29 Annotations

First Reading

David Bell  •  Link

A quite laconic entry, but it seems that, while Sam couldn't say he "knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road", he changed into his best clothes, and ends up walking in the Park as one of the Court.

In some ways, he may still be a minor official, going about My Lord's business and dependent upon him, but he is walking with the King.

And consider the business about the King's Gittar. This is almost a personal service.

It is all, indeed, gallantly great.

Paul Brewster  •  Link

The L&M has significant changes in this entry. Wheatley in [].
"Up betimes. 25s the reckoning for very beer [bare]. Paid the house and by boats to London, six boats. Mr. Moore, W. Howe and I, and then the child in the room of W. Howe.
Landed at the Temple. To Mr. Crews. To my father's and put myself into a handsome posture to wait upon my Lord. Dined there.
To Mr. Crews again. In the way met Dr Clerke and Mr. Pierce. [last two sentences missing in Wheatley]
To White-Hall with my Lord and Mr. Edw. Montagu. Found the King in the parke. There walked. Gallantry [Gallantly] great.
To Will How till 10 at night. Back and to my fathers.[last two sentences missing from Wheatley]"

language hat  •  Link

"Gallantry great"
makes much more sense, and it's good to have the other misreadings corrected as well. Thanks, Paul.

vincent  •  Link

Thoughts from the country side (Earles Colne the Diary of Ralph Josselin , on this day did say)
"God good to me in divers mercies and also to mine, the season very comfortable, a great calm in the country, the Kings proclamation against debauched courses a cut to the gentry of England, oh lord make him a nursing Father to thy people., god good to me in some spirit, keeping it in sweet peace, dependence on him, oh that my heart were more lively and active in the service of god."
http://linux02.lib.cam.ac.uk/earl…

vince  •  Link

Found the King in the park.... SP seems to be understating the whole event, not his usual style. Todays entry is very short may be he was distracted but I imagine the head of a 26 year old who had walked out with the king ( maybe he was a few miles away in the park who knows) would be full of grander thoughts. I guess he's done the meet and greet already.

Colin Gravois  •  Link

Sam's not his old ebullient self. Agree with David and Vince that he seems to be understating his role, but why?. Was he just being snobbish to his diary; was he that far away, as Vince could imagine, and had no details to report; or is he just with himself daydreaming of getting back into the swing of his old routine, imagining himself back in the old neighborhood. We'll see anon.

Paul Brewster  •  Link

I think we have to remember that according to L&M, all the diary entries between June 8th and 17th were included in the bound copies of the diary in rough note form only and not in Pepys more normal careful transcriptions. This may account for the greater number of discrepancies between the Wheatley and the L&M. The form of the notes may have made transcription more problemmatic. It also seems to explain the distinctly different tone we feel in these entries.
Once again, thanks to L&M for opening up a whole area to outside understanding that was left hidden by previous editions.

helena murphy  •  Link

There is no evidence that Pepys makes up the royal party in the park, and had the King acknowledged his presence he surely would have mentioned it. Physically the King was more socially visible then than was the case with later monarchs ,so the public at large in the park would have seen him too. The entry shows more Pepys'longing to belong to the world of the courtier as well as to rise professionally , therefore he conveys the significance of being in the right place at the right time irrespective ,and of course in the right apparel.

Jenny Doughty  •  Link

Pepys says he 'found' the King in the park, which suggests to me that he saw the King even if the King didn't see him.

Vince, you say 'maybe he was a few miles away in the park who knows' - but this is a London park, not a huge park in the state park sense of America. If you look up the Streetmap link on the information about the park, you will see that as it exists now it only takes ten minutes to walk across, and I don't think it was all that much bigger then, even if it then incorporated the area on the other side of Pall Mall up to Piccadilly that is currently called Green Park (anybody know if that was once part of St James' Park?)

Alan Bedford  •  Link

The answer to Jenny's last question can be found at the excellent website that Keir listed. The Green Park will be purchased by Charles II in 1667 (seven years "hence.") Before that it served as a hunting meadow and dueling-ground. From 1667 to 1745 it was known as "Upper St. James' Park."

Jenny Doughty  •  Link

Thanks for the information everybody. If St James' Park isn't very different in general size and shape now from what it used to be, it really is not very big at all. I know it only takes me about ten minutes to walk from Trafalgar Square to Buckingham Palace along Pall Mall, which runs right alongside the full length of the park.

Judy  •  Link

'put myself into a handsome posture.' Please, can someone tell me just what this means? It makes SP sound years ahead of his time and behave more like one of the Romantics

vincent  •  Link

"Up betimes, 25s. the reckoning for very bare." I do think he feels "ripped off"
Judy! My thought.. Best bib and tucker, His cane ,Ascot, Boots etc.. This is where every one who is Somebody goes to "Show off".
Man does so Love to show off his Status, He has done so since the cave days.

