Sunday 18 December 1664

(Lord’s day). To church, where, God forgive me! I spent most of my time in looking [on] my new Morena —[a brunette]— at the other side of the church, an acquaintance of Pegg Pen’s. So home to dinner, and then to my chamber to read Ben Johnson’s Cataline, a very excellent piece, and so to church again, and thence we met at the office to hire ships, being in great haste and having sent for several masters of ships to come to us. Then home, and there Mr. Andrews and Hill come and we sung finely, and by and by Mr. Fuller, the Parson, and supped with me, he and a friend of his, but my musique friends would not stay supper. At and after supper Mr. Fuller and I told many storys of apparitions and delusions thereby, and I out with my storys of Tom Mallard. He gone, I a little to my office, and then to prayers and to bed.


16 Annotations

First Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

For serious news, absent Dirk, who is on hiatus, yet an entry from the Carte Calendar

A Report by Prince Rupert, the Lord Treasurer Southampton, the Dukes of Ormond and Albemarle, the Earl of Lindsey, and others his Majesty's Commissioners of Inquiry
Written from: Whitehall

Date: 18 December 1664

Shelfmark: MS. Carte 33, fol(s). 743
Document type: Copy [fifteen signatures]

A Report by Prince Rupert, the Lord Treasurer Southampton, the Dukes of Ormond and Albemarle, the Earl of Lindsey, and others his Majesty's Commissioners of Inquiry, into various injuries, affronts, and spoils committed against his Majesty & his subjects, by the [Dutch] East & West-India Companies, and others, suspects of the States of the United Provinces of the Netherlands. http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/s…

jeannine  •  Link

"God forgive me!"

Hopefully God will because the annotators probably won't!

Mary  •  Link

"my new Morena"

L&M suggest that this may have been one Mrs. Horsley, who will be encountered again in 1666.

Pedro  •  Link

Outside the Pepys residence...

"Well what do you think Mr. Andrews?"

"Yes Mr. Hill. To Senhor Pedro for supper!"

Robert Gertz  •  Link

Hopefully the "new" Morena isn't dying as well... Though it became fashionable in the 19th century to romanticize death by TB (nothing else to do about it, I suppose), Sam doesn't seem the type to moon poetically over a poor girl's suffering.

I think God can forgive looking on, Sam...It's pursuing, hounding, forcing oneself on using one's position of power with promises (and perhaps? threats), and the act of adultery, She might have a problem with...

***
Cataline...Just read Cicero's account of how he dealt with the hot-headed kid. Too bad he wasn't so sharp with Octavian.

I dunno Sam...Play about a demagogic revolutionary bent on over throwing the Roman Republic's Senate aristocratic oligarchy for the benefit of the masses? Best not to let Coventry catch you reading that one, you former Rota club radical you.

Tony Eldridge  •  Link

"my new Morena"

Can someone relieve my ignorance here? Is Morena another word for a brunette, a character in a play or what? (Or whom?)
And why "new"? Have we had a mention of Morena before I started reading this excellent page?

Ruben  •  Link

Morena is a Spanish word meaning brunette or, in other instances someone with darker skin, as a Moro (a Moor for you) or also for what we call a Black person.
In Spanish, a Moreno can not have blue eyes, or he would be called something else.

About "my new morena". I see this as "my new pretty female object".

Bradford  •  Link

Any enlightenment about the part that Thomas Mallord---composer, viol-player, and lute-maker---played in "storys of apparitions and delusions thereby"? That ghostly music emanating from a room that proves empty. . . .

Mary  •  Link

the 'old' Morena

This was Elizabeth Dickons, the daughter of a merchant, who Sam much admired in 1662. If you enter 'Morena' in the search box, you will find all three references to her. She died in October 1662.

cape henry  •  Link

I suspect TE & Ruben may be right on it and that "Morena" is a figure of speech unique to Sam which he applied to certain females. TE may also be correct that the reference may have originated in literature and he appropriated it as a nickname for specific instances. It has that sound to the ear, doesn't it,? It'll be interesting to remember this when she reappears in the future.

Michael Robinson  •  Link

" ... storys of apparitions and delusions ..."

Tales, if not Pepysian, of appropriate antiquarian fascination to be read by the light of a single candle; one involving a musical instrument:-

'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad'
http://www.classicreader.com/read…

Index of M. R. James texts at Project Gutenberg:
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.…

Nix  •  Link

Morena -- OED:

1. A woman with dark-coloured hair; a brunette. Obs. rare.

1662 S. PEPYS Diary 27 Jan. (1970) III. 19 One Mr. Dekins, the father of my Morena.

2. A woman with a dark complexion, esp. (in South and Central America) a woman of mixed descent or of African origin.

1868 Overland Monthly July 24/1 Beside the Mexican beauties of greater or less celebrity..the dress-circle contained numerous fine women from Europe..presenting a radiant contrast of light hair, blue eyes and delicate complexions to the morenas of native extraction. 1960 Mod. Lang. Notes 75 416 The only constant ray of hope in the morena's life is the example of the Virgin Mary, traditionally supposed to have been swarthy. 1991 R. ANAYA Albuquerque xiv. 165 The faded black-and-white print showed a morena in a dark, flowing dress standing next to a mustachioed Hispano.

Tony Eldridge  •  Link

Ruben, Mary, Nix, many thanks for the information about the Morena.
I now have this vision of Sam trying to listen to a boring sermon but distracted by glances from dark eyes behind a fan.

Second Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"I out with my storys of Tom Mallard."

Mallard (Maylard) appears to have been a professional musician, and in 1665 was in Sandwich's service. These stories of his do not appear in the diary [or in Pepys's other writings]. (L&M footnote)

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"To church, where, God forgive me! I spent most of my time in looking [on] my new Morena —[a brunette]— at the other side of the church, an acquaintance of Pegg Pen’s."

A brace of nubile young women got you distracted, Pepys? Did they notice you?

Brace came to mean ‘a pair, two’ from about 1400 and was applied to pistols, pheasants, dogs, etc.
https://www.macmillandictionarybl…

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