Pepys Show: November 1661
Read to the end for a gambling monkey caught cheating
Then Mr. Gawdon being almost drunk had the wit to be gone, and so I took leave too, and it being a fine moonshine night he and I footed it all the way home, but though he was drunk he went such a pace as I did admire how he was able to go.
November 1661 is, in the diary of Samuel Pepys, a time of spending, feasting, and getting drunk. Before we start, let’s just take a moment to savour some of the great descriptions of food and drunkenness Pepys gives us: “a most brave chine of beef, and a dish of marrowbones,” “I did give it them in good wine, and anchovies, and pickled oysters,” “we had a good surloyne of rost beefe, the first that ever I had of my own buying since I kept house,” “We had a good dish or two of marrowbones and another of neats’ tongues to dinner,” “drank some raspberry sack and eat some sasages,” “There was a young Parson at the table that had got himself drunk before dinner, which troubled me to see,” “and after the office done, Sir Wms both and I and Captain Cock and Mr. Bence (who being drunk, showed himself by his talk a bold foole, and so we were fain to put him off and get him away) we sat till 9 a-clock by ourselfs in the office, talking and drinking three or four bottles of wine.”
So, the month starts with Samuel Pepys alone in his office hearing a gunshot go off downstairs. Is it murder? No, Wayneman, one of his boy servants, placed a match—which he thought was out but apparently wasn’t—into his pocket, which was full of gunpowder. Wayneman’s side is burned, and so is his hand, which he used to stop the fire. Pepys doesn’t like doing it, but he feels he’s obligated to give Wayneman a beating. Reminds me of the time Pepys and his buddy had to fire their pistols off in the house they were staying at, I guess just the nature of the guns didn’t allow them to be unloaded without firing them. Later in the month, Pepys will have a discussion with Major General Massy, “a great master in the secresys of powder and fireworks.”
Guy Fawkes Day, the fifth, involves a lot of drinking. First with his brother Tom and their friend William Armiger, then with Sir William Pen at Lady Batten’s. When he goes home, he finds Armiger already there, hitting on his wife and inviting her to a play. Pepys confesses to the diary that he thinks Armiger is an ass, but he’s not worried about him, and tolerates him for Tom’s sake, who Armiger does business with. Pepys goes back out to keep drinking. The kids are playing with firecrackers, and Sir William Pen is to drunk to play cards. Speaking of being suspicious of his wife, later in the month, on the 20th, Pepys will come home to find her “alone in the chamber” with Mr. Hunt, “which God forgive me did trouble my head,” but there is an innocent explanation: it’s washing day and so every other room with a fireplace has wet laundry hanging in front of it, and this is the only place they can stay warm. Of course, most of the time Pepys is suspicious of his wife, you get the sense it’s just his own guilty conscience coming back to haunt him, but years from now during one of their blowups Elizabeth will confess that there was one man who made a pass at her, and while she didn’t take him up on it, she also didn’t know how to turn him down—because it came from Pepys own patron, Lord Montagu, the Earl of Sandwich, who wanted her to be his mistress (presently in Lisbon, writing to Pepys about bullfights).
There’s a lot of spending this month, and Pepys is conscious of it. When some friends buy him his morning draft, he treats them to wine, anchovies, and pickled oysters, even sending to the grocers from the tavern they’re in. Then Lady Montagu takes him aside and tells him he needs to be spending more money on his wife, so he resolves to buy some lace for her, asking Montagu to pick some out for her. He agrees to the expenditure but writes “in my mind I think it too much,” and prays God that there’s no more inconveniences to his purse following this prodigality. Still, that doesn’t stop him from buying books, gambling with Captain Cocke, paying for musicians at the Dolphin, and seeing a bunch of plays, and it’s after the rainy ride home from one that he complains, “with my mind very heavy for this my expensefull life, which will undo me, I fear, after all my hopes, if I do not take up, for now I am coming to lay out a great deal of money in clothes for my wife, I must forbear other expenses.” And yet, on the 23rd he goes to Cheapside to see Mr Savill, a painter he intends to have do portraits of him and his wife. He’ll start sitting for his portrait at the end of the month, but it’ll be a while before it’s done.
There’s not a whole lot known about this Savill guy, and none of his paintings survive. This article says of him:
Savile is not well known because he painted men and women from the ‘middling sort’. These were people who, like Pepys at the start of his career, could not afford the services of one of the famous portrait painters.
None of Savile’s original images appears to have survived (including the one of Pepys) but he had a long and successful career – partly due to his willingness to humour clients by, for example, painting Mrs Pepys’s dog.
