Wednesday 11 July 1660

Annotations

• N Paul Brewster on Fri 11 Jul 2003, 11:10pm

  Major Bournes/Major Brown

• N Paul Brewster on Fri 11 Jul 2003, 11:39pm

• N Pauline on Fri 11 Jul 2003, 11:40pm

  “…a busy fellow…” and sleeping well at Willoughby’s house
  In her book, Tomalin has much to say about what is happening here. Pepsy was apparently too busy pulling off this “breathless sequence” to write it fully. I have typed the passage into Background Information for Seething Lane. (Stop short in your reading if you want to avoid a spoiler for two days hence.)
  See http://www.pepysdiary.com/p/1023.php

• N Nix on Sat 12 Jul 2003, 12:13am

  “going home to take a cap” —

  Perhaps it is “nap”, since he went on to nap at Willoughby’s? Though it means a change of site, in light of the OED’s extensive citation of Pepys it seems more plausible than Murray somehow overlooking a two-centuries-premature use of “crap”.

  Or might it refer to a sleeping cap for his intended nap? (I suppose not, in July.)

• N Paul Brewster on Sat 12 Jul 2003, 01:02am

  on the OED citation for crap …
  I presume Murray(?) was working from the Wheatley (or one of the previous editions) and not from the original shorthand and definitely not from the L&M, so the failure to find the reference is not particularly surprising. I think we may be left with the need to review the shorthand for a definitive answer here.

• N ellen on Sat 12 Jul 2003, 02:40am

  Knowing Sam as I think I do, I believe he means nap or maybe cap, but certainly not crap. He writes of internal functions only when they don’t function well.

• N vincent on Sat 12 Jul 2003, 03:14am

  “cap”/” nap ” or ca(t)pnap: my reading from my prospective would be SP’s Wants to lay claim to the new nest, and does not know how well he will be received by the old tenant. He was pretty upset earlier in the day and he wants to be his most amendable self so before bouncing over to the new digs he takes a cat nap: for if if was going to the “La Jaques” he would use “House of Privy” I believe Ellen has the correct interpretation . Must research some of the baudy poets for the phrase of the day.

• N Pauline on Sat 12 Jul 2003, 03:30am

  “…home to take a cap…”
  This from our General Reference link to Webster Dictionary 1913:
  “Cap paper. (a) A kind of writing paper including flat cap, foolsap, and legal cap…. Legal cap, a kind of folio writing paper, made for the use of lawyers, in long narrow sheets which have the fold at the top or narrow edge.”

  On this day his warrant for Clerk of the Acts is “turned into a bill, signed by the King.” Tomorrow he goes for the Privy Seal, and then he has “to get his patent formally written out and sealed by the Chancery.”

  I’m consulting “The Journal of Mrs Pepys” by Sara George in a search for other meanings of his use of “cap.” Paper is a possible explanation. His dogged focus these days is securing this post.

  That business where the word has an “r” can be done anywhere. But his supplies for preparing his bill and some sheets to stake a claim on the house are at home.
  

• N chip on Sat 12 Jul 2003, 04:10am

  Count me in with Pauline, yet many thanks to Paul Brewster for astute annotations (although I could not get this link to open). A foolscap was a size of paper, 13 by 16. Pepys is definitely jockeying for position here. He may want some legal size paper around to draw up something on the fly. He’s found his nest as Vincent says. And he will build it st

• N Paul Brewster on Sat 12 Jul 2003, 06:28am

  I’m not quite willing to give up on the L&M reading yet…
  In the absence of the actual document, I’m off to try to find a detailed work on Tachygraphy. I hope this will help resolve the following questions: Is there any similarity between the shorthand for “cap” and for “crap”? Could they have been mistaken for one another?

  By the way a text scan of the Gutenberg showed no usage of

• N Mary on Sat 12 Jul 2003, 07:31am

  the busy fellow

  Undoubtedly ‘busy’ in OED sense 5: officious, meddlesome, prying, inquisitive, active in what does not concern one. This usage attested from the early 15th Century to the 19th.

• N Colin Gravois on Sat 12 Jul 2003, 08:06am

  Cap — Crap — Nap

  Undoubtedly it’s a nap, as he talks of borrowing a pair of sheets from Mr Howe on his way home, and we cannot envison the sheets’ usage in the other situations advanced.

