Monday 18 December 1665

[Continued from yesterday. P.G.] Betimes, up, it being a fine frost, and walked it to Redriffe, calling and drinking at Half-way house, thinking, indeed, to have overtaken some of the people of our house, the women, who were to walk the same walke, but I could not. So to London, and there visited my wife, and was a little displeased to find she is so forward all of a spurt to make much of her brother and sister since my last kindnesse to him in getting him a place, but all ended well presently, and I to the ’Change and up and down to Kingdon and the goldsmith’s to meet Mr. Stephens, and did get all my money matters most excellently cleared to my complete satisfaction. Passing over Cornhill I spied young Mrs. Daniel and Sarah, my landlady’s daughter, who are come, as I expected, to towne, and did say they spied me and I dogged them to St. Martin’s, where I passed by them being shy, and walked down as low as Ducke Lane and enquired for some Spanish books, and so back again and they were gone. So to the ’Change, hoping to see them in the streete, and missing them, went back again thither and back to the ’Change, but no sight of them, so went after my business again, and, though late, was sent to by Sir W. Warren (who heard where I was) to intreat me to come dine with him, hearing that I lacked a dinner, at the Pope’s Head; and there with Mr. Hinton, the goldsmith, and others, very merry; but, Lord! to see how Dr. Hinton come in with a gallant or two from Court, and do so call “Cozen” Mr. Hinton, the goldsmith, but I that know him to be a beggar and a knave, did make great sport in my mind at it.

After dinner Sir W. Warren and I alone in another room a little while talking about business, and so parted, and I hence, my mind full of content in my day’s worke, home by water to Greenwich, the river beginning to be very full of ice, so as I was a little frighted, but got home well, it being darke. So having no mind to do any business, went home to my lodgings, and there got little Mrs. Tooker, and Mrs. Daniel, the daughter, and Sarah to my chamber to cards and sup with me, when in comes Mr. Pierce to me, who tells me how W. Howe has been examined on shipboard by my Lord Bruncker to-day, and others, and that he has charged him out of envy with sending goods under my Lord’s seale and in my Lord Bruncker’s name, thereby to get them safe passage, which, he tells me, is false, but that he did use my name to that purpose, and hath acknowledged it to my Lord Bruncker, but do also confess to me that one parcel he thinks he did use my Lord Bruncker’s name, which do vexe me mightily that my name should be brought in question about such things, though I did not say much to him of my discontent till I have spoke with my Lord Bruncker about it. So he being gone, being to go to Oxford to-morrow, we to cards again late, and so broke up, I having great pleasure with my little girle, Mrs. Tooker.

26 Annotations

First Reading

Australian Susan  •  Link

"....I having great pleasure with my little girle, Mrs. Tooker....."

Please let this just be her skill at cards....

Sam obviously feels he has done his brotherly bit for Balthasar and Bess's pleas are in vain.

Wonder when the Navy Office will move back to London? Sam really does seem to be having a jolly time in his lodgings (pun intended), but as he has let his wife go back there, he can't argue against any proposed move of the office back to its proper place.

He really made himself look foolish today with his teenage stalking of the Greenwich women. Dear me.

And he is most vexed with Mr Howe's evasive wriggling about the charges brought against him.

Terry Foreman  •  Link

I take it the move of the Navy Office back to London is the Duke of York's, and not Pepys's to determine. There are logistical reasons for both locations at the moment -- the Court being at Oxford, and (if memory serves, most of) the Fleet being in Greenwich.

Samuel  •  Link

They ought to have made a movie about Pepys starring Benny Hill

A. Hamilton  •  Link

How convenient for Sam to have his wife in London while for him in Greenwich there are the consolations of Mrs. Pennington and the young ladies of his lodging.

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"they spied me and I dogged them"

That'll teach the Clerke sisters!

Bryan M  •  Link

"Passing over Cornhill I spied young Mrs. Daniel and Sarah ... and did say they spied me and I dogged them to St. Martin’s"

This would make more sense if it was "did see they spied me". What do L & M have?

Robert Gertz  •  Link

"So to London, and there visited my wife, and was a little displeased to find she is so forward all of a spurt to make much of her brother and sister since my last kindnesse to him in getting him a place..."

Poor Bess, likely grateful to have somebody paying her attentions and offering company whilst her husband is enjoying himself, Mrs. Pennington, and poor Miss Tooker.

Of course Balty is probably rather full of himself these days...

