Monday 25 May 1668
Waked betimes, and lay long … [hazendo doz vezes con mi moher con grando pleasure to me and ella; – L&M] and there fell to talking, and by and by rose, it being the first fair day, and yet not quite fair, that we have had some time, and so up, and to walk with my father again in the garden, consulting what to do with him and this house when Pall and her husband go away; and I think it will be to let it, and he go live with her, though I am against letting the house for any long time, because of having it to retire to, ourselves. So I do intend to think more of it before I resolve. By and by comes Mr. Cooke to see me and so spent the morning, and he gone by and by at noon to dinner, where Mr. Shepley come and we merry, all being in good humour between my wife and her people about her, and after dinner took horse, I promising to fetch her away about fourteen days hence, and so calling all of us, we men on horseback, and the women and my father, at Goody Gorum’s, and there in a frolic drinking I took leave, there going with me and my boy, my two brothers, and one Browne, whom they call in mirth Colonell, for our guide, and also Mr. Shepley, to the end of Huntingdon, and another gentleman who accidentally come thither, one Mr. Castle; and I made them drink at the Chequers, where I observed the same tapster, Tom, that was there when I was a little boy and so we, at the end of the town, took leave of Shepley and the other gentleman, and so we away and got well to Cambridge, about seven to the Rose, the waters not being now so high as before. And here ’lighting, I took my boy and two brothers, and walked to Magdalene College: and there into the butterys, as a stranger, and there drank my bellyfull of their beer, which pleased me, as the best I ever drank: and hear by the butler’s man, who was son to Goody Mulliner over against the College, that we used to buy stewed prunes of, concerning the College and persons in it; and find very few, only Mr. Hollins and Pechell, I think, that were of my time. But I was mightily pleased to come in this condition to see and ask, and thence, giving the fellow something, away walked to Chesterton, to see our old walk, and there into the Church, the bells ringing, and saw the place I used to sit in, and so to the ferry, and ferried over to the other side, and walked with great pleasure, the river being mighty high by Barnewell Abbey: and so by Jesus College to the town, and so to our quarters, and to supper, and then to bed, being very weary and sleepy and mightily pleased with this night’s walk.
35 Annotations
First Reading
Terry Foreman • Link
The ellipsis above (at the top) omits shameless love L&M provide....
"Waked betimes, and lay long hazendo doz con mi moher con grande pleasure to me and ella; and there fell to talking, and by and by rose, it being the first fair day
Terry Foreman • Link
Ormond to Captain George Mathew
Written from: Moor Park - 25 May 1668
Affairs of estate, and of personal and family finance. Necessity of some remittances for the redemption of plate, and for the cancelling of certain outstanding bonds. ...
http://www.rsl.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwm…
***
Thought I'd post this for those interested in how assets were managed by nobles.
mary k mcintyre • Link
Can we get that ellipsis en Anglais, por favor?
Robert Gertz • Link
Well damned about time, Sam. Geesh, reunion after plague and fire apparently didn't do it (unless you were strangely discreet) but a trip to Brampton gets Bess into ... land.
***
"...all being in good humour between my wife and her people about her..." Now that is cause for astonishment. After all this time in Brampton one might have expected Bess to be sitting alone amongst a pile of corpses. She must have brought some decent wedding gifts for Pall.
***
"I promising to fetch her away about fourteen days hence..." The Spring of Sam continues...What is Bess thinking? Or up to?
Paul Chapin • Link
Mary, not sure about "doz", but in the context the meaning is clear: "lay long making love with my wife with great pleasure to me and her"
ONeville • Link
Dos, in Spanish, means, of course, two. So Sam could mean twice. Just to show that he has really missed her
Carl in Boston • Link
the waters not being now so high as before.
The ground water in my back yard is about a foot below the surface, according to my test borings. Must be the waters of May.
and find very few, only Mr. Hollins and Pechell, I think, that were of my time
MIT is having its 150th anniversary, and I'm going to go. Very few professors left of my time, and those remaining are snarling curmudgeons. Like Pepys, I'll poke and pry on my own. I live nearby and have my own tour of the old college places in mind.
classicist • Link
Wow, Sam's energetic! It was only yesterday that he got up in the small hours to ride to Brampton (it must have taken several hours and been a hard ride in the flood) after which he put in a full day with family and business. I'd want a day off after that, but he is up 'betimes' (and makes love twice, yes) before riding back with a whole mob of friends and hangers-on, partying at the Chequers in Huntingdon before visiting his old college in Cambridge. After all that, with a hard day's ride ahead, would you feel like walking to Chesterton and back just for fun? (It takes about an hour, using the bridge.)
mary k mcintyre • Link
"moher" = odd to refer to one's wife as 'mother' (would freak me out if husband did so).
