Wikipedia claims - I do not know on what authority, as the sentence does not have one of that site's famous reference notes attached - that Thomas Fuller, at least, died of typhus. It also mentions *that* Dean Nicholas died, the day before this one, in fact, but not what of.
Note that the Savoy mentioned here is not what we would now call The Savoy, to wit, the Savoy Hotel or the Savoy Theatre. Those were both built centuries after Pepys. Nor is it the originator of the name, the Savoy Palace. That had been destroyed several centuries before.
It's either the Liberty of the Savoy, comprising the lands on which the palace stood; or the Savoy Chapel or the Savoy Hospital, which had both been built in that area about a century and a half before. The Liberty has been abolished, the Hospital torn down, but we can still visit the Chapel that Sam may have gone to. (The Hotel and Theatre were also built in the same area, hence their name.)
Given the size, and at that time rural setting, of Huntingdon, I would be surprised if Mother ——'s house were an actual, organised brothel. I don't think they'd go there in a party like that, either. Two boys together, maybe, but a crowd of at least six men together? Not discreet. Not when you've just been discussing an inheritance.
More likely, I think, is that it was a public house of ill repute - and that repute for being somewhat more rough than the average and not having the best of ale, and *possibly* a, let's call her in the good tradition of The Eye of Argon, "complying wench". But not a brothel in the true meaning of that word.
As an indication how well regarded this site is: I went on a wikiramble from Portholme, and discovered that the article on Brampton cites pepysdiary.com as a respected source on Pepys information. Well done!
If the song dirk posted is indeed the one Sam was learning, it can be listened to on YouTube. The top one by Gudrun Anders is very good, but this - like Sam's - is a male voice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e… It was apparently written by one Sigismondo d'India (never heard of him, which surprises me a bit) in the early 1600s, so at least the timing works out.
I suspect that another reason Sam doesn't want to give away his books is that he knows lent books have a tendency to go astray. And it doesn't even have to be intentional - people are simply less careful with other people's property. They may be shoved onto a side shelf with a note "To be returned to Pepys" and then forgotten about.
If he brings them along himself and lets the Lords make the required copies, he can make sure he takes them back to the office in safety and keep his own records complete. If he lets any two random footmen carry them away, he has no such guarantee. I commend the good care he takes of his administration.
@Barbara (2004): nightingales in Berkeley Square would be a slight surprise, but not unbelievable. They do live in southern England. A city square would not be their most beloved habitat, but it's not quite unlikely. Richmond Park, sure, much *more* likely; but Berkeley Square, not impossible for one to stray there.
Nevertheless, Sam would not have heard them there. That, however, is only because the square was laid out a century or so after his life. He may well have heard them in whatever landscape there was there in his day.
(What there definitely has never been is a bluebird over the White Cliffs of Dover. The bluebird is an American species. That one's the completely wrong song.)
@john... possibly. Or he could just be rubicund and merry. After all, with his red sash, he does sound like a bit of a man-about-town, albeit in a harmless manner.
@Ruben (2004): hospital is certainly not from "Ushpezin". It comes - and this is exensively documented - from Latin hospes: host. It is cognate with many other Indo-European words. In fact, the most likely etymology of ushpizin is that it itself comes from a loanword from Persian into Aramaic! It's not English borrowing from Hebrew, it's Aramaic borrowing from Indo-European, and hospital has most certainly been Latinate all along.
@LKvM: 56 is by no means too old to be menopausal. It's near the old end of the range, but not unheard of. As for too young for it to be dementia... Early Onset Alzheimer is a thing, and 56 isn't even *very* young for it to start. So, it could indeed be either of those; but as we have no real evidence for either, all that really means is that it's silly to speculate either way. Sometimes people just take an irrational dislike to someone else.
@San Diego Sarah: Don't get me started! At least we Groningers and Gelderlanders are civilised enough not to burn a Hollander's holiday home down, or to take a shillelagh to their heads. But it is an irritation, on this site as well.
@Stephane Chenard: be honest, it is true that there are very few things that the English do better than a pomp and circumstance, and there is nobody who does it remotely as well as they do.
In case anyone wonders why they would bother "representing" the Dukes of Normandy and Aquitane at such an occasion: at this point in history, the English crown was still pretending to certain titles in France, /maugre/ the loss of the Hundred Years' War. The French throne was no longer even theoretically in sight - they still styled themselves so, but that was all - but they did have a paper claim to those two Duchies at least.
