Monday 26 January 1662/63

Up and by water with Sir W. Batten to White Hall, drinking a glass of wormewood wine at the Stillyard, and so up to the Duke, and with the rest of the officers did our common service; thence to my Lord Sandwich’s, but he was in bed, and had a bad fit last night, and so I went to Westminster Hall, it being Term time, it troubling me to think that I should have any business there to trouble myself and thoughts with. Here I met with Monsieur Raby, who is lately come from France. [He] tells me that my Lord Hinchingbroke and his brother do little improve there, and are much neglected in their habits and other things; but I do believe he hath a mind to go over as their tutour, and so I am not apt to believe what he says therein. But I had a great deal of very good discourse with him, concerning the difference between the French and the Pope, and the occasion, which he told me very particularly, and to my great content; and of most of the chief affairs of France, which I did enquire: and that the King is a most excellent Prince, doing all business himself; and that it is true he hath a mistress, Mademoiselle La Valiere, one of the Princess Henriette’s women, that he courts for his pleasure every other day, but not so as to make him neglect his publique affairs. He tells me how the King do carry himself nobly to the relations of the dead Cardinall,1 and will not suffer one pasquill to come forth against him; and that he acts by what directions he received from him before his death.

Having discoursed long with him, I took him by coach and set him down at my Lord Crew’s, and myself went and dined at Mr. Povy’s, where Orlando Massam, Mr. Wilks, a Wardrobe man, myself and Mr. Gawden, and had just such another dinner as I had the other day there.

But above all things I do the most admire his piece of perspective especially, he opening me the closett door, and there I saw that there is nothing but only a plain picture hung upon the wall.

After dinner Mr. Gauden and I to settle the business of the Tangier victualling, which I perceive none of them yet have hitherto understood but myself.

Thence by coach to White Hall, and met upon the Tangier Commission, our greatest business the discoursing of getting things ready for my Lord Rutherford to go about the middle of March next, and a proposal of Sir J. Lawson’s and Mr. Cholmely’s concerning undertaking the Mole, which is referred to another time.

So by coach home, being melancholy, overcharged with business, and methinks I fear that I have some ill offices done to Mr. Coventry, or else he observes that of late I have not despatched business so as I did use to do, which I confess I do acknowledge. But it may be it is but my fear only, he is not so fond as he used to be of me. But I do believe that Sir W. Batten has made him believe that I do too much crow upon having his kindness, and so he may on purpose to countenance him seem a little more strange to me, but I will study hard to bring him back again to the same degree of kindness.

So home, and after a little talk with my wife, to the office, and did a great deal of business there till very late, and then home to supper and to bed.

43 Annotations

First Reading

Terry F  •  Link

pasquill

lampoons, satires, later known as mazarinades (so L&M and others) had been issued about the Cardinal -- as though this were a new genre in the 19th century and beyond.

Terry F  •  Link

"Mazarinades are the name given to the numerous pamphlets that were printed in France before and during the Fronde (1648-1653). They take their name from Cardinal Jules Mazarin (1602-1661), who is the subject of most these tracts, and they represent the first mass use of the press for the purposes of political propaganda." For a facsimile cover of one from 1649 and Transcriptions thereof (in French) see http://www.babelstone.co.uk/Mazar…

Terry F  •  Link

"Term time"

The beginning of the term of Parliament's sitting at Westminster Hall.

(Though this is the fourth time Sam has attended it and called it so, it is not in either L&M's Select or Greater Glosssaries, and there was as yet no remark on the, ah, term -- so I thought I'd make one.)

Todd Bernhardt  •  Link

"and methinks I fear that I have some ill offices done to Mr. Coventry, or else he observes that of late I have not despatched business so as I did use to do, which I confess I do acknowledge"

Hey Sam, maybe it was that business of "guiding Mr. Coventry to sign a bill to Mr. Creed for his pay as Deputy Treasurer to this day, though the service ended 5 or 6 months ago"?

http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

Australian Susan  •  Link

Povey's perspective picture

Sam's note today makes it clear that Mr P had the picture hung as a trompe d'oeil painting as it is today at Dyrham Park.

Term Time

Sam is gloomy about the pending start up again of his legal business: it has dragged on, hasn't it. rather like Bleak House.

jeannine  •  Link

"The King (Louis XIV)..that he courts for his pleasure every other day, but not so as to make him neglect his publique affairs"... what an interesting comment, perhaps a little comparison to a certain other King who is often accused of neglecting his public affairs while in the pursuit of women??? I wish I could really understand the tone/intent here -not sure if this is just an innocent observation or perhaps a little sarcasm on what is a sore spot to many in the circle of Charles II. Also, of note Sam did detail his disgust about Charles II's activities during his end of year wrap up on Dec 31, 1662 (second section-link below).
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

dirk  •  Link

Remember the Rev. Josselin?

