Daily Photo Shoot for 20 February 2013:

Of Dogs, Chargers, and Pepys

This is the civilized Dog on the Sofa, in the morning before breakfast (mine, not theirs):



Then after a bit of to-and-froing, the morning wears on and we have this:






And that, as they say, is THAT.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Moving on to more inanimate objects, we were speaking yesterday of books. There was one small book I omitted in my diatribe then, and I wanted to mention it here. My copy of Pepys' Diary.



This little petal was bought by me in England, I believe during our last trip there in 2002 (with Sandy accompanying us). I actually have a larger modern version of Pepys' Diary that takes up half of one bookshelf but it's not complete, I think one volume is missing. But this little baby is all there. It measures a mere 4" x 6.5" and contained in that tiny tome are 925 pages. Yes! And it's less than 1-inch thick, well, maybe just about 1 inch... The pages are tissue-paper thin. Inside we have this:



"The Secondary School, Blackpool - 1918-19 - Prize: Essay, Awarded to E. G. Simm (Signed) Head Master."

There is one blank page after this and then this:



After this page is a heavier 2 pages with this:



Finally, the first text, "Preface to the Original Edition":



..which goes for a couple of pages and then this:



As stated in the Preface written by Lord Braybrooke (who edited this diary):

"The Diary commences January 1st, 1659-60, and after being regularly kept for ten years, it is brought to a sudden conclusion, owing to the weak state of Mr. Pepys's eyes, which precluded him from continuing or resuming the occupation. As he was in the habit of recording the most trifling occurrences of his life, it became absolutely necessary to curtail the MS. materially, and in many instances to condense the matter..." and etc.

For anyone who is not familiar with Pepys, click here for the Wikipedia Page on him.

There is no date of publication in my copy. However, on the very last page at the very bottom is: "Printed by William Clowes and Sons, Limited, London and Beccles"

My copy seems very old,indeed. I'm sure it is not a rare copy else I wouldn't have found it in England selling for a mere 2 pounds. But it appears to have been well-read by many eyes and well-handled by many, many hands over the years. Seeing as how the sticker on the inside cover says that it was given as a prize for an essay in 1918-19, I am assuming this little book was new then, but I could be wrong there. Second-hand books have their worth as do brand new books, so I guess it's just a mystery that will have to remain so.

You will see, in the Wikipedia page I've linked to above, that Samuel Pepys lived through the Great Fire of London, and that whole section of entries was most interesting to me. He was a first-hand witness to that historic event and describes his daily comings and goings related to the Great Fire beginning on page 450 of my copy, which occured on 1 Sept. 1666, and goes through to the 7th Sept. where he writes:

"7th. Up by five o'clock; and, blessed be God! find all well; and by water to Pane's Wharfe. Walked thence and saw all the towne burned, and a miserable sight of Paul's church, with all the roofs fallen, and the body of the quire fallen into St. Fayth's; Paul's school also, Ludgate, and Fleet-street. My father's house, and the church, and a good part of the Temple the like..."

It was a miracle that Pepys' house was not burned down. I can only imagine what it was like back then, with no fire department to put out the fire, with the whole city just catching fire one home after the other.

I could go on and on but I won't. Suffice it to say this is a fun diary to get stuck into on those evenings when you want a little first-hand taste of London in the mid 1600s - a fly-on-the wall, if you will. I did find this web site with some YouTube videos about Mr. Pepys that you might enjoy watching. I haven't seen them all but did click on The Diary video and it appeared to be interesting.

And this:



So let this be it for today. We'll see where the DPS (Daily Photo Shoot) takes us tomorrow.

As for life here on The Hill, it's been a decent enough day here with rain yesterday washing away a lot of the lingering snow. The front yard has bare paths where the dogs roam, necessarily bringing in very muddy paws upon their entering the house. Lucky for them I'm not a stickler housekeeper! Oh no, I'm quite the opposite of that!

Do you have any precious books you'd like to share with me/us here? I'd love to hear about them.

As for the "chargers" mentioned in today's subject line above, we never got around to those so maybe tomorrow on the chargers...

2003 - Present Archives at Diaryland
2007 - 2009 Archives at WordPress
2009 Archives at JournalScape
2010 Archives at JournalScape
2011 Archives at JournalScape
2012 Archives at JournalScape