It wasn't until after the French Revolution, which obliterated all those titles whoever held them for real, that George III dropped the pretence. Even now, for ceremonial reasons, at least the Norman - and I gather even the Aquitanian - pretence is held up in the Channel Islands. And of course the Jacobean laughing stock pretends to those, and the French crown, along with all their other silliness.
Note that, despite Sam's obvious fondness for the stage, the Globe mentioned here is not Shakespeare's theatre. That was demolished in, IIRC, 1644, and not rebuilt until Sam Wanamaker came along in the 1990s. This appears to have been a pub in East (as it was then) London.
Re Roger Browne: scrofula is not, in fact, the same thing as tuberculosis. It is an infection of the lymph nodes which is often, but not always, caused by the tuberculosis bacterium; apparently much more often in adults but much less often in children. In any case, the symptoms of scrofula, from whatever cause, are quite different from tuberculosis proper.
RM: it very definitely is. As is the Mall; the Maliebaan in Utrecht; and several others all over Europe, and even, I believe, the older American colonies.
Note: the petticoat breeches are the upper part which looks like a skirt, not the hose. You can't get two legs into one hose, but it would be possible with the almost-skirts.
Re. Sunday: it certainly always was, except in the most strict of sects, no work on a Sunday unless necessary. After all, Luke 14:5 says: “Which of you shall have an ox or an ass fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the Sabbath day?” Which is sensible advice.
Sam was probably asking for forgiveness because yes, it was necessary to do his accounts this morning to have them ready that afternoon; but it would not have been so, had he done this work the day before and not put it off until the last moment.
Comments
Third Reading
About Tuesday 20 August 1661
RLB • Link
@Australian Susan: I get the impression that he didn't mention it simply because he had been expecting it for some time.
About Friday 16 August 1661
RLB • Link
Wikipedia claims - I do not know on what authority, as the sentence does not have one of that site's famous reference notes attached - that Thomas Fuller, at least, died of typhus. It also mentions *that* Dean Nicholas died, the day before this one, in fact, but not what of.
About Thursday 8 August 1661
RLB • Link
Note that the Savoy mentioned here is not what we would now call The Savoy, to wit, the Savoy Hotel or the Savoy Theatre. Those were both built centuries after Pepys. Nor is it the originator of the name, the Savoy Palace. That had been destroyed several centuries before.
It's either the Liberty of the Savoy, comprising the lands on which the palace stood; or the Savoy Chapel or the Savoy Hospital, which had both been built in that area about a century and a half before. The Liberty has been abolished, the Hospital torn down, but we can still visit the Chapel that Sam may have gone to. (The Hotel and Theatre were also built in the same area, hence their name.)
About Saturday 20 July 1661
RLB • Link
Given the size, and at that time rural setting, of Huntingdon, I would be surprised if Mother ——'s house were an actual, organised brothel. I don't think they'd go there in a party like that, either. Two boys together, maybe, but a crowd of at least six men together? Not discreet. Not when you've just been discussing an inheritance.
More likely, I think, is that it was a public house of ill repute - and that repute for being somewhat more rough than the average and not having the best of ale, and *possibly* a, let's call her in the good tradition of The Eye of Argon, "complying wench". But not a brothel in the true meaning of that word.
About Sunday 14th July 1661
RLB • Link
As an indication how well regarded this site is: I went on a wikiramble from Portholme, and discovered that the article on Brampton cites pepysdiary.com as a respected source on Pepys information. Well done!
About Tuesday 25 June 1661
RLB • Link
If the song dirk posted is indeed the one Sam was learning, it can be listened to on YouTube. The top one by Gudrun Anders is very good, but this - like Sam's - is a male voice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e…
It was apparently written by one Sigismondo d'India (never heard of him, which surprises me a bit) in the early 1600s, so at least the timing works out.
About Wednesday 15 May 1661
RLB • Link
I suspect that another reason Sam doesn't want to give away his books is that he knows lent books have a tendency to go astray. And it doesn't even have to be intentional - people are simply less careful with other people's property. They may be shoved onto a side shelf with a note "To be returned to Pepys" and then forgotten about.
If he brings them along himself and lets the Lords make the required copies, he can make sure he takes them back to the office in safety and keep his own records complete. If he lets any two random footmen carry them away, he has no such guarantee. I commend the good care he takes of his administration.
