John Aubrey: My Own Life (37 page)

. . .

14 January

I was at Garraway’s
¹⁰⁹
with Mr Hooke and Mr Wylde until 11.30 p.m. Mr Wylde told Mr Hooke that the blood of a black cat can cure chilblains. This greatly irritated Mr Hooke and he muttered that Mr Wylde is not ‘worth a whistle’.

. . .

17 January

I smoked at Garraway’s
¹¹⁰
with Mr Hooke until midnight.

. . .

20 January

On this day
¹¹¹
, my papers and some of Mr Newton’s (on his theories of light and colour) were read at the Royal Society. Afterwards I went home with Mr Hooke.

. . .

22 January

There was much rain
¹¹²
today. Mr Hooke and I went to visit Mr Henshaw. On the way we saw a Dutch carver at Pall Mall who makes gilded leather frames by wetting the gilded leather then lying it on fine heated brick dust and placing the mould hard on the leather until it is dry. The frames were very fine and cheap. We went on later to Sir Christopher Wren’s.

. . .

27 January

Mr Paschall’s letter
¹¹³
to me was read before the Royal Society, containing natural observations of:

– The lead mines in the Mendip Hills

– The sulphur well in Spaw in Yorkshire

– A petrifying spring to rival the dropping well at Knaresborough in the north

– The motion of underground waters in the parishes of Zoylande, formerly recovered from the sea.

. . .

29 January

I visited Sir Christopher Wren
¹¹⁴
again with Mr Hooke and Mr Hill. Mr Henshaw and Dr Holder were there too. We talked about petrifications of bodies, about plaisters, about framing glass, staining marble, filligreen sodering with bran, about printing stuffs and gilding stuffs, and about ghosts and spirits.

Dr Holder is beholden
¹¹⁵
to no author and consults only with nature. He has a theory as to how to cure a deaf-mute, which has brought him into a terrible quarrel with Dr Wallis, who claims to have thought of the method before him. In his
Elements of Speech
(1669), Dr Holder derives the true and proper natural alphabet, discovered not through existing alphabets, but by investigating the organs of speech. He wishes that throughout the world there could be one sort of character for each letter to express it to the eye, exactly proportioned to the natural alphabet formed in the mouth.

. . .

As I was walking
¹¹⁶
through Newgate Street today, I suddenly saw the bust of Dame Venetia (née Stanley) for sale as scrap metal on a stall at the Golden Cross, a brasier’s shop. Even though the gilding had been burnt off in the Great Conflagration, I recognised it and pointed it out to my companion. I must return and rescue it if I can. Before she married, Venetia Stanley was my friend Edmund Wylde’s mistress, and afterwards she was mistress to the Earl of Dorset. Her picture, done by Van Dyck, hangs in the Queen’s drawing room at Windsor Castle, over the chimney. She was a most beautiful, desirable creature who died suddenly in her bed aged thirty-three in 1633. When Sir Kenelm Digby married Venetia, against his mother’s wishes, he said he could make a virtuous wife out of a whore. After her death, he retired to Gresham College to divert himself with chemistry and the professors’ good conversation. He erected the sumptuous monument to his wife that the Great Conflagration destroyed.

. . .

February

My friendship
¹¹⁷
with Mr Evelyn has grown since I sent him my notes on Surrey. He tells me Surrey is the county of his birth and his delight, but he was ashamed to discover how ignorant he is about it when he read my remarks. Nevertheless, he is sending me some material to add to my own. He tells me that the old house at Wotton was designed in the Italian manner on a mount fifty feet high. Under the mount was a grotto encrusted with shells and corals: their colours enhanced by the play of the water.

Mr Evelyn has drawn my attention to notable places in Surrey I have not yet visited, especially Bansted, which, he points out, is mentioned in Mr Burton’s notes on Antonius’s
Itinerary
. He says that to this day the rustics there dig up Roman coins, urns and bricks when they work the land.

. . .

Dr Plot says
¹¹⁸
he has transcribed my notes on what a gravedigger told me concerning the roots that spring from dead bodies. He has similar purposes in his
History of Oxford
(that is about to go to press) as I do in my Chorographia Antiquaria. His book will include a new map, marking British and Roman camps and highways.

. . .

5 March

I went to Man’s
¹¹⁹
coffee house – over against Lincoln’s Inn Gate in Chancery Lane – with Mr Hooke, Sir Robert Redding and Mr Chase. Afterwards at Sir Christopher Wren’s, Mr Henshaw showed us Lapland boots and gloves, curious mosaic works in glass, and several brass antiquities. There was much discussion of ancient shipping and of music. We stayed until late.

. . .

My friend Jane Smyth
¹²⁰
, Mr Wylde’s mistress, has chronic venereal disease: she is only twenty-seven years old. She was born the April after King Charles was beheaded. She came to London about half a year before the plague of 1665.

. . .

18 May

I told the Royal Society
¹²¹
today that I have managed to arrange a loan of the astronomer Mr Samuel Foster’s manuscripts, for their perusal, on the condition that they are returned afterwards. I arranged via my friend Mr Paschall to borrow them from Sir Francis Rolle via Mr Overton. Samuel Foster was Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College; he died in July 1652.

