Annotations and comments

Mary K has posted 1,146 annotations/comments since 9 March 2007.

Comments

First Reading

About Friday 13 January 1664/65

Mary  •  Link

Jane and her sweetheart

Jane is not Mrs. Jervis. She is Jane Welch/Welsh, an employee in Jervis's barber shop. She may well have a sweetheart, though it is perhaps slightly surprising that Jervis is inclined to tolerate 'followers'during working hours. (Whether Jervis would count Pepys as a bona fide follower is, of course, a nice quesion).

Except where small children are concerned, OED cites no passages where 'sweetheart' is clearly a term of endearment used between same-sex individuals

About Thursday 12 January 1664/65

Mary  •  Link

that easterly.

An easterly wind blows *from* the east, not towards the east. An easterly would help to keep the Dutch ships close to the Kent shore and would hamper any English vessels that were trying to reach Kent from Portsmouth. Sam should surely have written 'westerly'.

About Friday 6 January 1664/65

Mary  •  Link

"fully to my mind"

I take this to mean that Jane completely fulfills Sam's expectations of what a cook-maid should be.

About Thursday 5 January 1664/65

Mary  •  Link

simply angry.

Elizabeth is foolishly angry with Jane, there is no substantial reason for her anger - according to Sam, anyway. We don't know Elizabeth's side of the story.

About Tuesday 3 January 1664/65

Mary  •  Link

streets full of footballs.

Surely Sam means footballs flying about, whizzing past one's ears, hitting one in the back etc. Very annoying to the sober citizen, no doubt, and hence the number of ordinances made against playing football in the streets over the years. We are still in the season of Christmas/New Year jollification (Twelfth Night hasn't arrived yet) and the lads in various streets are having a kick-about. I don't see the problem with accepting the reading as it stands.

NB we are talking about football football (i.e. something like soccer) rather than any of the later games that allowed the ball to be handled.

About Horse racing

Mary  •  Link

Further notes on horse-racing.

If you go to www.bloodlines.net/TB/Early Races 1650-1700.htm you will see that Charles' horse Blew Capp was having considerable success in April 1675. He is not stated to have been the horse ridden by Charles himself in winning the Newmarket Plate, but this must be a possibility.

About Tuesday 3 January 1664/65

Mary  •  Link

footballs and frost.

Very few of the city streets were properly paved and their normal winter condition would tend to be muddy or sloppy. Given a hard frost (remember that it was frosty yesterday as well) the road surfaces will be hard enough for the better playing of football. Much less mud and dung flying about or caking the lads' clothes.

About Horse racing

Mary  •  Link

Charles II at Newmarket.

According to Antonia Fraser, Charles won the Plate on two occasions, 1671 and 1675, but she does not record the name of the horse on either occasion.

About Saturday 31 December 1664

Mary  •  Link

the family.

This clearly demonstrates Sam's typical conception of what constitutes the family. Note that Will Hewer, who used to be very much part of the family, no longer counts as such because he has moved out into lodgings elsewhere in the city.

About Wednesday 28 December 1664

Mary  •  Link

the Pepys's quarters at the Navy Office.

If Sam has been able to sleep through the gambolling and general merrymaking of the rest of his household, then the building in which he lives must be very solidly built with stout walls and doors.

About Sunday 25 December 1664

Mary  •  Link

A very merry Christmas to Phil

to all Lurkers and all Annotators, wherever they may be.
An alternative kind of 21st Century familia.

About Sunday 25 December 1664

Mary  •  Link

family

The 17th century maintains much of the original, Latin, meaning of 'familia', which is ' a house and all those belonging to it.'

The cognate 'famulus' is used for the whole number of slaves belonging to one master; a household establishment; domestics. Also used to refer to the slaves belonging to a particular temple.

About Thursday 22 December 1664

Mary  •  Link

Slave trade?

Quite probably. The Portuguese had first started to exploit the West African coast for slaves in the 15th century and Lagos, in Portugal, was the site of the first established slave-market in Europe. Initially Africans were imported to work in Europe, but with the development of Portuguese, Spanish, British and Dutch colonies in South America, the transatlantic slave trade began.

About Wednesday 21 December 1664

Mary  •  Link

I don't see how a stuffed, embroidered, sculpted or carved eagle could "foul our house of office mightily".

About Tuesday 20 December 1664

Mary  •  Link

Certainly not psychic.

We don't know the extent to which Bagwell himself is complicit in this 'negotiation', if complicit at all. However, Sam would probably not wish to be observed (by anyone) slipping into the Bagwell house when it might be known that Mrs. B. must be there alone; he has a position to keep up in Deptford. Much better to be there under the husband's aegis and then engineer an occasion for sin/crime.

Given his own proclivities, you can see why Sam gets so hideously jealous whenever another man casts an eye in Elizabeth's direction. He knows what he's capable of himself and hence what others might do.

About Monday 19 December 1664

Mary  •  Link

The outside light.

Indeed, according to Picard, householders had a duty to hang out a candle or lantern from dusk until nine o'clock at night in winter. A visitor to London in 1667 also commented on the fact that the streets were lighted until a certain hour in the morning 'by large lanterns.'

It looks as if Pepys's servants were expected to go and light a candle/lantern outside the door on a winter's morning ( when it can still be dark at nearly 8 o'clock) but had neglected to obtain the doorkey the night before and so had to extract it from Sam and Elizabeth's chamber, thus disturbing them 'betimes.'

About Monday 19 December 1664

Mary  •  Link

I wonder what Pepys can get up to with her husband around?

Terry, having legitimized his visit to the Bagwell household by, presumably, engineering an invitation from the husband, what's the betting that Sam will find some item of information that he urgently needs Bagwell to go and obtain for him from elsewhere in Deptford. He ought to be able to arrange at least a 15-20 minute 'conversation' with Mrs. B. in those circumstances.