Thursday 19 December 1661

Annotations

• N A. De Araujo on Sun 19 Dec 2004, 11:24pm

  “being ill matched and of two colours”
  Sam is getting to be a real control freak; telling a french girl how to dress; the nerve!!!

• N Diana Bonebrake on Mon 20 Dec 2004, 12:42am

  Gee. At least Sam admitted to calling his wife a whore in his diary…

• N vicenzo on Mon 20 Dec 2004, 12:42am

  Today we get a better picture of the upward mobile couple of the day.

• N Todd Bernhardt on Mon 20 Dec 2004, 12:59am

  re: “and so home.”

  To a chilly reception, no doubt! But, as Diana says, at least he admits his mistake to himself, showing he knows he acted the fool … it’s not just contrition for appearance’s sake.

• N Bradford on Mon 20 Dec 2004, 01:45am

  Temper, temper! But apparently the gap between misbehaving and recognizing it as such is not too long. In other situations he holds his tongue; will we see him doing so, eventually, in regards to Elizabeth?

• N Bullus Hutton on Mon 20 Dec 2004, 06:21am

  “I took occasion to fall out with my wife very highly .. and to very high words, so that, like a passionate fool, I did call her whore, for which I was afterwards sorry”
  Hey, this is terrific! It’s only in a loveless relationship that there isn’t the occasional tempest. Elizabeth must have been a very spunky person to wind the normally decorous Sam up to the point where he insults her so; I can hear her French accent right now regaling him for presuming to criticize her, I bet the cab driver was saying “Strewth! Upper class kids these days are a pain in the *rse, tweren’t that in my day!”

• N Australian Susan on Mon 20 Dec 2004, 10:15am

  “ribbands being ill-matched”
  Why on earth did this get Sam so riled? What exactly is meant by a “ribband” in this context? Some kind of lacing of her bodice? Did ladies of negotiable affection wear gaudy “ribbands”? Is that what has upset Sam? Or is his tailor’s son’s eye put out by mismatched trimmings? Or does he think his wife should be more tidily dressed as befits his station?

• N Glyn on Mon 20 Dec 2004, 10:28am

  “to the office, and there sat late, and so home.”

  Working late at the office is preferable to going home to face Elizabeth. If I’m any judge of character, he’ll be up early for work tomorrow just to get out of the house!

• N J A Gioia on Mon 20 Dec 2004, 01:55pm

  like a passionate fool, I did call her whore

  i think we see here the conflict of the former puritan college boy now making his rise in an increasingly licentious society. sam is mostly okay with the outer aspects: theater-going, lavish drinking and eating, gift-giving, adorning himself (all part of the job). he looks wonderingly at liturigcal changes, lets his observances of sunday and daily prayers slip a bit, but is clearly uneasy about the effect this is all having on his home. (remember his dream about liz getting thrown from the horse.) he wants his wife to look good, he *needs* his wife to look good (cf: lady sandwich’s admonition about liz’s outfitting a couple weeks back), but somewhere - not so deep down - is a voice calling ‘SHAME!’.

• N Ruben on Mon 20 Dec 2004, 02:02pm

  Elizabeth:
  was born in Devon. Her father was French but the mother not. I feel sure that her first language was English lernt from mother. She spoke English with the children in the street and at home with her brother. Her father spoke a broken English, probably a Frenglish dialect.
  But Elizabeth? Why would she speak English with an accent? To me it looks like she spoke French with an accent!

• N Grahamt on Mon 20 Dec 2004, 04:05pm

  I agree with Ruben:
  Elizabeth was born to an Anglo-Irish mother in Devon, so if we were to speculate on her accent, then an Oirish/west-country burr mix might be likely, but it certainly wouldn’t be French. I speak from experience; my daughter, like Elizabeth, was born in England of one French, one English parent and speaks English without the slightest trace of a French accent, and French with just a slight English accent.

• N David A. Smith on Mon 20 Dec 2004, 04:15pm

  “like a passionate fool, I did call her whore”
  I think the explanation for his choice of words is simpler — he was very angry and threw a hurtful word, the way we might use the C or MF or CS words, intended as lashes and not as literal descriptions.

• N Glyn on Mon 20 Dec 2004, 04:22pm

  Yes, but WHY was he angry? Elizabeth “dresses herself fine” for two important occasions where she had to look her best - a christening with old friends, and to meet the painter - why is this so irritating to him?

• N Mary on Mon 20 Dec 2004, 05:26pm

  There’s something wrong with them thar ribbons…

  At least, in Sam’s eyes. He makes two points about them: they are ‘ill matched’ and ‘of two colours’. ‘Ill matched’ alone might simply indicate carelessness or lack of taste, but the emphasis on the two colours seems to imply that there is something tarty and offensive about them. Too gaudy? Too frivolous? (I’m reminded of Shakespeare’s “parti-coloured fool”). Australian Susan’s query about the dress of ‘light ladies’ leads in a tempting direction but I’ve been unable to chase down any corroborating reference to the dress of 17th century prostitutes.
  