Also, per yesterday's entry I thought that she was having some painful lady troubles, not inclining one toward lovemaking...
nix • Link
"Mujer" (pronounced Samuel's transliteration, "moher") is the Spanish word for "woman," not mother ("madre").
Dos veces? Que hombre, Samuel!
Mary • Link
Elizabeth's intimate problems seem to have abated in recent times - we haven't heard anything further of them for quite a while now.
Geoff Hallett • Link
I always imagine Sam as a smallish portly fellow, do we know his height?
Terry Foreman • Link
"After all that, with a hard day’s ride ahead, would you feel like walking to Chesterton and back just for fun? " -- with a "bellyfull" of beer?!
Michael L • Link
"I always imagine Sam as a smallish portly fellow"
Smallish, perhaps, but I seriously doubt he's portly, given the miles of walking around London he apparently does each day.
Paul Chapin • Link
Nix is right that Spanish "mujer" means 'woman', but it also means 'wife', which is how Sam is using it here.
I know that "dos" means 'two', but that doesn't feel to me like the right gloss in this passage. Do L&M show the same "doz" here?
Mary • Link
Yes, Paul, L&M concur in "doz".
language hat • Link
"I know that “dos” means ‘two’, but that doesn’t feel to me like the right gloss in this passage."
I agree, and I don't think we can know what he intended here.
Mary • Link
L&M reads "doz vezes" = modern Spanish "dos veces"
Meaning = "two times" i.e. twice.
I don't see where the problem lies.
Paul Chapin • Link
Thanks, Mary. Adding the word "vezes", absent from our text, does make the passage clear (and Sam's amatory prowess impressive).
language hat • Link
I add my thanks, and my respect for Sam's prowess!
Terry Foreman • Link
My apologies to the vezes and SP, their performer and his admirers.
Second Reading
Terry Foreman • Link
"so up, and to walk with my father again in the garden, consulting what to do with him and this house when Pall and her husband go away; and I think it will be to let it, and he go live with her."
L&M: It appears that he did in fact go to live with them.
San Diego Sarah • Link
May 24. 1668
Deal.
Rich. Watts to [Williamson].
Two ships from Calais report that peace was yesterday proclaimed there between Spain and France, and that the castle and town guns were fired after the proclamation.
[S.P. Dom., Car. II. 240, No. 122.]
@@@
'Charles II: May 1668', in Calendar of State Papers Domestic: Charles II, 1667-8, ed. Mary Anne Everett Green (London, 1893), pp. 369-418. British History Online
https://www.british-history.ac.uk…
JB • Link
Just want to say I really enjoyed the whole "vezes" mystery from a decade past!
San Diego Sarah • Link
Furthermore, JB, Pepys rarely rides. He's 35, and he must be feeling those rarely-used muscles. Doz vezes is therefore a worthy boast. He doesn't have any Advil.
Stephane Chenard • Link
How cute that Sam considers Spanish the language of love... and how puzzling that, for as long as the Diary reveals, he writes "moher" and not "mujer". Not being ourselves so fluent in 17th century Spanish, we ascertained from (https://blogs.bl.uk/european/2013…) and a couple of other studies of Sam's hispanophilia, that moher was not the 1668 correct orthography of "mujer". Yes, yes, we know all about orthography not being standardized before the 19th century, but the experts say only Sam wrote "moher", and a search of Don Quixote in the original text (at http://cervantes.tamu.edu/auto/dq…) indicates that Cervantes consistently wrote "muger". Not moher. So there.
But "moher" is how it was pronounced. So this helps address the more interesting question (to us) or where Sam learned Spanish. At college? It seems slightly unlikely that it was on the curriculum (though other men-of-the-world, such as Roger L'Estrange, also read and likely spoke Spanish), and the moher/mujer thing inclines us to think he learned orally, from a Spaniard, or at least a Spanish locutor.
