Chrismastime for Samuel Pepys
Pepys Show for December 1661
All the morning at home lying in bed with my wife till 11 o’clock. Such a habit we have got this winter of lying long abed.
It’s winter and the days are shorter, darker, colder, but that not stopping Pepys from having his adventures, even if he does like to stay in bed a little longer.
The month starts with some gossip, that the state has been “clapping up” some old statesmen from the Cromwell regime, men suspected of plotting against King Charles II. Pepys thinks it’s all bullshit, and this is just what the state does, “whether there be cause or no.”
Pepys is reading a lot now. Mostly Selden’s Mare Clausum, a treatise about the sea in which Selden argues (per wikidpedia) “that the sea was in practice virtually as capable of appropriation as terrestrial territory.” It makes sense that Pepys is reading this considering he works for the navy board. It’s weird, though, Pepys is corrupt as hell, benefitting a great deal from his position, but he is trying to keep the navy running, and trying to understand how it works. He even plans on writing his own little treatise, “to present to the Duke, about our privilege in the seas, as to other nations striking their flags to us.” I don’t think he ever finishes it, but he is researching it: on the solstice he asks a friend to give him anything from the Domesday book concerning the sea. One night he falls asleep reading the Mare Clasum and dreams, “of my wife’s riding with me and her horse throwing her and breaking her leg, and then I dreamed that I had one of my testicles swelled, and in such pain that I waked with it, and had a great deal of pain there a very great while till I fell asleep again, and such apprehension I had of it that when I rose and trussed up myself thinking that it had been no dream.”
Captain Ferrers and a German friend (“Emanuel Luffe, who goes as one of my Lord’s footmen, though he deserves a much better preferment”) stop by Pepys’ house on the morning of the seventh. At this point, I’m expecting a big adventure whenever Ferrers is on the scene, and this one doesn’t disappoint.
The German plays Pepys’ theorbo (lute) in Pepys’ wife’s chamber while she’s staying late in bed, probably because of the cold. Pepys gives the two men breakfast (“mince pie and a collar of brawn and some wine”) and then sends them off, everyone merry. But fifteen minutes later and the German comes back, “all in a goare of blood,” and says he’s afraid Ferrers has been killed by the watermen (rowers and oarsmen and barge operators, in other words, the river’s working class) who hang out at the stairs leading down to the Thames. Pepys rushes off to save his friend. At the stairs he learns that there had been some harsh words, then Ferrers hit one with his cane and the German drew his sword and ran at them, but Ferrers and the German got the shit kicked out of them. Ferrers isn’t dead, though: he managed to board the hoy (barge) that must have been waiting for him. My sense is that Ferrers must be waiting just offshore, close enough for Pepys to hear him but far enough that the watermen can’t attack him further. Next, Pepys goes into a nearby alehouse where one of Captain Ferrers’ crew is demanding the return fo the captain’s feathers. Pepys (a regular customer of the watermen, and a well-paying one because his water travel is comped) is able to get them to deliver the feathers to Ferrers. This done, Pepys heads home and finds his wife dressing the German’s headwound. They give him, “a cravett for his neck, and a crown in his purse, and sent him away again.” What a morning! Captain Ferrers really comes off as, the sort of hapless oaf you’d find in a parody of The Three Musketeers, where instead of master swordsmen they keep getting their asses kicked.
There’s so much congestion from this session of parliament on the tenth that his coach is tied up in traffic for ninety minutes, but he should consider himself a lucky commuter: earlier in the month (before the Ferrers’ business) he mentioned offhand that he took a boat to work and found a day-old corpse of a drowned man on the stairs leading up from the Thames to Westminster. Those watermen don’t play around. Or maybe they were pissed off because one of their own had died?
From December 20th: and in our way met with Mr. Swan (my old acquaintance), and we to a tavern, where we had enough of his old simple religious talk, and he is still a coxcomb in these things as he ever was, and tells me he is setting out a book called “The unlawfull use of lawfull things;” but a very simple fellow he is, and so I leave him.
Pepys concludes his business at the Privy Seal on the solstice, when his boss, “my Lord Privy Seal did tell us he could seal no more this month, for that he goes thirty miles out of town to keep his Christmas.” So it’s a nice little break for Pepys, except that the king could decide he needs something sealed, in which case Pepys and friends would not only have to perform their duties, but go hunting for the Lord Privy Seal out in the countryside, and then drag him back.
Sam and Elizabeth Pepys spend about a week over the course of the month sitting for their portraits. At first, Pepys worries that his portrait won’t resemble him (neither portrait has survived, alas). But he finds the portrait of his wife captures her beauty… but that just triggers the old puritan reflex in him. One night on the coach ride home from a sitting with the painter, he admits that he, “took occasion to fall out with my wife very highly about her ribbands being ill matched and of two colours, and to very high words, so that, like a passionate fool, I did call her whore, for which I was afterwards sorry.”
