Diary of Samuel Pepys: Selected Passages

By Samuel Pepys

The son of a London tailor, Samuel Pepys (1633–1709) rose to political and social prominence in the latter half of the 17th century. A member of Parliament and the trusted confidant of Charles II, Pepys' (pronounced "peeps") unabashed curiosity in all things and a commitment to recording his innermost thoughts allow readers to experience firsthand accounts of the Great Fire of London, the horrors of the Plague, as well as such details as the exhumation and display of the head of Oliver Cromwell at Westminster Hall, along with suggestive accounts of the author's sexual dalliances. One of the most important historical records of Restoration England, the anthology is highly recommended for all collections.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Sep 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9780486137452

Book preview

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2004, is an unabridged republication of Passages from the Diary of Samuel Pepys, published by Boni and Liveright, New York, 1921. Although written in the seventeenth century, the Diary was not published for the first time until 1825.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pepys, Samuel, 1633–1703.

Diary of Samuel Pepys : selected passages / Samuel Pepys ; edited and with an introduction by Richard Le Gallienne.

p. cm.

Originally published: New York : Boni and Liveright, 1921.

9780486137452

1. Pepys, Samuel, 1633–1703—Diaries. 2. Great Britain.—Social life and customs—17th century—Sources. 3. Great Britain–History—Charles II, 1660–1685—Sources. 4. Cabinet officers—Great Britain—Diaries. I. Le Gallienne, Richard, 1866–1947. II. Title.

DA447.P4A4 2004

941.06’6’092—dc22

2004055104

Manufactured in the United States of America

Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y. 11501

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Acknowledgements

INTRODUCTION

PASSAGES FROM THE DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS (1660)

A CATALOG OF SELECTED DOVER BOOKS IN ALL FIELDS OF INTEREST

Acknowledgment is offered to Franklin P. Adams (F. P. A.) for the reawakening and stimulation of interest in Pepys’ Diary due to his The Diary of Our Own Samuel Pepys.

INTRODUCTION

THE diary of Samuel Pepys is like no other book in the world. To those who love humanity and vivid, unconscious writing, it is infinitely delightful and precious, scarcely to be over-valued. One reason, of course, for this is that its writer had no idea of making a book at all. It is plain beyond doubt that he never dreamed of human eyes falling upon his blessedly frank and naked page. The record was a secret between himself and his own soul, not forgetting his God,—whom, as will be seen, he is far from forgetting, and whom he invokes on many curious occasions. Most diarists have written with an eye to publication, or, at all events, with the fear before them of posthumous inspection by the family. They have, therefore, more or less posed themselves as they would have others see them. Most of us have kept diaries in our youth. They are for most people merely the pool of Narcissus. With that dwindling sense of our own importance, as contrasted say with the planet Jupiter, which comes with maturity, most of us have abandoned them. With the abdication of the ego, they become tiresome to us, and absurdly self-important. Pepys, however, though certainly not an egoist, in our modern sense of the word, never lost interest in himself or his affairs. That may perhaps be regarded as one of the many signs of that robust health of mind and body with which his diary abounds. But it is a childlike, boyish interest. It is not so much himself that interests him, nor merely the things that happen to himself, but the people about him and the things that are happening to everybody, all the time, to his nation as well as to his acquaintance. It is the world in which he lives that is so immensely interesting to him every minute—never was the world so full of a number of things as to Samuel Pepys, and the gusto with which he plunges into his experiences is good to see. The smallest happy trifle delights him. When he gets a new watch, for instance, he exclaims upon his old folly and childishness, because I cannot forbear carrying my watch in my hand in the coach all this afternoon, and seeing what o’clock it is one hundred times. He was then a grown man of thirty-two! Perhaps other grown men of thirty-two have been equally childish—and engagingly human—but, of course, they have kept it to themselves. Without any doubt, too, they have been as human as Pepys in other directions,—and kept that, too, to themselves. In that matter of women, for instance. There have existed, and still continue to exist, and in numbers so far from small as perhaps to constitute a majority of male humanity, men as susceptible to women as Pepys—it is idle to deny it—but these men have kept that amiable weakness, and still continue to keep it, to themselves; just as Pepys thought he was doing, and, for the most part did. Respectable readers, of course, hold up their hands at the frank memoranda of amorous dealings with the numerous fair and frail women, from pretty serving-maids—sweet Nan or Deb or Sue or Doll—to merry wives of loftier station, each one of them flashingly alive before us, often by the mere mention of their names. Those terrible Restoration times! Well, I wonder if the lives of our big business men, and men in public office, as was Pepys, would stand writing any better than his. Indeed, I don’t wonder at all. And as for the madness of woman-worship, it is a question if any previous age has surpassed the present in that particular form of dementia. Pepys was well aware of his weakness, and periodically repentant. Strange slavery that I stand in to beauty, he exclaims, that I value nothing near it! This was à propos a call upon Doll, our pretty ’Change woman, for a pair of gloves trimmed with yellow ribbon, to match the petticoate my wife bought yesterday, which cost me 20s; but she is so pretty, that God forgive me! I could not think it too much. However, musique and women, he admits elsewhere with a sigh, I cannot but give way to, whatever my business is. Unrefined as I suppose some of his amorous encounters are to be regarded, there is no question that they were all inspired by intense and catholic love of beauty. No one can bring the charge against Pepys that he ever kissed a homely woman. He reproaches himself, on one occasion, for wasting good business time on some unattractive ladies. She grows mighty homely and looks old, he says, thence ashamed of myself for this loss of time. Had it only been Lady Castlemaine, the lovely mistress of the King! In Pepys’ disinterested, hopeless worship of her, perforce at a distance, seen in a box with Charles II at the theatre, or walking in Hyde Park, or, as once, in dreams of the night, he attains to something like romance. It is enough for him to fill his eyes with her beauty from afar. It is his own phrase over and over again. Where I glutted myself with looking at her, he says of seeing her once at White Hall. His diary saddens at any hint of her falling out of the King’s favour, and whatever she does is right; for strange it is how for her beauty I am willing to construe all this to the best and to pity her wherein it is to her hurt, though I know well that she is—well, no better than she should be. The sight of her petticoats on a clothesline at White Hall thrills poor Pepys to the marrow. And in the Privy Garden, he says, saw the finest smocks and linen petticoats of my Lady Castlemaine’s, laced with Irish lace at the bottom, that ever I saw, and did me good to look upon them.