How romantic if it was from Francisco López de Zúñiga, Marquis of Baides, whom Sam reportedly met in 1656 after the marquis had been captured by England in a sea-battle, and ended up rooming at Sandwich's. Annotator Michael Robinson had already pointed to him as a possible tutor to Sam (in 2008, at https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…) quoting from a 1943 bio of Sam by Arthur Bryant ("The Man in the Making"). Our bookseller Mr. Google let us have a sneak peek at volume 2 (at https://books.google.fr/books?id=…, search for "Peru"), which does mention the young marquis, as "the most troublesome prize of all" - unfortunately only a sneak peek, at what seems to have been a great story of power and downfall in the colonies.
Stephane Chenard • Link
Another source, "Samuel Pepys and Spain", a 1979 article by Edward M. Wilson (paywalled at www.jstor.org/stable/41154576, but maybe available elsewhere), references the marquis of Baides, with a tantalizing description of how he was born "neere the mountains of Potisi" - the famous silver mines of Potosi, now in Bolivia, which would square with Bryant's description of his being the son of the viceroy of Peru. Wilson sources this to Evelyn's diary, which, on February 10, 1657, does contain Bryant's quote but applies it, not explicitly to any marquis of Baides but to the unnamed "governor of Havannah, a brave, sober, valiant Spanish gentleman, taken by Captain Young, of Deptford". The marquis must have been the 3rd son of the governor of Chile listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fra…, and, Evelyn says, "had never been in Europe before".
All the same, if that's the man who got Sam into Spain, what stories he must have had to tell, to a curious young man (of probably about the same age) like Sam. No wonder he convinced him to assemble the fantastic collection of Spanish plays he did - and did read, though somehow without picking up the right orthography for "mujer".
And what a fantastic connection Sam could have developed, should he ever need to use it, to the Viceroyalty of Peru and the giant mine of quicksilver just now being developed there, a couple weeks' ride north of Potosi...
Stephane Chenard • Link
Mynheer,
Following always your new Instructions, and taking advantage of the Secrecy afforded by the darkness of the Hour at which Mr. Pepys had chosen to leave Cambridge, I followed him to his country estate in Brampton.
There I chanced, as all were making merry, to inspect Mr. Pepys' lodgings, and made the Discoverie of some papers he was but recently writing in the Spanish language. I did not seize the papers but made a Faithfull copy so they can be translated. Methink this revealls still more about Mr. Pepys than had met the eye, that he may already be far advanced into the Business of Quicksilver, but with Spaine our Rivall in this and so many other matters and mayhap as their Agent.
I found Mr. Pepys again at the Inn they call Goodee Gorram and, having conceal'd my features in a postiche beard and a broad hat, rode with their party as far as Huntingdon, passing myself for a local gentleman. And there I had to leave them, for I was powerless to attempt more and feared being unmasked.
I am, Mynheer, your most loyal and faithfull servant ever,
Clancularius
Cambridge, May 25th, 1668, the 6th hour of evening
[Special archive of the Dutch secret service, Den Haag, 5i778-k, Very Secret. With margin note possibly by Admiral De Ruyter: "Send this cretin to Suriname"].
Victoria • Link
That Arthur Bryant para in full (Arthur Bryant, the Man in the Making, p46 in my 1952 edition):
"The most troublesome prize of all was the young Marquis de Baides, son of the fallen Viceroy of Peru. During the fight off Cadiz, his father, mother and sister had all been slain and his entire fortune captured, and Montagu's kindly and sympathetic heart had been touched by his plight. Till the boy could be ransomed, he left him in the charge of the Pickerings and his servant Pepys, bidding them apply some of the captured furniture to provide him a suitable bedchamber. It was possibly in the discharge of these charitable duties that Pepys first acquired that acquaintance with Spanish which he was later to find so useful in the formation of his library and the recording of his amours. Montagu had been content to converse with the young marquis in Latin; it is in keeping with what we know of Pepys' eager love for learning that he should have wished to improve the occasion by making himself master of a new language."
Stephane Chenard • Link
Thank you Victoria, the additional color and detail this provides is much, much appreciated.
The sole remaining dissonance is Evelyn's reference to the marquis as "governor of Havannah". It seems Evelyn was confused, for Francisco López de Zúñiga does not appear anywhere in the list of colonial governors of Cuba (at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lis…) He may have mentioned Havana as a stopover the family did make on their way to (they thought) Spain.
