Thursday 18 February 1668/69
Up, and to the Office, and at noon home, expecting to have this day seen Bab. and Betty Pepys here, but they come not; and so after dinner my wife and I to the Duke of York’s house, to a play, and there saw “The Mad Lover,” which do not please me so well as it used to do, only Betterton’s part still pleases me. But here who should we have come to us but Bab. and Betty and Talbot, the first play they were yet at; and going to see us, and hearing by my boy, whom I sent to them, that we were here, they come to us hither, and happened all of us to sit by my cozen Turner and The., and we carried them home first, and then took Bab. and Betty to our house, where they lay and supped, and pretty merry, and very fine with their new clothes, and good comely girls they are enough, and very glad I am of their being with us, though I would very well have been contented to have been without the charge. So they to bed and we to bed.
15 Annotations
First Reading
chris • Link
Sam is an intelligent and perceptive man. He goes often to the theatre. I find it surprising that his responses to what he sees seem usually to be like these, merely noting what more or pleases him. Do the other diarists come closer to what we might think of as a critical stance?
Robert Gertz • Link
Right out of "Life With Father", as to Bab and Betty and the charge, Sam...Though...
Heaven...
"What?" Babs, Betty, Roger...Reading...
"Cousin Samuel?"
"It's a provate Diary..." Sam tries.
"In our diaries we wrote how much we loved you for showing us London..." Babs, sadly...
"I hate you...Even if this is Heaven, cousin Sanuel." Betty...Running out.
Roger frowning...He and Babs stalking out.
"It was meant to be a personal diary..." Sam, pathetically.
"I could have told you..." Bess, smugly.
***
Terry Foreman • Link
The Royal Society today at Arundel House — from the Hooke Folio Online
Feb. 18. The Experiments of motion were prosecuted with Springy bodys. by which it appeared to some of the Company that the Laws of Motion Establishd by Dr Wren, were best verifyed by the motion of the most Springy bodys. Orderd that these tryalls be continued the next Day. --
Malpighius [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc… ] his pacquet about Silk wormes [ http://www.find-a-book.com/db/boo… ], orderd to be perused against next Day by Mr Olden[burg] & Mr Hooke. -
about flying cobwebbs. -- Bertrand De La Costa's ["perpetual motion" ] machin. -- Mr Coxes microscope Described.
http://webapps.qmul.ac.uk/cell/Ho…
Terry Foreman • Link
John Evelyn's Diary
18.February 1669 To the Royal Society, when Signer Malpighi, an Italian physician and anatomist, sent the Societie the incomparable History of the Silkworme.
[ http://www.culturaapicola.com.ar/… ]
http://goo.gl/eySTk
Roy • Link
We have our TV, internet, Theatre, Cinema and mass entertainment, they don't have much hence Theatre is popular.
Robert Gertz • Link
Sam: "It has been said...The theater should've been left for dead. Critics repeat it enmasse.
Bess: "But our theater's alive. It ought to survive."
Sam: "Though truly a pain in the ass...You wait forever to see a play that is shrewd. The lady next is ranting and crude."
Bess: "The guy to your right is frightfully tight...The one to your left is terribly lewd."
Sam: "The lyrics suck, the music's yuck...The casting is all wrong. (I mean Lacy as a comic Hamlet? Come on...)"
Bess: "And when I need the bathroom, the line is five miles long."
Together:
"Still there's nothing like a show in London...There's nothing like a London show."
Sam:
"Books can sag, their endings drag...Pamphlets can be a bore...(or be rather politically incorrect)."
Bess:
"So pick up your feet and take a seat...At the place we all adore."
Together:
"Because there's nothing like a show in London...There's nothing like a London show..."
Sam:
"I swear I'll never go again...Simply not worthwhile."
Bess:
"But then somehow...Despite your vow...You're back there in the aisle...(And I'd better be with you.)
Chorus...Charles, Jamie, cast of "The Adventure of Five Hours, House audience, Sam, Bess, Babs, Betty, Jane, and The:
"Because there's nothing like a show in London...There's nothing like a London show..."
Sam: "Till they invent movies. And though it is rather a huge pot of dough to throw..."
All:
"There's nothing...Like a London show..."
JWB • Link
...Mr Coxes microscope Described...
