Thursday 12 September 1661

Annotations

• N Pedro. on Sun 12 Sep 2004, 11:02pm

• N dirk on Sun 12 Sep 2004, 11:19pm

  “hear that Sir W. Pen do take our jest of the tankard very ill, which I am sorry for”

  What did he expect?
  

• N Ruben on Mon 13 Sep 2004, 05:22am

  looking for ” the King

• N George on Mon 13 Sep 2004, 08:12am

  ” I saw the King

• N andy on Mon 13 Sep 2004, 10:01am

  “at the little blind alehouse …a place I am ashamed to be seen to go into”

  Remember 31 August when he met the two whores at another alehouse:

  “so that I took no pleasure but a great deal of trouble in being there and getting from thence for fear of being seen”.

  Sam is evidently getting concerned about his public image!

  Incidentally, what does “blind” mean in describing an alehouse - no windows?
  

• N andy on Mon 13 Sep 2004, 10:03am

  hear that Sir W. Pen do take our jest of the tankard very ill

  Yes I agree with Dirk, a great joke if you’re in it, but not if you’re the victim of it, as S. has just found out. Boys will be boys.

• N Ruben on Mon 13 Sep 2004, 11:27am

  pleasure-boat
  I am sorry I did not explain myself better.
  The idea was to look at the small boats around the sea going vessels.
  The interpretation of the painting explains that the scene is from the River Thames near Coldharbour Point.

• N Lawrence on Mon 13 Sep 2004, 12:51pm

  “Blind” per L&M Companion, “ii. 192 out of the way, private, obscure: cf.”blind alley”

• N Glyn on Mon 13 Sep 2004, 01:19pm

  Hmm, on the one hand we have Sir William Penn, a fighting sailor who joined the navy when but a boy and has either killed people himself in swordfights or seen them get killed; on the other hand we have Pepys, who can be timid when in physical danger. I know who I’d bet on.

  It may be unfair, but I think William Batten will get away with it even though he “stole” the tankard. It’s the two or more letters that Pepys wrote, abusing Penn and no doubt sending him on fools errands all over the town, that caused the real offence since Penn can take them out of the drawer and read them again and again.

  If this had been 17th-century Japan, no doubt Pepys would have had to commit hari-kiri, but as it is I’m very surprised that Penn didn’t get him sacked.

  Better do some serious grovelling Sam!

• N Mark Ynys-Mon on Mon 13 Sep 2004, 01:39pm

  for the Pleasure Boat a good indication of what sort of thing was involved can be seen in Canaletto’s paintings of the Thames and Livery Barges from 70 years later.

  See http://tinyurl.com/6a2r7 and especially the large gold barges in the centre.

• N BradW on Mon 13 Sep 2004, 05:35pm

  saw the King

• N Mary on Mon 13 Sep 2004, 06:01pm

  the King’s new pleasure boat.

  This (per L&M footnote) was the ‘Bezan’, a smaller variety of the yacht ‘Mary’ which had been presented to the king by the Dutch (cf. Dutch bezaan = mizzen). Pepys was later to sail down river in her.

• N Mary on Mon 13 Sep 2004, 06:04pm

  “by my troth” again.

  Perhaps it is Sam’s catch-phrase of the moment.
  ‘Indeed’, ‘upon my word’, ‘I swear’ seem good equivalents.

• N Vincent Bell on Mon 13 Sep 2004, 08:19pm

  Found a picture of the pleasure boat -
  at :

  http://www.nmm.ac.uk/mag/pages/mnuExplore/PaintingDetail.cfm?lettera=v&ID=BHC0299&name=Willem%20van%20de%20Velde,%20the%20Younger&action=ArtistTitle
  
  “On the extreme right is the forepart of a Dutch bezan yacht, thought to be the one given to Charles II in 1661”

  re: the tankard - Sams in trouble! I guess the fun was essentially of the giggling because we’re underminding authority ilk. If I were Sir W Penn I would find it very hard to see why they all found so it so funny - though I can vaguely see where they are coming from - anyway, as Sir W Penn I’d be looking to make a statement that make it very clear who was in control around here - compensation from Sam of some sort maybe - watching Sam endlessly polish up all his silver tankards one evening may be appropriately humiliating.

• N Bob T on Mon 13 Sep 2004, 09:53pm

  Blind
  I wonder if “obscure, out of the way”, is the only meaning of this word. Years ago, a “Blind Pig” was the name for a bootlegger. See what I’m getting at?

• N Robert Gertz on Mon 13 Sep 2004, 11:38pm

  I think the problem vexing “Fighting Bill” Penn, conqueror of Jamaica, in properly dealing with our boy (ie, a quick, one-way night boat ride in a sewn-up sack) is that little Pepys has the backing of Lord Sandwich and Montague has the King’s ear for now.

  Then too, he’d never hear the end of it from that 1660s hippy Quaker boy of his… “But prithee Dad, God wants thee to love thy enemies…Not drown them in the Thames.”