About Tuesday 31 March 1668

Guy de la Bedoyere on 15 Sep 2024  •  Link

The shorthand actually reads:

'...but ella being in the shop, ego did speak con her, but she could not then go foras'. Bright turned foras into 'far'. L&M transcribed foras correctly but said it was garbled shorthand. It isn't. None of them seem to have considered it further, probably because some of the other English words in the sentence are in garbled shorthand (extraneous consonants). Foras is the Latin for outside which matches the context perfectly and is obviously what Pepys meant. See also 3 May 1668 for another instance of L&M misunderstanding a word completely.

About Sunday 3 May 1668

Guy de la Bedoyere on 15 Sep 2024  •  Link

Another example of L&M misunderstanding an unfamiliar word. For their 'in futar in conceit', read 'futer in conceit' (I have checked the shorthand). This is Pepys's version of 'in futuere in conceit', where P has used the infinitive form as a participle, thus 'in fucking in conceit', i.e. in his imagination. For scholars of L&M's generation it is interesting and surprising how much they seemed to struggle with Latin and Greek in Pepys's text. See also 31 March 1668 for another instance.

About Wednesday 23 August 1665

Guy de la Bedoyere on 12 Sep 2024  •  Link

The Greek in this passage was misunderstood and mistranscribed by Latham and Matthews.

After revisiting the shorthand, my reading is this:

And yo haze ella mettre su mano upon hemera pragma (1) hasta hazer me hazer la cosa in su mano. Pero ella no voulut permettre que je ponebam meam manum a ella [‘I made her put her hand upon my thing until making me do the thing in her hand. But she did not want to allow that I was putting my hand to her’] but I do not doubt but ἀλλῳ χείρῳ(2) de obtenir le [‘but with another laying on of hands to get it’].

(1) Sic: the Greek words ἠμέ(τε)ρα πρᾶγμα (‘my thing’) clumsily transliterated into shorthand. L&M read the first word as ‘her’ and substituted ‘my’, not apparently realizing that Pepys had blundered a Greek plural possessive pronoun but ending up with the correct meaning anyway; ἠμέ(τε)ρα means ‘our’ but was also substituted occasionally in Greek for ἐμος/ἐμά ‘my’ (Liddell and Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, vol. I, 771, rh column, under ἠμέτερος), for example the Odyssey XI.562,thus explaining Pepys’s use of it for ‘my’ here.
(2) These two final Greek words are in longhand, probably because writing them in shorthand would have been too difficult. L&M incorrectly read χ[ρ]όνῳ (‘time’), probably misled by Pepys’s seventeenth-century ligatured Greek script; the word clearly ends -ίρῳ. The word χείρῳ(σις) (‘laying on of hands’ in the sense of a conquest) is a more plausible reading, especially given the context and other words used. Pepys blundered the first vowel, resulting in a strangely formed character. Thanks to Tim Whitmarsh for the suggested readings of the Greek.

About Wednesday 20 March 1666/67

Guy de la Bedoyere on 12 Sep 2024  •  Link

During the making of new transcriptions from the shorthand for my forthcoming book The Confessions of Samuel Pepys, this entry proved a problem. L&M read 'opposante' which means 'challenger'. This makes no sense whatsoever. On re-examining the shorthand I see it more likely reads aposento (ap and op are the same sign in Shelton). This word means 'lodging', i.e. Betty was in lodging. It isn't exactly clear what that means on this occasion - she may have been away leaving only Doll in residence - but on 12 May 1669, for example, P met Betty in her lodging for sex. The passage also includes the word transcribed variously as mosa and moza. It's actually P's shorthand phonetic version of móça ('servant girl'/'wench') which was the 17th century spelling. Both móça and aposente are in Percivale's 1623 Spanish-English dictionary which P possessed a copy of. It is a curiosity of L&M's transcriptions that they seem never to have looked beyond transcribing polyglot words, even when what they produced made no sense. There is no evidence that they ever looked any up or attempted to translate them; if they had they would have noticed immediately that their transcription had to be wrong. There are other such instances in polyglot passages throughout the diary text in their published edition.

About Friday 1 February 1666/67

Guy de la Bedoyere on 4 May 2024  •  Link

My transcription of part of this entry from the original shorthand is thus, together with my translation:

At noon home to dinner and after dinner down by water though it was a thick misty and raining day and walked to Deptford from Redriffe, and there to Bagwell’s by appointment. Where the moher erat within expecting me venida. And did sensa alguna difficulty monter los degres and lie como jo desired it upon lo lectum and there I did la cosa con much voluptas. Je besa also her venter and cono and see the poyle thereof. She would seem alguns veces very religious, but yet did permit me to hazer todo esto et quicquid amplius volebam.

[‘Where the woman was within expecting me to come. And did without any difficulty mount the steps and lie, as I desired it, upon the bed and there I did the thing with much pleasure. I kissed also her belly and pussy and see the pubic hair thereof. She would seem sometimes very religious but yet did permit me to do all that and whatever more I wanted].

About Friday 1 February 1666/67

Guy de la Bedoyere on 4 May 2024  •  Link

L&M were in error with the word 'cons'. The shorthand for this passage which I have studied, actually reads 'cono' (Spanish coño), a slang term for the vulva and best translated as pussy though that doesn't alter the meaning here. Yes, poyle (written out in l.h. in this passage) is poil, which he spells thus on 22 March 1667.

About Sunday 7 February 1668/69

Guy de la Bedoyere on 4 May 2024  •  Link

Just for the record, the shorthand, which I have studied, here reads 'k(o)k(e)r()l', and in the last section the last word is written ‘sl(e)m(e)p’, and the word ‘her’ appears variously as ‘h(e)r(e)r’ and ‘h(e)l(e)r’. This was part of his process of interpolating extra consonants to 'disguise' words English words in some entries concerned with sex. One wonders why on earth he bothered with words like 'her' and 'sleep' which could hardly be said to be indelicate.

About Sarah Udall

Guy de la Bedoyere on 25 Apr 2024  •  Link

Sarah's marriage is recorded at St Margaret's Westminster on 4 November 1666. Her name is spelled there as Huedell. Her husband was John Harmond. She had thus been married for less than four weeks when SP started planning his seduction.