Thursday 14 February 1666/67

Up and to the office, where Carcasse comes with his plaistered face, and called himself Sir W. Batten’s martyr, which made W. Batten mad almost, and mighty quarrelling there was. We spent the morning almost wholly upon considering some way of keeping the peace at the Ticket Office; but it is plain that the care of that office is nobody’s work, and that is it that makes it stand in the ill condition it do. At noon home to dinner, and after dinner by coach to my Lord Chancellor’s, and there a meeting: the Duke of York, Duke of Albemarle, and several other Lords of the Commission of Tangier. And there I did present a state of my accounts, and managed them well; and my Lord Chancellor did say, though he was, in other things, in an ill humour, that no man in England was of more method, nor made himself better understood than myself. But going, after the business of money was over, to other businesses, of settling the garrison, he did fling out, and so did the Duke of York, two or three severe words touching my Lord Bellasses: that he would have no Governor come away from thence in less than three years; no, though his lady were with child. “And,” says the Duke of York, “there should be no Governor continue so, longer than three years.” “Nor,” says Lord Arlington, “when our rules are once set, and upon good judgment declared, no Governor should offer to alter them.” — “We must correct the many things that are amiss there; for,” says the Lord Chancellor, “you must think we do hear of more things amisse than we are willing to speak before our friends’ faces.” My Lord Bellasses would not take notice of their reflecting on him, and did wisely, but there were also many reflections on him. Thence away by coach to Sir H. Cholmly and Fitzgerald and Creed, setting down the two latter at the New Exchange. And Sir H. Cholmly and I to the Temple, and there walked in the dark in the walks talking of newes; and he surprises me with the certain newes that the King did last night in Council declare his being in treaty with the Dutch: that they had sent him a very civil letter, declaring that, if nobody but themselves were concerned, they would not dispute the place of treaty, but leave it to his choice; but that, being obliged to satisfy therein a Prince of equal quality with himself, they must except any place in England or Spayne. And so the King hath chosen the Hague, and thither hath chose my Lord Hollis and Harry Coventry to go Embassadors to treat; which is so mean a thing, as all the world will believe, that we do go to beg a peace of them, whatever we pretend. And it seems all our Court are mightily for a peace, taking this to be the time to make one, while the King hath money, that he may save something of what the Parliament hath given him to put him out of debt, so as he may need the help of no more Parliaments, as to the point of money: but our debt is so great, and expence daily so encreased, that I believe little of the money will be saved between this and the making of the peace up. But that which troubles me most is, that we have chosen a son of Secretary Morris, a boy never used to any business, to go Embassador [Secretary] to the Embassy, which shows how, little we are sensible of the weight of the business upon us. God therefore give a good end to it, for I doubt it, and yet do much more doubt the issue of our continuing the war, for we are in no wise fit for it, and yet it troubles me to think what Sir H. Cholmly says, that he believes they will not give us any reparation for what we have suffered by the war, nor put us into any better condition than what we were in before the war, for that will be shamefull for us. Thence parted with him and home through the dark over the ruins by coach, with my sword drawn, to the office, where dispatched some business; and so home to my chamber and to supper and to bed.

This morning come up to my wife’s bedside, I being up dressing myself, little Will Mercer to be her Valentine; and brought her name writ upon blue paper in gold letters, done by himself, very pretty; and we were both well pleased with it. But I am also this year my wife’s Valentine, and it will cost me 5l.; but that I must have laid out if we had not been Valentines. So to bed.

32 Annotations

First Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

The Royal Society today at Arundel House — from the Hooke Folio Online

Feb: 14. 1666. Society mett vpon Thursday.

