August 11th 1663 When I left England I returned to Burwell 84 crownes.[4] I had left in my pocket

French sol or sou, Reign of Louis XV, Wikipedia

Lister continued in his pocketbook:

From M. Battaliers at Marseilles

December 15  Fr. St.

from Toulose  M. Camby.

January 19th 1664

Montpellier. M Camby.

To by b. Will

M. Sharpe  Montp. Feb. 9. 1664

and my L[ady]. mother

To my b. Will}  Montpellier

To M. P and Mr. G.[17]  Feb. 23. 1664

To M. Briggs

To M. Camby

To M. Camby  my b. Will.

Enclosed. 15 Mar

To Mr. Pecke   Vinsennes[18] May 6

Mr. Grove

Mr Sharpe

To my b. Will   May 10 Vinsennes

My Lady

b. Mich

To M. Briggs  Arles June 10

To my b. Will  Aix June 20

M. Peck. August 13th

[1] Clearly a ventriloquist.

[2] Pagan could mean uncivilized, but in early modern parlance, it was also a euphemism for a prostitute.

[3] Practice.

[1] D.P. is probably Doctor [Henry] Paman (1626-1695), as he was reported by Philip Skippon as part of a group of English expatriates resident in Venice, Rome, and Tivoli in 1664/5. Paman was Lister’s former tutor in medicine at Cambridge.

[2] Skippon also reported one “Mr Soames” travelling with Paman.  This was presumably Barnham Soame (b. 1626).  Soame, from Little Thurlow in Suffolk, who had a son of the same name who graduated at St John’s College, Cambridge in 1681/2 and became a fellow there in 1693 after taking his M.D. (Venn, Alumni Cantab. 1V, p. 119).  Soame was credited for his botanical contributions in the preface of John Ray’s Methodus Plantarum (1682).  See Charles Raven, John Ray: naturalist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 217. See Skippon,  A Journey, 506, 650, 674.

[1] The Camargue, the delta of the River Rhône, which is primarily wetland.

[2] La Crau is just east of the Grand Rhone, and is a dry and treeless plateau.  The plateau of La Crau has the appellation of Chateauneuf du Pape, its terroir characterized by round pebbles from the Rhône, and a layer of blue clay that regulates humidity in summer. The terroir produces strongly characteristic and highly prized wines, deep and complex.  When Lister refers to ‘quantity of them’ he may have been referring to the huge quantities of stones under the vines, which concentrate the heat around the plants and promote ripening and sugar production.

[3] Francis Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum, or, a naturall historie (London: J.H., 1626), 119 and 160.  Bacon noted that wine can possess a type of oiliness, and that the lees of wine were a good compost to increase the ‘lust or spirit of the root’.

[4] The distance between Arles and Aix is 50 miles, so Lister would have been travelling quickly, as it is at the outer limit that a forced horse can travel.

[2] This is an epitaph for a small Roman tombstone with a base and crown that Lister must have seen at  Nîmes. The epitaph reads ‘Diis Manibus C. Attii Achillei; Iulia Severina marito optimo’. According to Germer-Durand, the tomb was originally near the basion of the Porte de la Couronne, before being moved to the Jardine Séguier near the Porte d’ Auguste and finally was placed in the Musée d’Archéologie in Nimes. See Germer-Durand, Inscriptions antiques de Nìmes, 590. The first notice of its epigraphy was in Jean Poldo d’Albenas, Discours historial de l’antique et illustre cité de Nismes, en la Gaule, 173.

[1] As typical to medical students at the time, Lister lodged with an apothecary, one Monsieur Jean Fargeon, to learn by informal instruction the names and preparations of particular drugs. These informal observations would be in addition to the more structured and theoretical education he would receive in lectures, as the study of the chemical and botanical pharmacopoeia and the study of medicine were inseparable at this time.

[2]Cheval Blanc.  The Fargeon’s shop was on the nearby Grand Rue (now the Grand Rue Jean Moulin), across from the Traverse des Grenadiers.

[3] The commune Castelnaudary in the Aude, Languedoc, which comes from the Occitan Castèlnòu d’Arri.  Lister probably travelled through it on the way to Montpellier as it is midway between Villefranche-de-Lauragais and Carcassone.

[4] ‘There are honest men of all religions in all nations’.

[5] René-Gaspard, the Marquis de Castries, the lieutenant-general and governor of Montpellier.

[7] Pézenas

[1] Lister may have been referring to the region of Pessac-Leógnan within the Vin de Graves, which has received a separate appellation for the traditional superiority of its soil, predominated by deep ancient gravel banks.   On 10 April 1663, Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary that he drank a ‘French wine called Ho Bryan that hath a good and most particular taste that I ever met with’.  Pepys apparently tasted a wine at the Royall Oak Tavern in the heart of London called Haut-Brion, from the leading Pessac-Leógnan chateaux in the region.   See Oz Clarke, Oz Clarke’s Wine Atlas, 2nd edition (London: Ted Smart, 2002), 42.

[2] Oz Clarke notes that in the times of Pepys, most Graves wine would certainly have been red; he states, ‘even today, Pessac-Leógnan has a reputation for producing good red in less good years because its ability to ripen Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot grapes that little bit earlier, before the autumn winds sweep in off the Bay of Biscay’.  White Graves, by contrast, were made by Sémillon and Sauvignon grapes. See Clarke, Oz Clarke’s Wine Atlas, 43.

[3] The Graves region begins north of Bordeaux, at the Jalle De Blanquefort, the southern boundary of the Médoc.   It continues through the city for 35 miles, ending south of Langon.

[1] Montaigu

[2] Presumably Saint-Hilaire-de-Loulay, a village in between Montaigu and Remouillé

[3] Remouillé

[4] Saint-Fulgent

[5] Chantonnay

[6] Thiré

[7] La Rochelle.

[8] Tonnay-Boutonne

[9] Taillebourg

[10] Saint Savinien

[11] Saintes.  The image above is of the Saintes Riverfront.

[12] Presumably the commune of Bois, in the Charente-Maritime department