RootsChat.Com
Old Photographs, Recognition, Handwriting Deciphering => Handwriting Deciphering & Recognition => Topic started by: Deskman on Monday 19 February 18 19:20 GMT (UK)
-
I've been away for a whole day...
I need help, I think xxxxxx should be remark but it has characteristics such as the dot that rule it out and what is that cross about? Can you help?
"later letters of Chesterfield, can’t see how he can reconcile his
xxxxxx about the lady “who has been married to her husband 12 months
& is still faithful to him” with his previous one “prac..."
With thanks for any thoughts.
-
Hello again :)
I think it might be Minds with underlines of the word above. A bit messy though, so not really sure.
Gadget
-
Mm - that first letter looks like one of his h
-
minds is interesting Gadget but does it sit well here? it suggests Chesterfield has two minds.
Here is a minds that will show us something!
-
It doesn't look like that - I thought it could start with an h - hixxxs
-
There is 'Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds'
https://www.enotes.com/topics/letters-his-son/quotes/idleness-only-refuge-weak-minds
-
Lovely quote Gadget.
The Chesterfield letter the diarist is attempting to quote is Letter CXXXVIII LONDON, April 15, O. S. 1751
"MY DEAR FRIEND: What success with the graces, and in the accomplishments, elegancies, and all those little nothings so indispensably necessary to constitute an amiable man? Do you take them, do you make a progress in them? The great secret is the art of pleasing; and that art is to be attained by every man who has a good fund of common sense. If you are pleased with any person, examine why; do as he does; and you will charm others by the same things which please you in him. To be liked by women, you must be esteemed by men; and to please men, you must be agreeable to women. Vanity is unquestionably the ruling passion in women; and it is much flattered by the attentions of a man who is generally esteemed by men; when his merit has received the stamp of their approbation, women make it current, that is to say, put him in fashion. On the other hand, if a man has not received the last polish from women, he may be estimable among men, but will never be amiable. The concurrence of the two sexes is as necessary to the perfection of our being, as to the formation of it. Go among women with the good qualities of your sex, and you will acquire from them the softness and the graces of theirs. Men will then add affection to the esteem which they before had for you. Women are the only refiners of the merit of men; it is true, they cannot add weight, but they polish and give lustre to it. ‘A propos’, I am assured, that Madame de Blot, although she has no great regularity of features, is, notwithstanding, excessively pretty; and that, for all that, she has as yet been scrupulously constant to her husband, though she has now been married above a year. Surely she does not reflect, that woman wants polishing. I would have you polish one another reciprocally. Force, assiduities, attentions, tender looks, and passionate declarations, on your side will produce some irresolute wishes, at least, on hers; and when even the slightest wishes arise, the rest will soon follow."
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3361/3361-h/3361-h.htm (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3361/3361-h/3361-h.htm)
-
:D :D :D :D Love that quote!
Not much has changed in 250 years then Deskman - when you really get down to it! ;) 8)
Wiggy
-
I keep seeing "hinds" which makes me wonder if it's his shorthand for "hindsight".
-
Agree it did look like hinds (see my reply #4) but is 'hindsight' a word the diarist would use about Chesterfield and can one describe Chesterfield of having hindsight about the married woman? Not fully convinced :-\
(why did I type Chesterton ::) )
PS- Deskman - can you complete your excerpt with his previous one “prac..."
-
Before reading anyone else's suggestions, I see 'hints'. If so, the crossing of the 't' is unusually strong, and I wonder if he did it like that to emphasise that it wasn't a 'd'. This was before the days of liquid paper.
I agree with Gadget - please give us the rest of this bit :)
Carol
-
I've been flicking through this version, if anyone wants to partake :)
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3314898;view=1up;seq=9
(think the 1751 letters are in this)
-
Thanks everyone.
I wonder if the long ascender of the 'h' is a result of avoiding writing through the bold random line below 'later'.
