Monday 1 September 1662

Up betimes at my lodging and to my office and among my workmen, and then with Sir W. Batten and Sir W. Pen by coach to St. James’s, this being the first day of our meeting there by the Duke’s order; but when we come, we found him going out by coach with his Duchess, and he told us he was to go abroad with the Queen to-day (to Durdans, it seems, to dine with my Lord Barkeley, where I have been very merry when I was a little boy); so we went and staid a little at Mr. Coventry’s chamber, and I to my Lord Sandwich’s, who is gone to wait upon the King and Queen today. And so Mr. Paget being there, Will Howe and I and he played over some things of Locke’s that we used to play at sea, that pleased us three well, it being the first music I have heard a great while, so much has my business of late taken me off from all my former delights.

By and by by water home, and there dined alone, and after dinner with my brother Tom’s two men I removed all my goods out of Sir W. Pen’s house into one room that I have with much ado got ready at my house, and so I am to be quit of any further obligation to him. So to my office, but missing my key, which I had in my hand just now, makes me very angry and out of order, it being a thing that I hate in others, and more in myself, to be careless of keys, I thinking another not fit to be trusted that leaves a key behind their hole. One thing more vexes me: my wife writes me from the country that her boy plays the rogue there, and she is weary of him, and complains also of her maid Sarah, of which I am also very sorry.

Being thus out of temper, I could do little at my office, but went home and eat a bit, and so to my lodging to bed.

36 Annotations

First Reading

Terry F,  •  Link

"to Durdans, it seems, to dine with my Lord Barkeley, where I have been very merry when I was a little boy"

L&M note: "Durdans, a country house near Epsom, Surrey, was owned by Lord Berkeley of Berkeley. Pepys would have known it when staying as a boy with his cousins at Ashtead. Evelyn attended the dinner party referred to in this entry, and reports the presence of the King and Queen, the Duke and Duchess of York and Prince Rupert, Prince Edward 'and aboundanc of Noble men'.

"And so Mr. Paget being there, Will Howe and I and he played over some things of Locke's that we used to play at sea”

L&M note: “Probably Matthew Locke’s *Little consort of three parts* (1656)….”
http://www.tfront.com/product.php…
Alas, I failed to find an audio file.

Terry F,  •  Link

"missing my key, which I had in my hand just now, makes me very angry and out of order, it being a thing that I hate in others, and more in myself, to be careless of keys, I thinking another not fit to be trusted that leaves a key behind their hole."

Sam perhaps recalls Tuesday 22 July 1662: "only at home at dinner, where I was highly angry with my wife for her keys being out of the way, but they were found at last, and so friends again."
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

Bradford  •  Link

"I thinking another not fit to be trusted that leaves a key behind their hole."
How's that again? Any explications?

The locksmith's son repeats what his father told him: if you only have one of anything, you will lose it. Get a duplicate made, Sam, and hide it as carefully as you've hidden your money.

Pauline  •  Link

"...leaves a key behind their hole...."
Could it be behind the keyhole? You stick your key in the door's keyhole, turn it, grapple with your packages, enter, use your foot to close the door, and the next person entering the door finds your key still in the keyhole--or you discover it there when you go out to get the newspaper in the morning.

I know all about these things. While Sam looks for the key I will be out retracing my steps in search of a missing billfold.

Australian Susan  •  Link

It looks as though Elizabeth has become thoroughly disenchanted with country life!
Keys: I can just hear Sam being cross and dismissive of office clerks who mislay things and now he has been caught out.....
But he does have a great deal on his mind.

Robert Gertz  •  Link

Leave a key behind in its keyhole and you are not fit to be trusted...

Easy to imagine Sam's rage at himself...Not to mention a bit of guilt over barking at Bess for the same thing.

Wonder if he's a bit miffed at Bess' letter not expressing undying love and rabid curiosity about the remodeling...On the other hand, maybe she did.

