Notes on a Week’s Diet and Poor Health, [between 12 June 1769, and 30 July 1770]
Notes on a Week’s Diet and Poor Health
AD: Library of Congress
[Between June 12, 1769, and July 30, 17701]
Monday—Din’d at Club2—Beef
Tuesday—at Mr. Foxcrofts—Fish
Wednesday—Dolly’s3 Beefstake
Felt Symptoms of Cold Fullness
Thursday—Mr. Walker’s4—Beef
Predicted it
Friday at home Mutton
Little Soreness of Throat
Saturday Club Veal
very bad at Night Wine Whey
Sunday—no Dinner continue bad[bed?]
Monday morn. Had a good Night, am better
U[rine] has deposited a reddish fine Sand.
1. So dated because of the reference to dining at Mr. Foxcroft’s. Although the time bracket is unlikely to have much value, the means of establishing it may be worth explaining to illustrate how such problems of dating can sometimes be narrowed when they cannot be solved. The Pa. Packet, on which Foxcroft came to England, arrived on May 30 or 31 (Lloyd’s Evening Post, May 31–June 2, 1769), and by the following Tuesday he might conceivably have found lodgings in which to entertain BF; in that case the end of the week chronicled was Monday, June 12, and in accordance with our policy we are placing the notes there. As for the other end of the time bracket, BF would scarcely have referred to Foxcroft alone after the latter had been married, in a ceremony in which BF had given away the bride. The wedding was on Thursday, Aug. 2, 1770, and BF dined that day not with Mr. Walker but with Thomas Coombe (Coombe to his father, Aug. 4, Hist. Soc. of Pa.). Hence the latest date for BF’s notes is the week ending on Monday, July 30.
2. Undoubtedly John Ellicott’s Monday club at the George & Vulture, for which see Verner W. Crane, “The Club of Honest Whigs: Friends of Science and Liberty,” W&MQ, 3d ser., XXIII (1966), 213–15.
3. Dorothea Blunt.
4. In all likelihood the same person who had invited him to dinner two years before: XIV, 93.