Saturday 20 June 1668
Up, and talked with my wife all in good humour, and so to the office, where all the morning, and then home to dinner, and so she and I alone to the King’s house, and there I saw this new play my wife saw yesterday, and do not like it, it being very smutty, and nothing so good as “The Maiden Queen,” or “The Indian Emperour,” of his making, that I was troubled at it; and my wife tells me wholly (which he confesses a little in the epilogue) taken out of the “Illustre Bassa.” So she to Unthanke’s and I to Mr. Povy, and there settled some business; and here talked of things, and he thinks there will be great revolutions, and that Creed will be a great man, though a rogue, he being a man of the old strain, which will now be up again.
So I took coach, and set Povy down at Charing Cross, and took my wife up, and calling at the New Exchange at Smith’s shop, and kissed her pretty hand, and so we home, and there able to do nothing by candlelight, my eyes being now constantly so bad that I must take present advice or be blind.
So to supper, grieved for my eyes, and to bed.
17 Annotations
First Reading
Chris Squire • Link
‘smutty, adj. < smut n. or smut v. Compare German schmutzig.
. . 5. Indecent, immodest, impure, obscene.
1668 S. Pepys Diary 20 June (1976) IX. 247, I saw this new play my wife saw yesterday; and do not like it, it being very smutty.
. . 1768–74 A. Tucker Light of Nature (1834) II. 124 He‥puts the women to the blush with his smutty jokes and rude jeers.
. . 1894 Tablet 16 June 920 It is only when the details are sensational or smutty that room is found for them in the columns of the great dailies.’ [OED]
john • Link
"grieved for my eyes"
Indeed -- I understand. (I lost the sight in one eye a decade ago and the other weakens annually.)
Robert Gertz • Link
A sharp literary eye has our Bess...
Jenny • Link
She is definitely not "a fool".
djc • Link
there seems to be a discrepancy between the day/date at the top of the day's entry and the day/date in the back/forward link in on the right eg
Saturday 20 June 1668 / Tue 19 Jun 1668
is it Saturday or should it be Wednesday?
Peter Taylor • Link
>>is it Saturday or should it be Wednesday?
Yes.
Phil Gyford • Link
Not sure how that happened djc and Peter! I don't have time to investigate it properly right now, so I've removed the day of the week from the next/previous links for the time being, seeing as the rest of it is correct. (The site is slowly rebuilding as I type; should be finished soon.)
Clement • Link
"... Creed will be a great man, though a rogue, he being a man of the old strain, which will now be up again."
Does anyone have a sense of what "old strain" Sam means here?
Jenny • Link
I took "old strain" as meaning someone from before the restoration, unlike the sycophantic courtiers now surrounding Charles II.
I could well be wrong.
Robert Gertz • Link
Povy seems to believe the current discontent will put the old Cromwellians back in power, at least perhaps their remnants in Parliament, and Creed is clever enough to turncoat again when their time comes.
Second Reading
San Diego Sarah • Link
'Charles II: June 1668', in Calendar of State Papers Domestic: Charles II, 1667-8, ed. Mary Anne Everett Green (London, 1893), pp. 418-468.
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/…
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June 20. 1668
The Monmouth, Downs.
Sir Thos. Allin to the Navy Commissioners.
I send the demands of the boatswains and carpenters that are to go to the Straits.
The Resolution and Rupert have arrived;
I am daily forced to release men falling sick and full of the scurvy, and have no money to give them to live upon, which is very hard.
Col. Middleton, the surveyor, and Mr. Pepys were at the Council table when it was resolved that there should be money laid aboard the commander-in-chief, for paying sick men not in a condition to do service, but I hear nothing of it.
I entreat you to order it for this voyages, as it may be the preservation of several poor souls;
for want of it, I have expender near 12/. in fresh meat, sugar, and sprits, to keep the men alive.
[S.P. Dom., Car. II. 241. No. 198.]
SOUNDS LIKE ADM. ALLIN WILL BE NEXT TO RUPERT WHEN THEY INDICT PEPYS.
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June 20. 1668
Ticket Office.
James Carkasse and Nathaniel Whitfeld, clerks of the Ticket Office, to [the Navy Commissioners].
Ask for the book of the Resolution, Dartmouth, and Bristol, for despatch of the seamen’s tickets;
those discharged from the Yarmouth and Sweepstakes have brought written tickers.
[S.P. Dom., Car II. 241, No. 199.]
HE'S BACK.
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June 20 1668
The Monmouth, Downs.