If it is minds it seems to being used as a synonym of thoughts.
Here is the end of the diary sentence.
...one “practice the moral virtues, without these you can never be truly happy” I suppose adultery is only immoral when practiced by people of no breeding.
which appears to be from
“By merit, I mean the moral virtues, knowledge, and manners; as to the moral virtues, I say nothing to you; they speak best for themselves, nor can I suspect that they want any recommendation with you; I will therefore only assure you, that without them you will be most unhappy.” Letter XL London, May 27, O. S. 1748.
-
Deskman, what did you make of Reply #10?
Carol
-
We're really looking for a word meaning views, comments, reflections, observations, etc. I've been looking through various thesauri but can't find anything that has that form of letters except 'mind' and I don't think it is :-\
Gadget
added - trying to get inside his vocabulary/phraseology
-
Hints is strong if we accept that the writer thought Chesterfield was hinting in his letters to his son.
Hints is weak as the 't' is so unlike his other 't's and it is a neat 'd' and the cross is weird when compared with all his other 't' crossings.
:-\ :-\ :-\
-
It's more like a d than a t. If there is a t there, the letter before it might be an a.
I feel that the horizintal stroke is either a partial underline or a mark that he's made in error.
Added - minds = reminds
-
A bit off the wall, but could it be a Lincolnshire dialect word hinch - primarily a verb 'to be mean/miserly', but also a noun, 'meanness'?
(Source: Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary)
-
Taken out the line and enlarged:
(also, didn't he write some of his letters to his son in French?)
-
Just in case it helps...
-
Wild theory: maybe the "dot" for an "i" was just an emphatic splotch made when he drew the long cross. If you remove the dot and the line.... can you make out "words" ?
-
A bit off the wall, but could it be a Lincolnshire dialect word hinch - primarily a verb 'to be mean/miserly', but also a noun, 'meanness'?
(Source: Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary)
I had been thinking "hinch" but couldn't find a meaning for it.
I'm not convinced about the last 2 letters being "ds" - there is only one single stroke for the vertical bit of the "d". That would be fairly unusual, even for our writer.
Hmmm... (yet again :))
-
A couple of further thoughts:
In the same line, there's an unusual letter/mark at the start of 'married'. The best I can make of it is that he started to write 'faithful' (possibly) then changed his mind. My point is that the writer wasn't averse to amending things as he went along, so there could be some odd letters here and there.
Second, on looking more closely, I'm not now sure that the last letter is 'h'. Where an 'h' is written with a careful clockwise stroke in the second part of the letter (see 'has' in the same line, also 'her husband' in the inserted bit), it's close to the upright stem. Where it's more hurried and has an anti-clockwise stroke (as in 'who', 'Chesterfield'), there's more of a gap. Here we have a clockwise stroke and a gap, which doesn't match either form.
I'm therefore wondering if the word could be minds, as suggested by Gadget above, perhaps as a last-minute amendment to something like 'thoughts', whose 't' remains.
This may be a bit far-fetched, but I'm currently preferring it to 'hinch' (especially if he wasn't from Lincolnshire).
-
Thanks again folks,
I find the hinch proposal interesting but unconvincing.
Karen McDonald's observation about the single strike of the 'd' like letter is an argument fo it not being a d. I notice that in reply 19 the ascender is not as simple as a single stroke. The the lower part is doubled.
I ask myself if and how do the two single stroke ascenders and the massive cross relate to the word?
:-\
-
A final thought on this as I think we seem to be stumped!
I don't think it's hinch and I don't think the penultimate letter is a t. I note that the diarist seems to have made a considerable number of mistakes/amendments/additions in this excerpt. Now I'm wondering if he started to write two minds , then corrected himself and it came out as tminds
Gadget
-
hinch, hints, minds, reminds, words... plenty of options...
Needing to make a decision I'll go for minds.
Thanks to everyone for exercising yourselves over this.