What can the diary of Samuel Pepys tell us about the election?
Naw I'm kidding, this is just a regularly scheduled Pepys post
Reminder: My short story “The Debtors’ Crypt” is out now in Hellarkey III. Paper copies are sold out, but ebooks are still available and my story is free to read online. I’ve also got a review of Rick Claypool’s Skull Slime Tentacle Witch War out over at Sage Cigarettes, and a review of Ariel Gordon's Fungal: Foraging in the Urban Forest in The /tƐmz/ Review.
up to dinner and much offended in mind at a proud trick my man Will hath got, to keep his hat on in the house, but I will not speak of it to him to-day; but I fear I shall be troubled with his pride and laziness, though in other things he is good enough.
October 1661 was kind of a quiet month for Pepys. He attends work and sees to some business about his uncle’s will, but nothing very exciting. At one point he’s worried he’s being taken advantage of. He hears a story about one Mrs. Pepys—a cousin, or I guess a woman married to his cousin, not anyone he’s close to—who is a servant in the house of Lady Harvy (his patron Lord Montagu’s sister—Montagu himself is also a cousin of Pepys, but one he cares about). This Mrs. Pepys had fallen deathly sick, but refused to make a will. In her sickbed she kept asking to see our man Sam Pepys. Normally, this would've been a moneymaking opportunity. But by the time Pepys hears about it she has recovered her health and is asking about taking a room with Sam. The way Pepys lays it out makes it sound like a con game—a sign of his rising status in the world, that distant acquaintances are trying to make a buck off him.
There’s some interesting food this month. Pepys’ takes his wife out for ‘China ale,’ I’m not sure what that is exactly, but it might be sarsaparilla, the joke drink from old westerns, which I understand sort of foams up like a soft drink? On arriving home, Pepys’ wife gets “vexed at her people for grumbling to eat Suffolk cheese.” Later in the month Samuel Pepys dines with his brother and cousins on “a fin of ling and some sounds, neither of which did I ever know before, but most excellent meat they are both, that in all my life I never eat the like fish.” It seems a sound is either a swim bladder or a cheek?
Part of the reason it’s a quiet month is because Pepys is laid low. On October tenth—his sixth wedding anniversary—he is in so much pain from a bruised testicle that he has to take to bed, where he’ll stay for the better part of a week. He tracks the swelling in his diary—sometimes up, sometimes down—and applies a ‘cataplasm,’ or poultice. When he overexerts himself on the eighteenth, we find out that the poultice he uses is made of “a good handful of bran with half a pint of vinegar and a pint of water boiled till it be thick, and then a spoonful of honey put to it and so spread in a cloth and laid to it.”
He’s back at work on the fourteenth, but doesn’t get much done. In the afternoon he goes for a walk with Captain Ferrers (the guy who fell from the balcony after confessing to being afraid of being sent overseas) to run an errand to Lord Montagu’s tailor, and then they drink to the health of the Duke of York, whose birthday it is. Ferrers, kind of a sadsack, tells a story “of his being abused by a Dr. of Physique who is in one part of the tenement wherein he dwells. It would make one laugh, though I see he is under a great trouble in it.” A very curious confession, but I don’t know what to read into it. Is he being drugged? Attacked? I don’t know.
The next day, Pepys allows himself to be led “to a blind place” to meet Mrs. Goldsborough, “who dare not be known where she lives,” to talk about what she’s owed from his uncle’s will. She’s very secretive about it, but Pepys isn’t too bothered and figured he can settle the matter easily enough, and appoints a lawyer to look into it. Unfortunately, his testicle begins to swell again from yesterday's walk.
On the seventeenth, Pepys finds himself at the Sun tavern, where Captain Cock buys him a drink and says he’s worried that when Parliament sits next month they’ll dig into the King’s spending and granting of offices, which will stir up trouble. Afterwards, Pepys meets Captain David Lambert and Lambert’s father-in-law at a cookshop. The father-in-law has just returned from Portugal, and he entertains them with some banter about how shitty a place it is. Both the city and court of Lisbon are poor and dirty, their king is rude and simple, and lost a duel over whether or not he’s a cuckold, and maybe even had his cod cut off. They laugh about how they could get rich selling glass windows in Lisbon, because Lisbon doesn’t have any.
The next day Pepys makes an offer to Mrs Goldsborough, and starts to worry about dealing with her in court—she has a devilish tongue. On the twentieth, Pepys is home in bed again, nursing what he refers to as the tumour on his testicle. He also gets upset with Will, his servant, who plays a “proud trick” in order to keep his hat on in the house. Pepys decides not to scold him for it today, observing, "I fear I shall be troubled with his pride and laziness, though in other things he is good enough.” I’m dying to know what the trick was! What sort of pranks were people playing in the 1660s?