. . .

25 May

While I was with
¹²²
Mr Hooke and Mr Hoskyns today, Mr Hill gave us an account of Thomas Shadwell’s new play
The Virtuoso
, which includes a character called Sir Nicolas Gimcrack said to be inspired by Mr Hooke. The play is a satire on the Royal Society. It draws on the Royal Society’s
Philosophical Transactions
. Mr Hooke will see it for himself.

. . .

1 June

I observed the eclipse
¹²³
of the sun with Mr Hooke.

. . .

3 June

Mr Hooke saw
The Virtuoso
last night and is furious. He says people in the audience all but pointed at him as the inspiration for the buffoonish character Sir Nicolas Gimcrack. Sir Nicolas Gimcrack relates his ridiculous experiments and this is the source of much comedy in the play. When he is first on stage, Sir Nicolas Gimcrack seems to be swimming on land. He has bottled air, attempted to transfuse blood between dogs, and, like Mr Hooke, is fascinated by microscopy. Mr Shadwell insists that no individuals are ridiculed in his play – only the new science, which, he believes, aims at knowledge but never at useful discoveries. There can be no doubt that Mr Hooke has taken this as a personal attack. In Mr Shadwell’s hands the Royal Society
¹²⁴
’s experiments have become subjects for satire.

. . .

The Royal Society will make transcripts of my papers. I have been chosen for the committee that audits the Royal Society’s accounts.

. . .

August

Mr Charles Snell has written
¹²⁵
to me of my nativity and accidents: ‘Sickness at birth; ague and vomiting at about five or six years old; issue in my head; small-pox; amours with Madame Wiseman; selling away the manor etc.; hesitating in my speech . . .’ All of which is accurate. He advises me that if my stammer hinders me, I could get a parsonage with a living of 400 or 500 li. per annum and give a curate 100 li. to officiate for me.

Mr Charles Snell has also
¹²⁶
sent me his judgement on Sir William Petty’s horoscope.

. . .

My friend Thomas Mariett
¹²⁷
tells me there is extreme drought in Wiltshire: all the rivers, brooks and ponds are dry.

. . .

If I had wings
¹²⁸
(like a character in
The Virtuoso
), I would fly to see Mr Wood in Oxford! Instead, only my good wishes are continually sent. Mr Ralph Sheldon, the Roman Catholic, is another ever-honoured friend and lover of antiquities. If I should take a ramble into the country, I’d wait on him at Weston as soon as on any man in England. He has often invited me to stay.

. . .

If I were to visit my friend Mr Ralph Sheldon in Weston, I could go to Oxford first, but then how will I get to Weston? Maybe it would be possible for Mr Wood to help me get a horse, or perhaps there is a coach.

I will send Mr Wood a recipe of warm rye dough to apply to his ear to help his deafness; also a copy of Mr Evelyn’s
Sylva
.

Today, Sir Henry
¹²⁹
St George, Clarencieux King of Arms, showed me manuscripts and good notes towards an account of my great-grandfather William Aubrey’s life, written I suppose (given the handwriting) by his son-in-law Daniel Dun, who married William Aubrey’s third daughter, Joane. William Aubrey went to Oxford aged fourteen, became doctor by the time he was twenty-five, and about two or three years later, professor and Judge Advocate. I will ask Mr Wood if he would like to see a copy of his Life.

Quaere: what became of David King’s collection of antiquities and antiquarian books, of which he had a great quantity at Yorke House?

My friends
¹³⁰
Sir William Petty and Sir John Hoskyns are still urging me to turn ecclesiastic to rescue my finances. Truly, if I had a good parsonage of 200 or 300 li. per annum, it would be a shrewd temptation. But this is no time to meddle in religion. People say the King of France grows stronger and stronger. What if the Roman religion were to come in again in England? I am no puritan, no enemy of the Pope, that old gentleman on the other side of the Alps. But as Mr Hobbes, that other old gent, says, I am better staying out of ecclesiastical matters in these unsettled times.

. . .

September

My lord the Earl
¹³¹
of Thanet has invited me to return to Kent.

I am soon to go
¹³²
to Essex for a week with my good friend Mr Wylde, then afterwards perhaps to his estate in Worcestershire. Of all my friends who have helped me in my penury, he has done the most.

PART X

The Popish Plot

Anno 1676

FEELING AGAINST
¹
ROMAN
Catholics is rising again in England. I am troubled by a letter I sent Mr Wood last year, or perhaps it was the year before, in which I expressed my friendship to the Church of Rome – I have asked him to burn the letter, or at least blot out the passage. I wrote the letter when I had been invited to take a benefice and was deciding what to do. God preserve us from another rebellion!

. . .

Mr Ogilby
²
, the King’s Cosmographer, has died and will be buried in the vault at St Bride’s in Fleet Street. The church was damaged in the Great Conflagration and is being rebuilt according to Sir Christopher Wren’s design.

. . .