John Aubrey: My Own Life (36 page)

. . .

May

My lord the Earl
⁷⁵
of Thanet has offered me accommodation in his Garden House, which his mother has lent him, and which he intends to have fitted up as two or three chambers for his personal use when he comes to London. I will help look after his business in London, for an agreed salary.

. . .

I wait daily on courtiers for preferment and cannot leave London.

. . .

Mr Marvell, now fifty-four years old, has promised to write some notes on John Milton (who died last year on 8 November) for me to send to Mr Wood. I plan to go and visit Mr Milton’s widow to collect details of his life that will otherwise be lost.

I have told
⁷⁶
Mr Wood to ask Mr Ashmole to show him the manuscript of Dr Gwyn, in which there are several letters from Dr John Dee concerning chemistry and magical secrets. I have left some notes on Dr Dee’s life with Mr Ashmole, about three pages in folio concerning him.

I cannot deny
⁷⁷
that I owe kindness and respect to George Ent for his friendship and civility to me, but I am so heartily sorry that he is not a better friend to himself or his reputation. But every man to his humour! He puts me in mind of Plato’s saying that perpetual drunkenness is the reward of virtue! His quarrel with Mr Wood will never mend now.

. . .

June

My mother has fallen sick of a burning fever at Langford, Somerset.

. . .

Mr Paschall has asked
⁷⁸
me to send him an account of the recent invention for improvement in beekeeping, which has been given a royal patent; it is said to prevent swarming and burning, and treble the profit of keeping bees.

He tells me his wife has had a letter from my mother complaining of ill health, on account of which she will stay a month longer at Langford, rather than going on to Bristol as she had intended.

. . .

I will visit my old friend Sir James Long at Draycot Cerne, near Easton Pierse, and stay with him until October. We will discuss Royal Society business. He is a good swordsman, horseman, and an admirable extempore orator, as well as a great historian, romancer and falconer. He is exceeding curious and has been searching for a long time into natural things.

Next time
⁷⁹
I am in Oxford, I wish to see the conjuring books in the Bodleian Library. I will ask Mr Wood whereabouts they are kept. Meanwhile, I have found out for him the exact spot of Sir Walter Raleigh’s grave: he is buried in St Margaret’s Church, next to Westminster Abbey.

. . .

I have reassured
⁸⁰
Mr Hobbes that he is not alone in being abused by Dr Wallis: Mr Hooke has been too, and so has Sir Christopher Wren. Dr Wallis is like a common spy, stealing from the discourse of ingenious people and printing what he takes. He is a most ill-natured man, an egregious liar and backbiter. He flatters and fawns on my lord Brouncker and his mistress, the actress Abigail Williams, who keeps up his reputation.

What can be said
⁸¹
in Dr Wallis’s favour is that although he steals flowers from others to adorn his own cap, some of the ideas he prints would be unrecorded otherwise. So while he does injury to the inventors, he does good to learning in publishing curious notions which would be lost to posterity if he did not set them down. Sir Christopher Wren especially is too busy to write himself.

Mr Hobbes is now translating the
Iliad
. His translation of the
Odyssey
,
The Travels of Ulysses
(1673), is much admired.

. . .

July

My mother has fallen sick with fever again.

. . .

August

Mr Hooke has written
⁸²
to me regarding my suggestion that he employ Mr Snell’s young brother George. He says he would be glad to have him live with him and help him, but he must undertake to stay seven years and others must provide him with clothing, since Mr Hooke will supply him with meat, drink, lodging, washing and instruction.

. . .

September

I have written
⁸³
to Mr Hooke about George Snell.

. . .

In Minty Common
⁸⁴
, in Malmesbury Hundred, near the road that leads to Ashton Kayne, there is a boggy place called the Gogges, where springs rise up out of blue clay. Round about this place in hot weather there is a salt that looks like frost on the ground. I have seen it several times, and again today there was an incrustation of salt four feet around the edges of the bog. I made up about half a pint of a lixivium with ½lb of this nitrous earth, which I then evaporated. It yielded just under a quarter of an ounce of residue. This residue was evaporated to almost all crystallise in a cellar: the liquor turned deep red and the crystals flew like saltpetre on a hot iron, but some sediment, like burnt allum, remained.

. . .

In Stanton Parke
⁸⁵
, in my grandfather’s time, there used to be martens. Now the species is lost in Wiltshire, but I think they are still in the New Forest, and in Cranborne Chase.

. . .

Michaelmas

Jane Smyth
⁸⁶
, Mr Wylde’s good lady, is very unwell with pleurisy. I am very fond of her, and she of me. If I can, I will see her at Mr Wylde’s house in the great square in Bloomsbury. On the first floor, over the hall, is Mr Wylde’s study, where he keeps the deeds to his extensive estates, his rare books, pamphlets, manuscripts, jewels, watches, enamelled pictures, vessels of crystal, stone, glass, silver, gold, and other rare objects.

. . .

November

Mr Paschall
⁸⁷
has returned my book about bees. I sent it to him earlier this year, together with information about how to obtain the beekeeping licence.

. . .

Mr Meredith Lloyd
⁸⁸
, who was once my neighbour in Fleet Street, and a great collector of information about the Celtic languages, has sent me a list of Welsh words for my collection.

. . .

A good way
⁸⁹
of ending my days in peace and ingenious innocence would be to become principal of Gloucester Hall! I would make it an ingenious nest, and would decoy thither several ingenious persons of both universities and some from beyond the sea. Byrom Eaton has been the principal since 1662, but under him the establishment has fallen into neglect. It is a pity! The foundation can be traced back to 1283 and at the dissolution of the monasteries the hall was bought by Thomas Whyte, the founder of St John’s College.

