@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.
@LKvM: I'm afraid you're a day out. Wednesday is supposed to be the day Judas went to the Sanhedrin to conspire to betray Jesus; Maundy Thursday (Witte Donderdag, Gründonnerstag - not Grein) was the day of the Last Supper and, subsequently, betrayal and arrest; and Good Friday is the day Jesus was crucified, after having been held through the night and brought before Pilate and Herod.
This latter point is important in the story, because it explains the haste the Sanhedrin had to get Jesus arrested, convicted, executed and buried: the next day was the Sabbath, when such matters were forbidden. It *had* to be finished before the Sabbath Eve, or as we would now call it, Friday evening. And yes, that *is* mentioned in the Bible, in Luke 23:54.
Jesus rose from the grave on the third day, Sunday; but note that this is not three days after! The confusion - and I suspect, dragging this back to site subject, that the same confusion happened in Sam's time - is over the different way both Romans and Jews counted days from modern Europeans.
First, the day - at least for liturgical reasons - started at dusk and continued to the next dusk. What we would call the evening before was for them the evening *of*. Hence Sinterklaasavond being December 5th, when the feast of Saint Nicholas is December 6th; and hence also Halloween, the e'en of All Hallows a.k.a Allerheiligen, November 1st.
Second, when they counted an interval of days, they counted both the starting day and the end day. Where we say that Sunday is two days *after* Friday, for them Sunday would be the third day *from* Friday.
And then Gregory XIII and Clavius came along and now this site has to show the first couple of days of each year with two dates...
(And don't get me started on the Ides of March! Then again, you don't have to, because all of that mess is explained on Claus Tondering's website, mentioned above, and indeed very useful.)
@Josh Crockett: It does have a bit of a "Da geh ich zu Maxim" vibe, doesn't it? But I get the impression that a lot of this socialising was at least work-adjacent, and could be described as networking.
The link given in the very first comment is broken, and if I substitute org for net, it still goes only to the introductory material of the collected works of Massinger and Fletcher (in which The Spanish Curate *is* mentioned, though). Here's a better (and more legible) link from the same project: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1…
Sam's lack of drunkenness may be partly explained by that sermon a week ago, but it's probably more to do with it being Lent. Even if he finds it hard to abstain from indulgence altogether, he does seem to make an effort for the season.
Sam may very well have seen this child actor later in life, but simply not have recognised him as the same person. He doesn't give his name and probably didn't know it; and who realises that that strapping lad of 20 with the stylish beard is the same guy as the round-faced boy of 11 you saw once, that many years ago? I saw Carice van Houten live on the stage at the very start of her career, and I knew right there right then that she'd be a star; but I thought she'd be a star of the stage, and if I hadn't remembered her name, I'd never have recognised Melisandre as that teen who stole a Greek tragedy.
@Stewart "This dramatically demonstrated how effective transportation of any heavy goods was by water rather than on the roads of the time":
It still is. That's why Rotterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg and London are so important. Bulk goods (like coal, oil and gravel, but also like, in this case, uncut wood) are still more efficiently shipped by, well, ship. Not everything needs to be Alibaba'd to your doorstep within three working days; the only difference between Pepys' days and ours is than some things can be, not that everything has to be.
According to Wikipedia (citation a print book with no web link, so too much bother to verify), Pepys saw this play at the Apothecaries' hall, which is indeed in Black Friars Lane. Don't ask why the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries would put up a play like this, or indeed any play at all.
For anybody wondering what a Trained Band looked like, look no further than Rembrandt's Night Watch, official, snappy title "The Company of captain Frans Banninck Cocq and lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburgh prepares to march out". It was painted not quite 20 years before this point in the diary, so these bands would still have looked similar.
@Awanthi Vardaray: you're probably taking the word "slut" to mean "sexually easy woman". But when Pepys uses it, it's in the older meaning of "slovenly person, usually but not always woman".
It is possible that Anthony is only keeping a brave face. Being, apparently, a man of not always mentally happy disposition in the first place, he may well have learnt to be quite good at that.
As I have no cat (and have only ever been infested by a single mouse), all I can do is join the chorus and wish everybody a good new year, and Phil in particular!
Comments
Third Reading
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.
About Wednesday 3 April 1661
RLB • Link
@LKvM: I'm afraid you're a day out. Wednesday is supposed to be the day Judas went to the Sanhedrin to conspire to betray Jesus; Maundy Thursday (Witte Donderdag, Gründonnerstag - not Grein) was the day of the Last Supper and, subsequently, betrayal and arrest; and Good Friday is the day Jesus was crucified, after having been held through the night and brought before Pilate and Herod.