About Sunday 5 May 1661
RLB • Link
@Barbara (2004): nightingales in Berkeley Square would be a slight surprise, but not unbelievable. They do live in southern England. A city square would not be their most beloved habitat, but it's not quite unlikely. Richmond Park, sure, much *more* likely; but Berkeley Square, not impossible for one to stray there.
Nevertheless, Sam would not have heard them there. That, however, is only because the square was laid out a century or so after his life. He may well have heard them in whatever landscape there was there in his day.
(What there definitely has never been is a bluebird over the White Cliffs of Dover. The bluebird is an American species. That one's the completely wrong song.)
About Saturday 4 May 1661
RLB • Link
@john... possibly. Or he could just be rubicund and merry. After all, with his red sash, he does sound like a bit of a man-about-town, albeit in a harmless manner.
About Saturday 4 May 1661
RLB • Link
@Ruben (2004): hospital is certainly not from "Ushpezin". It comes - and this is exensively documented - from Latin hospes: host. It is cognate with many other Indo-European words. In fact, the most likely etymology of ushpizin is that it itself comes from a loanword from Persian into Aramaic! It's not English borrowing from Hebrew, it's Aramaic borrowing from Indo-European, and hospital has most certainly been Latinate all along.
About Sunday 28 April 1661
RLB • Link
@LKvM: 56 is by no means too old to be menopausal. It's near the old end of the range, but not unheard of. As for too young for it to be dementia... Early Onset Alzheimer is a thing, and 56 isn't even *very* young for it to start. So, it could indeed be either of those; but as we have no real evidence for either, all that really means is that it's silly to speculate either way. Sometimes people just take an irrational dislike to someone else.
About Tuesday 23 April 1661
RLB • Link
Wow, is this the longest entry in the diary? It's certainly by a margin the longest I can remember up to now.
About Saturday 20 April 1661
RLB • Link
@San Diego Sarah: Don't get me started! At least we Groningers and Gelderlanders are civilised enough not to burn a Hollander's holiday home down, or to take a shillelagh to their heads. But it is an irritation, on this site as well.
About Monday 22 April 1661
RLB • Link
@Stephane Chenard: be honest, it is true that there are very few things that the English do better than a pomp and circumstance, and there is nobody who does it remotely as well as they do.
About Monday 22 April 1661
RLB • Link
In case anyone wonders why they would bother "representing" the Dukes of Normandy and Aquitane at such an occasion: at this point in history, the English crown was still pretending to certain titles in France, /maugre/ the loss of the Hundred Years' War. The French throne was no longer even theoretically in sight - they still styled themselves so, but that was all - but they did have a paper claim to those two Duchies at least.
It wasn't until after the French Revolution, which obliterated all those titles whoever held them for real, that George III dropped the pretence. Even now, for ceremonial reasons, at least the Norman - and I gather even the Aquitanian - pretence is held up in the Channel Islands. And of course the Jacobean laughing stock pretends to those, and the French crown, along with all their other silliness.
About Tuesday 16 April 1661
RLB • Link
Note that, despite Sam's obvious fondness for the stage, the Globe mentioned here is not Shakespeare's theatre. That was demolished in, IIRC, 1644, and not rebuilt until Sam Wanamaker came along in the 1990s. This appears to have been a pub in East (as it was then) London.
About Saturday 13 April 1661
RLB • Link
Re Roger Browne: scrofula is not, in fact, the same thing as tuberculosis. It is an infection of the lymph nodes which is often, but not always, caused by the tuberculosis bacterium; apparently much more often in adults but much less often in children. In any case, the symptoms of scrofula, from whatever cause, are quite different from tuberculosis proper.
About Tuesday 2 April 1661
RLB • Link
RM: it very definitely is. As is the Mall; the Maliebaan in Utrecht; and several others all over Europe, and even, I believe, the older American colonies.
About Saturday 6 April 1661
RLB • Link
Note: the petticoat breeches are the upper part which looks like a skirt, not the hose. You can't get two legs into one hose, but it would be possible with the almost-skirts.
About Sunday 7 April 1661
RLB • Link
Re. Sunday: it certainly always was, except in the most strict of sects, no work on a Sunday unless necessary. After all, Luke 14:5 says: “Which of you shall have an ox or an ass fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the Sabbath day?” Which is sensible advice.
Sam was probably asking for forgiveness because yes, it was necessary to do his accounts this morning to have them ready that afternoon; but it would not have been so, had he done this work the day before and not put it off until the last moment.