• N Roger Miller on Sat 12 Jul 2003, 09:55am

  From a scan of the Gutenberg text it appears that Pepys records taking a nap on five occasions. Perhaps the symbols for ‘c’ and ‘n’ are similar.

  I’ve just been looking at a sequence of images taken by my webcam today and was noting how light it was by about five am. Would Sam have been up and about by that time? If so, that would explain why he needed a short siesta.

• N Paul Brewster on Sat 12 Jul 2003, 01:48pm

  n vs. c (in Shelton)
  n: is a straight line is the manner of a long dash
  c: is the top and left sides of a square in the manner of an uppercase san-serif equilateral L rotated clockwise 90 degrees.

  From a table in Wheatley’s Pepysiana, Appendix II, Pepsy’s Cipher.

• N A. De Araujo on Sat 12 Jul 2003, 03:01pm

  “Cap Crap Nap”
  We should also explore:Rap,Tap,Lap,Map
  Sap,Gap,Jap,Yap and Zap.

• N Pauline on Sat 12 Jul 2003, 03:40pm

  the rotated equilateral L
  Paul, thank you for the research, and your description is wonderful.

  Home to take a cup? As in something to drink. Or maybe just a cap to put on his head?

  Several possibilities are seeming more likely than “crap.” But I think the sheets are unrelated; he takes those as he leaves for Willoughby’s.

  
  

• N martha wishart on Sat 12 Jul 2003, 04:22pm

  Sheets of foolscap perhaps? Did Sam go home to look for paper, and finding none, had to borrow some?

• N vincent on Sat 12 Jul 2003, 09:43pm

  Martha: I like that (fools)cap ,shorthand on shorthand: oh! so much meaning in one letter: I wonder how many wars got started on a mistranslation( preconceived thoughts fitting the missing intelligence)???

• N Pauline on Sat 12 Jul 2003, 10:07pm

  “…I borrowed a pair of sheets…”
  I was going by Claire Tomalin’s intrepretation that the sheets were to sleep between at Willoughby’s. See http://www.pepysdiary.com/p/1023.php

• N Laura K on Sat 12 Jul 2003, 11:00pm

  If cap = paper…

  then sheets are probably sheets of paper, no? I thought Sam has always referred to bed things as linens, rather than sheets. Sheets seems more modern to me, though I really don’t know.

• N vincent on Sun 13 Jul 2003, 02:29am

  I Like cap/nap but Paul Brewster spoilt that: Oh! off to Seething Lane I should go. Must find out what he meant here, so intriging. I do believe he wanted to go by the adage, “Possesion is nine tenths of the law”,(common law that is) bed sheets is good: but cap? put a cap on it? cap it off?: to take possession,seal the deal:?.
  

• N vincent on Sun 13 Jul 2003, 02:57am

  “cap” : Found another meaning, cap, the obvious one:ME cappe english; good old head covering or cloak: could have been a tad chilly at night, going to sleep in a strange place, not knowing he be in or out of house or just plain sleeping in a draughty location.

• N Mary on Sun 13 Jul 2003, 08:17am

  cap, crap, nap etc.

  Apologies for prolonging the debate, but doesn’t Sam usually use the term ‘shit’ when this is what he’s talking about? My impression is that this is his preferred usage.

• N Paul Brewster on Sun 13 Jul 2003, 01:18pm

  Cap/Nap/Crap
  I think we’ll just have to wait for someone to look at the original manuscript to resolve the issue but in the meantime I’ve taken the admittedly somewhat unusual step of submitting the reference to the OED as the earliest reference to the word. I’ve done this in the hope that it might stir up something. (It may in fact stir up nothing. I half expect to receive the academic response of

• N language hat on Tue 15 Jul 2003, 01:31am

  Paul: Good work contacting the OED!
  Do let us know if you hear back…

• N Todd Bernhardt on Wed 16 Jul 2003, 12:16pm

  Awesome debate!

  This is one of the reasons I love this site. Everyone here has just had a very civil (and very interesting, despite the arcane nature of the argument) discussion of whether or not an “r” should be included in a single word, and what ramifications it would have had in the life of a man who lived some 340 years ago. No one got hurt, and I learned a thing or three. I’m impressed.