Today is his birthday...

"Jan: 26. 1662. my 47. year enters. 46 ended -- When I look back I find I may set up my Eben-ezer hitherto god, has helped me, and when I look forward, this promise is mine. I will never fail thee nor forsake thee. I am now settled in a habitation of my own on Colne green which god has given me."

dirk  •  Link

"I do the most admire his piece of perspective especially, he opening me the closett door, and there I saw that there is nothing but only a plain picture hung upon the wall."

As suspected, this is clearly some kind of "trompe l'oeuil" -- "deceive the eye" painting: an image, usually "grisaille" that suggests the depth of sculpture work (shadows and all) so skilfully that it really does deceive the eye.

This kind of thing was very popular in the 17th c., and the best makers of it were to be found in Flanders. Of course the illusion of depth is helped by hiding the edges of the image. It seems that this is the case here, presumably by a specially made closet which shows the image through a central opening in the closet door, while hiding the edges. But Sam is allowed a look inside...

dirk  •  Link

Some may consider this a slight **spoiler** -- as it refers to Sam's visit to Verelst's studio on April 11th 1669 !!!

Here is a "trompe l'oeuil" painting, contemporary to Pepys, by the Dutch artist Verelst -- with a discussion of Sam's admiration for this artist.

http://www.historicalportraits.co…

Bradford  •  Link

Superb find, Dirk---and while the flowers &c. might not fool our eye today, the marble shelf that the vase rests on qualifies.

"Sir W. Batten has made [Mr. Coventry] believe that I do too much crow upon having his kindness . . . I will study hard to bring him back again to the same degree of kindness."
Such moment-by-moment temperature-taking of any relationship tends to cause worry even when none is justified: perhaps not everyone else around you is examining you quite as closely as you suppose, since most people think most often of themselves.

Terry F  •  Link

It may be OT to observe that the tradition of trompe l’oeuil continued in Holland for over 300 years, influenced and was visually analyzed by Maurits C. Escher (1898-1972) (made more famous by *Gödel, Escher, Bach* by Douglas Hofstadter). Here is Escher's Gallery 1946
http://www.mcescher.com/Gallery/b…

(not as pertinent as Dirk's contributions!)

in Aqua Scripto  •  Link

"...and so I went to, Westminster Hall, it being Term time, it troubling me to think that I should have any business there to trouble myself..." There be no entry of the House of Commons sitting until 18th of Feb.
and one of the issues be :
"Protections.
Resolved, upon the Question, That no Member of this House do grant any Protection to any, but such only as are their menial Servants: And that all Protections, already granted to any other Persons besides menial Servants, be forthwith withdrawn, and called in."
along with proper attendance to Church Prayer.
From: 'House of Commons Journal Volume 8: 18 February 1663', Journal of the House of Commons: volume 8: 1660-1667 (1802), pp. 436-37. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/…. Date accessed: 27 January 2006.

in Aqua Scripto  •  Link

"...and after a little talk with my wife, to the office, and did a great deal of business there till very late, and then home to supper and to bed...."
of course, there she[Eliza] be, stuck twiddling thumbs.

in Aqua Scripto  •  Link

The difference between the Sun King and Charles, be that Charles has neglected Parliament, Money is not be used for the original intention, and he is flaunting his Affaires while His Advisors be twiddling their thumbs too. Meanwhile Sam gets the impression that State Business in Paris be normal. Of course that be good public propaganda put out by Vesailles. As Sam hasn't any alternative views to make sound judgements, he should get out the shaker of salt.

Robert Gertz  •  Link

Why just the other day our boy flew so high none could touch him. What a difference a day or two...And a slight coolness from the Boss...Makes.

Ah, don't worry Sam...Coventry was probably just sleeping with Bess the night you stayed with Creed and feels a tad diffident with you now.

***

For fun, a link to a memoir of the court of Louis XIV by the Duke of Saint-Simon. Interesting to get an eyewitness view from the other side...http://www.gutenberg.org/d…

Mary  •  Link

Westminster Hall/term time.

Legal term, surely. Sam's troubling thoughts concern his ongoing legal problems with Uncle Robert's estate.

