Sunday 15 July 1666

(Lord’s day). Up, and to church, where our lecturer made a sorry silly sermon, upon the great point of proving the truth of the Christian religion. Home and had a good dinner, expecting Mr. Hunt, but there comes only young Michell and his wife, whom my wife concurs with me to be a pretty woman, and with her husband is a pretty innocent couple. Mightily pleasant we were, and I mightily pleased in her company and to find my wife so well pleased with them also. After dinner he and I walked to White Hall, not being able to get a coach. He to the Abbey, and I to White Hall, but met with nobody to discourse with, having no great mind to be found idling there, and be asked questions of the fleete, so walked only through to the Parke, and there, it being mighty hot and I weary, lay down by the canaille, upon the grasse, and slept awhile, and was thinking of a lampoone which hath run in my head this weeke, to make upon the late fight at sea, and the miscarriages there; but other businesses put it out of my head.

Having lain there a while, I then to the Abbey and there called Michell, and so walked in great pain, having new shoes on, as far as Fleete Streete and there got a coach, and so in some little ease home and there drank a great deale of small beer; and so took up my wife and Betty Michell and her husband, and away into the fields, to take the ayre, as far as beyond Hackny, and so back again, in our way drinking a great deale of milke, which I drank to take away, my heartburne, wherewith I have of late been mightily troubled, but all the way home I did break abundance of wind behind, which did presage no good but a great deal of cold gotten. So home and supped and away went Michell and his wife, of whom I stole two or three salutes, and so to bed in some pain and in fear of more, which accordingly I met with, for I was in mighty pain all night long of the winde griping of my belly and making of me shit often and vomit too, which is a thing not usual with me, but this I impute to the milke that I drank after so much beer, but the cold, to my washing my feet the night before.

46 Annotations

First Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"I weary, lay down by the canaille, upon the grasse, and slept awhile, and was thinking of a lampoone which hath run in my head this weeke, to make upon the late fight at sea, and the miscarriages there"

How I wish Pepys had recorded the "lampoone"!

***
"walked in great pain, having new shoes on" --

both shoes the same last (no recognizably left and right).

cgs  •  Link

there is a word for this?
"...I did break abundance of wind behind, which did presage no good but a great deal of cold gotten..."

Paul Chapin  •  Link

Sam's sarcasm in the first sentence suggests that he considers the truth of the Christian religion to be self-evident, in no need of proof. Perhaps the sorry silly lecturer has been talking to some freethinkers who have challenged his beliefs.

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"drank a great deale of small beer....[&] all the way home I did break abundance of wind behind"

Is anyone else not surprised by this??

Jesse  •  Link

Re: Is anyone else not surprised?

I was thinking both the small beer and the milk provided ample opportunity for some type of bacterial infection for which the wind was but a prelude for the storm to come.

Mr. Gunning  •  Link

Small beer should have been no problem for our hero but 17th century London milk....hmm no thanks, I'll take my milk pasteurized thanks.

Of course Sam could have been lactose intolerant,symptoms include: diarrhea, intestinal gas, cramps and bloating.

"of whom I stole two or three salutes" from whom? Michell or his wife? is 'salute' a euphemisim?

Mary  •  Link

"all the way home ..... abundance of wind"

What joy, to travel four up in a coach with a flatulent Sam on a warm afternoon.

Todd Bernhardt  •  Link

"is ‘salute’ a euphemisim?"

Yes, Mr. Gunning, if I recall correctly, a "salute" is a kiss.

"What joy, to travel four up in a coach with a flatulent Sam on a warm afternoon."

Mary, I'm hoping that the "behind" in that sentence describes Sam's position in -- or, rather, *outside* -- the coach (i.e., perhaps there was a way to step outside and ride on the back of the coach), rather than a description of the body part from which the wind was emanating (which is pretty much a given)...

Michael Robinson  •  Link

" ... to my washing my feet the night before."

It's the unnecessary bathing that will get you every time!

djc  •  Link

"I did break abundance of wind behind"

In the coach, not behind it, I think; a fart not a belch.

Bradford  •  Link

Milk after beer? Next he'll be washing down cucumbers with buttermilk.

JWB  •  Link

"lampoone"

Wonder which of our dietary & toiletry habits will be laughed @ 3 centuries & a half from now? One suggestion- mega-vitamins.

Richard Whittall  •  Link

This entry is included in most abridged versions, I think due to Mr. Peyps disgusting milk-chasing drinking habits.

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"Small beer should have been no problem for our hero "

It would not have been carbonated?

Mr. Gunning  •  Link

Well, I was just thinking that small beer would be pretty germ free but unpasteurized milk would be risky especially after the milk maid had possibly watered it down with water from who knows where.

Or, like I said he may have been lactose intolerant.

I have a new experiment for Andy.....drink a great deale of small beer followed by a great deale of milke and see if you get an abundance of wind behind :)

cgs  •  Link

Salute: it could have been one Elizabeth's coins that she had hidden away for a rainy day.**

salute, n.1
2. A kiss, by way of salutation. (Cf. SALUTE v. 2e.)
1590 GREENE Never too late (1600) 93 To her hee goes, and after his wonted salute sat downe by her. 1684 EARL OF ROSCOMMON Ess. Transl. Verse 314 There, cold salutes, But here, a Lovers kiss. 1688 R. HOLME Armoury III. 169/2 In Dances,..a Salute, a Kiss, or Kiss of the hand with a bow of the Body.