Instead he pretty much disappears from history, the 5th marqués de Baides, his name remembered mainly as the man who perhaps taught Sam his Spanish. What happened to him after his ransom was paid? He shows up in the comprehensive family tree maintained at https://gw.geneanet.org as marrying a certain María Dávila y Córdoba, and having a daughter who will be made marquise de Arcícollar, but, tantalizingly, his dates of birth and death are unrecorded in any source we could find. The Spanish-language Wiki bio of López de Zúñiga senior (https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fra…) notes that Francisco's brother José, who had also been captured by England (or rather, by "piratas ingleses", as the notice puts it) returned to Chile as a Jesuit missionary and lived with the Indians, to whom governor López de Zúñiga seems to have been more sympathetic than most.
Francisco, according to Spain's Royal Academy of History (at http://dbe.rah.es/biografias/2343…) didn't tarry either in this Europe "where he had never been before", and in 1670 became el "alcalde mayor [the big boss] de Zapotitlán", a somewhat obscure posting in Mexico which doesn't seem to have left much traces in 17th century history either, but may have had more appeal than a boring early retirement in some Spanish castle, and was actually more peaceful than Spain itself at the time.
With so many blank spots and ellipses, how can the imagination not be exercised?
Stephane Chenard • Link
Early 1658. Two young men have a chat in the gardens of House Montagu, watching servants pile coaches with baggage.
"So, Samuel, what have you resolved? Are you coming with me to Madrid tomorrow, and on to America?"
"I fear not, Francisco. Not now, at least".
"Que? But, Samuel, think again of it – the adventure, the fortune I will rebuild, the many-colored birds, the endless forests. Is that not enough for your philosophy? Between your wits, my valor, my reach as a marqués, my brother's connections with the caciques, we would carve our own kingdom! You wouldn't be the first tailor's son to make it big out there, but here? What can you ever be? Secretary of the Navy?" He laughs at the notion, how droll, where did that even come from? "Out there, Samuel. What else is there to do in 1658, but go to America? What, is it your wife?"
"No, Bess rather fancies herself Queen of the Mapuches, too."
"So what? What future have you here with those Puritans? Your Oliver makes the English winter feel even colder to me than it is. In Peru we worship the Sun!"
"Possibly quite a future, under my lord Montagu, but to Spain he would let me go, I think. No Francisco, it's more trivial. It's my stone. It's getting bad. I have to get it cut soon. There's no way I can spend weeks on a ship."
john • Link
"But I was mightily pleased to come in this condition to see and ask [...]"
He has done well after going down.
San Diego Sarah • Link
The 1656 Battle of Cadiz at
http://bcw-project.org/military/a…
gives a more comprehensive over-view, indicating Sandwich was one of the two Admirals at Sea, with Blake, but he does not appear to have been involved in the fighting.
He was the admiral to escort what was left of the captured treasure home ... and half of it "disappeared" on the way. Hmmmmm ... early larceny success led to later larceny apparently.
Something had to pay for Hinchingbrooke.
San Diego Sarah • Link
I just received a nice email from the curator of Oliver Cromwell's Museum in Huntingdon:
"This is just a quick mail to remind you that in just over a week’s time we start another series of online lectures, this time themed around subjects relating to the Civil Wars. These are:
Wednesday 9 June at 7.30pm - Stuart Orme on 'Making a Soldier: Cromwell's First Campaign'
Wednesday 16 June at 7.30pm - David Flintham on 'Rediscovering London's Lost Civil War Defences'
Wednesday 23 June at 7.30pm - Keith Dowen on 'With Swords by their Sides: Arms and Armour of the Civil Wars'
Wednesday 30 June at 7.30pm - Prof Steve Murdoch on 'History v. Heritage: the Mythology of Marston Moor'
You can find out more information on each of the above talks by following the links, where you can also purchase individual tickets for each talk. You can also get discounted season tickets for the whole series by visiting: https://www.cromwellmuseum.org/ev… .
As per the last series talks will be held online via Zoom, with the talks recorded for ticket holders to be able to view afterwards via a private section of our YouTube Channel.
The Museum has now reopened to the public, so if you are able to come and see us in person too, we’d love to see you!
Otherwise, please stay safe and well in these ‘distracted times’,
Best regards,
Stuart
Stuart Orme
Curator
"The Cromwell Museum, Huntingdon
Tel: (01480) 410389
sorme@cromwellmuseum.com
www.cromwellmuseum.org
Facebook: @thecromwellmuseum
Twitter: @museumcromwell
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Cromwel…"
The ones I have ZOOM attended were professional and interesting. But cheap, not free.
Third Reading
jimmigee • Link
"odd to refer to one's wife as 'mother' (would freak me out if husband did so"
The recent V.P. in the USA habitually referred to his wife as "Mother."