Monday 9 September 1661

To the Privy Seal in the morning, but my Lord did not come, so I went with Captain Morrice at his desire into the King’s Privy Kitchen to Mr. Sayres, the Master Cook, and there we had a good slice of beef or two to our breakfast, and from thence he took us into the wine cellar where, by my troth, we were very merry, and I drank too much wine, and all along had great and particular kindness from Mr. Sayres, but I drank so much wine that I was not fit for business, and therefore at noon I went and walked in Westminster Hall a while, and thence to Salisbury Court play house, where was acted the first time “‘Tis pity Shee’s a Whore,” a simple play and ill acted, only it was my fortune to sit by a most pretty and most ingenious lady, which pleased me much.

Thence home, and found Sir Williams both and much more company gone to the Dolphin to drink the 30s. that we got the other day of Sir W. Pen about his tankard. Here was Sir R. Slingsby, Holmes, Captn. Allen, Mr. Turner, his wife and daughter, my Lady Batten, and Mrs. Martha, &c., and an excellent company of fiddlers; so we exceeding merry till late; and then we begun to tell Sir W. Pen the business, but he had been drinking to-day, and so is almost gone, that we could not make him understand it, which caused us more sport. But so much the better, for I believe when he do come to understand it he will be angry, he has so talked of the business himself and the letter up and down that he will be ashamed to be found abused in it. So home and to bed.


47 Annotations

First Reading

vicente  •  Link

Fate steps in, no work to do , so easily temped, 'tis the beefs fault it was salty, so wine be necessary [17C chips smiths] then out he goes, lo and behold a vision, and words of suggestion to entertain "...only it was my fortune to sit by a most pretty and most ingenious lady, which pleased me much..." pretty I understand??? but ingenious, naw that is veddy interesting. Oh! Sam what did she get you to do that you are affeared to put to pen. ["... pleased me much..."]
then the topping off at Sir Wm: Penns expense. wow! what a monday, Tis best to relax after all that tension at the Sanctory, A new maid to break in, is so very demanding and passifying a wife on the war path. I wonder if he tells Eliza about the "...simple play and ill acted...." not worth wasteing a crown on.?

daniel  •  Link

"ingenuous"

suppose by this word it implies that her conversation was agreeable, or something else?

and what pray tell, is a "trost"?

daniel  •  Link

or troth?

oops

A. De Araujo  •  Link

"Tis pity shee's a Whore"
I remember watching an off Broadway play quite a while ago in spanish: "Lastima que sea Puta"
I wonder if it is the same play; the title is exactly the same.

maureen  •  Link

Tis Pity She's a Whore - by John Ford, first performance 1633. Still regularly performed, in print and available from amazon (.co.uk and .com)

vicente  •  Link

If you read the songs of period,
they are today only for the rugger crowd, banned from modern company,
the gents and ladies were more earthy then,unlike today, it had wit and flow, not raw, untreated. Read Rochester or or other poets or ditties of the period. Not for the sensitive.
Then one's imagination would fly to venus.
It could be acase of
'Quoniam aemulari non licet, numc invides.' Plautes, Miles Gloriousus , 839
otherwise 'Since you cannot copy our plesures, you begrudge them.

vicente  •  Link

basic :English poet and dramatist John Ford often wrote about taboo subjects and the deep human emotions that accompanied them. His most famous play, "Tis Pity She's a Whore (1633), concerns the incestuous relationship between Giovanni and his sister, Annabella. In the following excerpt Annabella's husband, Soranzo, plots revenge against the couple after learning that Annabella is pregnant with her brother's child. But Giovanni takes matters into his own hands, with tragic results.
http://au.encarta.msn.com/sidebar…

Pauline  •  Link

"...into the wine cellar where, by my troth, we were very merry..."
Said with gusto; and wouldn't that be an experience--set loose in the King's wine cellar! I suppose he will rue and regret and feel guilty.

DrCari  •  Link

Perhaps "ingenious lady" might be understood as the lady being young and freshly attractive in the manner of an ingenue.

Robert Gertz  •  Link

Lets see...Sam got bombed at breakfast in the royal wine cellar, spent the day at a play cause he was "unfit for business" and then joined the Navy Office gang to get plastered all afternoon and well into night…

Good to know the Royal Navy is in such capable hands…

Are there any openings at that office?