This weakness for women, that is pretty women, Pepys never, it has to be acknowledged, overcame. It occasioned no little trouble between him and his spirited young French wife, of whom, for all his marital airs of authority, he stood in marked dread, and for whom, in spite of his philandering—again not so different from his fellows—he had a deep affection. The domestic passages in all their homely, old-world simplicity, are among the most attractive in the diary; their constant quarrels and makings-up, their young fun, jaunts and outings together, their delightful scenes with their long processions of servants—not yet, for many a long year, known as help. The picture thus given of an English middle-class household of those days is far from unattractive, with its greater familiarity and gaiety of intercourse and sense of shared family-life; and no book so well as this diary gives one an idea of what was once meant by Merry England—an England which died with its Merry Monarch, and the accession of his dull and sinister brother. Music and drinking made a great part of the merriment. Of both the dairy is full, and it will be noticed that, when gentlemen got together in a tavern, they were never long without a song—and good singing, too. Pepys, indeed, as will appear, was a learned virtuoso of music and was himself a good performer on several instruments. The day seldom began, however early, or ended, however late, without a song,—in which the pretty mayde, or the rascal boy, were usually able to take part—or without some brief melody on lute or violin. How excellent and charming a practice, and how far removed from the uncivilized tradesman’s world we live in to-day!

