Pepys meets a baboon
Pepys meets a baboon
Adam's Notes for August 21, 2024
Pepys Post: August 1661
A lot of this month is taken up with attempts by Pepys to get his uncle’s estate in order. He sets out for Cambridge on the second, spending a lot of time there and at Brampton, consulting family members about the inheritance. On his journey out he has a conversation with a fellmonger (dealer in animal hides) who happens to be a Quaker. He’s still at Brampton on the sixth, complaining that, “I find that both here, and every where else that I come, the Quakers do still continue, and rather grow than lessen.” Wonder what that’s all about. He also notices the landlady at his tavern is very attractive, “but I durst not take notice of her, her husband being there.”
As for the will, his cousin Roger, “did give me good satisfaction, but tells me I shall meet with a great deal of trouble in it. However, in all things he told me what I am to expect and what to do.” So neither good nor bad, but pushing the paperwork uphill, I guess. He complains about how expensive it’s been to kick his aunt (his uncle’s widow!) out of the house. I still think that’s one of the shittier things Pepys has done.
Pepys his Privy Seal duties bringing him back to London on the 7th, but his superior doesn’t show up, so no work gets done, which irritates him because it “gives all the world reason to talk of his delaying of business, as well as of his severity and ill using of the Clerks of the Privy Seal.”
On the tenth, there’s a new arrival to the Pepys household, a chamber maid Mrs. Pepys did lately hire. Pepys complains to his diary that the maid is “very ugly, so that I cannot care for her, but otherwise she seems very good.” She’ll be dismissed in the autumn.
Pepys hears Lord Hinchingbroke is ill, and worries it’s caused by the fruit Pepys gave him recently. But when he goes to check on him it seems even worse: possibly it’s smallpox, which lately is causing everyone to worry. Worse still, Pepys has word that his Lord Sandwich has fallen sick on his overseas mission (currently he's in Spain). As a side note, apparently it was called smallpox because the ‘great pox' was syphilis, which had begun to rear its head in Italy a little more than a hundred years previously. The French called it the Neapolitan disease, after picking it up in Naples, while the Italians called it the French disease, because it coincided with the French invasion of Italy. This has come up in some other stuff I’ve been reading lately, and it makes me wonder why everyone assumes it’s from the New World—all the histories from the time really do seem to have it coming out of Naples.
Pepys is also mulling over the idea of getting rid of his sister Pall, complaining about her to his parents. When his mother starts a fight over it, he complains she has “become a very simple woman.”
A letter from Mr Creed dated July 15 declares that Lord Sandwich has recovered and is ready to resume his journey—so the whole thing was over and done with before Pepys heard about it. A day later Pepys goes and informs Sandwich’s wife, Jemima. She’s glad but doesn’t seem entirely convinced.
Lord Hinchingbroke also seems to be recovering, but an ingenious and lively young man from the office has died from the sickness, and everyone puts works off for the day to attend the burial. Pepys writes, “it is such a sickly time both in City and country every where (of a sort of fever), that never was heard of almost, unless it was in a plague-time.” He then lists some people he knows of who are dead or sick. Still, it doesn't stop Pepys from going out for a drink after dinner at Shoe Lane. He travels home “by link” which I always think is a rather charming image, though it makes me glad for streetlights.
After attending to Privy Seal business on the 17th, he goes for a walk in the park with a friend, who complains of the lewdness and beggary at Court. Earlier this month, Pepys’ cousin Roger complained of, “how basely things have been carried in Parliament by the young men, that did labour to oppose all things that were moved by serious men. That they are the most prophane swearing fellows that ever he heard in his life, which makes him think that they will spoil all, and bring things into a warr again if they can.” It seems like it’s a pretty good time for England, especially considering all the strife the Civil War caused only a decade ago, and the restoration has been proceeding smoothly, but still people aren’t happy, and it’s causing a sort of restlessness among the elite.
There’s more Privy seal business on the 19th, this time in the presence of King Charles II. The king is wearing “a plain common riding-suit and velvet cap, in which he seemed a very ordinary man to one that had not known him.” The business goes on into the evening, and Pepys has his supper at an alehouse with his buddy Henry Moore, though they're called for and go by coach to find the Lord Privy Seal, finish the business but loses the coach and they end up having to walk home. They reach some trees near a bunch of neat houses (I think barns for housing cows?) and their companion starts whistling, which makes them worry they’re going to get robbed, but the person being whistled to turns out to be Alphonso Marsh, a musician, who’s out with his wife.
The next week is filled with business: the privy seal, his uncle’s will, and now the death of his Aunt Fenner. Lady Sandwich gives birth to a daughter, and Pepys tries to arrange a marriage for his brother Tom. There are two prospective ladies but I can’t remember what ends up happening—I’m pretty sure Tom gets turned down.
There’s novelty waiting for him at Sir Batten’s office on the 24th: one of the navy captains has brought a baboon back from Africa. Pepys thinks it’s so much like a man that he doesn’t really believe it when they say they’re a separate species, and he can’t help but “believe but that it is a monster got of a man and she-baboon.” He also believes that it already understands a great deal of English, and figures it can be taught to speak, or at least makes signs. He’ll see some dancing monkeys at the end of the month but he doesn’t find it amusing because of the “nasty company” (he’s escorting Lady Sandwich through Bartholomew Fair, where earlier in the day he’d been accosted by “a dirty slut or two come up that were whores,” not something that would normally bother him, I think, but today he’s worried about being seen).
Pepys and his father gang up on Pall in an argument, trying to get rid of her but eventually getting her father to take her in. “At last, after we had brought down her high spirit, I got my father to yield that she should go into the country with my mother and him, and stay there awhile to see how she will demean herself.” The next day he sends his maid Jane off into the countryside as well (she’ll later marry one of the Pepys’ clerks).
Pepys ends the month with a survey of his affairs: his father has gone to settle in Brampton, and his mother and Pall will soon follow. Jane is gone. He and his wife are healthy, but Lord Sandwich is lucky to be alive. “The season very sickly every where of strange and fatal fevers.” His brother Tom is taking over their father’s business, and Pepys worries Tom will “miscarry for want of brains and care.” The navy has no money, and neither does Pepys: he’s spending way too much on the seeing of plays, and his own expenses and pleasures. He realizes he needs to cut back.
The political world is a mess, too. The clergy are acting too high and alienating everyone, while at court there is “so much emulacion, poverty, and the vices of drinking, swearing, and loose amours, that I know not what will be the end of it, but confusion.”
Plays
The merry Devil of Edmunton. “a very merry play, the first time I ever saw it, which pleased me well.” He sees this in the company of some gentlemen and ladies from his Lord Sandwich’s house, and among them is Captain Ferrers, the guy who threw himself off a balcony back in May.
The Alchemist. A play by Ben Johnson, again seen in the company of Captain Ferrers. No comment on the performance.
The Witts. An opera, “never acted yet with scenes,” (I assume this means scenery). King Charles II happens to be in attendance, “indeed it is a most excellent play, and admirable scenes.” He attends a second showing a few days later, again with Captain Ferrers. He sees the opera for a third time towards the end of the month, this time taking his wife.
Hamlet. “done with scenes very well, but above all, Betterton did the prince’s part beyond imagination.”
The Joviall Crew. The King and his family and mistress are in attendance. Pepys writes “my wife, to her great content, had a full sight of them all the while. The play full of mirth.”
Mariage d'Orphée et d’Eurydice. This French play is “so ill done, and the scenes and company and every thing else so nasty and out of order and poor, that I was sick all the while in my mind to be there.” Pepys takes his wife, and they run into a handsome man from her youth in France, which irks Pepys.
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading!
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