Saturday 6 January 1665/66
Up betimes and by water to the Cockepitt, there met Sir G. Carteret and, after discourse with the Duke, all together, and there saw a letter wherein Sir W. Coventry did take notice to the Duke with a commendation of my paper about Pursers, I to walke in the Parke with the Vice-Chamberlain, and received his advice about my deportment about the advancing the credit of the Act; giving me caution to see that we do not misguide the King by making them believe greater matters from it than will be found. But I see that this arises from his great trouble to see the Act succeede, and to hear my name so much used and my letters shown at Court about goods served us in upon the credit of it. But I do make him believe that I do it with all respect to him and on his behalfe too, as indeed I do, as well as my owne, that it may not be said that he or I do not assist therein. He tells me that my Lord Sandwich do proceed on his journey with the greatest kindnesse that can be imagined from the King and Chancellor, which was joyfull newes to me.
Thence with Lord Bruncker to Greenwich by water to a great dinner and much company; Mr. Cottle and his lady and others and I went, hoping to get Mrs. Knipp to us, having wrote a letter to her in the morning, calling myself “Dapper Dicky,” in answer to hers of “Barbary Allen,” but could not, and am told by the boy that carried my letter, that he found her crying; but I fear she lives a sad life with that ill-natured fellow her husband: so we had a great, but I a melancholy dinner, having not her there, as I hoped. After dinner to cards, and then comes notice that my wife is come unexpectedly to me to towne. So I to her. It is only to see what I do, and why I come not home; and she is in the right that I would have a little more of Mrs. Knipp’s company before I go away. My wife to fetch away my things from Woolwich, and I back to cards and after cards to choose King and Queene, and a good cake there was, but no marks found; but I privately found the clove, the mark of the knave, and privately put it into Captain Cocke’s piece, which made some mirthe, because of his lately being knowne by his buying of clove and mace of the East India prizes. At night home to my lodging, where I find my wife returned with my things, and there also Captain Ferrers is come upon business of my Lord’s to this town about getting some goods of his put on board in order to his going to Spain, and Ferrers presumes upon my finding a bed for him, which I did not like to have done without my invitation because I had done [it] several times before, during the plague, that he could not provide himself safely elsewhere. But it being Twelfth Night, they had got the fiddler and mighty merry they were; and I above come not to them, but when I had done my business among my papers went to bed, leaving them dancing, and choosing King and Queene.
26 Annotations
First Reading
Robert Gertz • Link
"...am told by the boy that carried my letter, that he found her crying; but I fear she lives a sad life with that ill-natured fellow her husband..."
How compassionate...Our boy couldn't possibly sense easy prey?
Say...Are we talking about Chris Knipp or Sam Pepys, Sam?
***
"...then comes notice that my wife is come unexpectedly to me to towne. So I to her. It is only to see what I do, and why I come not home; and she is in the right that I would have a little more of Mrs. Knipp’s company before I go away."
Busted...
Box him on the ears and drag him home, Bess.
***
"What? You want an actress...I can act. Watch me do Othello."
"Bess, I said I'd come home...Just put the dagger down, please."
Robert Gertz • Link
Poor Knipp, though. One senses she's merry and good company when Chris isn't making her miserable but not quite Court mistress material. Perhaps, at least in this case, Sam's flirting has some merit.
***
Heaven...Hall of Records.
"What!!? You must be wrong. Check that again."
"It's right here, sir."
"But my Diary has made me famous."
"Yes, and it's very nice...I've read to the Almighty many a night."
"And my reforms of the Royal Navy alone should make me immortal..."
"Sir...What can I say? It's right here in the Book of Fate. We all have our purpose, sir."
"The purpose of my existence was to lighten Elizabeth Knipp's sad life a few nights?!!"
Sure wasn't to lighten mine...Bess thinks, keeping sympathetic look on face.
Robert Gertz • Link
Sam, you're damned lucky Bess is still willing to come and get you and not just invite Ferrers to spend Twelfth Night in London.
Terry Foreman • Link
"I went, hoping to get Mrs. Knipp to us, having wrote a letter to her in the morning, calling myself “Dapper Dicky,” in answer to hers of “Barbary Allen,”"
Pepys replies to Elizabeth Knepp's flirtatious note of yesterday, and gives himself a nickname that will go down in infamy: he's teased by "MRS. PEPYS " for styling himself "Dapper Dicky" to "MERCER " in Louis Napoleon Parker's "Mavourneen, a comedy in three acts" (1916).