As for the drinking: here after a brief, but pretty thorough apprenticeship to Bacchus, Pepys is early seen developing a strength of character, which comes rather as a surprise, though it is an earnest of the success his life was to be, and is the more to his credit when one considers the habits and the temptations of his time. The diary has not gone very far when we find him abandoning those mornings at taverns,—draughts of wine, ale, or other malt and spirituous liquors which for our hardy ancestors took the place of breakfast—and taking the pledge to himself not to indulge for certain stated periods on pain of certain forefeits to the poor box, and such like deprivations, methodically arranged between himself and his own diary-keeping soul. He makes similar vowes against too many theatres, and the buying of too many books; and more feebly on that matter of beauty. For the most part, he keeps these vows—except as regards beauty—manfully; but, on occasion, as the reader will discover, he has ways of evading them with an amusing, quite childish casuistry. Wine, however,—with the exception of occasional friendly or family bouts few and far between—he practically renounces for good—and again and again, we find him recording his satisfaction in being able to do so, to the great good of his health and his business. But thanks be to God, we find him saying, early in January, 1661, when he was not yet twenty-eight, since my leaving drinking of wine, I do find myself much better and do mind my business better and do spend less money and less time lost in idle company. Later, we find him disposing of his well-stocked cellar, and congratulating himself on the monetary equivalent. And it is now time to say that Pepys was by far from being a fool, far indeed from being the mere sot and sensualist which those who only know his diary by hearsay, or by an occasional preposterous quotation, are apt with absurd injustice, to regard him. He was, on the contrary, a serious-minded businessman, and conscientious public-servant, clever, shrewd and painstaking, if not brilliant, and honest as men with his opportunities for presents and perquisites were in those days, far more honest, indeed, than his detractors—just as honest in fact, as business-men ever have been, or ever will be. He was, in addition, a scholar and man of taste, a learned musician, as we have seen, a lover of books and pictures, and so far interested in the growing science of the day as to be made President of the Royal Society. He left a valuable library to his alma mater, Magdalene College, Cambridge, and he died, having succeeded in his life’s aim as is given to few men to do: the admirable aim of making an honoured and comfortable place in the world for himself, his family and his descendants. And this he did mainly with his own hand, his one asset at the beginning being his relationship, as first cousin one remove to Sir Edward Montagu, afterwards Earl of Sandwich, the My Lord of the diary, who, however, proved throughout something more than kin to him, and his constantly helpful friend and patron. It was through Lord Sandwich’s influence that Pepys began his career in the Navy office as Clerk of the Acts, a post equivalent to the post of Permanent Under Secretary at present, and in this capacity as in the post of Secretary to the Admiralty to which he later succeeded, Pepys was brought into frequent contact with the Duke of York (afterwards James II), who was Lord High Admiral, and by whom, as by the King himself, he was frequently complimented on his services to the department. That department had never been in worse case, and evidence is unanimous that it was the energy and industry of Pepys in its reorganization that laid the foundations of the British Navy as we know it to-day. Many other posts, with their responsibilities, honours, and prequisites, were afterward added unto Pepys, all evidence of his efficiency.

Samuel Pepys was born February 23, 1633, and died May 25, 1703. The name Pepys, by the way, has always been pronounced by the family Peeps. His diary extends over but eight and a half years of his life, the first entry being made on January 1, 1660, the last on May 31, 1669. The cause of its discontinuance, as the reader will find by referring to that last solemn entry, was the rapid failure of his sight. Henceforth, he says, his diary will have to be kept by my people in long hand, and must therefore be contented to set down no more than is fit for them and all the world to know—no slight difference for posterity!—adding characteristically, with a last flash of the old spirit, or, if there be anything, which cannot be much, now my amours to Deb. are past, and my eyes hindering me in almost all other pleasures, I must endeavour to keep a margin in my book open, to add, here and there, a note in short-hand with my own hand.

The diary, in six calf-bound volumes, stamped with Pepys’ arms and crest, was deposited, at Pepys’ death, with the other bequeathed books, at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and attracted no particular notice, till at the instance of the Master of the College, an undergraduate, the Rev. John Smith, undertook to decipher it, and beginning his work in the spring of 1819, completed it in April, 1822, having worked on it, he tells us, from twelve to fourteen hours a day, for nearly three years. The system of shorthand used by Pepys was that invented by Thomas Shelton, a copy of whose treatise on what he calls Tachygraphy is in the Pepysian Library. The diary was first published in 1825, edited by Lord Braybrooke, and was reviewed by Sir Walter Scott in The Quarterly Review.