It’s funny how he’s able to catch himself acting like a dick only afterwards, confessing to his diary. I kind of want to cut him a break here, because the anglo world is still infected with that puritan streak to this day, and we’ve really only just begun to put it behind us. For Pepys, it was only a generation or two old, and had been a major factor in the Civil War. Sadly, he and his wife spend end up fighting on and off for the rest of the month.
He’s already been cross at their maid, Nell, before the fight broke out, calling her a “simple slut” (in the sense of dirty or extremely untidy) and a “cross-grained wench.” Then on the twenty-second he gets angry at both Nell and his wife for “the blacknesse of the meat as it came out of the pot,” storming off to read until it’s time for church. At church, they encounter Captain Holmes—the guy from a few months back who had a captive baboon that Pepys wondered if it wasn’t half-human, half-monkey. Holmes is extravagant (here wearing a gold-laced suit) even by Pepys’ standards, and Pepys admits to being, “troubled because of the old business which he attempted upon my wife.” We never learn what the business was, precisely, but it puts Pepys in a mood to reconcile with his wife. Notice also the entry’s atmospheric description of rain outside the church. But then on Christmas Day, Nell evidently burns the meat again, which sets Pepys off again. He storms off to his chamber to brood. His wife comes, “all friends again” and they go out onto the leads, the little balcony thing on their house, and then over to visit their neighbour and Pepys’ co-worker, and they and a captain all get very drunk and merry.
Boxing Day finds Pepys a little bit closer to the Christmas spirit: Pepys and his wife go for a walk with Sir William Pen and his children at the Moorfields, but the weather being too foul they duck into an alehouse for cakes and ales, and a “washeallbowle” woman and girl sing to them. Back home, Pepys tries to be indulgent with his boy servant, but then his inner Scrooge gets triggered when Wayneman eats two cakes and a pot of ale instead of just the leftovers. Then Sir Pen has the Pepys over for turkey and cards.
If Pepys can’t be generous to his servants, he can at least try to be generous with his friends. On the thirtieth, Pepys finds himself dining at the Mitre, throwing a little impromptu banquet for a dozen friends, providing them with a, “good chine of beef, which with three barrels of oysters and three pullets, and plenty of wine and mirth, was our dinner.” He must be imbibing a good bit, too, because he makes a promise which he then realizes is foolish, which is to throw a feast like this once a year for the rest of his life. He tells his diary he has absolutely no intention of keeping the vow.
Elizabeth Pepys’ portrait with, “her little black dogg sat in her lap,” is finally ready on the thirty-first, with Pepys doing some backseat driving and telling the painter the few little finishing touches he wants on it. Both of the Pepys are quite pleased with it.
New Year’s Eve is a time for reflection and renewal. Pepys says that for the most part his health is fine, he has four servants (Will Hewer, Sarah, Nell, and Wayneman), and the house at the navy office, and altogether he figures he’s worth five hundred pounds, plus he’s due to inherit the house in Brampton that was his uncle’s, which he has secured for his parents. He wants to find a wife for his brother Tom, and to write a book on the navy. He also makes a vow for the new year: “I have newly taken a solemn oath about abstaining from plays and wine, which I am resolved to keep according to the letter of the oath which I keep by me.” It’s going to be hard, considering how much Pepys loves drinking and the theatre.
Thanks so much for reading! Next year, Pepys will put his vow to the test, shit on one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays, have political suspicion fall on one of his servants, and Captain Ferrers will come close to losing a finger in a swordfight he shouldn’t have picked. Only eight years left of our Pepys read through!
Plays
December 2: ‘By and by called on by Mr. Sanchy and his mistress, and with them by coach to the Opera, to see “The Mad Lover,” but not much pleased with the play.’
December 4: ‘(my wife) and I by coach to the Opera and Theatre, but coming too late to both, and myself being a little out of tune we returned.’
December 5: ‘my wife and I to the Opera, and saw “Hamlett” well performed.’
December 16: ‘after dinner to the Opera, where there was a new play (“Cutter of Coleman Street”), made in the year 1658, with reflections much upon the late times; and it being the first time, the pay was doubled, and so to save money, my wife and I went up into the gallery, and there sat and saw very well; and a very good play it is. It seems of Cowly’s making.’
Dec 30: ‘and so home to Sir W. Pen, who with his children and my wife has been at a play to-day and saw “D’Ambois,” which I never saw.’
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I'd read The Unlawful Use of Lawful Things! Especially if written by a coxcomb.