Pepys returns to work, deals with a goldsmith “who is the man of the world that I do most know and believe to be a cheating rogue,” and visits Sir Slingsby, “who is fallen sick of this new disease, an ague and fever.” He tracks Slingsby's sickness over the course of a few days in the diary, getting worse and worse until he can no longer speak, and then dying.
Pepys watches the opening night of a play at Davenant’s Opera, and deeming it okay for his wife to see, takes her to see it a few nights later. On the way out they run into Mrs. Pierce, and Pepys’ wife gets jealous that Pepys goes over to talk with them (Pepys has previously been in trouble with his wife, multiple times, for praising Mrs. Pierce’s beauty—he can’t seem to learn his lesson). I wonder if she knew that Pepys had taken Mrs. Pierce and her friend to a play earlier in the month when he’d come home and found her and her friend at his house (it’s not really clear why they were there, and Pepys himself was surprised to find them there). Pepys is upset the whole walk home, though he does stop to see the instrument maker preparing his new lute. At home, Pepys takes out his anger on Will, lecturing him at length (presumably about the hat trick) and the need to be respectful to his masters.
The twenty-ninth is a day for dressing up fancy. Pepys dons black stockings, his ‘new coat of fashion,’ and his ‘beaver’, presumably some fur. I can’t help but wonder if it came from Canada, given that the fur trade would’ve been about ready to pop off. Anyway, the reason for the fancy dress is that the Lord Mayor is holding a feast, reviving some old custom that must’ve been dropped during the Civil War or Cromwell’s reign. But Pepys’ neighbours and co-workers, the two Sir Williams, don’t want to go, complaining about the inevitable crowd. So they stay in to eat and go to the Dolphin for drinks later, but Pepys is annoyed by it all and complains about the wine—he wanted to go out and take part in some revelry.
His plans are cancelled the next day as well. Sir Slingsby died and Pepys wanted to stop by and pay his respect, but the family is “pretending” that the corpse stinks too much to keep it for a wake, planning to bury it privately in the night so that they can forgo a funeral and “unbespeak all the guests.” Very curious but I have no idea why Pepys thinks this is some sort of plot.
Plays
October 2. “I never had so little pleasure in a play in my life, yet it was the first time that ever I saw it, “Victoria Corombona.” Methinks a very poor play.”
October 4. “Then Captain Ferrers and I to the Theatre, and there came too late, so we staid and saw a bit of “Victoria,” which pleased me worse than it did the other day. So we staid not to see it out, but went out and drank a bottle or two of China ale.”
October 8. “late after dinner took Mrs. Martha out by coach, and carried her to the Theatre in a frolique, to my great expense, and there shewed her part of the “Beggar’s Bush,” without much pleasure, but only for a frolique, and so home again.”
October 9. “at home I found Mrs. Pierce, la belle, and Madam Clifford, with whom I was forced to stay, and made them the most welcome I could; and I was (God knows) very well pleased with their beautiful company, and after dinner took them to the Theatre, and shewed them “The Chances;” and so saw them both at home and back to the Fleece tavern, in Covent Garden, where Luellin and Blurton, and my old friend Frank Bagge, was to meet me, and there staid till late very merry.”
October 10. “after dinner Sir W. Pen and my wife and I to the Theatre (she first going into Covent Garden to speak a word with a woman to enquire of her mother, and I in the meantime with Sir W. Pen’s coach staying at W. Joyce’s), where the King came to-day, and there was “The Traytor” most admirably acted; and a most excellent play it is.”
October 21. “Thence to the Wardrobe and dined, and so against my judgment and conscience (which God forgive, for my very heart knows that I offend God in breaking my vows herein) to the Opera, which is now newly begun to act again, after some alteracion of their scene, which do make it very much worse; but the play, “Love and Honour,” being the first time of their acting it, is a very good plot, and well done.”
October 23. “and so back to the Opera, and there I saw again “Love and Honour,” and a very good play it is.”
October 25. “After dinner my wife and I to the Opera, and there saw again “Love and Honour,” a play so good that it has been acted but three times and I have seen them all, and all in this week; which is too much, and more than I will do again a good while.”
October 26. “So at the office all the morning, and in the afternoon Sir W. Pen, my wife and I to the Theatre, and there saw “The Country Captain,” the first time it hath been acted this twenty-five years, a play of my Lord Newcastle’s, but so silly a play as in all my life I never saw, and the first that ever I was weary of in my life.”
This has been Adam’s Notes for October 31, 2024.
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I always enjoy your Pepys posts. Just yesterday I was in Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, and their little mini-art museum had an exhibit of Dutch paintings about food - purchasing it, preparing it, displaying it. Your illustrations would have fit in perfectly.
Tough times for our friend