Dr Cottons Loadstone of 60 pounds mouing a needle at 9 foot Distance & sub 7 foot without its peice. (Sr R moray. of a Loadstone lifting 80 times its own weight).

burning & sticking stone of Dead Sea [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulf… ]
58
The Lamp shewd last meeting was Experimented and Recomended to the care of mr Ch: Howard to obserue the manner of its burning, the description & demonstration of it to be giuen in (Dr wren mentioning that he had a new kind of Lamp Operator to attend & Receiue his Directions) he suggested likewise that a small socket vpon the wick being added would make the wick furnish the oyle accoding to any proportion of time and Regulate the Lamp to be a clock orderd to be tryd

The Expt. of winding vp a Spring by the force of Gunpowder was made by the Curator [ mr. Hooke ], the sucesse was as he Related that about 1 1/2 graine of powder wound vp the spring so the top which was about 4 foot high to be tryd monday againe

(crones chariot) mr. Hoskins. of making old trees fruitfull by inserting young trees planted by)

The curator [ Mr. Hooke ] proposed for next meeting (besides the particulars mentiond aboue touching the addition to the Lamp, and Repeating the expt. of winding vp a Spring by gunpowder)

an expt. improuing Circular pendulums by soe ordering them that they shall not vary their motion by more or Lesse appendant weight which he also vndertooke to demonstrate
[ http://www.ngsir.netfirms.com/eng… ]

(Operator to take out & reconuey into frame a glasse wth a narrow mouth, such a frame of wood as the King had sent a patterne of in a glasse)

http://webapps.qmul.ac.uk/cell/Ho…

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"(Operator to take out & reconuey into frame a glasse wth a narrow mouth, such a frame of wood as the King had sent a patterne of in a glasse)"

Is this a "ship-in-a-bottle" for His Majesty?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impo…

Bradford  •  Link

A stylistic technical note:
“We must correct the many things that are amiss there; for,” says the Lord Chancellor, “you must think we do hear of more things amisse than we are willing to speak before our friends’ faces.”

I can't recall Pepys ever putting the attributive in the middle of a speech like this before, and in a manner very suggestive of a novelist's, with a break for rhetorical emphasis, which would not have occurred there naturally in the Lord Chancellor's speaking. A small point, but of interest.

jeannine  •  Link

"This morning come up to my wife’s bedside, I being up dressing myself, little Will Mercer to be her Valentine; and brought her name writ upon blue paper in gold letters, done by himself, very pretty; and we were both well pleased with it."

Nothing in the world beats one of those lovely hand written Valentine's from a little one. Holidays that lose thier luster as we age still hold such excitement for children. I wish Sam and Elizabeth had been blessed wtih children of their own.

cum salis grano  •  Link

Kings nemesis "...so as he may need the help of no more Parliaments..."
Who does like to beg for monies, Banks???

cum salis grano  •  Link

Send a boy to do a man's Job, so diplomatic
"...that we have chosen a son of Secretary Morris, a boy never used to any business, to go Embassador [Secretary] to the Embassy, which shows how, little we are sensible of the weight of the business upon us. God therefore give a good end to it,..."

cum salis grano  •  Link

Where is 'me' money?
"... keeping the peace at the Ticket Office..."

Same old story, while the Cat laps it up, the mice run amok.

cum salis grano  •  Link

"...I being up dressing myself, little Will Mercer to be her Valentine; and brought her name writ upon blue paper in gold letters, done by himself, very pretty..."

Surely not Papa but baby brother to miss Mercer.?

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"Up and to the office, where Carcasse comes with his plaistered face, and called himself Sir W. Batten’s martyr, which made W. Batten mad almost, and mighty quarrelling there was."

Recall yesterday Pepys "hearing that there was a very great disorder this day at the Ticket Office, to the beating and bruising of the face of Carcasse very much." http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

SPOILER: James Carkesse' japery will, in 1678, prove sufficiently aberrant to send him to Finsbury Madhouse and then to New Bedlam for six months. At Bedlam he wrote poems that were published in a slim volume as *Lucida intervalla* (1679), perhaps the first of a "mad poet" while confined.

