Friday 27 January 1659/60

Going to my office I met with Tom Newton, my old comrade, and took him to the Crown in the Palace, and gave him his morning draft. And as he always did, did talk very high what he would do with the Parliament, that he would have what place he would, and that he might be one of the Clerks to the Council if he would. Here I staid talking with him till the offices were all shut, and then I looked in the Hall, and was told by my bookseller, Mrs. Michell, that Mr. G. Montagu had inquired there for me. So I went to his house, and was forced by him to dine with him, and had a plenteous brave dinner and the greatest civility that ever I had from any man. Thence home and so to Mrs. Jem, and played with her at cards, and coming home again my wife told me that Mr. Hawly had been there to speak with me, and seemed angry that I had not been at the office that day, and she told me she was afraid that Mr. Downing may have a mind to pick some hole in my coat. So I made haste to him, but found no such thing from him, but he sent me to Mr. Sherwin’s about getting Mr. Squib to come to him tomorrow, and I carried him an answer. So home and fell a writing the characters for Mr. Downing, and about nine at night Mr. Hawly came, and after he was gone I sat up till almost twelve writing, and — wrote two of them. In the morning up early and wrote another, my wife lying in bed and reading to me.

30 Annotations

First Reading

Djangocat  •  Link

Phil, Nice to be able to read tomorrow's entry at about 11PM GMT as it is now on the 26th. I noticed yesterday's episode was available before Midnight GMT on the previous day as well - are you aiming for a particular posting time every day or is that just the way it goes? (And so to bed)

Phil  •  Link

Each entry should appear at 11pm UK time. These aren't the following days entries however; it's the 27th now and thus the entry for the 27th has been published.

Pepys obviously wrote his entries at the end of the day and I just picked this time kind of at random. Sometimes Pepys obviously wrote his entries later however.

Eric Walla  •  Link

OK, off the day's topic, but ...

... maybe others would enjoy this idea. What music would you recommend we listen to while reading (and rereading, as I find) the Diary? Right now I'm listening to the Baltimore Consort's "The Art of the Bawdy Song," which seems mainly taken from the 17 c. There are several others from this period worth sampling as well.

Any more nominations?

Bonny  •  Link

I live in California, where the day's diary entry comes on-line at 3:00pm. I can't resist reading it right away, but that means going back the next day for all the annotations!

Eric Walla  •  Link

I don't want to make a habit ...

... of replying to my own posts, but I realized as I read the ... well, they used to be called "liner notes" ... from the "Bawdy Song" collection mentioned above (on the Dorian label, btw), that they talk of the vast popularity on all levels of society of these quite graphic ballads, which were printed on broadside sheets and sold on the street. They then refer to Pepys:

"Samuel Pepys ... accumulated a vast collection of broadside ballads which still reside in his famous library at Magdelene College, Cambridge."

I should have known!

Todd Bernhardt  •  Link

Not to worry, Bonny!

I do the same thing, only three hours later than you (are you in my future, or am I in your past? 8^) ... I'm on the East Coast of the U.S., but always try to sneak a look at the day's entry before I leave work (as I'm doing now) ... as you say, thank goodness for the "Recent Annotations" link!

Warren Keith Wright  •  Link

The day's entry arrives about 8PM Central time here in Missouri. Putting the site on the browser's "Favorites" makes it easy to check back for additions to yesterday's postings. Was it the Jesuits who said "15 minutes is never wasted"? With such access to Pepys and the Pepys-minded, even 3 minutes counts!

PHE  •  Link

Still January!
Its difficult to believe that we are still within Sam's first month of 10yrs of diary. Reading a hard copy of his diaries, you would probably get through this in under an hour. At the website pace, you have a lot more time to consider and appreciate the detail, and with the amount of additional material through annotations, it is much more re-warding. I think this is one of the best uses of the internet I've seen and a wonderful assimilation of science and art.

David Bell  •  Link

So Sam meets an old friend, stops off for the morning draft, and never gets to the office...

You can sort of imagine him getting lost in web-browsing from the office machine.

j a gioia  •  Link

Sam is always buying a round for the mates.

