Saturday 8 December 1660

Annotations

• N Andrew Hamilton on Tue 9 Dec 2003, 02:09am. Flag this

  ” and the wind I observed was rose exceedingly before I went to bed.”

  I am struck (not stricken) by the conjugation of “was rose” and wonder when “risen” came into use as, I think, a past participle.

  The phrase is suspensful, and makes one wonder what the morning will bring — or am I too much influenced by Mary Poppins?

• N vincent on Tue 9 Dec 2003, 03:08am. Flag this

  “…having drunk so much wine that my head was troubled and was not very well all night, and the wind I observed was rose exceedingly before I went to bed…”
  which wind? Even the best of Writers do need editors, to correct mistakes made when they are in their cups, and especially after having visions of enjoying the view (incorporeal)from the tower [of London].

• N David Quidnunc on Tue 9 Dec 2003, 03:17am. Flagged

  beef and wine in December — ‘tis the season

  “December was the season

• N David Quidnunc on Tue 9 Dec 2003, 03:27am. Flag this

  “CHINE of beef”

  Webster’s New World Dictionary defines “chine” as “a cut of meat containing part of the backbone.”

  To “chine,” according to the same dictionary, is “to cut along or across the backbone of (a carcass of meat).”

• N vincent on Tue 9 Dec 2003, 03:50am. Flag this

  Meat in Winter; this revolution was not only about Lauds ,Ladies ,kings and Earls, ‘tis maths, time,perspectives, magnefying glass and population growth[boring part] and farming from mundane; carrots peas,CLOVER, and getting goose to market. So many changes in diet.
  Clover was a major ingredient in the growth of London: diet vs plague; Fresh meat around longer For the Cattle fodder for the humans unsalted meats.. It seems strange that the Thames froze yet this year will be the warmest since 1659?

  3 refs for fodder :

  The innovations in this four year rotation system were turnips and clover. Turnips were not a new crop to English farming because they had been grown in East Anglia for use as cattle feed, fodder for livestock, during the winter months, since the 1660’s. However, this was the first time they had been used in crop rotation. Charles Townshend was later to be known as “Turnip” Townshend because of his use of this crop in the four year rotation system.
  http://www.saburchill.com/history/chapters/IR/003fp.html
  ————————-
  Legacie (1651), which passes under the name of Samuel Hartlib
  farming and changes in ways using clove and lucerne
  http://www.soilandhealth.org/01aglibrary/010136ernle/010136ch5.htm
  ——————————————
  Sir Richard Weston’s Discourse on the Husbandry of Brabant and Flanders was published by Hartlib in 1645, and its title indicates the source to which England owed much of its subsequent agricultural advancement
  http://48.1911encyclopedia.org/A/AG/AGRICULTURE.htm
  

• N vincent on Tue 9 Dec 2003, 04:24am. Flag this

  lanthorn :One word from 1587 has largely disappeared in American English, but survives in British English: lanthorn. Lanthorn is another name for a lantern; its name comes from the fact that the sides of some lanterns once were made of horn.
  http://www.m-w.com/wftw/98aug/081898.htm
  A Dark LANTHORN, the Servant or Agent that receives the Bribe (at Court).
  http://dirk.holoweb.net/~liam/dict/L/LANTHORN.html
  make your own lanthorn
  http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/horn/hlant.html
  :

• N Mary on Tue 9 Dec 2003, 08:35am. Flag this

  Meat in winter

  Even before the development of cheap winter feed, December was not the only month in which animals were slaughtered, though the slaughter rate would increase sharply as winter set in. In 1661 Charles issued a proclamation reminding butchers that they were not to kill ‘flesh’ during Lent; slaughterers, meat markets and butchers operated throughout the year and in the warmer months meat was eaten very fresh indeed…. practically slaughtered on one’s doorstep, as Liza Picard points out.

• N Kevin Sheerstone on Tue 9 Dec 2003, 10:04am. Flag this

  Good point Vincent - which wind? Assuming that it was the aeolian variety, it was a common superstition in SP’s time that a strong wind, particularly at night, was a harbinger of death, either that of someone close or a ‘famous personage’. This belief survives in many places in Britain and possibly elsewhere. (Of course, if a tree falls on you it ceases to be a superstition.)

• N tony t. on Tue 9 Dec 2003, 10:28am. Flag this

  ‘Warmest since 1659’
  Vincent - you have been misled by the UK press here. The significance of 1659 is simply that it is the earliest year for which reliable records exist. Using ‘1659’ rather than ‘since records began’just makes a better headline.