"Throughout his ‘Lucid Intervals’, Carkesse maintains that he has been thrown into Bedlam by the contrivance of his enemies:

Satan’s Agents, my false Friends, combine
A Minister to Silence and confine.
I’m forc’d (though Sober) Bedlam to inherit,
When they, who put me here, the Prison merit;
For they’re possest, not I, by th’Evil Spirit…

These enemies seem to include, interestingly, Samuel Pepys, who had caught Carkesse peculating at the Navy Office, and had him dismissed from office:

… Mr. Pepys, who hath my Rival been
For the Duk’es favour, more than years thirteen:
But I excluded, he High and Fortunate…

http://roy25booth.blogspot.com/20…

martinb  •  Link

"his plaistered face..."

i.e., presumably, smothered in some kind of paste or cream, not adhesive plasters (U.S. Band Aid), which came later, nor, of course, Plaster of Paris, the image which absurdly came to my mind when I first read this. But what might this sort of paste have contained?

Mary  •  Link

plaister.

Whatever the paste, cream or unguent consisted of, it was normally applied to a piece of cloth which was then applied to the wound, bruise, sore, ulcer, rash or whatever. Sometimes the remedy was able, of itself, to stick to the skin, sometimes it needed to be secured there (with gum, tape, an item of clothing, even paper).

cape henry  •  Link

"...and called himself Sir W. Batten’s martyr..." Keeping in mind that any wound, no matter how slight, could be a death sentence in those days.The plaister's primary purpose was to act as a barrier to infection and it's likely that successful recipes for such were passed down through families.

Ruben  •  Link

"A small point, but of interest" (Bradford)
“We must correct the many things that are amiss there; for,” says the Lord Chancellor, “you must think we do hear of more things amisse than we are willing to speak before our friends’ faces.”

I am not sure the punctuation we discuss here is in Samuel's writing. For that to be sure it must be checked in the original, and not in the edited copy we read.

Todd Bernhardt annotated on Wed 7 May 2008, citing Michael Robinson ("Another excellent annotation from Michael Robinson related to this subject, found at http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…"
________________

L&M on ‘Punctuation’ etc.,...“The normal marks of punctuation are seldom used in the manuscript, probably because some of them are "used instead as arbitrary symbols for common words: the colon and full-stop are thus employed to represent ‘owe’/’oh’ and ‘eye’/’I’ respectively, etc."

So we need confirmation that what we read is what Pepys wanted to say. It makes sense, but...

cum salis grano  •  Link

" So we need confirmation that what we read is what Pepys wanted to say"

Where is Humpty Dumpty, we need you to pepper and salt the blog.
`When I use [punctiation],' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'
sorry!
orig:

`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'
http://www.sabian.org/Alice/lgcha…
`

Ruben  •  Link

"When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’"

Then it is for Humpty Dumpty to say that! I, like Alice, can only say: "of all the unsatisfactory people I ever met..."


Robert Gertz  •  Link

"...the Dutch: that they had sent him a very civil letter, declaring that, if nobody but themselves were concerned, they would not dispute the place of treaty, but leave it to his choice; but that, being obliged to satisfy therein a Prince of equal quality with himself, they must except any place in England or Spayne. And so the King hath chosen the Hague, and thither hath chose my Lord Hollis and Harry Coventry to go Embassadors to treat; which is so mean a thing, as all the world will believe, that we do go to beg a peace of them, whatever we pretend."

You are begging a peace, Sam. And since your boys started it with the notion it would be a cheap win for the new regime, you best be gettin' on your knees.

Someone in the Dutch foreign office must have had a very good time composing that exquisite note to Charlie.

Bradford  •  Link

I meant not the quotation marks and commas, which may indeed be editorially supplied---are they in L&M?---but putting the attributive in the middle of the sentence, at a break where it would not occur in ordinary speech. That, I don't think, even Wheatley would do.