One wonders if this was also a key to his rise...

As for music, the American musicologist Alan Lomax recorded the folk songs of the longshoremen of Genoa around 1955. They are very dense four or five part accapella harmonies of very ancient design and, albeit in Italian, may give as good a "living" indication of the kind of pub singing Sam was so fond of that we have.

The cd has been issued in the US as part of the Lomax collection and is called "The Tralaleri of Genoa".

Paul Miller  •  Link

"the greatest civility that ever I had from any man."
"Within court and city the creation, maintenance, and manipulation of social relationships was a more complex and tricky business than in the local community" (p. 138). Civility offered a technique for representing personal merit to the view of strangers and acquaintances: "Good manners had become less a matter of household ritual and more a sign of a gentleman's membership of 'civil society,' an 'imagined community'" (p. 150) that was reproduced through court, city, and schools for elite youth. An important component of civility was proper language: "Polite conversation was the most sophisticated means whereby 'civil' gentlemen could express and elaborate their common culture in an exclusive social milieu; and polite verbal and epistolary forms and formulae proliferated to provide the 'civil' gentleman with a much expanded repertoire of signs by which to orientate himself in an increasingly crowded and complex 'civil society'"
--- From Courtesy to Civility: Changing Codes of Conduct in Early Modern England. By Anna Bryson

Glyn  •  Link

People he knows

Pepys seems to know an awful lot of people by name. Just how many different people have appeared in his diary over the last month? It's definitely a lot more than would appear in my own diary, if I kept one. Is Pepys just naturally gregarious, or is he doing a lot of networking?

Michael  •  Link

Since music plays an important (and growing) role in Pepys' life, this is an important topic. I assume that one cannot go wrong with CDs on 17th century part songs and catches. They were not too complicated, so devoted amateurs like Pepys could easily tackle them. There are several good collections available, e.g. by the Hilliard Ensemble or by Pro Cantione Antiqua. And then there is the more elaborate, artificial music. Shakespeare has already been mentioned, and since most of his plays contain some music, listening to a CD with Shakespeare songs also gives an idea of the musical world. I particularly like an old (but still available) recording of Alfred Deller, but there will be others. Finally, I just checked with Tower Records, and there even is a CD called "The musical world of Samuel Pepys".
Apart from that: keep up the good work, everybody. I read the diary years ago, but it is much more fun to do it in small increments. And, reading it in the Chicago area, it is double fun with the main entry available sometime late afternoon and the commentaries allowing a revisit next day...

Paul Miller  •  Link

I first began reading Pepys after finishing Helene Hanff's charming "84, Charing Cross Road". The book is a record of an exchange of letters between a New York writer and a London bookseller. Hanff is outraged that Marks & Co. has dared to send an abridged Pepys diary. "i enclose two limp singles, i will make do with this thing till you find me a real Pepys. THEN i will rip up this ersatz book, page by page, AND WRAP THINGS IN IT."

Eunice Muir  •  Link

Dining, visiting, gossiping and socializing was how they amused themselves before movies, radio and TV. Each techonological advance in entertainment drives us farther away from real social contact.

Yes, Pepys kept up his networking and knew a lot of people, so would we all if it was the only entertainment we had.

Michael L  •  Link

Is this January 27 entry written the next day? The last line makes it sound as if he woke up early morning on the 28th and began his day by writing in his diary about the previous day.

Stephen Hannaford  •  Link

the Crown in the Palace

Does this mean there was a tavern on the grounds of Whitehall Palace? Or does it possibly mean "in the neighborhood of the palace."

M. Stolzenbach  •  Link

"My bookseller Mrs. Michell"

I am reading Claire Tomalin's new biography of Pepys, and find there that Betty Michell, daughter of this lady, was later the object of one of Pepys' fumbling amours - about which I am not sure how much we will get in this edition of the DIARY.

Phil  •  Link

the Crown in the Palace

I've just checked up in Latham & Matthews, and they suggest "Palace" is in fact New Palace Yard. I've changed the link on that word so it points to a page for this, rather than Whitehall Palace, which I'm sure was incorrect. Sorry about the mix up!

