Pepys Show: May 1662
This one has lustful nuns, and a grim reminder
Crew and I talked together, and among other instances of the simple light discourse that sometimes is in the Parliament House, he told me how in the late business of Chymny money, when all occupiers were to pay, it was questioned whether women were under that name to pay, and somebody rose and said that they were not occupiers, but occupied.
A quick note: I meant to do a post-election post, but I fell behind on a bunch of stuff, and had this banked, so it’s a Pepys post today. Maybe next week?
May 1662 begins with Pepys still out of town on business, sleeping alone, with his servant Will in the truckle bed (a small bed kept crosswise at the foot of a bed, for a student or servant or apprentice to sleep at the feet of his master). He returns to London on the second, and after washing himself (“it having been the hottest day that has been this year”), he takes his wife and Mr. and Mrs. Hunt (who were keeping her company in his absence) to go and see Dr. Clarke’s wife (Clarke was on the trip with him and hasn’t returned home yet, evidently, and Pepys has a letter for her). Oddly for Pepys, he finds himself a little intimidated by her and the number of fine ladies with her, or as he puts it, “much out of countenance, and could hardly carry myself like a man among them,” but eventually he does get his courage back up, he says.
The next day he’s with Lady Sandwich, who’s tending Sir Thomas Crew’s children. Pepys takes them all to see the lion in the Tower of London. I love a trip to the zoo but I’d be sort of worried about how safe it was in the 1660s.
His arm is giving him trouble and so he has it bled, about sixteen ounces, which makes him sick until he lies down on his back. Later he has his arm tied up with a black ribbon—what a baby. Later in the month he has his maid Sarah comb his head, “which I found so foul with powdering and other troubles, that I am resolved to try how I can keep my head dry without powder; and I did also in a suddaine fit cut off all my beard, which I had been a great while bringing up, only that I may with my pumice-stone do my whole face, as I now do my chin, and to save time, which I find a very easy way and gentile. So she also washed my feet in a bath of herbs, and so to bed.” He also has Wayneman start wearing a sword, to try and outdo the boy servants of the two Sir Williams, who lately have new liveries (Wayneman’s was updated last month). Pepys thinks Wayneman is the finest of them all, rare praise for the kid.
The Queen finally arrives in London from Libson, “the King and she did send for a pair of scales and weighed one another; and she, being with child, was said to be heaviest. But she is now a most disconsolate creature, and comes not out of doors, since the King’s going.” This also means Pepys patron, his cousin Lord Sandwich, is back in England as well. Also, Pepys thinks the King is happy with the Queen, “which, I fear, will put Madam Castlemaine’s nose out of joynt.” That is, the king’s mistress.
On the twenty-fourth, Pepys has a long day with Mr. Creed, his sometimes rival for Lord Sandwich’s patronage. Over a couple of lobsters on Fish Stret, they discuss: Lord Sandwich’s troubles in getting clear orders from the king, bullfighting in Spain, the queen’s stinginess (she failed to reward any of the navy men who brought her to England, except for “Lord Sandwich; and that was a bag of gold, which was no honourable present, of about 1400l. sterling”), her reclusiveness (she only came up on deck for Sandwich’s music), Lord Sandwich’s fight for payment for his trip (funding the navy is a continual problem), and that the king of Portugal is said to be a fool.
On the twenty-sixth, there’s a meeting at Trinity House (a corporation adjacent to the navy, responsible for the protection of the coasts). They have to choose a new master, and Pepys has some schadenfreude when his pal, neighbour and co-worker Sir William Batten loses out, despite “contend(ing) highly for it.” Also, during the meeting, Pepys sits next to Mr. Prin, who shows him a dirty pamphlet on the, “lust and wicked lives of the nuns heretofore in England … wherein thirty nuns for their lust were ejected of their house, being not fit to live there, and by the Pope’s command to be put, however, into other nunnerys.”
Pepys runs into Mr Creed again a few days later when, on Lombard Street, Alderman Blackwell calls to him from the upper window of his house (Blackwell was an English goldsmith turned financier and politician, which explains why he lives on Lombard Street, as it was a gift from King Edward I to some goldsmiths from Lombardy). Creed is among those inside, “and it seems they have been under some disorder in fear of a fire at the next door, and had been removing their goods, but the fire was over before I came.” There are a lot of bonfires in the evening, as it’s King Charles II’s birthday,” but nothing to the great number that was heretofore at the burning of the Rump.”
Pepys finds himself worth about 530 pounds, up thirty from the start of the year, “so little have I increased it since my last reckoning; but I confess I have laid out much money in clothes.” Earlier in the month Pepys decided to relax his vow and let himself see as many plays as he wants this month, but then for him and his wife to stay home from the theatre until Michaelmas, which I believe is in late September.
There’s a spontaneous outing on the thirtieth, with Pepys taking his wife, their maid Sarah, and servant Will, by water to Gravesend to look at some ships, but there’s a note that the modern reader will somewhat disturbing, or at least I did. They meet Mr. Shepley on the river and board his hoy. He’s taking some things to Lord Sandwich, among them, “a little Turk and a negroe, which are intended for pages to the two young ladies.” These are, I think it’s fair to say, slaves. Two years before this diary entry was made, the Royal African Company was established in London. Its original purpose was to run a monopoly trade in gold and other commodities in West Africa, but quickly became a prime mover of slaves, shipping more African slaves to the Americas during the Atlantic slave trade than any other company. By 1680 “the company was transporting about 5,000 enslaved people a year to markets primarily in the Caribbean across the Atlantic.” Pepys references the company fifteen times throughout the diary, sometimes dining with their members, attending a meeting of theirs, discussing their finances and their ships. It’s a grim reminder that while Pepys’ domestic and social life is amusing, his work as a navy clerk puts him adjacent to one of the worst crimes humanity has ever committed. He’s the 1660s equivalent of a Raytheon administrator.
Food
“He himself made a dish with eggs of the butter of the Sparagus, which is very fine meat, which I will practise hereafter,” “a good quarter of lamb and a salat,” “He hath also sent each of us some anchovies, olives, and muscatt; but I know not yet what that is, and am ashamed to ask.” “This day I had the first dish of pease I have had this year.”
Other Pepys posts
January 1662: No more drinking, no more theatre
February 1662: Dancing mania, Valentine’s, arquebus headshot
March 1662: A leather submarine?
April 1662: Sneaking around on his wife
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"the truckle bed (a small bed kept crosswise at the foot of a bed, for a student or servant or apprentice to sleep at the feet of his master)."
This is not unlike the beds some people make up for their dogs in the same places- was this a psychological reminder to Will as to who was the boss?