Brampton
September, 1662

"Deerest HusBand,

(Passage in French unprintably erotic, not in keeping with the dignity of this publication, therefore)
...

Waynemann has been playing the rogue here and must be discipled...disciplined and Properly Schooled on our return to London. Your wife is also much Vexed with Sarah, who has been Telling Tales to all who would listen of me. I hope, Deerest One, you will Chastise her on our return and Instruct her well in Proper Duty toward her Mistress.

Do Keep Warm and Do not Upset Yourself with Workmens.

My Lady wishes you Very Well and Insists you write more often.

Your Loving Wife,

(Pet name not in keeping with the dignity of this publication, therefore)
...

A. Hamilton  •  Link

Being thus out of temper, I could do little at my office,

The royal social schedule has thoroughly upset Sam's day, taking away the Duke (his first chance (?) to shine before James?) and Lord Sandwich. Also Sir William Penn coming home early upsets Sam's living arrangement, and puts Sam at a disadvantage against a rival. Sam acts disoriented, losing his temper and his key.

A. De Araujo  •  Link

"that her boy plays the rogue there and she is weary of him"
What could 14 year old Wayneman possibly be doing? smoking pot, body piercing, tatoos,dyeing his hair or most likely just wearing his coat over his shoulder!

Bob T  •  Link

but missing my key

I know how he feels - I've mislaid a telephone :-(

Clement  •  Link

playing the rogue
It's probably more what he's not doing than what he is doing. In the country there may be more opportunity, and motivation, to slip off and explore the surroundings, rather that wait on milady. Elizabeth may not have much social company there and prefers to occupy herself with devising new, helpful activities for Wayneman to perform.

dirk  •  Link

I've mislaid a telephone :-(

Just call the number - maybe you’ll hear it ring :-)

Jeannine  •  Link

Ok Robert--here's the real letter from Elizabeth....

Sam,
Enjoying myself in the country where a cute little houseboy follows me around and picks up all of the keys I've misplaced all day.....oh...here he comes now...gotta go.. tootles!
Liz

Pauline  •  Link

'The royal social schedule has thoroughly upset Sam's day’
I agree with your take, A. Hamilton. On the heels of feeling so good about his net worth, his growing name as a mover and shaker, his confidence in setting himself against and above Penn and Bratten, this moment of reminder of the higher heights of status and comfort. All off to a party at Dardens that he can visualize, having been there very merrily and very impressed as a child. That childhood experience may even have fed his drive to attain all he has today. Fortunately he appears to be gaining pleasure in his work and his abilities that can float him over those times he comes hard up against the privileges of high birth.

Cumgranissalis  •  Link

"Wayneman!" Wot more can the lad want, all those pretty milkmaids with nary a potmark and they be impressed with his bowbell ways. Mistress be tired out by that invigorating country aire, so 'e be there at the milking time and be ready to help makeing wey? This be harvest and harvest means harvesting , helping with stooking and getting all the barley hairs from the under clothing.
Wayneman! No! No! No! not there.!

LindaF  •  Link

As I recall, all it took for Sam's "boy" to play the ruffian was to toss his cloak back over his shoulder with a jaunty air. Elizabeth's boy may not have had far to go to qualify as a rogue.

Re: mislaid things: with very little around me, I still managed to mislay a pen today and not find it until I reached for the notebook to which I had clipped it.

Pauline  •  Link

"...when I was a little boy..."
"...my key, which I had in my hand just now..."
Phrases that haven't changed by a word in all these 300+ years.

Terry F,  •  Link

"I removed all my goods out of Sir W. Pen's house into…my house, and so I am to be quit of any further obligation to him.”