This latter point is important in the story, because it explains the haste the Sanhedrin had to get Jesus arrested, convicted, executed and buried: the next day was the Sabbath, when such matters were forbidden. It *had* to be finished before the Sabbath Eve, or as we would now call it, Friday evening. And yes, that *is* mentioned in the Bible, in Luke 23:54.
Jesus rose from the grave on the third day, Sunday; but note that this is not three days after! The confusion - and I suspect, dragging this back to site subject, that the same confusion happened in Sam's time - is over the different way both Romans and Jews counted days from modern Europeans.
First, the day - at least for liturgical reasons - started at dusk and continued to the next dusk. What we would call the evening before was for them the evening *of*. Hence Sinterklaasavond being December 5th, when the feast of Saint Nicholas is December 6th; and hence also Halloween, the e'en of All Hallows a.k.a Allerheiligen, November 1st.
Second, when they counted an interval of days, they counted both the starting day and the end day. Where we say that Sunday is two days *after* Friday, for them Sunday would be the third day *from* Friday.
And then Gregory XIII and Clavius came along and now this site has to show the first couple of days of each year with two dates...
(And don't get me started on the Ides of March! Then again, you don't have to, because all of that mess is explained on Claus Tondering's website, mentioned above, and indeed very useful.)
About Tuesday 2 April 1661
RLB • Link
@Josh Crockett: It does have a bit of a "Da geh ich zu Maxim" vibe, doesn't it? But I get the impression that a lot of this socialising was at least work-adjacent, and could be described as networking.
About Saturday 16 March 1660/61
RLB • Link
The link given in the very first comment is broken, and if I substitute org for net, it still goes only to the introductory material of the collected works of Massinger and Fletcher (in which The Spanish Curate *is* mentioned, though). Here's a better (and more legible) link from the same project: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1…
About Sunday 3 March 1660/61
RLB • Link
Sam's lack of drunkenness may be partly explained by that sermon a week ago, but it's probably more to do with it being Lent. Even if he finds it hard to abstain from indulgence altogether, he does seem to make an effort for the season.
About Saturday 2 March 1660/61
RLB • Link
Sam may very well have seen this child actor later in life, but simply not have recognised him as the same person. He doesn't give his name and probably didn't know it; and who realises that that strapping lad of 20 with the stylish beard is the same guy as the round-faced boy of 11 you saw once, that many years ago? I saw Carice van Houten live on the stage at the very start of her career, and I knew right there right then that she'd be a star; but I thought she'd be a star of the stage, and if I hadn't remembered her name, I'd never have recognised Melisandre as that teen who stole a Greek tragedy.
About Thursday 31 January 1660/61
RLB • Link
@Stewart "This dramatically demonstrated how effective transportation of any heavy goods was by water rather than on the roads of the time":
It still is. That's why Rotterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg and London are so important. Bulk goods (like coal, oil and gravel, but also like, in this case, uncut wood) are still more efficiently shipped by, well, ship. Not everything needs to be Alibaba'd to your doorstep within three working days; the only difference between Pepys' days and ours is than some things can be, not that everything has to be.
About Tuesday 29 January 1660/61
RLB • Link
According to Wikipedia (citation a print book with no web link, so too much bother to verify), Pepys saw this play at the Apothecaries' hall, which is indeed in Black Friars Lane. Don't ask why the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries would put up a play like this, or indeed any play at all.
About Monday 7 January 1660/61
RLB • Link
For anybody wondering what a Trained Band looked like, look no further than Rembrandt's Night Watch, official, snappy title "The Company of captain Frans Banninck Cocq and lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburgh prepares to march out". It was painted not quite 20 years before this point in the diary, so these bands would still have looked similar.
About Friday 11 January 1660/61
RLB • Link
@Awanthi Vardaray: you're probably taking the word "slut" to mean "sexually easy woman". But when Pepys uses it, it's in the older meaning of "slovenly person, usually but not always woman".
About Tuesday 1 January 1660/61
RLB • Link
It is possible that Anthony is only keeping a brave face. Being, apparently, a man of not always mentally happy disposition in the first place, he may well have learnt to be quite good at that.
About Monday 31 December 1660
RLB • Link
As I have no cat (and have only ever been infested by a single mouse), all I can do is join the chorus and wish everybody a good new year, and Phil in particular!