Alastair  •  Link

One of the best trompe l'oeil paintings (as Sam would say) I have ever seen in my life is in Chatsworth House in Derbyshire and is of a violin & bow hanging on a door. http://www.chatsworth-house.co.uk…

A. Hamilton  •  Link

Mr. Coventry

Makes Sam reflect "I have not despatched business so as I did use to do" (drinking with Batten again may be one reason) and there is the shadow of the misdated invoice for Creed, but Sam also notes a comment suggesting Coventry may feel he has gotten the Navy office to perform as he wants, and by inference has less time to spend on that project and is beginning to turn his attention elsewhere,a development that could make Sam's eagerness for his company and appprobation burdensome to him:

"But by the way Mr. Coventry was saying that there remained nothing now in our office to be amended but what would do of itself every day better and better, for as much as he that was slowest, Sir W. Batten, do now begin to look about him and to mind business. At which, God forgive me! I was a little moved with envy..." Jan. 19

A. Hamilton  •  Link

"Westminster Hall, it being Term time, it troubling me to think that I should have any business there to trouble myself"

I think the reference here is to the law courts, not parliament, in which case Sam's apprehension is explained by the on-going contests over Robert Pepys's will.

JohnT  •  Link

Pasquill. The reference to a " pasquill" is fascinating. There is some evolution from the italian and french terms pasquino and pasquillo. There is a statue in the piazza Pasquino (next to the much more famous Piazza Navona ) in Rome of a battered soldier, it is claimed originally depicting a character from the Iliad. Apparently a cobbler in about 1500 started attaching satires and lampoons to the statue at night to avoid censorship. Others followed suit and have been doing so ever since. Even today you can see the latest crop. ( For those tempted to visit and have a look there is a very good wine bar , " Cul de Sac", from where you can admire the ancient statue). http://palazzolivia.it/eng/maps_o…

A. Hamilton  •  Link

Pasquill

Thank you, John T.

OED confirms this with a colorful tale. Pasquil[l] is an obsolete form of

"Pasquin, n.

("p&skwIn) [ult. ad. It. Pasquino, in L. PasquWnus, F. Pasquin.
Pasquino or Pasquillo was the name popularly given to a mutilated statue, or piece of ancient statuary, disinterred at Rome in the year 1501, and set up by Cardinal Caraffa at the corner of his palace near the Piazza Navona. Under his patronage, it became the annual custom on St. Mark's Day to ‘restore’ temporarily and dress up this torso to represent some historical or mythological personage of antiquity; on which occasion professors and students of the newly restored Ancient Learning were wont to salute Pasquin in Latin verses which were usually posted or placed on the statue. In process of time these pasquinate or pasquinades tended to become satirical, and the term began to be applied, not only in Rome, but in other countries, to satirical compositions and lampoons, political, ecclesiastical, or personal, the anonymous authors of which often sheltered themselves under the conventional name of Pasquin. According to Mazocchi, in the preface to the printed collection of the pasquinate of 1509, the name Pasquino or Pasquillo originated in that of a schoolmaster (‘literator seu magister ludi’) who lived opposite the spot where the statue was found; a later tradition given by Castelvetro, 1558–9, made Pasquino a caustic tailor or shoemaker; another of 1544 calls him a barber. See L. Morandi in Nuova Antologia 1889 I. 271, 755, D. Gnoli ibid. 1890 I. 51, 275, Storia di Pasquino. The latinized form Pasquillus was already a1544 applied both to the author and the pasquinade, in which extended application it was subseq. followed also by Pasquin.]

1. The Roman Pasquino (man or statue), on whom pasquinades were fathered; hence, the imaginary personage to whom anonymous lampoons were conventionally ascribed."

slangist  •  Link

great discussion of "pasquill, pasquinade"
a term long since admired in a favorite sentence (not inapplicable to sam's oeuvre) from lawrence sterne's "tristram shandy" (1759) vol. 1, chapter xiv:

Could a historiographer drive on his history, as a muleteer drives on his mule,-- straight forward;--for instance, from Rome all the way to Loretto, without ever once turning his head aside, either to the right hand or to the left,- -he might venture to foretell you to an hour when he should get to his journey's end;--but the thing is, morally speaking, impossible: For, if he is a man of the least spirit, he will have fifty deviations from a straight line to make with this or that party as he goes along, which he can no ways avoid. He will have views and prospects to himself perpetually soliciting his eye, which he can no more help standing still to look at than he can fly; he will moreover have various Accounts to reconcile: Anecdotes to pick up: Inscriptions to make out: Stories to weave in: Traditions to sift: Personages to call upon: Panegyricks to paste up at this door; Pasquinades at that:--All which both the man and his mule are quite exempt from.

A. Hamilton  •  Link

Westminster Hall/term time.

Just noticed your entry, Mary. I apologize for my redundancy.