http://www.archive.org/details/ma…
Terry Foreman • Link
The "Dapper Dicky" turn is also mentioned by Robert Louis Stephenson in *Familiar Studies of Men & Books*
"We all, whether we write or speak, must somewhat drape ourselves when we address our fellows; at a given moment we apprehend our character and acts by some particular side; we are merry with one, grave with another, as befits the nature and demands of the relation. Pepys's letter to Evelyn would have little in common with that other one to Mrs. Knipp which he signed by the pseudonym of DAPPER DICKY; yet each would be suitable to the character of his correspondent. There is no untruth in this, for man, being a Protean animal, swiftly shares and changes with his company and surroundings; and these changes are the better part of his education in the world. To strike a posture once for all, and to march through life like a drum-major, is to be highly disagreeable to others and a fool for oneself into the bargain. To Evelyn and to Knipp we understand the double facing; but to whom was he posing in the Diary, and what, in the name of astonishment, was the nature of the pose?"
http://www.fullbooks.com/Familiar…
JWB • Link
But wouldn't signing the letter "Barbary Allen" have been a put-down that Sam misread?
Ralph Berry • Link
"...and after cards to choose King & Queene..."
"... leaving them dancing, and choosing King and Queene".
Can anyone please tell us about about choosing King and Queene? Is this a particular game for twelth night?
Linda F • Link
Twelfth Night (Jan. 6th, twelfth day of Christmas) marks the beginning of the Carnival season that ends with Mardi Gras (immediately followed by Lent).
On twelfth night friends (and business associates in offices) share king cake, and the person whose piece has the bean (or baby or pecan or other token) baked into it chooses a consort (king or queen), hosts the next week's party, and provides the king cake for it, and so on throughout Carnival.
To deny having got the baby (and particularly to insert it into someone else's piece) would be an excellent way to insure that one is never invited to eat king cake with anyone anywhere ever again.
[Culinary note: Traditional New Orleans king cake consists of a braided cinnamon/pecan brioche ring with hard white icing topped with cherries or with sugar in Carnival colors (purple/green/gold) or both. Some favor French king cake, a rich apple custard torte. And on the side of wretched excess (but with many adherents) are "filled" king cakes, brioche with custards or jellies. At this moment, New Orleans king cakes are winging their way by air express to all parts of the globe. It is a vibrant, if seasonal, industry. In Lent everyone diets and works out like mad.]
Robert Gertz • Link
"'Dapper Dicky' I presume? Meet 'Chris Cross'."
Pow.
"I've waited three hundred years to do that." Knipp, smiling for the first time in more than three hundred years. "Please accept my Betty's and my invite to dinner next Saturday. I actually think I can be gracious now."
"I thought this was Heaven..." Sam, groaning as Bess helps him up, Knipp and his Betty leaving arm-in-arm.
"Heaven for all of us, Sam'l." Bess smiles,"And you did note I didn't say no to dinner with Mrs. Knipp?"
"I could have taken him if I'd seen it coming, you know."
"Difficult to believe you couldn't see it coming, Sam'l. Just like with Bagwell..."
"That was totally unfair. I was watching the husband, I never expected she'd be the one looking to belt me."
Smile...
"You only beat the crap out of that Stevenson fellow because he was consumptive..."
"I did, didn't I?" Bess, beaming.
"Not that he didn't deserve it for what he wrote about you. But you might've let me earn a few redemption points..."
"You can whale the tar out of Mr. Stevenson next time, darling."
Glyn • Link
"Dapper Dicky"?? Ha ha. I suppose that you can make yourself ridiculous on Twelfth Night, but I do always think of Pepys as being dapper, i.e meticulous in his clothes. (By the way, Mrs Knipp and her husband eventually get to run a pub that was conveniently on the direct route between the Tower and Westminster, and it is still there today, i.e. the Old Cock on Fleet Stret).
Glyn • Link
Terry, wherever did you find that play? Not as good as RG's version would be (obviously) but interesting to see Mrs P depicted as an attractive woman that the men all chase after, and Sidney Montague being knighted by King Charles at the end.
Robert G: the BBC are currently seeking 30-minute radio plays - why don't you write one about Mrs Pepys and mail it to them - doesn't matter if they reject it so long as you do it - after all why should we be the only ones to suffer :-)
andy • Link
"Dapper Dicky"? no wonder she was crying. And, indeed, opened the "Old Cock" with her husband. Sam a strutting cock(erel).
Todd Bernhardt • Link
>But wouldn’t signing the letter “Barbary Allen” have been a put-down that Sam misread?<
Not if it was "their song"...
I wonder if this passage was something Sam winced at, when reading it years later. Ah well, happens to us all.
That said, I do like Sam's little bit of fun with Cocke and the clove.
Terry Foreman • Link
"I to walke in the Parke with the Vice-Chamberlain [Sir George Carteret], and received his advice about my deportment about the advancing the credit of the Act; giving me caution to see that we do not misguide the King by making them believe greater matters from it than will be found. But I see that this arises from his great trouble to see the Act succeede, and to hear my name so much used and my letters shown at Court about goods served us in upon the credit of it. But I do make him believe that I do it with all respect to him and on his behalfe too, as indeed I do, as well as my owne, that it may not be said that he or I do not assist therein."