That curious fellow Pepys, was Scott’s way of referring to him, and he certainly had some curious and absurd ideas. With what extreme seriousness he took himself, certainly without humour in regard to his physical existence and well-being, many quaint and outspoken instances which I have had reluctantly to omit from this edition bear amusing witness; but one of the oddest of his whims is mentionable. On March 26, 1658, he had undergone a successful operation for stone in the bladder. Therefore, the reader will find him, on every annual recurrence of that date, giving what he calls his stone-feast, a dinner to his most intimate friends in memory of the occasion, and as a token of gratitude to Almighty God. Also we find him having a case made in which to keep the stone, which he had solemnly preserved. He had his superstitions, too. He wore a hare’s foot as a charm against the colic, and the reader will find some rhyming spells quoted in his text. Certainly Pepys was a curious fellow, and as a human document the Diary is literally unique. For some readers it will have a still greater value for its historical importance. The Restoration period lives in the Diary as in a magic class; and Pepys was either a spectator of, or a partaker in, many picturesque and strange happenings. He was on the ship which brought the King into his own again from Holland. How the joy of the occasion lives again in all its flashing colours and tumultuous happy noise! He went through the Great Fire and the Great Plague, saw London burning, and saw the grass growing in the streets. His accounts of both are masterpieces of description, and his conduct during the Plague is deserving of comment, particularly as he has got (that is, given himself) a certain reputation for cowardice. While the Court, the great doctors, and most of his business associates fled the city, he stuck to his guns, and, almost single-handed, carried on the business of the Navy office. In a letter to one of his colleagues, Sir William Coventry, he writes: The sickness in general thickens round us, and particularly upon our neighborhood. You, sir, took your turn of the sword; I must not, therefore, grudge to take mine of the pestilence. He was the heart-broken witness of the Dutch burning English ships in the Medway. He saw the heads of Cromwell and other regicides exposed on pikes at Temple Bar, and in Westminster Hall, and he often saw and talked with the lazy, kind-hearted, sad and merry King, against whose wish that barbarity was committed.

And did you once see Shelley plain? Well, I think Pepys did better, for he saw Nell Gwynne, time and again, in her tireing room at the King’s Theatre, dressing herself and all unready, very pretty, prettier than I thought, and heard her curse—how Nell cursed—for having so few people in the pit; and the way she did it seemed to poor, infatuated Pepys quite pretty.

Well, Pepys saw these and a thousand other gallant and gay, heart-aching and tragic things, which he enables us to see again, as I said before, as in a magic glass; for how good a writer, how exceptionally vivid and various, he is has never been sufficiently acknowledged. From this reference to his destroying the manuscript of an early college romance of his Love a Cheate, one might gather that he had some sneaking literary ambition, but he never published anything except his valuable Memoirs of the Navy. Robert Louis Stevenson comes nearest to a just appreciation of his literary gift. Stevenson’s essay, indeed, is the fairest estimate of him all round that is known to me. I cannot do better than quote this passage on Pepys’ style: It is generally supposed that as a writer Pepys must rank at the bottom of the scale of merit; but a style which is indefatigably lively, telling and picturesque, through six large volumes of every-day experience, which deals with the whole matter of a life and yet is rarely wearisome, which condescends to the most fastidious particulars and yet sweeps all away in the forth-right current of the narrative, such a style may be ungrammatical, it may be inelegant, it may be one tissue of mistakes, but it cannot be devoid of merit. But this leaves more to be said. Cannot be devoid of merit! That is, after all, a somewhat lame conclusion, and it is no such negative praise that a style so brimming over with the colour and sound of life demands. For giving us the thing seen absolutely as he saw it, and in its own peculiar atmosphere, no professional writer need patronize Samuel Pepys. Read his account of the burning of London, or his gloriously lugubrious account of the death of his brother Tom, with all the death-bed, and funeral horrors and humours. It is quite Shakespearean in its quality. And not infrequently Pepys attains real beauty of writing, particularly in some of his pictures of trips into the country, filled with country comeliness and mirth, the freshness of fields and lanes and the fragrance of wild flowers; for Pepys’ love of beauty was not limited to beauty in women. It is evident that he had a sensitive dreaming eye for beautiful effects in nature too, a sensitiveness not common in his day.

But it is time I left this curious fellow to speak for himself, and I will only add that he is not so inadequately represented in the following selections as might be supposed from the fact that the standard edition of the Diary (Mr. H. B. Wheatley’s) from which they have been made is in eight volumes and here, therefore, is but an eighth of the whole material. Yet the nature of the Diary is such that nothing characteristic is thereby lost, for in the original there is, of necessity, much repetition of the same, or similar happenings, from day to day. Here the reader has, I believe, all the extraordinary happenings, with sufficient of the ordinary happenings of Pepys’ every-day life—not forgetting his almost every-day dalliances—to justify him in feeling that he knows Samuel Pepys and the world he lived in, as thoroughly as though he had read the whole eight volumes—to which, at all events, this volume cannot but prove a seductive invitation.

