Thursday 21 February 1660/61
To Westminster by coach with Sir W. Pen, and in our way saw the city begin to build scaffolds against the Coronacion. To my Lord, and there found him out of doors. So to the Hall and called for some caps that I have a making there, and here met with Mr. Hawley, and with him to Will’s and drank, and then by coach with Mr. Langley our old friend into the city. I set him down by the way, and I home and there staid all day within, having found Mr. Moore, who staid with me till late at night talking and reading some good books. Then he went away, and I to bed.
28 Annotations
First Reading
Josh • Link
"Mr. Moore, who staid with me till late at night talking and reading some good books."
No, Sam, no, don't torture us this way, at least mention one topic and one title!
vincent • Link
My guess? its some of those Risque novelettes ala Francaise; 'tis why he fails to mention [not yet ready to embarrass his future readers].
vincent • Link
"...build scaffolds against the Coronacion ..." 2 months to organise
The Coronation of Charles II, April 23rd 1661.
vincent • Link
Brief and to the point."...here met with Mr. Hawley, and with him to Will's and drank,…”
vincent • Link
Samuel Pepys last night misses all important meeting of the science clique.
"..February 20 To Lond: about buisinesse: & to our Meeting, trying severall Exp: about refining Metalls...."
He should have gone, might have solved the minting problem.
Evelyn and SP have not met up yet?
J A Gioia • Link
out of doors
here's a locution that, up until reading the diary, i thought was particular to us new yorkers. the rest of america rightfully says 'outdoors' to signify our vast and magnificent landscape. that single article 'of' indicates, to me, so very many doors and, perhaps, a slight cultural unease at venturing too far under the sky.
mary • Link
Out of doors
Here, I think, the expression means simply 'gone out' and doesn't imply that he's set off on a hiking trip!
daniel • Link
out of doors
I agree with Mary. he also uses "abroad" in this sense which many of us on the eastern seaboard in the US would not.
Jenny Doughty • Link
'Indoors' is often used in England (especially in the London area) to mean 'at home', qv 'her indoors' for 'the wife'.
Lawrence • Link
Indoors/out of doors is certainly used here in Oxford with the same meaning as Pepys' is using it here, I just assumed that my Lord was out, some where quite local, lady spotting I shouldn't wonder?
Laura K • Link
Native New Yorker here
and I've never used nor heard the expression "out of doors" used in the sense J A Gioia refers to above. As far as I know, NYers say "indoors" or "inside" and "outdoors" or "outside" like the rest of Americans.
vincent • Link
"Out of doors" "gone abroad" are the same, equals out of sight, on the street sumwhere or is it in the street , in/on, the Romans could not figure it out and the Latinists followed the habit. "build scaffolds against the Coronacion"; "against", one would now use 'for' saves a syllable, is that not so.
Modern 'bring' 'take' which one gets the "to" or the "from"? 'tis devolution or evolution or simple being laxadaisical.
dirk • Link
"for" & "against"
If 17th c. English use of prepositions was in anyway similar to present day Dutch, there would be a subtle but not unimportant difference between building scaffolding "for" the coronation and "against" the coronation.
"For" would simply indicate the purpose, whereas "against" would emphasize the time still available to do the job.
Hic retearius • Link
Since we are on prepositions and we're in the wee hours here-
"of" is a preposition rather than an article (English is blessed with two, a definite and an indefinte, a detail calculated as a major challenge to speakers of sensible, tidy, inflected languges like the Slavs but merely to be a toe stubber to speakers of French and German!) (Mind you, the Czechs exact a horrid revenge upon English speakers by spelling words without vowels and even a contrived sentence without vowels.)
Whot say, Vincent: in English "of" governs the accusative, the dative or the locative?
vincent • Link
"of" :Try generative if all else fails try the Apostrophe "'" s.
Nigel Pond • Link
"of" = genitive (cf Latin).
language hat • Link
None of the above.
English does not have cases, so it has neither accusative, dative or locative. (The idea that "of the boy" was a genitive construction was invented by people who desperatedly wanted English grammar to be just like Latin.)
alex • Link
English does have cases. It had a full case sytem (which was almost the same as the Latin case system), and it retains the genitive in the form of the possessive, and the old accusative case persists in English pronouns (him, them, whom, etc.)
language hat • Link
cases:
This is getting pretty far afield, but it is not useful to use the category "case" for a few remnants like the English pronouns. Old English, like Latin, had cases as a basic feature; like Latin, it lost them over the centuries (during which Latin split into several divergent parts now called French, Spanish, Italian, &c). "His" is a possessive pronoun, not a genitive.