Would like to know what he was up to in Holland earlier, though. Can't help thinking there was something strange about his going and returning and receiving a good position with the Navy so easily even given his brother-in-law (a generally rather circumspect fellow to take such a risk) and the easier-going wartime days of the 17th century. After all...(spoiler)

...he will prove a rather able agent for Sam in the future.

tonyt  •  Link

Benny Hill did do a Samuel Pepys sketch in one of his shows in, I think, the 1960s. It was based around a song with the chorus line 'It's all written down in his Diary'. That apart it was much the same as all other Benny Hill sketches.
The inspiration for this was a serious BBC docudrama in which a young Peter Sallis (of 'Last of the Summer Wine' and 'Wallace and Gromit') played Sam.

Mary  •  Link

"did see they spied me" is, indeed, the L&M reading.

Mary  •  Link

A Benny Hill/Sam Pepys sketch is one thing,

but not a whole film. Pepys was far from being the perfect man, but he certainly wasn't a grotesque.

Stacia  •  Link

I know we have no idea of Frances Tooker's age, but when Sam refers to her as "little Mrs Tooker" I always wonder if he is using "little" as a way to distinguish between the mother and daughter. Perhaps "little" doesn't necessarily mean "very young". Or perhaps I'm inadvertently projecting my modern mores onto Sam's behavior.

Australian Susan  •  Link

Clare Tomalin is of the opinion that Frances Tooker was a child and what Sam did with her constituted what we would call child abuse. See Tomalin's book (pbk) xxxi, 185, 423n and other refs.

cgs  •  Link

"...I having great pleasure with my little girle, Mrs. Tooker...."
Mrs meaning Mistress , courtesy of not being without family.
I am of the same opinion as AS, she be young, and in to-days world be in the same category as the Rev Dodgson, a DOM.

Bryan M  •  Link

Little Mrs Tooker as Sam first described her on October 11:

"and so, by Captain Cocke’s coach, had brought a very pretty child, a daughter of one Mrs. Tooker’s, next door to my lodging".

There doesn't appear to be much room for doubt in this instance.

Harvey  •  Link

'Dogged' (followed), not 'dodged'.

"...and did say they spied me and I dogged them to St. Martin’s, where I passed by them being shy, and walked down as low as Ducke Lane and enquired for some Spanish books, and so back again and they were gone. So to the ‘Change, hoping to see them in the streete, and missing them

cgs  •  Link

"...I dogged them to..."
hungered after them???
OED: A. adj.

1. gen. a. Like a dog; having the character, or some characteristic, of a dog. b. Of or pertaining to a dog or dogs, canine.dogged appetite, hunger: = CANINE appetite, BULIMY (obs.). (Now rare in gen. sense.)
c1440

2. Having the bad qualities of a dog; currish. a. Ill-conditioned, malicious, crabbed, spiteful, perverse; cruel. (Of persons, their actions, etc.) Obs.
a 1307 ...1663 BUTLER Hud. I. i. 632 Fortune unto them turn'd dogged. For they a sad Adventure met.

1684 Roxb. Ball. (1895) VIII. 40 This dogged answer cut this poor soul to the heart.

b. transf. Of things: Awkward, ‘crabbed’, difficult to deal with. Obs.
1634 ..
c. Ill-tempered, surly; sullen, morose. Now with some mixture of sense 3: Having an air of sullen obstinacy.
c1400 ...

1667 PEPYS Diary (1879) IV. 424 My wife in a dogged humour for my not dining at home.

3. Having the persistency or tenacity characteristic of various breeds of dogs; obstinate, stubborn; pertinacious. (The current use.) Esp. in colloq. phr. it's dogged as does it: persistency and tenacity win in the end.
1779 JOHNSON 1 Apr. in Boswell, [He commended one of the Dukes of Devonshire for] ‘a dogged veracity’.

4. Comb., as dogged-sprighted a., having a ‘dogged’ or malicious spirit (obs.).
1600...

B. as adv. ‘As a dog’; very, extremely. colloq. or slang. (Cf. DOG n.1 19d.)
1819 Sporting Mag. IV. 272 He [a horse] was dogged ‘rusty’ when your man passed our house.

cgs  •  Link

such a cur?

Second Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"by water to Greenwich, the river beginning to be very full of ice, so as I was a little frighted"

L&M note the river-ice thawed on the 27th.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"... the river-ice thawed on the 27th."

Stress is getting the better of Pepys. Yesterday he was huddled in a boat on the river, practicing Tantric sex (so far as I can tell from his fractured French). His private parts might have become frost bitten. The man's gone bonkers.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"... and up and down to Kingdon and the goldsmith’s to meet Mr. Stephens, and did get all my money matters most excellently cleared to my complete satisfaction."