Hmmn…So, Lady Batten and Martha joined the merry crew roasting poor Sir Will P at the Dolphin?…Interesting lady all around, our Lady B.

Sam, you jerk…Go get Beth and let her in on the fun…Though perhaps our boy is letting his residual Puritanism show here. Lady Batten of infamous rep and Mr. Turner’s wife and their daughters may grace such wild goings-on but not his wife. Not to mention it might be a tad rough company for Bethie…

Louis  •  Link

ingenious or ingenuous: "clever, intelligence; OED notes 'ingenuous' as a customary 17th-cent. misuse for 'ingenious'"
---Large Glossary, L&M Companion

john lauer  •  Link

-- but this time Sam did (properly) use 'ingenious'.

Ruben  •  Link

you may buy John Ford's play in Spanish:
"La lastima que sea una puta"
or in French "Dommage que ce soit une putain" on Internet.

Ruben  •  Link

I see that 350 years later a woman still may become a whore, that means the lowest in society, by the same (sexual) act that does not get any special name for her brother.
The following disgression is only for Spanish readers:
Zorro: Espadachin Justiciero
Zorra: Puta
Perro: Mejor amigo del hombre
Perra: Puta
Aventurero: Osado, valiente, arriesgado.
Aventurera: Puta
Ambicioso: Visionario, Energico, con metas
Ambiciosa: Puta
Cualquier: Fulano, Mengano, Zutano
Cualquiera: Puta
Regalado: Participio del verbo regalar
Regalada: Puta
Callejero: De la calle, urbano.
Callejera: Puta
Hombrezuelo: Hombrecillo, minimo, pequeno
Mujerzuela: Puta
Hombre publico: Personaje prominente. Funcionario publico.
Mujer publica: Puta
Hombre de la vida: Hombre de gran experiencia.
Mujer de la vida: Puta
Atorrante: Adj. que indica simpatia y viveza.
Atorranta: Puta
Rapido: Inteligente, despierto.
Rapida: Puta
Puto: Homosexual
Puta: Puta
and some more:
PATRIMONIO: Conjunto de bienes.
MATRIMONIO: Conjunto de males.
HEROE: Idolo.
HEROINA: Droga.
DON JUAN: Hombre en todo su sentido.
DONA JUANA: La mujer de la limpieza.

OzStu  •  Link

Troth.

Without resorting to weightlifting the OED off the shelf, my Collins Little Gem gives troth as "fidelity, truth". I take "..by my troth.." to be a common exclamation along the lines of ".. to be honest.."

OzStu  •  Link

Ingenious.

A bit of a digression, but the word "Ingenious" is supposed to be the root of the English word "Engineer", as someone who solves problems (and hence implying intelligence). Not, as is commonly supposed, someone who fixes the plumbing or greases a steam train. A perenially contentious issue for those of us who are professional engineers.

Ruben  •  Link

Troth:
"Semper fidelis".
In German "Bleibtreu".
Maybe "treu" is from the same rooth as "troth".

Mary  •  Link

" by my troth"

A slightly old-fashioned modern English equivalent would be "Upon my word".

Mary  •  Link

Ingenious.

OED category II, example 5: well born or well bred. Perhaps Sam is saying that the young lady gave every indication of enjoying high social standing. Pretty manners, fine dress etc.?

PHE  •  Link

Lovable Sam.
Yesterday: "troubled in mind to think how much of late I have addicted myself to expense and pleasure... I pray God give me grace to begin now to look after my business". Today: the morning in the royal wine cellar, followed by a series of merry diversions from business for the rest of the day!

helena murphy  •  Link

Thank God Sam is not a courtier ,where let us hope a gentleman can hold his liguor.

Roger Arbor  •  Link

Ruben's poster... is it by Tamara de Lempicka? Looks like it. (Off subject, sorry)

And the king's wine... were vintages extant in those days? Or was this just ordinary stuff?

Ruben  •  Link

to Roger Arbor:
I agree with you. If you live in London you may check at the Royal Academy where last May there was an exhibition of her work. By the way, she was involved in the women's part of humanity liberation.

Ruben  •  Link

continue Vicente:
Here we have a man: Sam P, who likes to pick in garden's not his own, at a play where someone else is having the same forbidden pleasures. That after his wife met with a feathery man. How could he like the play?