On the Eleventh, Pepys goes on a little adventure with Captain Ferrers (I love when these two hang out, it’s a really odd friendship, Pepys normally avoids his social inferiors but there’s something about Ferrers that makes him fun to be around—although years later Pepys will learn that Ferrers was the go-between when Lord Sandwich proposed an affair with Mrs Pepys). They end up slumming it at a gaming house, the first Pepys ever saw, “where strange the folly of men to lay and lose so much money, and very glad I was to see the manner of a gamester’s life, which I see is very miserable, and poor, and unmanly.” Afterwards they check out a dancing school and ogle the pretty girls, but at the same time he says he doesn’t like seeing girls exposed to such vanity—his attitude dancing is really the last part of the puritan mindset that grips Pepys, and it’ll come back to haunt him when his wife decides she wants to learn to dance.
On the twenty-fifth, Pepys and Sir William Penn go to the theatre and run into Mr. Sanchy and Mrs. Mary Archer. Pepys apparently had a thing for Mary’s sister when he was at Cambridge. Pepys invites them out, but “Mr. Sanchy could not by any argument get his lady to trust herself with him into the tavern, which he was much troubled at, and so we returned immediately into the city by coach,” where they have a drink at the Mitre before taking Mary to her uncle’s house, then they go back to drinking, Mr. Sanchy drunkenly explaining how he’s going to marry a rich girl, Pepys remembering Mary’s sister. The next day he’s hungover and sleep in until noon.
Elizabeth Pepys is still having trouble with the maids, as they lose Dorothy from their service. Reports Pepys, “which though she be a wench for her tongue not to be borne with, yet I was loth to part with her, but I took my leave kindly”. They’ll hire the tall and well-favoured wench Sarah to replace her.
Pepys receives a letter from his patron, the Earl of Sandwich, currently in Tangiers, where “hath done some execution upon the Turks, and retaken an Englishman from them, of one Mr. Parker’s, a merchant in Marke-lane.” Then Pepys ends the month with some political news: some judges from Cromwell’s reign have been brought before Parliament, and are likely to be hanged. Likewise, the coins from Cromwell’s regime are now being phased out. This is the last month they can be used for public transactions, but the King will accept them as payment for a further three months.
You can read Samuel Pepys’ November 1661 entries here.
Plays
November 1: and so went away to the Theatre, to “The Joviall Crew,” and from hence home.
November 4: to the Opera, where we saw “The Bondman,” which of old we both did so doat on, and do still; though to both our thinking not so well acted here (having too great expectations), as formerly at Salisbury-court. But for Betterton he is called by us both the best actor in the world.
November 12: My wife and I to “Bartholomew Fayre,” with puppets which I had seen once before, and the play without puppets often, but though I love the play as much as ever I did, yet I do not like the puppets at all, but think it to be a lessening to it.
November 13: From thence to the Theatre, and there saw “Father’s own Son” again, and so it raining very hard I went home by coach.
November 15: So to the Opera, where I met my wife and Captain Ferrers and Madamoiselle Le Blanc, and there did see the second part of “The Siege of Rhodes” very well done.
November 18: After dinner to Mr. Bowers at Westminster for my wife, and brought her to the Theatre to see “Philaster,” which I never saw before, but I found it far short of my expectations.
November 25: after dinner Sir W. Pen and I to the Theatre, and there saw “The Country Captain,” a dull play, and that being done, I left him with his Torys1 and went to the Opera, and saw the last act of “The Bondman,” and there found Mr. Sanchy and Mrs. Mary Archer, sister to the fair Betty, whom I did admire at Cambridge, and thence took them to the Fleece in Covent Garden, there to bid good night to Sir W. Pen who staid for me.
November 27: Captain Ferrers and Mr. Moore and I to the Theatre, and there saw “Hamlett” very well done.
November 29: Sir W. Pen and I to the Theatre, but it was so full that we could hardly get any room, so he went up to one of the boxes, and I into the 18d. places, and there saw “Love at first sight,” a play of Mr. Killigrew’s, and the first time that it hath been acted since before the troubles, and great expectation there was, but I found the play to be a poor thing, and so I perceive every body else do.
That’s all for now—thanks for reading! Elsewhere online, I’ve got two book reviews out. I read Gail Simone’s Red Sonja: Consumed for the New Edge Sword and Sorcery blog, and I read Michelle Berry’s latest thriller Satellite Image for Rain Taxi.
Instagram | Goodreads | Letterboxd | Bluesky