• N Paul Brewster on Mon 4 Aug 2003, 04:33pm

  Cap/Nap/Crap
  Response from the OED:

  Dear Mr Brewster,

  Thank you very much for your e-mail to the Oxford English Dictionary. Please accept my apologies for the delay in replying to you.

  We have an edition of this book in our library and, checking in it, I notice that there is footnote, which reads:

  ’? ‘cape, cap’, i.e. [s]crap [of food]’

  It would seem that there is a certain amount of debate as to what ‘crap’ means in this context, and therefore it is unlikely that we could include it for, this reason. However, I have passed your e-mail to our revision file for further consideration when work begins in that part of the alphabet.

  Thank you once again for taking the time and trouble to write to us.

  Yours sincerely,

  Fiona McPherson
  Senior Editor OED.

• N Paul Brewster on Mon 4 Aug 2003, 04:39pm

  Cap/Nap/Crap
  My reply to the OED:
  Ms. McPherson,
  In an interesting quirk, the footnote you refer to is missing from the printing of the referenced [L&M Volume I - 1660] volume that I was using as my source for the original submission.

  After I had submitted my note I purchased a copy of the first printing (my copy of a later printing was a library book and was due back). When I received your note I went back to the diary entry in my volume and found the footnote you referred to. I was quite chagrinned to think that I had somehow missed this critical clue. This sent me back to my original source from the local library (Fourth Printing 1979, sixth UK impression) and, true to my memory, I found that the footnote was missing.

  I

• N Pauline on Mon 4 Aug 2003, 05:54pm

  Crap/Crap/Crap
  Bravo, Paul.
  If crap as in scrap, I wonder if it means the “s” is accidently dropped in the shorthand or that “scrap” was colloquially or playfully shortened to “crap.”

  The footnote (‘?

• N vincent on Mon 4 Aug 2003, 07:03pm

  Great work, fascinating this scholarly insight. If it is up to my vote I believe that it is the cap as in night cap for keeping the chill night air off his nogging. A popular device until 45 years ago. Of course he may take a slice of leftovers not Knowing where the local cook shop be. Cape I like to as in shawl to keep his shoulders from cooling off , he not with his jammies.
  Lets face it,entries in a diary are about the non routine days interest.

• N Paul Brewster on Mon 4 Aug 2003, 09:49pm

  ?

• N vincent on Tue 5 Aug 2003, 01:06am

  Paul you make very good points. a minor detail can sink the ship
  

• N vincent on Tue 5 Aug 2003, 03:34am

  re: cr vs c has validity: My Observation Is that Sam does note his new experiences: therefore this may the firstime he has taken his head warmer out for an outing; He mentions the sheets but I do beleive he slept ala natural but needed his earmuffs and head covering while lying on the floor and there was no palias or down filled sleeping mat and no mention of a ‘ammock. Just my ‘ang up.

• N language hat on Tue 5 Aug 2003, 11:44pm

  Well done Paul!
  Strange business about the disappearing footnote. A lot of trouble to go to when reprinting a volume. Must be a story there, but we’ll never know.

  I agree with vincent that “cap” seems likely (certainly likelier than “crap”).

• N Vicente on Sun 18 Apr 2004, 03:11am

  Cap : Reading the OED ‘Twas fascinating: 1611 Night cap worn under the hat: another Wearing Leekes in their Monmouth caps;
  then 1656 BP Hall REm WKS 1660 ’ we hold the head uncovered if the hat be off then the cap be on.’
  Fullers Worthies 1662 IV 50
  ” the best caps were made at Monmouth where the Cappers chapper doth still remain.
  the the Great Bard mention Fluellen and his monmouth be-leeked caps.[Henry V]
  http://the-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/henryv/henryv.4.7.html

  another ref cap :http://the-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/henryv/henryv.5.1.html

• N dirk on Tue 20 Apr 2004, 03:38am

  cap

  Could it be that the most straightforward reading makes the most sense? Sam needs a sleeping cap for the night (also worn in summer, a habit rather than a necessary protection from the cold of winter), goes home to get it and then proceeds to borrow some sheets etc.