Bryan M  •  Link

“his plaistered face…”

I'm sure we all recall the sad tale of Jack and Jill and the importance of plaster there:

Up Jack got and home did trot
As fast as he could caper;
And went to bed to mend his head
With vinegar and brown paper.

Jill came in and she did grin
To see his paper plaster;

Ruben  •  Link

Bradford:
Thanks for the clarification.

Robert Gertz  •  Link

"This morning come up to my wife’s bedside, I being up dressing myself, little Will Mercer to be her Valentine; and brought her name writ upon blue paper in gold letters, done by himself, very pretty..."

"That was lovely, Will. By the by, Will...If I ever catch you in my bedroom with my wife on any other day, you are a dead little Will Mercer." Sword pull.

"Oh, Sam'l."

"Happy Valentine's Day, love."

Australian Susan  •  Link

So is Sam saying "little" in disparaging term to refer to Mercer's father? Or does he really mean "little" as in young and that this is a brother of Bess's companion?

cum salis grano  •  Link

Little goes a long way but I doubt that Samuell Esq would use it as a put down for a man older than himself unless Samuell was feeling the weight of his own statue, this was a fun day.

Second Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"We spent the morning almost wholly upon considering some way of keeping the peace at the Ticket Office; but it is plain that the care of that office is nobody’s work, and that is it that makes it stand in the ill condition it do."

L&M note on 8 December 1668 it was put under Brouncker's supervision.

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"Thence parted with him and home through the dark over the ruins by coach, with my sword drawn, to the office, "

Cp. yesterday: "I mightily troubled to get a coach home; and, which is now my common practice, going over the ruins in the night, I rid with my sword drawn in the coach."
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

Terry Foreman  •  Link

" the King did last night in Council declare his being in treaty with the Dutch"

L&M: Charles had proposed The Hague in a letter of 30 January, and appointed Lord Holles and Henry Coventry (brother of Sir William) soon afterwards. Bredas was later substituted for The Hague:
see https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… and https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
Negotiations for a peace treaty between all the belligerents opened there in mid-May and were concluded in August.

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"This morning come up to my wife’s bedside, I being up dressing myself, little Will Mercer to be her Valentine; and brought her name writ upon blue paper in gold letters, done by himself, very pretty"

L&M: Possibly it had been drawn by lot: cf. https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… Will Mercer was 16.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"Up and to the office, where Carcasse comes with his plaistered face, and called himself Sir W. Batten’s martyr, which made W. Batten mad almost, and mighty quarrelling there was. We spent the morning almost wholly upon considering some way of keeping the peace at the Ticket Office; but it is plain that the care of that office is nobody’s work, and that is it that makes it stand in the ill condition it do."

It's clear who Carkasse considered his boss, even if he did persuade a sleepy Pepys to sign his tallys a while back.

from L&M Companion:
According to Pepys' notes in his 'Navy White Book' Batten chose his clerks badly (see Gilsthorpe), and undermined the efficiency of the Navy Office by seconding them to the Ticket Office or Navy Treasury in order to earn extra pay.

Which explains how the Surveyor of the Navy is to blame for a ruckus at the Ticket Office.

Another hint as to Carkasse's relationship with the Battens: on March 6, 1666 Mrs. Carkesse was socializing with the Battens, and at that time toured Pepys’ home.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"But I am also this year my wife’s Valentine, and it will cost me 5l.; but that I must have laid out if we had not been Valentines."

Usually they drew lots to select a Valentine. By drawing his wife, Pepys here acknowledges that a penny saved is a penny earned.
But that's one good thing to report today. He couldn't even manage to be happy about peace negotiations.

James Morgan  •  Link

It seems Sam is slowing down or perhaps more busy; in early years he was out early to make sure he was the first to be someone's Valentine.

Ricadus  •  Link

Don’t write him off... Wait for tomorrow’s shenanigans.

Log in to post an annotation.

If you don't have an account, then register here.