RICHARD LE GALLIENNE.

PASSAGES FROM THE DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS (1660)

BLESSED be God, at the end of the last year I was in very good health, without any sense of my old pain, but upon taking of cold. I lived in Axe Yard, having my wife, and servant Jane, and no more in family than us three. My wife . . . gave me hopes of her being with child, but on the last day of the year . . . [the hope was belied].

The condition of the State was thus; viz. the Rump, after being disturbed by my Lord Lambert, was lately returned to sit again. The officers of the Army all forced to yield. Lawson lies still in the river, and Monk is with his army in Scotland. Only my Lord Lambert is not yet come into the Parliament, nor is it expected that he will without being forced to it. The new Common Council of the City do speak very high; and had sent to Monk their sword-bearer, to acquaint him with their desires for a free and full Parliament, which is at present the desires, and the hopes, and expectation of all. Twenty-two of the old secluded members having been at the House-door the last week to demand entrance, but it was denied them; and it is believed that [neither] they nor the people will be satisfied till the House be filled. My own private condition very handsome, and esteemed rich, but indeed very poor; besides my goods of my house, and my office, which at present is somewhat uncertain. Mr. Downing master of my office.

Jan. 1st (Lord’s day). This morning (we living lately in the garret,) I rose, put on my suit with great skirts, having not lately worn any other clothes but them. Went to Mr. Gunning’s chapel at Exeter House, where he made a very good sermon upon these words:—That in the fulness of time God sent his Son, made of a woman, &c.; showing, that, by made under the law, is meant his circumcision, which is solemnized this day. Dined at home in the garret, where my wife dressed the remains of a turkey, and in the doing of it she burned her hand. I staid at home all the afternoon, looking over my accounts.

2nd. In the morning before I went forth old East brought me a dozen of bottles of sack, and I gave him a shilling for his pains. Then I went to Mr. Sheply, who was drawing of sack in the wine cellar to send to other places as a gift from my Lord, and told me that my Lord had given him order to give me the dozen of bottles. Thence I went to the Temple to speak with Mr. Calthropp about the £60 due to my Lord, but missed of him, he being abroad.

4th. Early came Mr. Vanly to me for his half-year’s rent, which I had not in the house, but took his man to the office and there paid him. Then I went down into the Hall and to Will’s, where Hawley brought a piece of his Cheshire cheese, and we were merry with it. Then into the Hall again, where I met with the Clerk and Quarter Master of my Lord’s troop, and took them to the Swan and gave them their morning’s draft, they being just come to town. I went to Will’s again, where I found them still at cards, and Spicer had won 14s. of Shaw and Vines. Then I spent a little time with G. Vines and Maylard at Vines’s at our viols. So home, and from thence to Mr. Hunt’s, and sat with them and Mr. Hawley at cards till ten at night, and was much made of by them. Home and so to bed, but much troubled with my nose, which was much swelled.

5th. I went to my office. Then I went home, and after writing a letter to my Lord and told him the news that Monk and Fairfax were commanded up to town, and that the Prince’s lodgings were to be provided for Monk at Whitehall. Then my wife and I, it being a great frost, went to Mrs. Jem’s, in expectation to eat a sack-posset, but Mr. Edward not coming it was put off.

15th. Having been exceedingly disturbed in the night with the barking of a dog of one of our neighbors that I could not sleep for an hour or two, I slept late, and then in the morning took physic, and so staid within all day. At noon my brother John came to me, and I corrected as well as I could his Greek speech to say the Apposition, though I believe he himself was as well able to do it as myself.

16th. At noon, Harry Ethall came to me and went along with Mr. Maylard by coach as far as Salsbury Court, and there we set him down, and we went to the Clerks, where we came a little too late, but in a closet we had a very good dinner by Mr. Pinkney’s courtesy, and after dinner we had pretty good singing, and one, Hazard, sung alone after the old fashion, which was very much cried up, but I did not like it. Thence we went to the Green Dragon, on Lambeth Hill, both the Mr. Pinkney’s, Smith, Harrison, Morrice, that sang the bass, Sheply and I, and there we sang of all sorts of things, and I ventured with good success upon things at first sight, and after that I played on my flageolet, and staid there till nine o’clock, very merry and drawn on with one song after another till it came to be so late. After that Sheply, Harrison and myself, we went towards Westminster on foot, and at the Golden Lion, near Charing Cross we went in and drank a pint of wine, and so parted, and thence home, where I found my wife and maid a-washing. I staid up till the bell-man came by with his bell just under my window as I was writing of this very line, and cried, Past one of the clock, and a cold, frosty, windy morning. I then went to bed, and left my wife and the maid a-washing still.