Pepys's qualms melt as he learns Carteret supports the Act according to which the Navy buys stores on the good faith and creditof the Exchequer http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
Australian Susan • Link
"...and there saw a letter wherein Sir W. Coventry did take notice to the Duke with a commendation of my paper about Pursers,..."
Was this left lying around for Sam to see? Or was he rifling through papers? A good thing to read anyway.
The wonderful celebrations described by Linda f are testimony to the survival of customs carried overseas to the US from Europe which have somewhat declined on the east side of the Atlantic. But what is described is a French style cake. In England, it was a boiled dried fruit and spice cake with marzipan and icing, which metamorphosed into the Christmas cake and got moved back to December and there was only one cake and party, not the wonderful succession described as happening in New Orleans, and the tokens in the cake got transposed in England into tokens put in the Christmas pudding, which, when I was a child, were silver threepenny bits.
Terry Foreman • Link
"I privately found the clove, the mark of the knave"
Pepys's dealings with "little Mrs. Tooker" discovered!
cgs • Link
dicky? was he calling 'imself an he-ass,
"...“Dapper Dicky,”..."
may be meant 'dapper dan'
neigh ?
LInda F • Link
Thanks, Aus. Susan, for explaining the connection --one I never made -- between Christmas fruit cake and pudding and Twelfth Night king cake. (As children we wondered why minced angelica and cherries and nutmeats and certain spices were combined only for Christmas, then steeped in whiskey for months before Christmas Day).
The thought of Sam extracting the clove from one piece of sticky cake and hiding it in another reminds me that back then no one had the first notion of germs and how they operate.
tld • Link
"Dapper Dicky"
Well we've all jumped to the obvious sexual meaning of Dicky. But was that meaning common at this time?
Dawn • Link
The current sign outside Ye Olde Cock Tavern on Fleet Street says
Est Circa 1554
The Cock was opened in 1888 with the fittings from the original tavern on the site of the branch of the Bank of England opposite.
The records of the tavern go back to the early seventeenth century.
Pepys says:"April 23 1668. To the Cock alehouse and drink and eat a lobster and sang and....and then Knipp and I to the Temple again, and took boat, it being darkish, and to Fox Hall".
Alas there are now no Vauxhall Gardens wher we can take our "Knipp" but there is still the Cock.
Second Reading
Terry Foreman • Link
"But wouldn't signing the letter "Barbary Allen" have been a put-down that Sam misread?"
L&M describe it as a song (Scottish, like Barbara Allen) in which a girl laments her lover's absence.
Terry Foreman • Link
"my Lord Sandwich do proceed on his journey"
L&M note he sailed as ambassador to Spain in late February.
Louise Hudson • Link
Linda F wrote
“The thought of Sam extracting the clove from one piece of sticky cake and hiding it in another reminds me that back then no one had the first notion of germs and how they operate.”
At the time when everything anyone came in contact must have been teeming with with bacteria, personal hygiene being unknown, I doubt the handling of a single clove would have made much difference.
I wanted to remind myself of the lyrics to Barbara Allen, so did an Internet search and found this:
.
“Looking for Barbara Allen? Get Cell Phone #, Address, Pics & more.”
Who knew?
I did find interesting history and other information at
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/B…
San Diego Sarah • Link
Germs: I wonder if their immune systems were stronger than ours?
From reading hundreds of biographies, it seems to me their lives would have averaged much the same as ours if they had had better operating facilities and knowledge. Three score and ten, as the Bible says, seems to be the design norm. (In Pepys day I would have been crippled or died at 7 from appendicitis.)
Mary K • Link
Quite possibly.
One thing you can be sure of is that they didn't suffer from peanut allergy/anaphylactic shock syndrome.
San Diego Sarah • Link
Correct. Since you mentioned peanuts, I didn't know when they joined the British food chain:
"European explorers first discovered peanuts in Brazil. ... Tribes in central Brazil ground peanuts with maize to make a drink. Peanuts grew as far north as Mexico when the Spanish began their exploration of the new world. The explorers took peanuts back to Spain, and from there traders and explorers spread them to Asia and Africa. Africans were the first people to introduce peanuts to North America beginning in the 1700s.
"Records show that it wasn’t until the early 1800s that peanuts were grown as a commercial crop in the United States. They were first grown in Virginia and used mainly for oil, food and as a cocoa substitute. At this time, peanuts were regarded as a food for livestock and the poor and were considered difficult to grow and harvest.
"Peanut production steadily grew the first half of the 19th century. Peanuts became prominent after the Civil War when Union soldiers found they liked them and took them home. Both armies subsisted on this food source high in protein."
If they had been accepted as food in England, the knowledge would have crossed the Atlantic quicker than that.
See: http://www.nationalpeanutboard.or…