[a. F. salut masc., of twofold origin: (1) = Sp. saludo, It. saluto, vbl. n. f. Common Rom. (L.) sal{umac}t{amac}re to SALUTE; (2) originally fem., = Sp. salud, Pg. saude, It. salute:{em}L. sal{umac}t-em (nom. sal{umac}s) health, safety, salvation.]

I. An act of saluting.

1. An utterance, gesture, or action of any kind by which one person salutes another; a salutation. Now chiefly used with reference to other than verbal modes of saluting: cf. the following senses.
a1400-50

3. Mil. and Naut. a. A discharge of cannon or small arms, display of flags, a dipping of sails, a cheering of men, manning the yards, etc., as a mark of respect, or as military, naval, or official honour, for a person, nation, event, etc.
A salute is said to be of as many guns as there are volleys fired.
1698 F

** sa-lute, n.2
[a. OF. salut, saluyt, pl. saluts, saluz, salus, a special use of salut salutation, SALUTE n.1]

A gold coin bearing a representation of the salutation of Gabriel to the Virgin Mary; struck by Charles VI of France, and also by Henry V and Henry VI of
England for circulation in their French dominions.
...

580 STOW Chron. 618 King Henry [VI] caused a peece to be stamped called a Salus, worth two and twentie Shillings and Blans of eyghtpence a peece.

1653 URQUHART Rabelais I. xlvi, The summe of three score and two thousand saluts (in English money fifteen thousand and five hundred pounds).

1688 R. HOLME Armoury III. 29/1 The Salute of England, worth six shillings ten pence.

Mary  •  Link

Lactose intolerance.

Remembering that Sam has, on occasion, thoroughly enjoyed and suffered no ill effects from a dish of cream, I had been inclined to discount the idea of lactose intolerance. However, a bit of superficial research indicates that cream made by traditional (rather than modern, dairy/industrial) methods is very low in lactose, so this remains a possible theory.

Sam has also mentioned drinking whey, but this should not present any problem to the lactose-intolerant, as it contains almost no milk solids.

So Mr. Gunning may well have a point worth considering.

cgs  •  Link

a sorry state of affairs ???
OED

sorry
5. Vile, wretched, worthless, mean, poor; of little account or value: a. Of persons, (a) in general character or (b) in some special respect.

silly, a., n., and adv.
3. a. Unlearned, unsophisticated, simple, rustic, ignorant. Obs. or arch.
a1547...

ticea  •  Link

What is "small" beer?

Terry Foreman  •  Link

ticea, click the link to "beer" in the Diary entry and read the annotations there.

anonymous  •  Link

As a milk lover who (sadly) developed lactose intolerance as an adult, the symptoms Sam describes are a classic example of the disorder.

Robert Gertz  •  Link

"...Michell and his wife, of whom I stole two or three salutes, and so to bed in some pain and in fear of more, which accordingly I met with, for I was in mighty pain all night long..."

Heaven...

"Pepys still doesn't get the message, sir." St. Peter notes to a frowning Almighty...What does it take to get this little... to heed?

A. De Araujo  •  Link

"and making of me shit often and vomit too"
methinks most likely bacterial contamination rather than lactose intolerance which does not cause vomiting.

cgs  •  Link

ok: it be just one of the humours....bacteria has to find easy victims so they can enjoy the planet too,

Clement  •  Link

re Paul's, "...Sam’s sarcasm in the first sentence suggests that he considers the truth of the Christian religion to be self-evident, in no need of proof."

I think Sam's judgements on the quality of a sermon have had more the ring of assessing the strength of the argument than comparing the content to his own beliefs. Whether through education or his own inclination to critical thought he seems trained to examine an argument, and he's certainly not been reserved about sharing his judgements with us, fortunately.
I don't recall reading much that would support a view of Sam as an unquestioning defender of Anglican or even broader Christian faith.

Mary  •  Link

the poor, silly sermon.

I tend to agree with Clement's view of Sam's judgment. In addition to having a naturally orderly mind where matters professional are involved, his whole education will have schooled him in the arts of constructing and presenting a convincing argument. Hence his impatience with the 'sorry' and 'silly.'

Australian Susan  •  Link

For those out there with the full version, is there a transcription error in the last sentence, so that one of the "buts" should be a "not"?

Todd Bernhardt  •  Link

Susan, I think both "buts" are correct -- Sam is saying he's suffering from a stomach ailment, as well as a "cold gotten." The former is due to the milk, says he (and I agree), while the latter is due to washing his feet the night before.

Michael Robinson  •  Link

transcription error ...

L&M text:

"... for I was in mighty pain all night long of the winde griping of my belly and making of me shit often, and vomit too -- which is a thing not usual with me. But this I impute to the milke that I drank after so much beer. But the cold, to my washing my feet the night before."