As for the Crown... Latham & Mathews say there was a tavern of this name on the west side of King Street, which itself finishes to the western side of New Palace Yard, so I guess this is the place Pepys means.

OgionNJ  •  Link

Anyone know which card games Pepys and Mrs. Jem would likely have been playing?

Fred Coleman  •  Link

"This edition of the DIARY" that M. Stolzenbach refers to is, as Phil has pointed out, the Wheatley edition, published in eight volumes between 1893 - 1896. Tne complete text, more recently edited by Robert Latham and William Matthews, mentions that Wheatley's text is "almost the entire diary" with some 90 "erotic and scatological passages" omitted but always indicated by marks of omission (dots). I have been doing some comparing of the two texts and so far I can relate that what we are reading day by day is practically identical with the complete text. I think there have been only two omitted passages so far, but they both have been noted and supplied from the Latham/Matthews text. So, all you Pepysophiles, be assured you are reading all that there is, with only very minor omissions which will be noted as we go along.

Eric Walla  •  Link

Michael re: Pepys Music

I couldn't believe there actually was a CD called "The Musical World of Samuel Pepys," but sure enough, on Amazon.com they not only have it but also have music samplings from the first few selections!

The musical quality is not exactly of the highest calliber, but it probably sounds more like the tavern atmosphere of Pepys' time than do the professional CDs I've been listening to. And yes, the Deller is one of my favorites. You can also try "The King's Delight" from the King's Noyse (Harmonia Mundi) for more period ballads.

David Quidnunc  •  Link

Pepys's Ballad Collection

From "Samuel Pepys and the World He Lived In," (1889 edition) by Henry B. Wheatley (pp. 90-91):

"The [Pepys] Library [at Magdalene College] contains many very valuable volumes . . . but the chief interest centres on the various collections.

"First and foremost among these are the five folio volumes of old English Ballads, which contain the largest series of broadside ballads ever brought together; the next in size being the well-known Roxburghe Collection, now in the British Museum. . .

"The Ballads are arranged under the following heads: --1. Devotion and Morality. 2. History, true and fabulous. 3. Tragedy, viz. murders, executions, judgements of God. 4. State and Times. 5. Love, pleasant. 6. Love, unfortunate. 7. Marriage, cuckoldry. 8. Sea: love, gallantry, and actions. 9. Drinking and good fellowship. 10. Humorous frolics and mirth. The total number of Ballads is 1800, of which 1376 are in black letter. Besides these there are four little duodecimo volumes, lettered as follows: Vol. 1. Penny Merriments. Vol. 2. Penny Witticisms. Vol. 3. Penny Compliments; and Vol. 4. Penny Godlinesses."

I get the impression that these were ballads Pepys collected invidually, organized and then had a printer bind into volumes.

vincent  •  Link

Interesting re-reading the inter-play,wife and SP:
"...my wife told me that Mr. Hawly had been there to speak with me, and seemed angry that I had not been at the office that day, and she told me she was afraid that Mr. Downing may have a mind to pick some hole in my coat. So I made haste to him, but found no such thing from him, but he sent me to Mr. Sherwin

Lawrence  •  Link

Maybe she was annoyed at samuel and thought she'd put the wind up him? well it sort of worked, he soon got himself round there.

Second Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

The Pepys collection of over 1,800 ballads resides in The Pepys Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge. https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/pag…

The Pepys collection is also online as a substantial part of the English Broadside Archive. EBBA is the most ambitious project to date of the Early Modern Center in the English Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/pag…

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Apparently Tom Newton and George Montagu didn't have any substantial gossip to convey to the Admiral this evening. All you can do is prod ... sometimes there is nothing there.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

The L&M Companion note for Richard Sherwin MP says he may have been the Westminster magistrate who conducted Pepys' marriage ceremony in Jan. 1655.

Maybe the big family bash last night was to celebrate the Pepys' fifth anniversary. That makes sense.

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