Second Reading
Sasha Clarkson • Link
" .... invented by people who desperatedly wanted English grammar to be just like Latin."
Err, not really: the roots of English grammar are German not Latin, although the syntax has "in a different direction evolved". I often find comparisons with German grammar instructive. Also, some case inflections survive, eg "he" nominative -> "him" accusative/dative, -> "his" genitive, etc.
It's also interesting that, as in French and German, Pepys uses "to be" as an auxiliary verb for intransitive verbs*, rather than the modern "to have". Eg "He was come home" rather than "he had come home".
*verbs without a direct object, typically like verbs of motion. Eg "I hit him": him being the direct object. "I went to the pub", the pub being an indirect object.
Third Reading
San Diego Sarah • Link
Don't under-estimate the Early Modern desire to Latin-ize English:
In Shakespeare's plays The Merry Wives of Windsor, Hamlet and Richard III the phrase “declension of pronouns” is used to describe language. That phrase relates to Latin, the language of education for Shakespeare’s lifetime, throughout Europe.
It helps to understand the Latin background of nouns, pronouns, and spelling in 16th and 17th century English when you navigate their literature.
MartinVT • Link
"caps that I have a making there"
What kind of caps? For whom? This doesn't seem to be part of any Valentine's gifts. Perhaps they are for Liz?
Dave Bonta • Link
I had the same question as Martin! And instead found people arguing about declensions in Latin. WTF but also LOL, gotta love this site.
San Diego Sarah • Link
"What kind of caps? For whom?" "I had the same question as Martin!"
Gents -- since Pepys hasn't told us, how can anyone guess? Read on -- maybe you curiosity will be answered in the days to come.
In general, 17th century houses were drafty and cold. Wearing a cap all the time makes sense. They didn't have any "rules" about not wearing caps in the house. Look at the paintings -- hats of all sizes and shapes for everyone.
MartinVT • Link
Caps.
Well, last year, Liz was making Sam's caps. (https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…) Now, he bespeaks them at Westminster. Another sign he's moving up in the world.
LKvM • Link
Re above:
". . . verbs without a direct object, typically like verbs of motion. Eg "I hit him": him being the direct object. "I went to the pub", the pub being an indirect object."
That passage includes the very strangest definition of an indirect object I have ever seen. An indirect object receives the action of a transitive verb, as in "I gave her the book," where "her" is the indirect object and "book" is the direct object. The phrase "to the pub" is not an indirect object; it is simply a prepositional phrase, with "pub" as the object of the preposition "to."
Stephane Chenard • Link
What with all the hoohay on whether English is like Latin, no-one seems to have noticed the odd little endocyte in Sam's first sentence: "the Coronacion". Now, that is not the accepted horttograf, not even in 1661; Thos. Rugge for instance records that this week's Mercurius Politicus writes of "Greate preparations in the Citty of London, makeinge of pagion and triumphall arches againge the coronation of his Majesty", with a T as in Tudor, and we could not finde a single instance of a coronacion, with a C as in Carrambas, in other English discourse.
So is it "la coronación", and thus Sam's first (maybe one thereof) use of Spanish in the Diary? It did survive the Diary's transcription and translation into 19th and 20th century English, unlike all the endearing Olde English which of course is Sam's language at this time, 1661 (and in which we do wish for an edition of Sam his Diurnall). There must be a reason, and not the saucy reasons for which Sam will later avail of forraigne tongues, or a slip of the quill which we deem improbable.
Is this a subtle allusion, written perhaps in disapproval, to the rumors swirling around Sam in his taverns that Charles will marry with a Spanish beauty and into the Catholic house of Habsburg?
Celia • Link
Here is a link to a site about caps for men in the seventeenth century. It points out that men who wore wigs generally shaved their heads and were probably in need of a cap indoors in the winter months. It also mentions the fact that so-called 'nightcaps' were often worn during the day as well. https://trc-leiden.nl/trc-needles…