Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
At the office all the morning. Then to the Wardrobe, and there coming late dined with the people below. Then up to my Lady, and staid two hours talking with her about her family business with great content and confidence in me. So calling at several places I went home, where my people are getting the house clean against to-morrow. I to the office and wrote several letters by post, and so home and to bed.
Sunday 30 March 1662Friday 28 March 1662
Dining with “the people below” is a good example of Sam’s charming personality. You can just imagine him joking and gossiping with the servant girls. A man destined to be the great adminstrator. You can’t see the Sir Williams doing this.
Before getting his place with the Navy Board, Sam was Montague’s secretary and still more or less retains the position of personal confident to the Sandwiches - he is thus entitled to eat as part of the household, for that is what he is. However much he feels treated as special by his beloved “my Lady”, he is not going to overlook his entitlement to board as a member of the household, even if it means dining with the servants - but even with the servants there would probably been differentiation between upper and lower servants.
Now it is Below. The strut is there. For those that have traversed the equator of pecking orders, via commissions etc., should always remember that ones aire can be fully deflated, so never look downs one beak.
Besides keeping in with the ladds and lasses, the food of tum be good but food for thought be better, for, it has many benefits, for one, being in on the “scoope” of the day. It comes in very useful in dealings with other hi faluting forget-me-pasts.
The self delusion of the upper strata, is facinating, they speake in their presence and they doth think that they be dumb, forgeting they doth have ears, and so the ever presence of the Grape vine be in full graphic flow.
“getting the house clean against tomorrow”
So Easter Day is to be specially marked in the Pepys household, even though Good Friday wasn’t.