Arbor  •  Link

The King in the park... we can obviously not be sure of anything regarding this, I think remarkable, entry... but I have a vision of Samuel and the King giggling together about the kings dog pooping on the 'poop' just a few days ago. It's of such silly incidents that relationships are built! Lovely...

Colin Gravois  •  Link

With Sam giving us so little information to go on today, what a gamut of speculation that produced on the King in the park. After reading carefully all the entries, I have to give the nod to Helena's as the most reasonable, but each of your reasons was very convincing and could have been the right one, but we'll never know, unless Paul can take this one step further.

David A. Smith  •  Link

"Gallantry great"
I suspect that Pepys had a habit, common to diarists, of scrawling a fast outline of his doings (perhaps even just before turning in) so not to forget them, and then transcribing them in a fuller form the next morning (or spare moment). The notes, like cartoon tracings, exist only to guide the design and are intended to be lost. But here Sam may have become so busy that he got caught up in events and never got back to polish them.

vincent  •  Link

David: Thanks. Rereading of the words, provides the flavo(u)r meaning all the top brass being on hand, The Dukes, Earls. The whole cast of Gallants (Gents you might say) etc.
Evelyn does elude to this situation;

Emilio  •  Link

Pepys's notes

To follow up on what Paul and David were saying - in the L&M introduction they speculate that the journal writing seems to have included as many as four steps. These stages included collecting brief notes, letters, receipts, etc. to jog the memory; writing up a short, outline-like entry; doing a first draft; and fleshing out the events in his final, fair copy version.

Today and the next few days give us our first glimpse of that process at work. Later in the diary some days are only represented by loose sheets of notes stuck in the diary book among the blank pages they were meant to fill. With today, though, he seems to have just copied his notes directly into the book without trying to make them pretty.

Reading these notes gives me a feeling of looking over his shoulder as he's composing, not quite the way I usually approach his words. As many have noted, it also really sparks the curiosity about what really happened beyond the bare hints Sam gives us.

Second Reading

arby  •  Link

Thanks, Emilio and David, if you're still out there. These entries are sketchy in the best sense of the term.

Bill  •  Link

This from Johnson's dictionary may be relevant:

GALLANTLY ... Gayly ; splendidly ...

Mary K  •  Link

Gallantry.

A collective term for gallants, gentry, fashionable people. (1606). Also fine or gay appearance, splendour, magnificence (1613).

Gillian Bagwell  •  Link

Gallantry in Sam's period meant anything from flirting to outright sex. OED: "courtliness and devotion to the female sex, polite or courteous bearing or attention to ladies" or "amorous intercourse or intrigue."

Which sounds as though Charles's notoriously debauched court was getting off to a rolling start. It was rumored that he spent his first night back in London (May 29, 1660, his birthday) in the arms of his mistress Barbara Villiers (later Lady Castlemaine, the Duchess of Cleveland), and she did bear a child nine months later.

James, the Duke of York, later James II, was accompanied back to England by Anne Hyde, the daughter of Charles's advisor, Edward Hyde, who he had already secretly married.

Chris Squire UK  •  Link

‘gallantry, n.
1. Gallants collectively; gentry, fashionable people. Obs.
1609 Shakespeare Troilus & Cressida iii. i. 133 Hector..and all the gallantry of Troy.
. . 1660 J. Evelyn Mem. (1857) I. 357, I went to Hyde Park, where was His Majesty, and abundance of gallantry . . ‘ [OED]

Diana  •  Link

"25s, the reckoning for very bare"
Is Sam refering to the amount he had to pay for his accomodation? Or is it the total amount they (Sam, Lord Mountagu and so on) had to pay? In either case it doesn't seem to be a huge amount, so I wonder why he thought it was so much...

Ivan  •  Link

If Bess was at his father's on this day he does not say. His notes for today end simply "Back and to my fathers" and I think he has dined there earlier in the day unless I have misunderstood the location, but he makes no mention of her nor of any affectionate reunion. He has not seen her since he said farewell on March 17th; all of 12 weeks ago! On the next day his note reads, "At my fathers found my wife." Has she just arrived or was she there all the time waiting for him to show up. What a pity we only have these very bald notes. Perhaps the one concession to the romantics lies in tomorrow's final sentence: "To bed with my wife."

Third Reading

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Elizabeth was not at his fathers: "After dinner came Mr. Cooke from London, who told me that my wife he left well at Huntsmore, ..."

And "put myself into a handsome posture to wait upon my Lord, ..." probably means he washed and put his new coat. "At night very busy sending Mr. Donne away to London, and wrote to my father for a coat to be made me against I come to London, which I think will not be long."

Both quotes from a couple of days ago when Pepys was still writing in whole sentences: https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Having a tailor for a father is useful at times like this. Dad would know his size and taste, and what was current. Pepys picks it up in 2 days. Those were the days!

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