Terry F  •  Link

"Term time"

is always used by Sam when he visits Westminster Hall. http://www.gyford.com/cgi-sys/cgi…
3 February 1659/60:
About noon Mrs. Turner came to speak with me, and Joyce, and I took them and shewed them the manner of the Houses sitting, the doorkeeper very civilly opening the door for us. Thence with my cozen Roger Pepys, it being term time

A. Hamilton  •  Link

“Term time” is always used by Sam when he visits Westminster Hall.

An ambiguity in the 1660 citation lies in the fact that Roger Pepys was both a Member of Parliament and a barrister. On the present occasion, since as IAS notes Parliament is not in session, term time surely only refers to the law courts.

Bradford  •  Link

Holbein's "Ambassadors" is the famous example of anamorphic distortion.

Jesse, here's a shorter URL for that site:

http://www.rense.com/general67/st…

Truly dementing.

Terry F  •  Link

Per Robert Gertz, "For fun, a link to a memoir of the court of Louis XIV by the Duke of Saint-Simon. Interesting to get an eyewitness view from the other side…" http://pglaf.org/~widger/folder/c… Madame Maintenon in Conferance—painted by Sir John Gilbert

Robert Gertz  •  Link

Always liked the good Madame, thanks Terry.

Paul Chapin  •  Link

Many thanks for all the info on "pasquill"
I spent over an hour yesterday trying to find out what it meant, with no success. Got so frustrated I ordered a copy of the OED on CD-ROM. Might have known our learned colleagues would come to the rescue.

in Aqua Scripto  •  Link

OED: big dark secret: the OED, be on line from thy Library, using your tax payers solution .

Second Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

dirk's "spoiler" of Pepys's visit to the studio of Simon Pietersz Verelst 11 April 1669

"But by accident [ 'Jan Looten, the landscape-drawer, a Dutchman, living in St. James’s Market' ] did direct us to a painter that was then in the house with him, a Dutchman, newly come over, one Evarelst, who took us to his lodging close by, and did shew us a little flower-pot of his doing, the finest thing that ever, I think, I saw in my life; the drops of dew hanging on the leaves, so as I was forced, again and again, to put my finger to it, to feel whether my eyes were deceived or no. He do ask 70l. for it: I had the vanity to bid him 20l.; but a better picture I never saw in my whole life; and it is worth going twenty miles to see it. " http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

Bill  •  Link

“and will not suffer one pasquill to come forth against him”

PASQUIL, a Statue in Rome, upon which Satyrical Papers are usually fix’d, and fathered on him as the Author; a slanderous Libel posted up for public View.
PASQUINADE, a Satyrical Invective or Libel.
---An Universal English Dictionary. N. Bailey, 1724.

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

"wormewood wine", in principle now more commonly known as Vermouth, but just as Coca Cola no longer contains cocaine, Vermouth generally no longer contains wormwood!
(or, at most, very small quantities)

❝..."wormwood wine". By the mid-17th century, the drink was being consumed in England under the name "vermouth" ...❞

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ver…

Chris Squire UK  •  Link

OED has:

‘pasquil . . 2. = pasquinade . .
. . 1612 T. James Iesuits Downefall 38 They blame others for Libells and verie vnpriestly Pasquils, and yet write themselues.
1698 Protestant Mercury 18–23 Feb. 1/1 A certain Pasquil, which was sometime since affixed up at the Town-House, against the Government.
1709 R. Steele Tatler No. 92. ⁋1 All the Pasquils, Lampoons and Libels, we meet with now-a-days.
1767 T. Percy Reliques (ed. 2) II. ii. 118 Many a pasquil was discharged at the Romish priests, and their enormous encroachments on property . . ‘

‘pasquinade, n. < French pasquinade (Originally) a lampoon posted in a public place; (later) any circulated or published lampoon or libel.
1658 E. Phillips New World Eng. Words Pasquinade, a Satyrical Invective or Libel, savoring of the Pasquin at Rome.
1705 D. Defoe Writings Author True-Born Englishman II. 70 Some in Pasquinades affront the State . . ‘

eileen d.  •  Link

slangist, thank you for the wonderful passage on the historian's experience in discovering the past. so very well describes the great fun and discourse found here on this site, don't you think?

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"He tells me how the King do carry himself nobly to the relations of the dead Cardinall,1 and will not suffer one pasquill to come forth against him; and that he acts by what directions he received from him before his death."

L&M: Cardinal Mazarin had died on 27 February/ 9 March 1661. He left no testament politique, but in his last few weeks gave advice to Louis XIV, which the young King dictated to a secretary, and which is printed in Lettres, instructions et mémoires de Colbert (ed. P. Clément), i. 535. See also A. Chéruel, Hist. de France sous Mazarin, iii. 395+. Many pasquils (i.e. lampoons later known as mazarinades) had been issued against him during his lifetime. See https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… and https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…

Third Reading

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