Monday 15 September 1662

Up betimes to meet with the plasterer and bricklayer that did first divide our lodgings, and they do both tell me that my chamber now in dispute did ever belong to my lodgings, which do put me into good quiet of mind.

So by water with Sir Wm. Pen to White Hall; and, with much ado, was fain to walk over the piles through the bridge, while Sir W. Batten and Sir J. Minnes were aground against the bridge, and could not in a great while get through. At White Hall we hear that the Duke of York is gone a-hunting to-day; and so we returned: they going to the Duke of Albemarle’s, where I left them (after I had observed a very good picture or two there), and so home, and there did resolve to give up my endeavours for access to the leads, and to shut up my doors lest the being open might give them occasion of longing for my chamber, which I am in most fear about.

So to Deptford, and took my Lady Batten and her daughter and Mrs. Turner along with me, they being going through the garden thither, they to Mr. Unthwayte’s and I to the Pay, and then about 3 o’clock went to dinner (Sir W. Pen and I), and after dinner to the Pay again, and at night by barge home all together, and so to my lodgings and to bed, my mind full of trouble about my house.

30 Annotations

First Reading

A. De Araujo  •  Link

Sir John Minnes and Samuel Pepys, males engaging in territorial disputes;lots of anxiety!

Terry F  •  Link

Methinks this entry has two uses of "being" no longer current:

(1) "shut up my doors lest the being open might give them occasion of longing for my chamber" -- I would say "their being open".

(2) "they being going through the garden" -- Would we not generally omit "being" as unnecessary to indicate a "progressive" tense of sorts?

I'll let the grammar experts rule on these and describe them formally.

daniel  •  Link

(2) "they being going through the garden"

Could this usage be similar to the German? thus:

they having gone through the garden

dirk  •  Link

"they being going through the garden"

Daniel's suggestion sounds attractive. In the other Germanic languages (i.e. except modern English) there are two auxiliary verbs for the formation of perfect tenses: to be & to have.

The verb "to go" is then normally conjugated with "to be". Cfr.
german: ich bin gegangen
dutch: ik ben gegaan
(both translate to the theoretical form "I am gone" with the grammatical meaning of "I have gone")

Could Sam's usage of "being going" be some kind of remnant of this "old feeling for the language"?

But then again I'm no expert on historical grammar. Language Hat?

dirk  •  Link

"shut up my doors lest the being open might give them occasion of longing for my chamber"

Re - Terry

"Their" being open is certainly the most common form in modern English. ("Them" being open is also a valid form.) The gerund is grammatically equivalent to a noun/substantive. So, it can have the article too. Think of phrases like "the killings", "the ringing of the bells", etc.

Tony Eldridge  •  Link

they being going through the gardens.
I have long forgotten the correct grammatical terms but I read this as a future tense - they intending to go through the gardens to Mr Uthwayte's.
What a splendid name, by the way - I wonder what that derives from?

maureen  •  Link

Mr Uthwayte - modern spelling is Outhwaite, geographical origin Yorkshire or County Durham. The "thwaite" means forest land cleared for tillage and is an element in several surnames. Can anyone track down the meaning of the "ou"?

Australian Susan  •  Link

My "English Place Names" says "Ou" means "Owl", so it is, presumably, a surname derived from the place Outhwaite meaning cleared forest land frequented by owls.

dirk  •  Link

Uthwayte - Outhwaite

Re - Maureen

It appears to me that this might be the same as the Old English (Anglo-Saxon) word “tweald”, which - according to the Online Anglo-Saxon Dictionary by Bosworth & Toller - means:
?t-weald, es; m. An outlying wood:-An ?twalda

Bosworth & Toller:
http://dontgohere.nu/oe/as-bt/rea…

Australian Susan  •  Link

Weald is southern Old English. Thwaite is Northern Old English (with Scandanavian influences).

Australian Susan  •  Link

"gone a-hunting"
This is frequently happening to Sam and the others: they prepare notes (well Sam does - see yesterday's entry) and turn up and - the Duke's gone! Sam never seems to comment on this, just accepts it as the whim of royalty I suppose, but tardiness or missed appointments irk him in general as we know from other comments.
Sam is very honest and human with himself today, isn't he? Shutting up the doors so he can't see what he might be about to lose!
We now have the partial answer to some puzzles about the Navy Office buildings. It seems it was a building which was sub-divided, *after* construction (we don't know how long)and Sam has now got the men who originally did this (how very Sam - go to the source!) and so found out from them that the chamber he covets *was* part of the original subdivision belonging to *his* much loved house.
Thought for the future: wonder if he will get back to the Duke of Albemarle's to have a better look at the good pictures he spied there? I wonder if they are of lovely ladies?

Terry F  •  Link

Nice post, Australian Susan; but didn't Sam "shut up [his] doors lest the being open might give them occasion of longing for [his] chamber" - lust coming from others, fierce possession from him?

Robert Gertz  •  Link

A kindness to my Lady Batten and daughter...Sam's carefully manuevering for support. Sir Will B.'s house was involved in the reconstruction I believe and if so he might be concerned about fallout from the arguments over Sam's work, making him a potentially valuable ally. In any case, buttering up Ms. Batten and cooling her fuming over the pepysing (again I accept the "worst pun" award and would like to thank the Academy and all the little people) incident.

andy  •  Link

Interesting psychology of choices here. The threat to his favourite chamber is presented as a shrewd counter-move by Minnes to stop him walking out on the leads. Sam thinks he's got to choose between a) walking on the leads b) keeping his favourite chamber. So if he doesn't walk out on the leads he hopes Minnes will back off the threat to his chamber. Sam knows he's a bit fickle on his resolutions so the only way he thinks he can minimise the risk to his chamber is to brick up his access to the leads. This shows a weakness because it's more than Minnes has actually asked him to do, so if Minnes really wants to sweat him, he should now move to claim the chamber.