18th. All the world is at a loss to think what Monk will do: the City saying that he will be for them, and the Parliament saying he will be for them.

26th. Home from my office to my Lord’s lodgings where my wife had got ready a very fine dinner—viz. a dish of marrow bones; a leg of mutton; a loin of veal; a dish of fowl, three pullets, and two dozen of larks all in a dish; a great tart, a neat’s tongue, a dish of anchovies; a dish of prawns and cheese.

30th. This morning, before I was up, I fell a-singing of my song, Great, good, and just, &c., and put myself thereby in mind that this was the fatal day, now ten years since, his Majesty died.

Feb. 3rd. Drank my morning draft at Harper’s, and was told there that the soldiers were all quiet upon promise of pay. Thence to St. James’s Park, and walked there to my place for my flageolet and then played a little, it being a most pleasant morning and sunshine. Went walking all over White Hall, whither General Monk was newly come, and we saw all his forces march by in very good plight and stout officers. Thence to my house where we dined, but with a great deal of patience, for the mutton came in raw, and so we were fain to stay the stewing of it. In the meantime we sat studying a Posy for a ring for her which she is to have at Roger Pepys his wedding. The town and guards are already full of Monk’s soldiers.

4th. In the morning at my lute an hour, and so to my office.

7th. To the Hall, where in the Palace I saw Monk’s soldiers abuse Billing and all the Quakers, that were at a meeting-place there, and indeed the soldiers did use them very roughly and were to blame.

8th. A little practice on my flageolet, and afterwards walking in my yard to see my stock of pigeons, which begin now with the spring to breed very fast.

9th. I called at Mr. Harper’s, who told me how Monk had this day clapt up many of the Common-council, and that the Parliament had voted that he should pull down their gates and portcullisses, their posts and their chains, which he do intend to do, and do lie in the City all night. I went home and got some allum to my mouth, where I have the beginnings of a cancer, and had also a plaster to my boil underneath my chin.

11th. This morning I lay long abed, and then to my office, where I read all the morning my Spanish book of Rome. I went then down into the Hall, where I met with Mr. Chetwind, who had not dined no more than myself, and so we went toward London, in our way calling at two or three shops, but could have no dinner. At last, within Temple Bar, we found a pullet ready roasted, and there we dined. Then to his office, where I sat in his study singing, while he was with his man (Mr. Howell’s son) looking after his business. Thence we took coach for the City to Guildhall, where the Hall was full of people expecting Monk and Lord Mayor to come thither, and all very joyful. Here we stayed a great while, and at last meeting with a friend of his we went to the 3 Tun tavern and drank half a pint of wine, and not liking the wine we went to an alehouse, where we met with company of this third man’s acquaintance, and there we drank a little. Hence I went alone to Guildhall to see whether Monk was come again or no, and met with him coming out of the chamber where he had been with the Mayor and Aldermen, but such a shout I never heard in all my life, crying out, God bless your Excellence. And indeed I saw many people give the soldiers drink and money, and all along in the streets cried, God bless them! and extraordinary good words. In Cheapside there was a great many bonfires, and Bow bells and all the bells in all the churches as we went home were a-ringing. Hence we went homewards, it being about ten o’clock. But the common joy was every where to be seen! The number of bonfires, there being fourteen between St. Dunstan’s and Temple Bar, and at Strand Bridge I could at one view tell thirty-one fires. In King-street seven or eight; and all along burning, and roasting, and drinking for rumps. There being rumps tied upon sticks and carried up and down. The butchers at the May Pole in the Strand rang a peal with their knives when they were going to sacrifice their rump. On Ludgate Hill there was one turning of the spit that had a rump tied upon it, and another basting of it. Indeed it was past imagination, both the greatness and the suddenness of it. At one end of the street you would think there was a whole lane of fire, and so hot that we were fain to keep still on the further side merely for heat.