• N Kevin Sheerstone on Tue 9 Dec 2003, 11:17am. Flag this

  Warmest since 1659 - tony t. I try to keep up with the UK press via the internet, but I missed this topic entirely. I am wondering how ‘reliable records’ (regarding temperature, at least) could have been kept well before the development of the thermometer. Perhaps somebody could provide a link.

• N Kevin Sheerstone on Tue 9 Dec 2003, 12:09pm. Flag this

  Further to my annotation above, I have just found a link (The Independent) that does refer to ‘records’. But I am still perplexed re temperatures. I do not think that this subject is ‘off topic’, unless we get into dendrochronology, or the Thames freezing,(which has admittedly been ‘done to death’.) SP frequently refers to a ‘hard frost’, from which it can certainly be inferred that it was below freezing, but my question stands, I think.

• N Rick Ansell on Tue 9 Dec 2003, 12:14pm. Flag this

  The principle reason that the Thames no longer freezes in London is the replacement of the old London Bridge (in 1831, with a subsequent further replacement). The new bridge didn’t block the waters any way as much as the old, which, together with the reduction of the rivers width by the building of the Embankments, has speeded the rivers flow, making it less likely to freeze.

  Its not completely impossible though, it froze in the legendarily cold winter of 1963, which, as far as I know, was the last time it happened.

• N A. De Araujo on Tue 9 Dec 2003, 12:22pm. Flag this

  “any meat…would have to be preserved…by salting” at least ducks and pigs could be preserved after cooking in their own fat “confit”

• N A. De Araujo on Tue 9 Dec 2003, 12:25pm. Flag this

  also by smoking

• N Jenny Doughty on Tue 9 Dec 2003, 12:59pm. Flag this

  Regarding dendrochronology, recent discoveries seem to show that Sam is in the middle of a very happy period for people acquiring new violins, possibly caused by Europe being in the grip of the ‘Little Ice Age’, which reached its coldest point during the 70-year period from 1645-1715 known as the Maunder Minimum, named after the 19th century solar astronomer, E.W. Maunder, who documented a lack of solar activity during the period.

  Read this link for an account of research into dendrochronology and climatology and the link between the weather and the manufacture of Stradivarius violins. Of course, Antonio Stradivarius is, as Pepys writes, only sixteen or seventeen years old so Sam will have to wait a few years if he wants to acquire one of his products.

  http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/a/2003/12/07/national1250EST0468.DTL

• N PHE on Tue 9 Dec 2003, 01:50pm. Flag this

  Weather
  I’ve copied the ‘weather’ entries here into the ‘Science & Technology/Weather’ section. My own interest is as a Gobal Warming cynic. Its no surprise temperatures are warmer now than atanytime since 1659 if that was in the middle of a Little Ice Age - though I presume if anyone wants to further comment on that, it’d be best under the Science section!

• N bruce on Tue 9 Dec 2003, 02:56pm. Flag this

  Apropos preserving meat: why was beef or mutton always salted, whereas fish could be salted or smoked, and hams were usually smoked? Is it not effective to smoke beef or mutton? Wouldn’t smoking meat have kept it more palatable than salting it? (to say nothing about the effect on their blood pressure of all that salt….)!

• N Sam Dodsworth on Tue 9 Dec 2003, 03:42pm. Flag this

  Smoking meat:

  Smoking requires a lot of fuel, and space for smokehouses if it’s done in quantity. Salting, on the other hand, needs only salt and some tubs or barrels - easier to do, and it can be transported while it’s curing.

  I suspect the size of the cuts of meat may have something to do with it, too - ham is actually cured with salt or brine, and only sometimes smoked afterwards.

• N john simmons on Tue 9 Dec 2003, 06:12pm. Flag this

  Air Dried Beef…that delicious specialty of Haute Savoie, served at a couple of places in Paris, haven’t a clue how it’s done..but that and a good bottle of white burgundy and you’re home free…j.s.

• N cindy_b on Tue 9 Dec 2003, 07:48pm. Flag this

  This entry reads like a list of headache causes…
  1. A huge emotional stress with a sudden release
  2. Too much wine (especially red wine)
  3. A change in the weather (large change in barometric pressure)

  It’s no wonder the poor guy’s “head was troubled”!

• N vincent on Tue 9 Dec 2003, 08:13pm. Flag this

  I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction
  http://www.cyber-nation.com/victory/quotations/authors/quotes_bevan_aneurin.html
  yes Tony T; always read between the li(n)es:
  

• N tc on Tue 9 Dec 2003, 11:02pm. Flag this

  “…I was fain to send order…”

  Does one detect a note of peevishness in Sam’s entry? Dragged into the office to double check the numbers…one wonders how confident he was in his figures.

  And in “…we did find we were in no mistake.”

  Is that a I-told-you-so, Sir W. Pen? Or a sense of relief that Sam himself didn’t make a “great error”?