This quittance has a bite to it. Cumgranissalis explains:
“Penn before he was sidelined, or rusticated by Cromwell in 1656, for letting Venables [Col./Gen.] make a hash out of removing Hispanola from the Spanish crown, had a taste of Tower of London's hospitality suite, Venables appears to have been a disaster of the first order the epitomy of ineptness, and Penn received some of the backlash. S. Pepys may not understand some of Pens comments on fellow titled leftovers from the Cromwell period.
“The story of how 2000 plus soldiers failed to capture Santa Domingo, defended by a few undernourished Islanders, is a good study of a combined ops.”
http://www.pepysdiary.com/encyclo…

“Correspondence, 13 September, 1655, from Cromwell to Admiral Blake read:

‘It is too sad a truth, The Expedition to the West Indies has failed!
Sea-General Penn and Land-General Venables have
themselves come home, one after the other,
with the disgraceful news; and are lodged in the Tower,
a fortnight ago, for quitting their posts without orders.’

Penn was dismissed and replaced by Montague.”

http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~rsteph…

And Penn had lately conspired to unseat SP’s kin and patron, Montague/Sandwich. Talk about office intrigue!

David A. Smith  •  Link

"missing my key ... makes me very angry"
First of two posts on a very revealing inner monolog.
Throughout this diary, Sam constantly upbraids himself for anger, intemperance, striking out, and so on. Yet when he faces the public space, he is acutely sensitive, cautious, even obsequious. I have elsewhere commented that Sam uses the diary to blow off steam, and I speculate that in these 'anger' entries (angries?) he magnifies his emotional reaction because during the day he minimized his physical manifestation.
Remember, we have only his words to judge by, and he may be an unreliable narrator.

David A. Smith  •  Link

"it being a thing that I hate in others, and more in myself"
Second of two.
This throwaway is marvelously self-revealing. Sam:
1. Hates absent-mindedness in others.
2. Judges himself superior to those who are forgetful.
3. Himself forgets (!).
He must, therefore, logically be *more angry with himself than with others.* And somehow he is aware of this, perhaps not at the moment of cursing the absent key, but later, as he writes his expiating diary.
The recursive trap of self-examination ....

Jeannine  •  Link

David A. Smith--What a keen observation and you are NOT the only one to notice this. I recently finished reading a book by Percival Hunt called "Samuel Pepys In the Diary" (I did a rather lousy review on the site at http://www.pepysdiary.com/encyclo…

Dirk, our resident internet whiz found the link to it online for free at
http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=r…

The book is a collection of essays and there are a few pertinent essays related to your comments (and today's entries too). The articles you may enjoy are called "One Value of the Diary to Sam" (page 157) and "Morality" (p. 153) which deals with the "private" vs. "personal" sides of Sam.
In addition there are other essays related to topics mentioned today ("Catherine of Braganza", "Pepys and William Penn" and "A Principal Officer".
I LOVED this book as it offered a great persepctive to a variety of ongoing themes, thoughts, etc.
After reading it I thought that the book would be a great place to explore topics and perhaps if any others chime it it may be fun to set up a "reading assignment" in the Articles section or the discussion group where anyone interested can read the essay of the week and then share comments. It may be fun to explore the themes beyond the daily annotations?????? If any others may be interested I'll ping Phil (who I think is away right now) and figure out how to set it up.

Robert Gertz  •  Link

But the key point, as we both noted Jeannine...She does indeed write.

One imagines Sir Will P quietly but firmly standing by the door as Sam's goods are...All...removed.

"Is this?..." Penn holds up a small nightshirt, frowning at his uninvited guests, as Sam urges the men to...Hurry.

"Mine, thank ye, Sir Will." Jane, smiling modestly, takes the nightgown.

Terry F,  •  Link

"the first music I have heard [in] a great while"

Soothing the savage soul with a distraction, as Sam has furnished me these last few days (CNN on the telly in the background, its screen just to the left of the monitor on which I see these words I am typing; to the right a souvenir coffee mug from New Orleans' Café Du Monde — itself a symbol of a center of the world as a destination-point of many in-migrations, but now… Heart-in-mouth, grateful for the consolations du monde provided by many here.)
Philosophical observations about today: Are we not each the center of the world, individually and collectively? Isn’t Sam’s distress after the music (not “musique”) his displacement from this sense at the office of late that all are coming to him, but now he is on the margin?!

language hat  •  Link

"where I have been very merry when I was a little boy"
This (if correctly transcribed) shows a remarkable change that's taken place in the verbal system since Pepys' day: it is now impossible to use the present perfect when referring to a past time, and we have to say "where I was very merry when..."