12th. So to bed, where my wife and I had some high words upon my telling her that I would fling the dog which her brother gave her out of window if he [dirtied] the house any more.

14th. Called out in the morning by Mr. Moore, whose voice my wife hearing in my dressing-chamber with me, got herself ready, and came down and challenged him for her valentine, this being the day.

16th. In the morning at my lute. Then came Shaw and Hawly, and I gave them their morning draft at my house. So to my office, where I wrote by the carrier to my Lord and sealed my letter at Will’s, and gave it old East to carry it to the carrier’s, and to take up a box of china oranges and two little barrels of scallops at my house, which Captain Cuttance sent to me for my Lord.

18th. A great while at my vial and voice, learning to sing Fly boy, fly boy, without book. So to my office, where little to do.

21st. In the morning going out I saw many soldiers going toward Westminster, and was told that they were going to admit the secluded members again. So I to Westminster Hall, and in Chancery Row I saw about twenty of them who had been at White Hall with General Monk, who came hither this morning, and made a speech to them, and recommended to them a Commonwealth, and against Charles Stuart. They came to the House and went in one after another, and at last the Speaker came. Mr. Prin came with an old basket hilt sword on, and had a great many shouts upon his going into the Hall. They sat till noon, and at their coming out Mr. Crew saw me, and bid me come to his house, which I did, and he would have me dine with him, which I did; and he very joyful told me that the House had made General Monk, General of all the Forces in England, Scotland, and Ireland; and that upon Monk’s desire, for the service that Lawson had lately done in pulling down the Committee of Safety, he had the command of the Sea for the time being. He advised me to send for my Lord forthwith, and told me that there is no question that, if he will, he may now be employed again; and that the House do intend to do nothing more than to issue writs, and to settle a foundation for a free Parliament. Here out of the window it was a most pleasant sight to see the City from one end to the other with a glory about it, so high was the light of the bonfires, and so thick round the City, and the bells rang everywhere.

23rd. Thursday, my birthday, now twenty-seven years. A pretty fair morning, I rose and after writing a while in my study I went forth.

27th. So we went to our Inn, and after eating of something, and kissed the daughter of the house, she being very pretty, we took leave, and so that night, the road pretty good, but the weather rainy to Ep[p]ing, where we sat and played a game of cards, and after supper, and some merry talk with a plain bold maid of the house, we went to bed.

March 2nd. Great is the talk of a single person, and that it would now be Charles, George, or Richard again. For the last of which, my Lord St. John is said to speak high. Great also is the dispute now in the House, in whose name the writs shall run for the next Parliament; and it is said that Mr. Prin, in open House, said, In King Charles’s.

3rd. To Westminster Hall, where I found that my Lord was last night voted one of the Generals at Sea, and Monk the other. Up to my office, but did nothing. At noon home to dinner to a sheep’s head.

4th. Lord’s day. Before I went to church I sang Orpheus’ Hymn to my viall. After that to Mr. Gunning’s, an excellent sermon upon charity. Then to my mother to dinner, where my wife and the maid were come. Then to my mother again, and after supper she and I

Reviews for Diary of Samuel Pepys

[vivienner_3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Pepys (1633-1703) kept a private diary for the years 1660-69 that has become one of the most important sources of information about the period. He did not intend for it to be published, but by preserving it, must have believed it would be of some interest. He stopped keeping the diary when he believed his eyesight was deteriorating to the point where he might go blind.This volume of selections is, like the entire diary, not only intensely interesting but highly entertaining. He recorded some of the most important events of the Restoration period all blended with details of his personal life. He used a form of shorthand and many of the "naughty" bits are in French, thought to prevent his wife from sharing. The straightforward frankness of the text is very appealing whether he is describing momentous national events or intimate incidents. His account of the the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London is unmatched.This gets the same five-star rating that I gave to the full version of the diary read many years ago.

[alexthehunn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Pepys kept detailed accounts of his life - from the high court governmental circles to which he had access by virtue of his position to the low and common husband at home with his wife and their servant. His high, important connections make interesting reading as glimpses into the human and personal workings of history. But for me, the most interesting parts are the everyday details, the minutiae of daily life. The technology and specific tools change, but human nature - its needs, wants, hopes, and dreams are persistent.