Monthly Archives: April 2012

The resorts of idle and disaffected persons

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On Thursday 30 December 1675, a startling proclamation was printed in the London Gazette:

Whereas it is most apparent, That the Multitude of Coffee-houses of late Years set up and kept within this Kingdom . . . and the great resort of Idle and Disaffected persons to them, have produced very evil and dangerous Effects, as well for that many Tradesmen and others do therein mispend much of their time, which might and probably would otherwise be employed in and about their lawful Callings and Affairs; but also, for that in such Houses, and by occasion of the meetings of such Persons therein, divers false, malitious and scandalous Reports are devised and spread abroad, to the Defamation of His Majesties Government, and to the Disturbance of the Peace and Quiet of the Realm; His Majesty hath thought it fit and necessary, That the said Coffee-houses be (for the future) Put down and Suppressed . . .
(read the whole proclamation on the London Gazette website)

There was a public uproar and he had to back down, but His Majesty Charles II did have a point. Anyone reading Hooke’s diary is under no illusions that a good deal of Hooke’s time that might otherwise have been spent doing who knows what, possibly one of his several lawful callings, was in fact employed in meeting friends at Garraway’s or Jonathan’s. Furthermore, every Restoration Londoner knew that the coffee-house was the place to go for false, malicious and scandalous reports (second only to the palace of Whitehall for really juicy gossip). Hooke probably didn’t go specifically for the scandal, although occasionally he ran across scandal in the course of a visit. He went to meet friends, talk to people, and read the latest news from home and abroad. Of course, the main topic of conversation on 30 December 1675 was the royal proclamation.

You could run into just about anyone at a coffee-house, from shoe-makers to courtiers. Hooke’s friends and associates had their own particular haunts – Hooke often visited Man’s with Sir Christopher Wren, and select Fellows of the Royal Society regularly adjourned to the Crown Tavern in Threadneedle Street after meetings. In the 1670s Hooke’s favored establishment was Garraway’s in Exchange Alley, run by Thomas Garraway; in the 1680s and 1690s he preferred Jonathan’s, kept by Jonathan Miles, again in Exchange Alley. Hooke sometimes visited Jonathan’s three times in a day, and usually met some of his particular friends there. He recorded such visits in a truncated fashion in his diary. Part of an entry for Thursday 17 January 1689 reads:

. . . at Jon Gof Lod Sp Wal: Hayn. Mev. Cur. Pag. of flood. Atlantis &c . . .
meaning ‘at Jonathans. [met] Godfrey, Lodwick, Spencer, Waller, Hains, Meverell, Currer, Paggin. [talk] of flood. Atlantis, &c’. The listing of names became almost compulsive for Hooke in the later part of his diary – this is a typical entry. On this occasion the talk turned to the Biblical flood and its consequences, something Hooke was particularly interested in at this time as part of his theorising about the history and formation of the earth. On other visits Hooke was more interested in reading the latest news printed in the London Gazette, or papers from Scotland, Ireland, Holland and Paris. It was at Jonathan’s that Hooke first learnt of the death of Queen Christina of Sweden (he noted this on Monday 18 March 1689, and again on Thursday 9 May, when the Paris Gazette apparently ran an obituary of the prominent monarch). Happenings closer to home were also discussed, including London mayoral elections and military affairs in Scotland and Ireland.

Just one contemporary drawing of the interior of a seventeenth-century coffee-house exists, now in the British Museum collections. (view it here) It’s just a watercolour sketch, but it gives a good impression of the tobacco pipes, coffee and conversation on offer – a convivial place to spend an evening with Hooke and his friends.

Random Hooke quote of the week (#1)

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16 April 1673:

“an exceeding lovely May day. . . . being the first summer morning and finding my blood begin to ferment I walkd till noon in the feild with Blackburne.”

I know exactly how he felt – that first warm spring morning is just magic. Happy Easter everyone!

Printing with Tallow . . . ?

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While editing Hooke’s diary this week I came across the following nugget of information in an entry for 27 January 1673:

Dr Pell told me that somewhere in Porta was a way deliuered of stamping letters & figures in Sallow and afterwards plaining them almost out then steeping or boyling them in water wherby the letters would swell outwards and be fitt for printing or ye like or be embossed wth heads or the like.

Hooke and the other Royal Society Fellows were extremely interested in mechanical processes, and Hooke mentions new ways of printing or engraving quite a few times in the diary. Unfortunately Dr Pell’s rather vague reference ‘somewhere in Porta’ hasn’t yet helped me to track this particular suggestion down. Giambattista della Porta was a prolific Italian Renaissance author whose best-selling book ‘Natural Magick’ contains lots of interesting information about useful things you can do with science, including sections ‘on counterfeiting precious stones’ and ‘on beautifying women’. You can read the English translation online here  – but please don’t try the white lead cosmetic preparations at home.

What caught my attention was the fact that in the 1935 printed version of the Diary, the section quoted above had come out as ‘a way delivered of stamping letters and figures in tallow and afterwards plaining them almost out then steeping or boyling them in water’ . . .

Now, tallow, as we all know, is a kind of fat, and therefore probably not much use if you intend to boil your letters before printing with them. Whereas sallow is a willow plant – much more suitable for stamping, planing and boiling. Why did Hooke’s 1935 editors print ‘tallow’ for ‘sallow’? Probably because Hooke’s initial ‘s’ looks a bit like a ‘t’ in the manuscript, and tallow is a more commonly used word than sallow (or at least it was in the 20th century – I guess neither is particularly common now), and they weren’t thinking very hard about what they were writing. It’s easy, as an editor, to see the words that you expect to see, especially in Hooke’s rather cramped lines of text. I was pleased to find this, of course, because it reminds me that the mammoth job of re-editing the diary is actually worthwhile! But it also confirms with me again the importance of going back to the manuscript, even when there’s a printed text available. How many readers of Hooke’s diary over the years have scratched their heads over this section and wondered what on earth Hooke could have meant? (Well, okay, probably not that many since it’s never exactly been a best-seller.) As readers we’re used to assessing the quality of the text in front of us, whether Wikipedia entry, newspaper article, or scholarly tome, but it’s sometimes harder to decide whether an edition is a faithful representation of the original text or not, especially if you’re just dipping into it. Of course we can’t all go rushing off to the manuscript whenever we spot something unlikely in a printed text but if it’s the crux of your argument then it’s worth having a look.

While I’m on the subject I should add that going back to the original manuscript doesn’t just allow you to spot errors like this one, or omissions. A printed page, with its neat rows of type, each letter formed in exactly the same way, can never convey as much information as the manuscript. I always feel as though I know an author better when I’ve seen his work written in his own hand. Hooke’s meandering lines of tiny script with their many insertions of extra text squeezed in above a line tell, better than anything else, that he didn’t plan on other people reading his diary. All the more important to get the printed version right!