These on-going settling of accounts are in preparation for the next Quarter Day -- Christmas Day. Since cash is in short supply, I think Pepys is trying to find people with money early. He must have a ton of tally sticks. Hopefully he'll use the money to pay those angry sailors camped outside his office -- but I suspect it's earmarked for the fleet insurance. How does he manage without an armed guard or 3, and a horse and cart? Those coins weighed a lot.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"How convenient for Sam to have his wife in London while for him in Greenwich there are the consolations of Mrs. Pennington and the young ladies of his lodging."

Things have not been good between Elizabeth and Sam for over a year: I think it started on Sunday 9 October 1664:

"Lay pretty long, but however up time enough with my wife to go to church. Then home to dinner, and Mr. Fuller, my Cambridge acquaintance, coming to me about what he was with me lately, to release a waterman, he told me he was to preach at Barking Church; and so I to heare him, and he preached well and neatly. Thence, it being time enough, to our owne church, and there staid wholly privately at the great doore to gaze upon a pretty lady, and from church dogged her home, whither she went to a house near Tower hill, and I think her to be one of the prettiest women I ever saw. So home, and at my office a while busy, then to my uncle Wight’s, whither it seems my wife went after sermon and there supped, but my aunt and uncle in a very ill humour one with another, but I made shift with much ado to keep them from scolding, and so after supper home and to bed without prayers, it being cold."

My guess is that Bess didn't know where he was, and went to Uncle Wight's looking for him. She had to endure an awful afternoon before Sam turns up, and she suspected he was cheating on her.

The next day was their Wedding Anniversary, but there is no mention of him remembering.

Bess' ill-humor with her husband continued for months. Consider just one day of his Christmas diary:

Tuesday 27 December 1664
My people came to bed, after their sporting, at four o’clock in the morning;
...
I went to bed, leaving my wife and all her folks, and Will also, too, come to make Christmas gambolls tonight.

Then there was the day she took the servants to see a ship launched; Pepys left later and was part of the official party. But he hurried to go back to London with Elizabeth and her party, but they had sailed without him. So he went through a terrible trip home, almost falling through London Bridge and having to be rescued by a night watchman, only to get home hours before Elizabeth and party turn up.

There have been quite a number of classic passive-aggressive stories about Elizabeth in the last 15 months; he's bored with his child bride, and she's resentful of him.

So I would say living apart was equally "convenient" for Elizabeth; she must have had fun this summer being mistress of her own house. Hopefully, when they both finally get back to Seething Lane, they will discover they like each other again.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"Mr. Pierce to me, who tells me how W. Howe has been examined on shipboard by my Lord Bruncker to-day, and others, and that he has charged him out of envy with sending goods under my Lord’s seale and in my Lord Bruncker’s name, thereby to get them safe passage, which, he tells me, is false, but that he did use my name to that purpose, and hath acknowledged it to my Lord Bruncker, but do also confess to me that one parcel he thinks he did use my Lord Bruncker’s name, which do vexe me mightily that my name should be brought in question about such things, though I did not say much to him of my discontent till I have spoke with my Lord Bruncker about it. "

Sounds like the preparation with Brouncker and Teddiman bore fruit, not all of which Pepys likes. Hopefully Brouncker had heard enough from Pepys to be able to tell what was true and what was not:

Last Friday 15 December 1665: "... and to my Lord Bruncker’s where I met with a great good dinner and Sir T. Teddiman, with whom my Lord and I were to discourse about the bringing of W. Howe to a tryall for his jewells, and there till almost night, ..."

That Pepys turned in Howe makes him one of the "good guys" for now. Let's hope the reputation sticks.

The word 'envy' puzzles me. And was "my lord" Sandwich or Brouncker?

James Morgan  •  Link

I thought to "dog someone" was to follow them, and found this dictionary definition that includes that meaning:
[often passive] to cause trouble for someone over a long period of time. He has been dogged by persistent back problems. To cause problems for someone or something:let down, hold back, embarrass... to follow someone closely in a way that annoys them.
dog (verb) definition and synonyms | Macmillan Dictionary
https://www.macmillandictionary.c…

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

James, I think being "dogged" by someone or something has an element of intrusion, irritation, stalking, unnwanted-ness. I am closely dogged by my dog, and there are times I want to slam the bathroom door in his face ... I long to have some unsupervised time away from those big brown eyes.

So that's where being dogged by a bad back comes in. You can't escape it's constant intrusion.

Mary K  •  Link

to dog.

Often found in such expressions as "to dog someone's footsteps". To follow someone as covertly as possible, to trail them, to shadow them.

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