"Christopher Cock was a London instrument maker of the 17th century, who supplied microscopes to Robert Hooke. These microscopes were compound lens instruments, which, unfortunately, suffered greatly from spherical aberration."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chri…
JWB • Link
Trying to find anything on Bertrand de La Costa, I came across this essay and think many fellow diary readers will find it interesting:
"Science as Ceremonial Activity"
Robert Wuthnow
'The Emergence of Modern Science and World System Theory'
Theory and Society
Vol. 8, No. 2, Sep., 1979, 215-243.
http://www.compilerpress.ca/Compe…
Dorothy Willis • Link
Someone asked earlier about what the problem was with Bab and Betty's clothes. This passage answers that question. They were waiting for their new, fashionable clothes to be made before they went out. There was no way for people in the country to know what was fashionable before they arrived, so when anyone with any pretensions to fashion visited they allowed some time at the start of the visit to have something made. The example that came immediately to my mind took place about 100 years later, and the ignorant girl from the country has come to Bath, not to London but the situation is the same.
"[Catherine's] entree into life could not take place till after three or four days had been spent in learning what was mostly worn, and her chaperone was provided with a dress of the newest fashion. Catherine too made some purchases herself, and when all these matters were arranged, the important evening came which was to usher her into the Upper Rooms. Her hair was cut and dressed by the best hand, her clothes put on with care, and both Mrs. Allen and her maid declared she looked quite as she should do."
Terry Foreman • Link
"Malpighi, Swammerdam and the Colourful Silkworm: Replication and Visual Representation in Early Modern Science," Matthew Cobb - Annals of Science, 59 (2002), 111–147.
See pp. 115-117 for B/W plates and p.120 for the "Colourful Silkworm" larva.
http://www.culturaapicola.com.ar/…
***
JWB, thanks for the link to some very helpful ways to think about modern science by the estimable Robert Wuthnow!
Jim • Link
According to Phil's 'Pepys Family Tree' Babs would be 24, Betty is 17, and Talbot would be 21.
While the girls spend time with Samuel & Elizabeth I would guess that Talbot and his father are immersed in the world of law and Parliament. Both Roger Pepys and his father served in Parliament. I suspect Roger's hope is that Talbot will follow in their footsteps.
Second Reading
Terry Foreman • Link
Marcello Malpighi, (born March 10, 1628, Crevalcore, near Bologna, Papal States [Italy]—died Nov. 30, 1694, Rome), Italian physician and biologist who, in developing experimental methods to study living things, founded the science of microscopic anatomy....Malpighi conducted many studies of insect larvae—establishing, in so doing, the basis for their future study—the most important of which was his investigation in 1669 of the structure and development of the silkworm. https://www.britannica.com/biogra…
Terry Foreman • Link
Marcello Malpighi (10 March 1628 – 29 November 1694) was an Italian biologist and physician, who is referred to as the "Founder of microscopical anatomy, histology & Father of physiology and embryology". Malpighi's name is borne by several physiological features related to the biological excretory system, such as the Malpighian corpuscles and Malpighian pyramids of the kidneys and the Malpighian tubule system of insects. The splenic lymphoid nodules are often called the "Malpighian bodies of the spleen" or Malpighian corpuscles. The botanical family Malpighiaceae is also named after him. He was the first person to see capillaries in animals, and he discovered the link between arteries and veins that had eluded William Harvey. Malpighi was one of the earliest people to observe red blood cells under a microscope, after Jan Swammerdam. His treatise De polypo cordis (1666) was important for understanding blood composition, as well as how blood clots. In it, Malpighi described how the form of a blood clot differed in the right against the left sides of the heart.[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar…
Terry Foreman • Link
"so after dinner my wife and I to the Duke of York’s house, to a play, and there saw “The Mad Lover,” which do not please me so well as it used to do, only Betterton’s part still pleases me."
L&M: Betterton played the part of Memnon in this tragi-comedy by Fletcher: https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
San Diego Sarah • Link
It tales 10 years plus to rebuild London after the Great Fire; housing is still in short supply.
Presumably Roger Pepys and his new wife are living at his Middle Inn Chambers, and having young Talbot there as well would be crowded. Now Elizabeth and Sam are on good terms again, the girls can have Elizabeth's room. If Pepys returns to the dog house, he can camp in his Cabinet with his books.
I've lost track of their room additions: they may even have a real spare room by now.