. . .

With the intention of helping Dr Plott, I have transcribed my Natural History of Wiltshire, my remarks of Surrey, and a sheet or two of other counties. I have asked my cousin Henry Vaughan to send me the Natural History of Brecknockshire and other adjacent counties to add to my collections. I began collecting memoirs and natural remarks in Wiltshire in 1656, almost twenty years ago. The Secretary of the Royal Society came to hear of it and has suggested I submit my remarks to the Society. I believe I am the first that ever made an essay of this kind for Wiltshire and (for aught I know) anywhere in the nation. Since seeing how excellently Dr Plot is doing with his Natural History of Oxfordshire, I have decided to give him all my papers and ask him to undertake Wiltshire too. I hope he will finish the task I have begun.

. . .

I have deposited
⁹⁰
with Mr Ashmole my notes on Dr Dee, two pages on Lord Bacon, and some remarks on other eminent men: Sir Christopher Wren, Mr Robert Hooke, Dr William Aubrey (my great-grandfather), John Pell, and Richard Boyle, the 1st Earl of Cork.

I remember
⁹¹
that Lord Bacon’s widow was still living after the beheading of the late King. After Lord Bacon’s death she married her gentleman usher, Thomas Underhill, whom she made deaf and blind with too much of Venus. I must find out where and when she died.

. . .

1 December

On the first date
⁹²
of this month, I drank a sack with Mr Hooke and Mr Hoskyns at Mrs Story’s.

. . .

Quaere
⁹³
: does the brain ferment in madness because of the extraordinary heat and motion of the spirits? Perhaps a hole bored in the skull would give some ease? Or a wet cap for the head to cool it? A good cure for headaches after drinking strong wine is putting one’s head in a pail of cold water.

. . .

I think it is strange
⁹⁴
that magnifying glasses were so long unknown about in this world. Any good fellow at a tavern cannot escape noticing how much the threads of linen cloth are magnified by a glass (of sack or white wine) that has a stem and a hemispherical or conical bottom to it. At least, so it seems to me, when I stare into the bottom of my glass in a tavern and think about what I can see.

. . .

7 December

I went to Garraway’s
⁹⁵
coffee house.

. . .

9 December

I was at Garraway’s
⁹⁶
with Mr Hooke, Mr Hill
⁹⁷
, Mr Snell, and I smoked four pipes of tobacco.

. . .

10 December

Mr Hooke, Mr Hill, Mr Lodwick, Sir Jonas Moore, Mr Wylde and Mr Hoskyns and I are to set up a new club to meet at Joe’s coffee house
⁹⁸
. The first meeting will be tomorrow night at 7 p.m.

. . .

11 December

At Joe’s coffee house our new club – a small group of members of the Royal Society loyal to Mr Hooke – began. We discussed Mr Newton’s new hypothesis and Mr Hooke explained his way of moving boiled alabaster dust and sand by magnetic filings.

. . .

15 December

I was with Mr Hooke
⁹⁹
until 11.30 p.m. this evening. He spoke to me of his new mechanical principle for flying.

. . .

16 December

Mr Newton read
¹⁰⁰
his
Discourse
to the Royal Society. Later I went to the Crown in Threadneedle Street with Mr Hooke, Mr Henshaw, Sir William Petty, Mr Barrington and Mr Hill.

. . .

18 December

I went to Garraway’s
¹⁰¹
with Mr Hooke, Mr Lodwick, Mr Hill and Mr Wylde: we talked of the Universal Character, Pre-Adamites and Creation; also about insects. Mr Hooke believes all vegetables are females. He told us about his principle for flying and we drank port. Mr Hooke claims that when he was a schoolboy at Westminster School he devised thirty different ways of flying. He imagines flying by some mechanical means: a chariot pulled by horses; or powered by vanes; or bending springs by gunpowder. I consider Mr Hooke the greatest mechanic alive in the world today.

. . .

19 December

I dined
¹⁰²
with Mr Hooke.

. . .

28 December

I was at Cardinal’s
¹⁰³
until late this evening with Mr Hooke, Mr Wylde and Mrs Smyth.

. . .

30 December

I read a paper to the Royal Society. I presented my observations of Wiltshire, and have been asked to procure:

– Some of the iron ore of Sein that is said to be so rich that it can be melted in the smith’s forge.

– Some of the blue clay from Easton Pierse that is free from sand and almost ultramarine in colour, since Mr Doight believes it might be good for making porcelain.

Mr Oldenburg
¹⁰⁴
has transcribed my observations of Surrey and Wiltshire, and papers on the springs and rocks of Herefordshire, Somerset and Gloucestershire. He will present them at the next meeting, which is on 13 January.

. . .

Anno 1676

1 January

On the first day
¹⁰⁵
of this month, I met Mr Hooke at Child’s coffee house in St Paul’s Churchyard after he had addressed the new Philosophical Club within the Royal Society. We stayed until 11 p.m. eating meat and drinking chocolate.

. . .

2 January

I was with Mr Hooke
¹⁰⁶
again today.

. . .

Mr Paschall says
¹⁰⁷
the bee colony licence is too expensive for the middle and mean classes of people who trade in bees. He has an idea as to how a cheaper method might be used by them instead, and thinks that it would pay the designer to publish it. The other method could be reserved for persons of estate.

. . .

Now I come
¹⁰⁸
(as Dr Ralph Kettell used to say) to the purpose: I have written ten sheets of my Natural History of Wiltshire and Surrey and some other counties for Dr Plot and have submitted them to the Royal Society: they were well received.

. . .

13 January

Mr Oldenburgh produced his transcriptions of my observations on Surrey at the Royal Society today, but the meeting was out of time, so they will not be considered until the next meeting.