• N language hat on Tue 9 Dec 2003, 11:49pm. Flag this

  The innovations in this four year rotation system were turnips and clover:
  These innovations were imported from Holland, whose inhabitants were the first to develop modern farming methods (planting fertilizing crops like clover rather than letting fields lie fallow, and growing for sale rather than subsistence) from (I believe) the 15th century on. Because the English adopted them early, they had a good supply of food during periods when the French and other laggards were starving.

• N language hat on Tue 9 Dec 2003, 11:50pm. Flag this

  Lanthorn is another name for a lantern:
  It’s just a variant spelling; as the OED says, “The form lanthorn is prob. due to popular etymology, lanterns having formerly been almost always made of horn.”

• N language hat on Wed 10 Dec 2003, 12:00am. Flagged

  wonder when

• N vincent on Wed 10 Dec 2003, 12:35am. Flag this

  “Rise and Raise ” when it comes getting more money. One side of the pond say it is a “pay rise”, the other, it is “pay raise”. Of course the pay rose beyond all expectations and not risen to level of the others..

• N dirk on Wed 10 Dec 2003, 03:01am. Flag this

  Smoked meat

  Beef was also smoked instead of salted occasionally - at least some parts of the animal were. This is still done today by the way. Don’t ask me which parts of the ox or cow were more regularly smoked resp. salted - I don’t have the details.
  

• N David Quidnunc on Wed 10 Dec 2003, 06:28am. Flag this

  Prime Chine Time

  Nissenbaum certainly seems to exaggerate by saying early winter was the “only” time for fresh meat. But beef was may have been cheaper in the late fall and early winter.

  One indication of that is the number of times Pepys mentions “chine of beef” in the diary. Of the 17 occasions when the phrase shows up in the diary, Pepys mentions it five times in December (29 percent), thrice in January (18 percent), twice in November and twice in October (12 percent each). February, March, April and September each have only one appearance of “chine of beef” and no in other months (that is, May through August) does it appear.

  December is obviously the big month for it, and nearly half of the mentions are in December and January.

  http://www.google.com/search?as_q=&num=50&hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&c2coff=1&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=chine&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=www.pepys.info&safe=images
  

• N Harry on Wed 10 Dec 2003, 10:59am. Flag this

  who were in a great fear that we had committed a great error of 100,000l. in our late account gone into the Parliament in making it too little.

  
  I am surprised nobody has commented on what I believe must have been a really dramatic episode for Sam. As a retired chartered accountant and auditor, I well remember that one lived in constant fear of being involved in a material misstatement or certifying wrong / fraudulent accounts. In this case, the 100,000l. understatement could result in money voted by Parliament running out before everyone had been paid off ,followed by an indignant public outcry. This could destroy the reputation and career of a young and ambitious civil servant. In the event it turned out all right, as we somehow felt was likely all along, but nevertheless Sam will have spent an anxious moment before being finally vindicated!

• N David Quidnunc on Thu 11 Dec 2003, 04:29am. Flag this

  In Theatre News Today …

  “When did actresses first appear on the British stage?
  
  “Before the English Civil War all female roles on the public stage were played by boys and men. The Puritans closed all theatres in 1642 and it was only at the Restoration of the monarchy, in 1660, that a professional actress appeared on the British stage for the first time. She appeared as Desdemona in The Moor of Venice [Othello] on 8th December 1660. Although the role is known, the name of the actress is not.”

  — The Theatre Museum, “Britain’s National Museum of the Performing Arts”
  http://theatremuseum.vam.ac.uk/faq.htm

• N David Quidnunc on Thu 11 Dec 2003, 06:21am. Flag this

  Which woman was on stage today?

  Most websites, it seems, credit Margaret Hughes as the first woman to act in a play. But others, which seem more authoritative, say we don’t know — however, either Hughes or Anne Marshall are good picks. There were, by the way, actress-singers in “The Seige of Rhodes” (by William D’Avenant) which “is considered one of the first English operas.” Part 1 appeared in 1656, Part 2 in 1659.

  “The official date for the first woman to appear on stage is December 8, 1660, when Thomas Killigrew’s company performed Othello with a female actress in the role of Desdemona. The name of this pioneering woman is unknown, however, as it was never recorded. Credit is usually given to Anne Marshall, a career actress, or Margaret Hughes, who later became the mistress of Prince Rupert (Charles II’s cousin).

  http://www.gwu.edu/~klarsen/theatre.html

• N vincent on Fri 12 Dec 2003, 10:27pm. Flag this

  Harry: ‘tis why he went on a binge that night.”…having drunk so much wine that my head was troubled and was not very well all night…”