Pedro.  •  Link

"Not to mention it might be a tad rough company for Bethie"

I found my Lady Batten and her daughter to look something askew upon my wife, because my wife do not buckle to them, and is not solicitous for their acquaintance, which I am not troubled at at all.

http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

vicente  •  Link

professional engineers-Ingenious-to engineer.
So many doth think she be in troth be good, but she should know that the playhouse be so friendly to un-attached, so why does she subject 'erself to just a wink and a nod and is without an escort in a notorious sin joint, so spelled out by the 'out group' the pure in minds.[Puritans that be out, for being straight laced and uptight] Sorry! [not OED category II,in the opinion of my sinful non puritan mind ,the place was banned to the other end of the spectrum the RC Priests. The teatro being a place for frank speech.]. She was entertaining by engineering under the covers or shearing an Apple maybe or just lines that be in the play. Sam has not yet put down his thoughts, in Espanol.

Andrew Hamilton  •  Link

troth

cf John Donne, The Good Morrow:

"I WONDER by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved ? were we not wean'd
till then ?"

http://www.luminarium.org/sevenli…

A. De Araujo  •  Link

Ruben
Lastima que sea verdad
Tis a pity it is all true
but the times they are achanging

Nix  •  Link

'Tis Pity --

Samuel's reference stirs memories of my days as a drama critic, 30 years ago, when my newspaper bowdlerized the title to "'Tis Pity She's Bad"!

language hat  •  Link

"were vintages extant in those days?"

See the Wine background section:
http://www.pepysdiary.com/encyclo…

Short answer: No, vintages as we think of them are a creation of the next century, when modern corks and bottles develop. In Sam's day, wine didn't last, and you just drank the latest available (as is still the best idea with most white wines).

David A. Smith  •  Link

"drank so much wine I was not fit for business"
So much for yesterday's vows of moderation ...

language hat  •  Link

ingenious
I think in this context "clever" is the best rendering -- he enjoyed her banter.

Jenny Doughty  •  Link

I believe when he do come to understand it he will be angry, he has so talked of the business himself and the letter up and down that he will be ashamed to be found abused in it.

Interesting that Sam evidently sees more shame for Penn in being gulled than in his and Batten's actions in gulling him.

vicente  •  Link

Jenny D: a great point.

dirk  •  Link

troth

1. Belief; faith; fidelity
Bid her alight And her troth plight. --Shak.

2. Truth; verity; veracity
by my troth. --Shak.
In troth, thou art able to instruct gray hairs. --Addison.

3. Betrothal.

Source:
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
? 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.

[Middle English trouthe, trothe, variant of treuthe, from Old English treowth, truth. Indo-European Root: deru-]

Source:
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
? 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Kevin Peter  •  Link

It's not as if Sam didn't at least try to get some business done. He did try to get some Privy Seal business done, but found that the necessary people weren't there.

Perhaps he's not the only one slacking.

Kevin Peter  •  Link

I found it rather hilarious that they finally let Sir William Penn know about the prank they played on him, but he was too drunk to understand what they were saying.

I wonder how long it will take him to realize what they were saying to him.

Second Reading

Bill  •  Link

"it was my fortune to sit by a most pretty and most ingenious lady"

INGENUOUS, frank, free, open, sincere, plain.
---An Universal Etymological English Dictionary. N. Bailey, 1675.

(Note the non-current spelling and the non-current definition.)

Bill  •  Link

Actually, the above definition of "ingenuous," which is what I think SP meant, is close to the current definition. As is this one:

DISINGENUOUS, insincere, false hearted, unfair.
---An Universal Etymological English Dictionary. N. Bailey, 1675.

(What SP didn't mean was "ingenious" by our current definition.)

Bill  •  Link

Wheatley, in his annotation of the diary (1899), gives us the footnote below for 14 March 1662/63. And this footnote is included in Phil's current version of the diary for that date. Wheatley should have given it earlier.

"The distinction of the two words ingenious and ingenuous by which the former indicates mental and the second moral qualities was not made in Pepys's day."

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

It's a huge company gone to drink at Penn's expense: even Comptroller Slingsby. There must have been quite a few happy to take him down a peg or two, even if Sam is now starting to have pangs of conscience.

