterally. I suppose what we would now call a light train would take the illumination from the candle through a sort of tunnel - "frame" - where it would illuminate the "globe" or magnifying glass which he would use to read and write. The oiled paper served to diffuse the light otherwise it would flicker too much and be uneven.

Some sort of diagram:

O Globe <-|oyled paper| <- Candle
|
handheld globe

Evidently this is the system Mr Cocker used for "gaining light to grave by". (grave = engrave?)

Martin King  •  Link

I seem to remember many years ago in the museum in HIgh Wycombe that there was an exhibit about Buckinghamshire lace. This included a glass globe, which was placed between the candle, or other light source, and the work piece, thus concentrating the light. I seem to remember that the globe was hollow and filled with water, and it acted as a lens. No oiled paper, but I would imagine that this was just to diffuse the light.

language hat  •  Link

"Hard to think of Sam hitting Elizabeth"

Unfortunately, that was common practice in the bad old days. "A woman, a dog, and a walnut tree, the more you beat them the better they be."

Robert Gertz  •  Link

To be fair to Sam it does sound as though the blows might have been mutual and we know Bess has a very short temper where her control of her household is concerned.

mary mcintyre  •  Link

Andy and Martin have between them got it right. You fill the globe with water, creating a prism. The candlelight passing through it is concentrated into a beam that you can use at full force or diffuse through a frame of oiled paper.

I've seen engravings of jewellers using this rig -- like lacemakers, they would definitely need bright, concentrated light aimed at a relatively small area.

Robert Gertz  •  Link

"You fill the globe with water, creating a prism."

"Mr. Newton, have a look here. This is a most interesting little invention of a friend of mine, a Mr. Cocker. Note the prism effect, sir."

Now if Hooke had just not been so busy chuckling at the name...

Ruben  •  Link

Lamps
We had already in the past annotated interesting points concerning lacemakers lamps, including ilustrations.
See: http://lace.lacefairy.com/Gallery…
This lamps did not include oiled paper. Maybe the oiled paper was there as a device to diffuse the light, so you need more candles for the same lighting effect. This is something good if you are Samuel Pepys but expensive if you are a girl making your living a penny at a time.

Ruben  •  Link

Lamps
By the way:
A prism has by definition plane surfaces. The classic prism has a triangular base and the surfaces are more or less parallel.
A globe may reflect light to a focus, but it is no prism.

Pedro  •  Link

A prism.

Newton bought his prism from Stourbridge Fair in Cambridge in 1664!

Carl in Boston  •  Link

Ruben has the goods on lace maker's lamps with a spherical globe filled with water to catch the off axis rays of light and bend them back to the central focus, giving some small concentration of light. This is an approximation to a spherical lens, which is better than nothing. (A prism goes the other way, spreading light into colors, lenses bring the diverging light together). Lighthouses used parabolic lenses, arranged in pieces as a Fresnel lens, but round globes filled with water weighed less than glass globes and served for lacemakers and would have been interesting to Samuel Pepys, who is getting concerned about his eyesight. I remember seeing whale oil lamps for sale on Nantucket Island (off Massachusetts USA) with a globe to be filled with water to focus the light. The focus of a spherical lens is crummy, because the red and blue parts of light are focused in different places, making spherical abberation. An oiled paper might scramble the light and hopefully make the red and blue parts come back together. I have been looking all over the internet for more on this, but no one is selling a whale oil lamp with a spherical intergalactic translational modulating lens (made from a glass light bulb).

Australian Susan  •  Link

Lacemakers in England used to sit at their doors with their lace cushions in sunlight when they could to get really good natural light. (and save money on candles). The places known for lace-making (such as Honiton in Devon) became destinations for tourists when Victorians started travelling around much more with cheap rail travel - people would stand around and watch the lacemakers as they worked sitting in front of their doors (and no doubt wishing the ********** tourists would ********* off and let them get on with their work) (which would be piece work rates). Similarly some weaving cottages in England, where they survive not too much improved, have huge windows (which were not always glazed)in the upper storey loft area where looms were set up to get the best light. Bollington in Cheshire has good examples.

pepf  •  Link

"...came Mr. Cocker, and brought me a globe of glasse, and a frame of oyled paper, as I desired, to show me the manner of his gaining light to grave by, and to lessen the glaringnesse of it at pleasure by an oyled paper."