Sir Thos. Allin to Williamson.
The Yarmouth and Dragon that went out with Capt. Beach have returned through bad weather, leaving Capt. Beach off Beachy Head.
They spoke with 2 Hamburghers and 9 or 10 Hollanders,
on the 19th, 2 or 3 spouts of water fell from the sky, and rebounded very high, a thing not usual off the North Foreland.
[S.P. Dom., Car II. 241, No. 203.]
ALLIN SOUNDS CASUAL ABOUT A MUTINY LEAVING CAPTAIN BEACH OFF BEACHY HEAD. THERE ARE NO ISLANDS THERE: BEACHY HEAD ISN'T A CLIFF YOU CAN CLIMB.
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June 20, 1668
Rye
James Welsh to Williamson.
A vessel arrived with passengers from Dieppe gives particulars of the scuffle between the French men-of-war and his Majesty’s pleasure boats;
that the men-of-war of 12 and 14 guns, and 2 of the king’s pleasure boats came into the road, one having her colours, on which one of the Frenchmen fired, and broadsides were exchanged;
but the other pleasure boat coming up, he struck to the English, and both made all the sail they could away.
The dispute might have lasted longer.
[S.P. Dom., Car II. 241, No. 204.]
SOME SMALL FRENCH WARSHIPS FIRED ON HIS MAJESTY'S PLEASURE BOATS (yachts?) IN DIEPPE'S ROADS. THE ENGLISH BOATS SHOULD HAVE SALUTED THE FRENCH SHIPS FIRST -- BUT HOW CAN BROADSIDES BE EXCHANGED WITH 'PLEASURE BOATS'? THE FRENCH WERE CORRECT IN NOT SEEING MUCH PLEASURE ABOUT THEM.
San Diego Sarah • Link
On second thoughts, "The Yarmouth and Dragon that went out with Capt. Beach have returned through bad weather, leaving Capt. Beach off Beachy Head."
What makes more sense is that Capt. Beach was in a third ship, and the warships Yarmouth and Dragon left the Downs at the same time as Beach's ship. They parted company off Beachy head. The Dragon and Yarmouth then sailed around observing what other ships were in the channel and returned to the Downs in bad weather to make their report.
San Diego Sarah • Link
"... and so she and I alone to the King’s house, and there I saw this new play my wife saw yesterday, and do not like it, it being very smutty, ..."
Poor Elizabeth, she had to sit through a play she didn't like in order to make sure Pepys didn't consort with actresses or "other" women. Will she be waiting outside St. James's Palace and Westminster Hall in Hansom cabs soon?
San Diego Sarah • Link
"... he thinks there will be great revolutions, and that Creed will be a great man, though a rogue, he being a man of the old strain, which will now be up again."
As some of the letters I've posted, and the recent Bawdy House riots showed, there were many unhappy people in England, Ireland and Scotland. Famine, poverty and religious repression make an inflammatory mix.
I'm surprised Creed was so outspoken about his Presbyterian leanings to a major financier of the Stuarts. This is information Povy could use to enhance his own falling reputation
Povy probably told Pepys because he wants to get the message back to Sandwich that he has someone unreliable in his household.
Now Pepys has something on Creed that he can use ... we will see if he does.
Liz • Link
“I saw this new play my wife saw yesterday, and do not like it, it being very smutty”
This surprises me given Sam’s sexual proclivities. Could this be not wanting to admit to Elizabeth that he likes ‘that sort of thing’?
San Diego Sarah • Link
Well, Liz, yes. And more hypocrital than even that.
Pepys is a male chauvenist, disapproving of bad language and explicit plays, while not linking them in any way to his own behavior, or to his enjoyment of smutty French novels about naught girls in boarding schools which have to be burned so no one knows he bought and read them.
It's the old double standard which has, thankfully, receeded to the point that you find it odd. Being old, I remember reading Lady Chatterley's Lover in the 1960's with a brown wrapping paper cover, so people wouldn't know AND JUDGE. Why do you think Wheatley et al censored The Diary?
Censorship is and always has been to protect other people, but not yourself. You want to know everything, and knowledge is power. Men wanted to know about sex, but they wanted their women to be ignorant so the man's performance would not be judged sub-par.
Except for Charles II who, I understand, had Rochester teach women his favorite activities so he wouldn't have to exert himself, and was guaranteed a good time from the start.
Thank God we live in a different world.
San Diego Sarah • Link
“Hypocrisy is the homage which vice pays to virtue.” -- François de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) -- from Reflections: Or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665)