The 350th Anniversary of a Very Good Day

For Samuel Pepys on October 24, 1662, things were going well: 

24th. After with great pleasure lying a great while talking and sporting in bed with my wife (for we have been for some years now, and at present more and more, a very happy couple, blessed be God), I got up and to my office, and having done there some business, I by water, and then walked to Deptford to discourse with Mr. Lowly and Davis about my late conceptions about keeping books of the distinct works done in the yards, against which I find no objection but their ignorance and unwillingness to do anything of pains and what is out of their ordinary dull road, but I like it well, and will proceed in it. So home and dined there with my wife upon a most excellent dish of tripes of my own directing, covered with, mustard, as I have heretofore seen them done at my Lord Crew's, of which I made a very great meal, and sent for a glass of wine for myself, and so to see Sir W. Pen, who continues bed-rid in great pain, and hence to the Treasury to Sir J. Minnes paying off of tickets, and at night home, and in my study (after seeing Sir W. Batten, who also continues ill) I fell to draw out my conceptions about books for the clerk that cheques in the yard to keep according to the distinct works there, which pleases me very well, and I am confident it will be of great use. At 9 at night home, and to supper, and to bed. ...

Afterthought:  Except it's not, is it?  Given that Julian/Gregorian stuff, the "real October 24 is--um sometime in early November.  The Russians have some kind of a problem along these lines, not so?

The Horror, The Horror

Finished with T.J. Stiles' admirable biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt, I figured it might be nice to triangulate with a look at the (selected) diaries of George Templeton Strong, New York lawyer and Vanderbilt contemporary.

Result: almost nothing.  Only two references.  One is glancing: Strong brackets Vanderbilt with other high-fliers and says he is "ashamed to live in a community" with such men. That computes: Vanderbilt was a grade-school dropout who never learned to spell and never really lost the rough manners of his youth on the river.

The other is more equivocal.  Strong as vestryman of Trinity Church laments that he has to participate in the taking of Vanderbilt's money for the sale of St. John's Park:

Consideration of $1,000,000, of which the church gets $400,000 and the lot-owners $600,000.  I fear this will stir up a perilous storm of abuse and misrepresentation against us.  "A bloated operation"--"adding another to its untold millions, by destroying an old landmark, the garden spot of downtown, one of the few breathing places left to the city poor"--somehow "intriguing with the lot-owners to secure their concurrence"--"no reasonable man can doubt that members of the vestry pocket at least half the money," and so forth. Forty flagrant lies will be told about  the transaction and thirty-nine of them will be firmly believed except by a minority of rational people.  It is in fact a dangerous step for a wealthy corporation to take.  Our only safety is in keeping every dollar of the $400,000 out of our own treasury, and applying that sum forthwith to some church-object outside Trinity Church; as for example, to the erection and endowment of  Free Church or two, or which we might retain some nominal control, or the establishment of scholarships with stipends in Columbia College, the right of nomination to be given to all of the New York parishes.  No one would more gladly apply this money to the extinction of our debt than I, if it could safely be done.

--George Templeton Strong, The Diary of George Templeton Strong 

(A. Nevins and M. Thomas eds.1988)