Pepys Show: April 1662
Adam's Notes for whatever day this is
So home and walked upon the leads with my wife, and whether she suspected anything or no I know not, but she is quite off of her going to Brampton, which something troubles me, and yet all my design was that I might the freer go to Portsmouth when the rest go to pay off the yards there, which will be very shortly.
“I was much troubled to-day to see a dead man lie floating upon the waters, and had done (they say) these four days, and nobody takes him up to bury him, which is very barbarous.” That sentence really drives home that Pepys lives in a vastly different world than ours, even if his domestic life often seems quite familiar. Let’s take a look at his diary entries for April 1662.
On the sixth, Pepys is at mass at the Whitehall Palace chapel, with King Charles II in attendance. The sermon is against adultery—Charles II isn’t actually married yet (his future queen is in Portugal, and everyone’s waiting for the fleet to bring her over) but already he’s notorious for his mistresses. Pepys’ comment on the sermon: “which methought might touch the King, and the more because he forced it into his sermon, methinks, besides his text.” Making her first appearance in the diary this month is Sir George Carteret’s wife, who “seems a good lady” to Pepys. Apparently Elizabethtown, North Carolina is named for her.
“At the office all the morning, where, among other things, being provoked by some impertinence of Sir W. Batten’s, I called him unreasonable man, at which he was very angry and so was I, but I think we shall not much fall out about it.” Pepys is right, they’ve been butting heads since I think December, but their friendship is too strong to let anything come of it—on the nineteenth Batten gives Pepys, “a bever, an old one, but a very good one,” that is, a hat lined with beaver fur (Canadian?) and Pepys finds himself obligated now to give Batten a gift, but doesn’t have anything just yet. Besides, Batten and Pepys have common enemies. There’s some guy Field causing trouble for their office, with a “bitter petition to the King against our office for not doing justice upon his complaint to us of embezzlement of the King’s stores by one Turpin.” It’s a pain in the ass, but when the King refers the matter to the Duke of York they realize nothing will come of it.
Pepys also has a business trip this month to Portsmouth. The thing is, he wants to go alone so he can have fun, but obviously he can’t tell his wife that. So laying in bed together he tries to get her to take their maid Sarah to his parents’ place in Brampton, to cure the maid of her fever. During the day he buys some little things for her trip, but comes home to find she’s changed her mind. He still hasn’t told her about his own trip, and worries that she’s getting suspicious.
On the eighteenth, Pepys beats Wayneman with a cane, with Wayneman’s sister Jane begging Pepys to stop. Later he tells Jane he loves the boy and is doing it for his sake, but it’s hard to see how Wayneman could follow that logic. Also, earlier this month their maid Nell took her pay and left the service, Pepys doesn’t give us a reason.
Pepys tries getting his wife to go to Brampton again, presumably so that he’ll be able to fool around on her without her doing the same to him, but she refuses. So finally he confesses that he has to go to Portsmouth, and it’s resolved that she’ll stay home. Later in the day, the church bells start ringing, in celebration of the new Queen’s arrival from Lisbon, but it turns out to be a false alarm. Pepys talks with a cousin about his brother Tom’s marriage prospects (I forget what it is exactly, but Tom isn’t really considered a catch—he has a bad stutter but I think there’s more to it than that). Pepys wants to make some money for his brother, to make his chances better, and so he proposes buying tallow cheap off his cousin and selling it dear to the king—but the cousin wants that profit for himself.
Finally, Pepys sets out for Portsmouth on the 22nd, and is gone for the rest of the month. Pepys wants it to be a bit of a guys’ trip, I think, and on the first night he ends up hearing a salacious story, “of the monkey that got hold of the young lady’s cunt as she went to stool to shit, and run from under her coats and got upon the table, which was ready laid for supper after dancing was done.” Later, at Southampton, there’s gourmet dining, with fresh-caught sturgeon and caviar. Pepys tries to buy some of the latter to bring home, to no avail, both because it hasn’t been salted enough, and also “nor are the seedes of the roe broke, but are all in berryes.”
The twenty-seventh has Pepys and company on a tour of Portsmouth’s dockyards. James Pierce, the surgeon, has brought his wife Elizabeth Pierce on the trip. They’re both close friends of the Pepys household, but Sam has kind of a thing for Mrs. Pierce to the point where his wife has caught on and fought with him over it. Which explains why he writes that he, “saluted Mrs. Pierce, but being in haste could not learn of her where her lodgings are, which vexes me.” At any rate, he attends a shipboard sermon, “full of nonsense and false Latin” preached by a navy chaplain, and they see an expensive salt cellar which is to be a gift for the queen. And speaking of the queen, there’s another false alarm, this time with everyone rushing to the seaside to get a glimpse of her ship, but no such luck.
Later in the trip Pepys leaves the fellas to go for a walk with Mrs. Pierce, and you get the sense that this was whole reason for leaving his Elizabeth at home. But Mrs. Pierce is with “another lady passing by” and so Pepys treats them to wine and sweetmeats, then with Dr. Clarke takes them to their lodgings where they laugh and carry on until the town’s gates are to be shut. Pepys doesn’t get a chance for his faux Latin-Spanish-Italian hijinks, and so schemes with Dr. Clarke on how to keep the company from returning to London tomorrow. Pepys tries again a few days later, taking the women to show them the salt cellar for the queen, and ends up with Dr. Clark and the ladies playing cards until midnight. Again Pepys’ hopes for a liaison are dashed, and in fact he ends up sleeping in bed with the doctor, where they gossip about one of the women accompanying Mrs. Pierce, “she being somewhat old and handsome, and painted and fine, and had a very handsome maid with her, which we take to be the marks of a bawd. But Mrs. Pierce says she is a stranger to her and met by chance in the coach, and pretends to be a dresser.”
If Pepys’ hopes for some extramarital fun were dashed, he is rewarded in other ways. Dr. Clarke offers to bring Pepys into “the college of virtuosoes,” that is, the Royal Society, also offers to have him meet the Society’s president, “and to show me some anatomy.” Also, the mayor of Southampton and the burgesses make Pepys a(n honorary?) burgess. Honestly the burgess stuff just seems like a shakedown, it only involves taking an oath and shaking everyone’s hand, but Pepys has to pay ‘a piece in gold to the Town Clerk, and 10s. to the Bayliffes’ for the honour, and then afterwards takes them all to a tavern for drinks.
Plays
April 1: After dinner he (Mr Herbert) and I and the two young ladies and my wife to the playhouse, the Opera, and saw “The Mayde in the Mill,” a pretty good play. In the middle of the play my Lady Paulina, who had taken physique this morning, had need to go forth, and so I took the poor lady out and carried her to the Grange, and there sent the maid of the house into a room to her, and she did what she had a mind to, and so back again to the play; and that being done, in their coach I took them to Islington, and then, after a walk in the fields, I took them to the great cheese-cake house and entertained them, and so home, and after an hour’s stay with my Lady, their coach carried us home, and so weary to bed.
April 2: I home and dined; and then my wife and I by water to the Opera, and there saw “The Bondman” most excellently acted; and though we had seen it so often, yet I never liked it better than to-day, Ianthe acting Cleora’s part very well now Roxalana is gone. We are resolved to see no more plays till Whitsuntide, we having been three days together. Met Mr. Sanchy, Smithes, Gale, and Edlin at the play, but having no great mind to spend money, I left them there.
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the cad!