Martin  •  Link

`They being going through the garden'. This seems fairly clear to me. We can break it down.

1) If Sam had written a parenthetical subclause `(for they were going through the garden)' we would have no problem interpreting it as either a present or a kind of future tense. `I am going through the park' can mean `I'm doing it now' or `when I go, that's where I'm going' or `that's the way I'm going'.

2) `were' translates into `being' in the standard way in which we form in English the construction that in Latin would be called an ablative absolute, and in English is sometimes called a nominative absolute. `The postman had arrived. The house was thrown into confusion' => `The postman having arrived, the house was thrown into confusion.' In this example, you have to preserve the auxiliary verb to preserve the sense, and I think that's true of Sam's case too: `they going through the garden' would mean something different (`that's the way they went as they left').

Tom Burns  •  Link

...with much ado, was fain to walk over the piles through the bridge, while Sir W. Batten and Sir J. Minnes were aground against the bridge, and could not in a great while get through.

'Tis a sign from above - the two scallywags frustrated in their efforts, while our hero glides blissfully by!

Jerry Atkinson  •  Link

Shut up my doors

Could these doors be doors from his chamber onto the leads? It may be that he is talking about permanently closing off his access to the leads in order to keep the room. The decision to close the doors comes after he has resigned himself to losing the leads.

Mary  •  Link

The navy Office accommodation.

At this period it was the northern portion only of a large house, bought from Sir John Wolstenhome in 1654. The house stood on the eastern side of Seething Lane. It had a courtyard opening onto Seething Lane and a garden that stretched from the Lane to the north-west corner of Tower Hill. It was a rambling building, lit by over 180 windows and taxed on 48 hearths in 1666. From time to time the Navy Board made attempts to acquire the southern part of the original house (leased to Sir Richard Ford) but without success.

The building offered accommodation for the four Principal Officers and a Clerk, plus a porter's lodge and office space.

No representation of the house is known to survive.

(All distilled from L&M Companion)

Thus we have one very large house that has been sub-divided into two substantial portions (north and south), with the north section being further much sub-divided in order to accommodate the Navy Office itself and its personnel. Little wonder that there was room for dispute about the manner in which the different lodgings had been carved out of the original building.

brian  •  Link

I hope this isn't too off-topic. Sir John Wolstenholme the Customs Commissioner (see the Sept. 5 entry) sold his home to the Navy Office in 1654. An interesting tidbit is that his father of the same name was (according to L&M) a "great Jacobean merchant." In the Williamsburg, Virginia area there is an archeological site called Wolsteholme Town, initially settled ~1619, whose excavation was extensively covered in National Geographic some years ago. If the town was named for the elder Sir John, then it's a nice connection of the Diary to American history.

http://research.history.org/Archa…

Terry F  •  Link

Re Wolstenholme Towne, brian has it right;
it was the principal town of the plantation named Martin's Hundred, a venture "of the joint-stock Virginia Company of London. The Society of Martin's Hundred, named for Richard Martin, recorder of the City of London, was its owner. Sir John Wolstenholme was among its investors."
http://www.history.org/Almanack/p…

A.Hamilton  •  Link

they being going through the garden thither

We would say, "On my way from Picadilly to St.James's Park,I ran into the Pepys family, they being at Green Park."

I think Pepys is using this construction, defining the adverbial modifier of "being" as "going through the garden thither."

Second Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

A.Hamilton, I would say, "On my way from Picadilly to St.James's Park,I ran into the Pepys family at Green Park."

John York  •  Link

In Mary's post above she quotes from the L&M Companion that No representation of the house is known to survive.

In the Encyclopedia under Seething Lane there is a link to a picture that may be the house, or it may be the later rebuild of 1674/5 (the house survived the Great Fire of 1666 but was destroyed by a later fire of 1673).

http://assets.londonremembers.com…

There is a print produced in 1714 which appears to be based on this picture
https://independentradiodramaprod…

The picture of the house works for me when I try to understand the various entries referring to the house. However I doubt that Tho. Taylor would issue a print in 1714 dedicated to the Board of the Navy showing the old house.

Sarah C  •  Link

Thanks for the picture above, John. It does give me an idea of what many of the entries have been about. Where are the 'leads'? Do you know?

Gerald Berg  •  Link

leads for lead roof. i.e. On the roof.

Weavethe hawk  •  Link

the 2005 folks tended to get extremely long winded about Sam's grammar. Did they not take into account the three and a half centuries of linguistic progression?

john  •  Link

"Did they not take into account [...]?" I daresay that they did -- there were several linguists among them. Part of the pleasure of reading Pepys is seeing how the language changed and discussing it.

eileen d.  •  Link

Gerald, Sarah C. was referring to the house as shown here when she asked, "where are the leads?" I have the same question! the only roof access would seem to be up through some kind of hatch. however, as John York noted, this may be the house as rebuilt after the fire of 1673. I suspect that's the answer, darn it!

http://assets.londonremembers.com…

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Beautiful picture, John. Imagine London looking like that all over ... sigh.

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