Chris Squire UK  •  Link

OED has:

'troth
. . 1.b. by (rarely upon) my troth , as a form of asseveration.
. . 1600   Shakespeare Much Ado about Nothing ii. iii. 99   By my troth my Lord, I cannot tell what to thinke of it.
1704   Swift Full Acct. Battel between Bks. in Tale of Tub 245   By my Troth, said the Bee, the Comparison will amount to a very good Jest . . '

'ingenious . . 5. Well born or bred. Obs.
1638   F. Junius Painting of Ancients 286   Neither will any man who hath but a drop of ingenious bloud in his breast, trifle away both his art and time.
1692   J. Washington tr. Milton Def. People (1851) xii. 247   All manner of Slavery is scandalous and disgraceful to a freeborn ingenious Person.
1707   J. Chamberlayne Angliæ Notitia (ed. 22) iii. xi. 386 (Colleges London)   Any other thing that may any way contribute to the Accomplishment of an ingenious Nobleman or Gentleman.'

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"thence to Salisbury Court play house, where was acted the first time “‘Tis pity Shee’s a Whore,” a simple play and ill acted"

As Davenant had transferred his troupe, the Duke of Yotk's Company, from the Salisbury Court Theatre to his new playhouse in Lincoln's Inn Fields in June
(see https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… ) the performance seen by Pepys on this occasion may have been given by a company under the management of George Jolly, a veteran actor to whom the King had given a license for the organisation of performances in September 1660. This license was subsequently revoked, leaving Davenant and Thomas Killigrew with a clear monopoly of professional performances in London. The play was a tragedy by John Ford, written c. 1629, and published in 1633. (L&M note)

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Meanwhile, at the Palace of Whitehall, ...

"When Charles II was restored to the throne he issued a Royal Warrant, dated 9th September 1661, for the disinterment of the bodies of Oliver Cromwell, his family and supporters. Their bodies were buried in a pit in the adjoining churchyard of St. Margaret's Westminster.

"In the 19th century a stone over the vault in the Abbey (in what is now the RAF chapel) was inscribed with the names and dates of death of all those who were once buried there.

"In 1966 a memorial inscription was cut into the west wall of the exterior of St. Margaret's to record all those re-buried there. This reads:

"This tablet is erected by the Cromwell Association to the memory of the undermentioned whose remains were disinterred from Westminster Abbey at the time of the restoration of King Charles II and were in September 1661 buried in this churchyard of St. Margaret's:
Colonel Robert Blake ... Denis Bond ... Colonel Nicholas Boscawen
Mary Bradshaw ... Sir William Constable ... Elizabeth, mother of Oliver Cromwell,
Colonel Richard Deane ... Jane Desborough ... Dr Isaac Dorislaus
Anne Fleetwood ... Thomas Hesilrige ... Colonel Humphrey Mackworth
Stephen Marshall ... Thomas May ... Colonel John Meldrum
Colonel Edward Popham ... John Pym ... Humphrey Salwey
William Strong ... William Stroud ... Dr William Twiss."

https://www.westminster-abbey.org…

I bet Adm. Penn wasn't the only drunken Parliamentarian in those days.

Third Reading

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

And today at Wadham College, Oxford, the newly-appointed university Chancelor, Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, has the honor of bestowing an honorary M.A. degree on his 14-year-old distant kinsman, John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester,

During Rochester's 18-month stay at the university, three poems attributed to him appeared in two Oxford collections of encomium and consolation.
Epicedia Academiæ Oxoniensis (1660) is a collection of poems expressing condolance to Queen Mother, Henrietta Maria, for the death by smallpox of her daughter Mary, the Princess Royal.
Attributed to Rochester is a Latin poem, "In Obitum Serenissimae Mariae Principis Arausionensis," and an English poem, "To Her Sacred Majesty, the Queen Mother, on the Death of Mary, Princess of Orange."
But it is the poem in Britannia Rediviva (1660) celebrating the restored Charles II, who is apostrophized as "Virtue's triumphant shrine," that is most striking for its ingenuity.

After Oxford, in the charge of Dr. Andrew Balfour, a 30-year-old Scottish physician and man of learning, Rochester set out on a grand tour of France and Italy on 21 November 1661.
Little can be said with certainty of this period of Rochester's life and education, a period that was concluded in 1664, when he returned to England and presented himself to Charles II at Christmas time.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/…
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…

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