The only difference is in the authorial punctuation.

Second Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"I weary, lay down by the canaille, upon the grasse, and slept awhile, and was thinking of a lampoone which hath run in my head this weeke, to make upon the late fight at sea, and the miscarriages there"

Wait for....Andrew Marvell, Last Instructions to a Painter
London, 4 September 1667
http://www.theotherpages.org/poem…

Terry Foreman  •  Link

LAMPOONE (Fr. Lampon): virulent satire on an individual: 1645, Evelyn

Terry Foreman  •  Link

LAMPOONE (Fr. Lampon): virulent satire on an individual: 1645, Evelyn (Companion Large Glossary)

Terry Foreman  •  Link

LAMPOONE (Fr. Lampon): virulent satire on an individual: 1645, Evelyn
(Companion Large Glossary)

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Remembering that last week Pepys unsuccessfully tried to meet with the Commissioners of Excise, I wonder if that's why he invited John Hunt to lunch? According to the L&M footnote for 12 Mar. 1660/61, by early 1666 John was serving as a sub-commissioner for Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire. It does not say it, but I presume that he was still in the Excise Office. Help on the inside of any organization often helps solve problems.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"... lay down by the canaille, ..."

Charles II had remodeled some small ponds into one long lake, often referred to as a "canal". I presume this was where Pepys took his nap. For someone "having no great mind to be found idling" at Whitehall, sleeping in St. James's Park seems a curious acceptable alternative.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

In 1661 Edmund Waller entitled “A Poem on St. James’s Park as lately improved by his majesty”, which offers an idealized version of the park, a formerly marshy area near the royal palace that had been made a park in the 16th century.

Charles II turned the park into a formal garden, on the model of the French gardens that had impressed him when he was living in exile near Paris.

Where Waller flatters the King for having transformed it into a kind of paradise, around this time the recently welcomed back to Court and appointed as a new Gentleman of the Bedchamber, John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester writes of the seamy underside of the sexual assignations that were apparently also commonplace there for members of all classes in his epic, "A Ramble in St. James's Park".

A Ramble was published in 1680 (the year he died), but who knows when this was circulated in written form to his friends. It is found in "Poems on Several Occasions: By the Right Honourable, The E. of R--" (Antwerpen, 1680?): 14-19. John Wilmot, earl of Rochester, Poems on Several Occasions [1680?] (Scolar Press, 1971): 14-19. British Library X.989/13650

And no, you're going to have to read it elsewhere!
https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/p…

But I wouldn't be napping there.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

I think Pepys was trying to have a lighthearted day off. To me, "So home and supped and away went Michell and his wife, of whom I stole two or three salutes, ..." fits this definition:

1688 R. HOLME Armoury III. 169/2 In Dances,..a Salute, a Kiss, or Kiss of the hand with a bow of the Body.

I imagine him farting all the way home in the coach, and having to make light of it there and then at dinner to the Mitchells. Now he and Elizabeth are standing at the front door saying goodnight ... and he does a mock-gallantry "after you, Alphonse" routine holding Betty Howlett Mitchell's hand and making everyone laugh so he feels forgiven -- all the while squeezing her pretty little hand so she knows that he knows that she knows.

Nice friendly Uncle Pepys.

Louise Hudson  •  Link

Michael Robinson:

" ... to my washing my feet the night before."

It's the unnecessary bathing that will get you every time!

—-
I’ll bet Sam washed his feet once a month whether they needed it or not.

As for pasteurized milk, as we all know, nobody in 1666 could have known what pasteurization was, since it wasn’t to be discovered until nearly 200 years later. But before then plenty if people drank unpasteurized milk throughout their lives and lived to tell about it, just as plenty if people did even after pasteurization was discovered to the present day.

StanB  •  Link

Beer and Milk
Even in today's modern sanitized world you never ever mix Beer with Milk in such a short time you never do that
The two can work together however and quite effectively
If I'm headed out for a big night out and know a lot of alcohol will be consumed you take a drink of milk and food, but it is taken a good couple of hours before you have a beer it puts a lining on your stomach and it works!!!

You never take them together Sam knows this as he even makes mention of it

Given how 17th Century sanitary methods compared to 21st Century methods are poles apart anyway is it no wonder the adverse effects that Sam felt

Not at all

Deep Thought  •  Link

I think staphylococcal food poisoning to be the most likely cause of Pepys’ stomach upset. Rapid onset with a short-lived bout of colic, diarrhoea and vomiting is typical. Unlikely to have been due to the milk, but maybe he had some food to eat with it, not mentioned in his diary entry.

Phil C.  •  Link

I’m surprised that it’s safe enough in London that a well dressed man, with new shoes, can lay down and sleep in the park. Was it a “members-only” park in those days?

Jonathan V  •  Link

I thought of this, too, Phil. I pictured "his boy" standing nearby while he slept.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Good point, Jonathan. I think you solved the dilemma. And no, Phil, St, James's Park was open to all ... read the poem I linked by Rochester to see just how open!

Phil C.  •  Link

Good heavens - I definitely wouldn’t lie down there!

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