Re: discussion of scotoscope
(light condenser vs. camera obscura)
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
http://www.pepysdiary.com/encyclo…

I can't help but notice the similarity, if not identity, of Mr. Cocker's and Mr. Hooke's lighting apparatus. Hooke's microscope condenser featured an additional collecting lens (Micrographia Schem.1 fig.5); otherwise it's the same contraption as Mr.Cocker's including the oily paper as a diffusion screen, cf. R. Hooke, Micrographia:
"The way for doing which is this. I make choice of some Room that has only one window open to the South, and at about three or four foot distance from this Window, on a Table, I place my Microscope, and then so place either a round *Globe of Water*, or a very deep clear plano convex Glass (whose convex side is turn'd towards the Window) that there is a great quantity of Rayes collected and thrown upon the Object: Or if the Sun shine, I place a small *piece of oyly Paper* very near the Object, between that and the light; then with a good large Burning-Glass I so collect and throw the Rayes on the Paper, that there may be a very great quantity of light pass through it to the Object; yet I so proportion that light, that it may not singe or burn the Paper."
Curiously, the English language seems to be lacking a specific term for the glass globe filled with water or brine although its use as a light collecting lens by lace makers or goldsmiths is documented. The continental equivalent, known as "Schusterkugel" (literally shoemaker's globe) in German, has been utilised for lighting purposes of artisans and theaters since the late M.A. at least (e.g. Architectura recreationis, Furttenbach, Joseph. - Berlin : Verl. für Bauwesen, 1988, Fotomechan. Nachdr. d. Erstaufl. Augsburg, Schultes, 1640). Without doubt SP, too, would have noted the similarity and mentioned his ἅπαξ λεγόμενον "scotoscope" again had it been this lighting device. So, after all, Latham & Matthews seem to have a point in identifying the scotoscope with a camera obscura.

...and were it graven with gravers upon the eye corners it were a warner to whoso would be warned.

Second Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

Mary on Mr. Cocker's 'globe'

There was speculation on this article in the entry for August 10th 1664. Some variation on the 'shoemaker's window' now sounds even more likely, since we have reference to a globe.

http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

"blows"?

On his past form, if Sam had struck first, he's have been writing something like "God forgive me!" Then he'd have been wallowing in misery and self-pity for the rest of the day.

I'd guess that today he woke up feeling grumpy, made a sarcastic comment or two, and Bess clobbered him, after which they enjoyed making up.

I seem to recall that, describing his childhood in his memoirs, the late John Mortimer described "mutual torment" as "the chief pleasure of family life".

Louise Hudson  •  Link

Robert Gertz:
"...having bad words with my wife, and blows too, about the ill-serving up of our victuals yesterday; but all ended in love..."

But for the black eyes and broken arms...True romance.
I guess all we can do is hope Bess landed a few good ones.

----------------

Ii suspect if any blows were landed they were by Sam on the servants. Sam has admitted to hitting them before.

Tonyel  •  Link

"the ill-serving up of our victuals yesterday;"
He described this as a rare chine of beef but perhaps 'rare' was not a compliment. In the UK at least rare beef means lightly cooked so that the centre is still bloody. Or, perhaps it was a misprint for 'raw'. Either way, not an attractive dish to set before guests given the hygiene standards of the time.

Louise Hudson  •  Link

I think whay Sam meant when he said "rare" is that it was not commonplace. Not many people at that time could afford a piece of beef. Probably most people below Sam's class had never so much as tasted beef--which would have accounted for the vast majority of Londoners of the time.

Louise Hudson  •  Link

Correction: " I think what Sam meant . . . "

Chris Squire UK  •  Link

Re: ‘ . . even to the having bad words with my wife, and blows too . . ‘

‘blow, n.1 < Origin doubtful . .
3. ‘An act of hostility’ (Johnson). Usually in pl. blows = ‘combat, fighting, war’. .
. . 1651   T. Hobbes Leviathan i. v. 19   Their controversie must either come to blowes, or be undecided . . ‘

(OED)

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