Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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“Pepys’s mistress, together with her sister Doll Powell, though for a longer period. Neither found marriage any impediment to her association with Pepys. Betty was presumably the elder since she is usually referred to as ‘Mrs’ Lane. Both we linen-drapers in Westminster Hall. (The tax returns which show them as paying tax suggests that they were not mere assistants.)”
from the L&M Companion
From Claire Tomalin, Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self:
Tomalin, on page 46, tells of a drunken story Pepys heard about a man ‘who persuaded a gullible pretty woman to let him handle her private parts by pretending to be a doctor impressed Pepys so much that he went looking for the woman. A real woman he and his fellow clerks got to know was Betty Lane, who worked in Westminster Hall, where a well-established community of stallholders sold linen, gloves, books and newspapers, and she ran a draper’s stall from which he sometimes bought his linen. Betty was a Nottingham lass who had come south to conduct her own business; she took a cheerful, pagan view of sex and its possibilities, she liked Pepys, and he was fascinated by her.”
I luv it, two differing flavo(u)rs of the same text. Glasses are tinted, I do believe: That old message game trick: No wonder there are some interesting drops in a stroke or a comma, etc. from the transcribing of the Original Pepys(Pepies) Diurnal.