Excerpted from Christopher Morley’s A Book of Days: Being a Briefcase packed for his own Pleasure
NOVEMBER 21, SAT. 1931
He did delight to be in the darke, and told me he could then best contemplate. He had a house at Combe, in Surrey, where he had caves made in the earth, in which in summer time he delighted to meditate.
He was wont to say that man was but a great mischievous baboon.
He would say, that we Europeans knew not how to governe our women, and that the Turkes were the only people used them wisely.
He kept a pretty young wench to wayte on him, which I guess he made use of for warmth-sake as King David did, and took care of her in his will.
I have heard him say, that after his booke of the Circulation of the Blood came out, that he fell mightily in his practize, and that twas beleeved by the vulgar that he was crack-brained.
— JOHN AUBREY, Brief Lives