• N BradW on Mon 20 Dec 2004, 07:09pm

  There

• N Pedro. on Mon 20 Dec 2004, 07:12pm

  Elizabeth:

• N Pedro. on Mon 20 Dec 2004, 08:29pm

  This day in the Lords, a message from the King concerning “a Plot in Agitation.”

  http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=14186

• N Glyn on Mon 20 Dec 2004, 10:54pm

  Possibly connected to the arrests reported by Pepys on 1 December

• N vicenzo on Tue 21 Dec 2004, 12:53am

  re: house of L: did comtemplate to expel the army rifaff, in spite of the fact that it was soldiers that helped to restore the crown to ALL ITS GLORY.
  Humans??? ref above

• N Bradford on Tue 21 Dec 2004, 01:43am

  Back at
  http://www.pepysdiary.com/archive/1660/01/24/index.php
  we have seen one Mr. Lucy and a Mrs. Carrick calling each other groom and bride and pulling at one another’s ribbons in a deal of byplay both Sam and Elizabeth found silly; so perhaps ribbons signify more than we realize. If anyone digs up such information, there’s no section about them in the Fashion background yet, where it might prove useful.

• N dirk on Tue 21 Dec 2004, 05:14am

  Ribbons

  Both men’s and women’s costume were commonly fit with decorative ribbons - a practice that would grow to preposterous proportions in the years to come. Possibly using ribbons of more than one colour on the same dress was judged ridiculous or vulgar?

  One pic of an unknown English lady at court:
  http://womenshistory.about.com/library/pic/hollar/blhollar2_image15.htm
  (Note the ribbons!)

  More contemporary pics of two of Charles II’s mistresses:

  http://www.costumes.org/history/17thcent/lely/DUCHESSofPortsmouth.jpg
  (Duchess of Portsmouth)

  http://www.costumes.org/history/17thcent/lely/BARBARAVILLIERS.jpg
  (Barbara Villiers)

• N Glyn on Tue 21 Dec 2004, 04:35pm

  Concerning Dirk’s entry above, this is a good example of Pepys’s news-gathering abilities, which is part of his job. His contacts informed him of the arrests almost 3 weeks before the government announcement, and presumably he has by now informed Mongagu.

• N language hat on Tue 21 Dec 2004, 09:46pm

  “Why on earth did this get Sam so riled?”

  We have no way of figuring this out, and wouldn’t even if we were living in 1661 and Sam told us the anecdote over ale at the Dolphin. Married couples can quarrel over anything or nothing if there’s tension in the air. I speak from experience.

  “You know, dear, those ribbons aren’t quite matched.”
  “Yes they are! And who are you to talk about my ribbons anyway? Just look at your hat!”
  “My hat is fine, and I don’t like your tone of voice…”
  And away we go!

• N vicenzo on Tue 21 Dec 2004, 10:09pm

  Ribbons be for men on their chest to tell the world how great they be.
  Ribbons be for girls to be have around the thigh for the explorer to find.
  Ribbons be for the maypole for the girls to hang on to for the ride.
  Ribbons be for the winning horse.
  Ribbons be for the bonnet to show ones support.
  Ribbons be for adorning the package for ones present.
  Ribbons are also to be torn to shreds if they be the wrong ones.

• N Glyn on Thu 17 Feb 2005, 09:11pm

  I stand with Bullus on this one regarding her accent. She may have been born in Devon, England but how long did she stay there? We know that she was taught at a convent school in Paris and I’m sure none of the nuns would have a backward and primitive language such as English.

  And I’m going to use GrahamT’s argument against him: he says that his own bilingual daughter speaks with the slight accent of her father’s (i.e. Graham’s) language. If that was also true of Elizabeth then her accent would have been French (however slight).

• N Philip on Thu 5 May 2005, 12:58pm

  being ill matched and of two colours

  Just over a decade earlier the Levellers used coloured ribbons to indicate political allegiance. It is said that they wore sea-green one to indicate their allegiance. According to John Lingard in his “History of England”, at the funeral of Robert Lockyer (usually spelt Lockier) a New Model Army soldier hanged for mutiny in 1649, “some thousands of men and women followed with black and green ribbons on their heads and breasts”. So it is possible that different colour combinations of ribbons could have indicated different things. It is also possible that Sam a man about town knew something about the significance of that combination before the argument started which Beth did not. But from what he writes, he had told her by the end of it!
  

• N Patricia on Sun 23 Jul 2006, 01:29am

  I gasped aloud when I read this entry: that’s how real and immediate these people have become to me, and I thought, “this is private, I shouldn’t be reading this.”

• N Aqua on Sun 23 Jul 2006, 06:09am

  Taught in Convent School, Papa could not abide the Convent, she stayed only a few weeks, schooling appears to be at the court.