Two New Years Resolutions: no more drinking, no more theatre
Pepys Show: January 1662
Waking this morning out of my sleep on a sudden, I did with my elbow hit my wife a great blow over her face and nose, which waked her with pain, at which I was sorry, and to sleep again.
Welcome to 1662. It’s January, it’s cold, and Pepys is wont to lay long in bed, but there’s work to do. On the agenda for this month: finding a wife for his brother Tom, and keeping his vow to drink less and stop going to plays. But already by the third he finds himself, “not now so hasty to get a wife for him as I was before.” There’s a girl that their cousins the Joyces would set Tom up with, but Pepys turns down the offer, wanting his brother to marry up.
Pepys also worries about his own expenses. Last month he committed to buying a thesaurus worth four pounds for his alma mater (for reference, he reckons his estate is worth about five hundred pounds), and he’s commissioned portraits of himself and his wife, Elizabeth (her picture is now finished), plus he spends a lot of money on drinking and going to see plays. So, on New Year’s Eve, Pepys wrote, “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.” Still, he’s at the theatre on New Year’s Day, but manages to abstain after that.
January sixth turns out to be the wedding anniversary of Pepys’ neighbour and co-worked, Sir William Penn, who celebrates with a party that include “eighteen mince pies in a dish, the number of the years that he hath been married.” Captain Holmes is at the party (the guy who had the baboon), and Pepys, “perceive(s) (he) would fain get to be free and friends with my wife, but I shall prevent it, and she herself hath also a defyance against him.” Holmes tried to seduce Elizabeth in the past, but Pepys has always been vague about it. There’s a lot of drinking at the party, but Pepys, with newly vowed sobriety, decides to leave, coming back later to play cards with Penn and his children. He does that newly sober thing of criticizing a drunk, in this case “my man Gull,” who vomits before going to bed. Pepys threatens to get Gull’s uncle to “dispose of him.”
There’s trouble at Westminster on the eighth, when Sir William Penn warns Pepys that he heard Sir Carteret angry with Will Hewer, Pepys’ manservant-turned-clerk. Carteret says that Will’s uncle, Robert Blackborne, is a rogue, and Will is a snitch who tells him everything that happens in the office. Pen advises Pepys to ditch Will, but Pepys doesn’t want to, and goes to question Will and then to ask Sir William Batten for advice, though he doesn’t report to the diary what’s said. Pepys happens to meet with Carteret the next day, but Carteret doesn’t bring the matter up. Indeed, nothing seems to come of it.
Ever curious about the wider world, Pepys this month reports a number of strange customs from abroad, namely the election of dukes in the Republic of Genoa, the nightwatch in the Dukedom of Ragusa, and of the king of Gambia:
So to the Exchange, and there all the news is of the French and Dutch joyning against us; but I do not think it yet true. So home to dinner, and in the afternoon to the office, and so to Sir W. Batten’s, where in discourse I heard the custom of the election of the Dukes of Genoa, who for two years are every day attended in the greatest state; and four or five hundred men always waiting upon him as a king; and when the two years are out, and another is chose, a messenger is, sent to him, who stands at the bottom of the stairs, and he at the top, and says, “Va. Illustrissima Serenita sta finita, et puede andar en casa.” — “Your serenity is now ended; and now you may be going home,” and so claps on his hat. And the old Duke (having by custom sent his goods home before), walks away, it may be but with one man at his heels; and the new one brought immediately in his room, in the greatest state in the world. Another account was told us, how in the Dukedom of Ragusa, in the Adriatique (a State that is little, but more ancient, they say, than Venice, and is called the mother of Venice, and the Turks lie round about it), that they change all the officers of their guard, for fear of conspiracy, every twenty-four hours, so that nobody knows who shall be captain of the guard to-night; but two men come to a man, and lay hold of him as a prisoner, and carry him to the place; and there he hath the keys of the garrison given him, and he presently issues his orders for that night’s watch: and so always from night to night. Sir Wm. Rider told the first of his own knowledge; and both he and Sir W. Batten confirm the last.
Stokes told us, that notwithstanding the country of Gambo is so unhealthy, yet the people of the place live very long, so as the present king there is 150 years old, which they count by rains: because every year it rains continually four months together. He also told us, that the kings there have above 100 wives a-piece, and offered him the choice of any of his wives to lie with, and so he did Captain Holmes. So home and to bed.
At a banquet on January twentieth, Pepys goes in on the purchasing of two butts of sherry from Cale (Cadiz?). He puts his share into a hogshead, “and the vessel filled up with four gallons of Malaga wine.” So I guess he’s mixing two kinds of wine? Anyway he’s very proud of himself, saying it’s “the first great quantity of wine that I ever bought.” I think this is a speculative purchase—I believe this is the same wine he’ll sell to Sir Batten in August.
There’s some good gossip this month, too, on, “the great jealousys that are now in the Parliament House.” For one thing, Parliament has refused a request to raise an army for the King’s brother and heir, the Duke of York, according to Pepys they said, “they were grown too wise to be fooled again into another army; and said they had found how that man that hath the command of an army is not beholden to any body to make him King.” But more than that, there are factions forming at court for and against Madam Palmer aka Lady Castlemaine, the mistress of King Charles II. Palmer is married, and apparently when visiting her the King makes sport of leaving his things behind him for her husband to find.
Pepys has a bad time at Three Crane Tavern, “and though the best room in the house, in such a narrow dogg-hole we were crammed, and I believe we were near forty, that it made me loathe my company and victuals; and a sorry poor dinner it was too.” But the worst meal of the month has to go to the one he has after a naval meeting at Trinity-house, “and so to dinner, where good cheer and discourse, but I eat a little too much beef, which made me sick, and so after dinner we went to the office, and there in a garden I went in the dark and vomited, whereby I did much ease my stomach.”
Pepys ends the month by ordering ‘alteracions’ to his cellar. Oh, and he’s been practicing music again, too. He’s taking lessons from a guy named Berkenshaw and even learning composition.
Theatre
Only one play this month, on the first, as Pepys is trying to keep his vow to stop drinking and stop attending plays.
Jan 1: Up and went forth with Sir W. Pen by coach towards Westminster, and in my way seeing that the “Spanish Curate” was acted today, I light and let him go alone, and I home again and sent to young Mr. Pen and his sister to go anon with my wife and I to the Theatre.
That done, Mr. W. Pen came to me and he and I walked out, and to the Stacioner’s, and looked over some pictures and maps for my house, and so home again to dinner, and by and by came the two young Pens, and after we had eat a barrel of oysters we went by coach to the play, and there saw it well acted, and a good play it is, only Diego the Sexton did overdo his part too much.
Instagram | Goodreads | Letterboxd | Bluesky