Terry F,  •  Link

"so much has my business of late taken me off from all my former delights. By and by by water home, and there dined alone"

Not quite? Perhaps he is dining with ambivalence and reflection, both regretting the long absence of certain of his former delights, but without other people, reaffiming his new sobriety.

Pedro  •  Link

"but when we come, we found him going out by coach with his Duchess, and he told us he was to go abroad with the Queen to-day (to Durdans, it seems, to dine with my Lord Barkeley,"

Of course Jeannine and Mr Hat you are right, and I learned my lesson concerning old Vincent's fall from a great height!

The Portuguese author, Casimiro, also notes the excursion- “Catherine and Charles go to Epsom Downs at the invitation of Lord Berkley, with the Duke of York and the Princes Rupert and Edward.”

It is at the point in Jeannine's narrative where Catherine is trying to take an interest in the ways of the English Court, after accepting that she cannot continue her stand against Castlemaine.

Terry F,  •  Link

Dirk, our resident internet whiz found the link to ["Samuel Pepys In the Diary"] online for free at
http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=r…

Re Questia: once entirely a subscription service, “Questia offers free access to the first page of every chapter in a book and the first paragraph of each article for your review.” then requires a subscription: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=r…
There are various plans: http://www.questia.com/Registrati…

Questia’s free access is comparable to Amazon’s for many books, though not this one (either in yhe US or the UK).

Mary  •  Link

"where I have been very merry ...."

The use of the tenses here does not seem so discordant if one takes the "when I was a little boy" as a parenthetic, explanatory afterthought. The sense then expands to; "Durdans, a place where I have been very merry. [That was] when I was a little boy."

Not elegant, perhaps, but possible.

Terry F,  •  Link

"where I have been very merry."

Mary, I not only think this possible, but actual (I have used this construction), and not inelegant, if not the most usual today, as language hat observes.

Jeannine  •  Link

Terry F. Thanks for the info on the Percival Hunt book and what a bummer that it's not available online. I looked at Amazon US and UK (expensive!) and for anyone interested the cheapest versions can be found at
http://www.usedbooksearch.co.uk/b…
or perhaps your local library. WELL WORTH THE EFFORT!

Australian Susan  •  Link

LindaF
It was Will Hewer, not Wayneman, who was told off for flinging his cloak over his shoulder.
Wayneman, it seems, can only be controlled by either Sam or his big sister.
We have had many posts about what constitutes his running wild, but we need to remember that this is never actually spelled out. Be that as it may, we should remember that obedience to one's elders and betters was deemed essential, so *any* disobedience by Wayneman, no matter how trivial in our eyes, would have been caused Elizabeth and Sam to think he was running down the primrose path. Getting that way by our standards (think of our own teenagers - I'd often rather not....)encompasses vastly worse behaviour than what Wayneman may have been up to.

Robert Gertz  •  Link

I think Linda knows it was Will in the cloak incident, Susan...She was just (humorously I think) suggesting Wayneman might be doing the same as one of the behaviors Beth was upset about. I further suspect bad behavior in Sam's day wasn't all that different from our own... We know Wayneman played with gunpowder and may have endangered the Pepys house with careless fire handling.

wisteria53  •  Link

Seven copies of Percival Hunt's "Samuel Pepys In the Diary" book come up in a library search within London http://www.londonlibraries.org.uk… (although the two City copies closest to me are not for borrowing as they are at the Guildhall), so you may find that your local library can request it for you.

Second Reading

Ivan  •  Link

L&M read "heels" not "holes"

"I thinking another not fit to be trusted that leaves a key behind their heels."

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