Friday 21 September 1666
Up, and mightily pleased with the setting of my books the last night in order, and that which did please me most of all is that W. Hewer tells me that upon enquiry he do find that Sir W. Pen hath a hamper more than his own, which he took for a hamper of bottles of wine, and are books in it. I was impatient to see it, but they were carried into a wine-cellar, and the boy is abroad with him at the House, where the Parliament met to-day, and the King to be with them. At noon after dinner I sent for Harry, and he tells me it is so, and brought me by and by my hamper of books to my great joy, with the same books I missed, and three more great ones, and no more. I did give him 5s. for his pains, and so home with great joy, and to the setting of some off them right, but could not finish it, but away by coach to the other end of the town, leaving my wife at the ’Change, but neither come time enough to the Council to speak with the Duke of Yorke, nor with Sir G. Carteret, and so called my wife, and paid for some things she bought, and so home, and there after a little doing at the office about our accounts, which now draw near the time they should be ready, the House having ordered Sir G. Carteret, upon his offering them, to bring them in on Saturday next, I home, and there, with great pleasure, very late new setting all my books; and now I am in as good condition as I desire to be in all worldly respects. The Lord of Heaven make me thankfull, and continue me therein! So to bed. This day I had new stairs of main timber put to my cellar going into the yard.
21 Annotations
First Reading
Glyn • Link
Hi everyone. I'm just back from three blissful weeks as far from emails and the internet as I could get. Has anything happened while I was away?
5s (=5 shillings, i.e. a quarter of £1) is an awful lot of money to give as a tip.
Terry Foreman • Link
House of Lords
The King's Speech [the first after the fire and the late naval battles].
"My Lords and Gentlemen,
"I am very glad to meet so many of you together again; and GOD be thanked for our Meeting together in this Place! Little Time hath passed, since we were almost in Despair of having this Place left us to meet in: You see the dismal Ruins the Fire hath made; and nothing but a Miracle of GOD'S Mercy could have preserved what is left from the same Destruction. I need make no Excuse to you for dispensing with your Attendance in April. I am confident you all thanked Me for it. The Truth is, I desire to put you to as little Trouble as I can; and I can tell you truly, I desire to put you to as little Cost as is possible. I wish with all My Heart, that I could bear the whole Charge of this War Myself, and that My Subjects should reap the Benefit of it to themselves. But we have Two very great and powerful Enemies, who use all the Means they can, fair and foul, to make all the World to concur with them; and the War is more chargeable (by that Conjunction) than any Body thought it would have been. I need not tell you the Success of this Summer, in which GOD hath given us great Success, and no Question the Enemy hath undergone great Losses. And if it had pleased GOD to have withheld His late Judgement by Fire, we had been in no ill Condition.
"You have given Me very large Supplies for the carrying on the War. And yet I must tell you, if I had not, by anticipating My own Revenue, raised a very great Sum of Money, I had not been able to have set out the Fleet this last Spring: And I have some Hopes, upon the same Credit, to be able to pay off the great Ships as they come in. You will consider what is to be done next, when you are wellinformed of the Expence. And I must leave it to your Wisdoms, to find out the best Expedients for the carrying on this War with as little Burden to the People as is possible. I shall add no more, than to put you in Mind that our Enemies are very insolent; and if they were able this last Year to persuade their miserable People, whom they mislead, that the Contagion had so wasted the Nation, and impoverished us, that we would not be able to set out any Fleet, how will they be exalted with this last Impoverishment of this City, and contemn all reasonable Conditions of Peace! And therefore I cannot doubt but you will provide accordingly."
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/…
I detect stress on the horizon.
Terry Foreman • Link
House of Commons
Navy, &c. Accompts.
Resolved, &c. That Tuesday next be appointed for the Officers of his Majesty's Navy, Ordnance, and Stores, to bring in their Accompts.
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/…
Might this implicate SP?
CGS • Link
five bob, on that one could get a mayde to delouse , empty the potty and many other sundry tawdry unsavoury jobs for a month, so Samuell is truly relieved to get his missives back on the stands. The Lad be so happy that he is in the employ of such a generous master.
Paul Chapin • Link
Glyn, nothing much, only you might check your environs for smoke damage.
Welcome back!
Eric Walla • Link
Glyn, let's just say that, if you had plotted out a "London Walk" in Sam's time, you might want to check your landmarks and reconfigure.
Margaret • Link
Glyn: If you had to choose which three weeks to miss out of the ten years, I don't think you could have made a worse choice.
Australian Susan • Link
I think it's Pen's boy who got the tip. Wonder if he will "misplace" and then "discover" anything else? Or will Sam's boy "discover" some things of Pen's in their cellar and hope for similar generosity from Sir W. This could run and run.
JWB • Link
hamper of wine/hamper of books
What's top-hamper to one is ballast to another.
JWB • Link
This morning I read of U. of Chicago genetics researcher, who worked with attenuated palgue bacteria, admitted to hospital on 13th this mo. and died later that day of what is believed to be the disease.
Mary • Link
According to the L&M Companion, this boy (Harry) is not Pen's personal boy, but is Harry Kembe, the Navy Office messenger, who lived in Boar's Head Yard, Westminster.
A. De Araujo • Link
"Has anything happened while I was away"
Glyn there are the good news and the bad news: the plague is almost gone,but there was a big big fire.
CGS • Link
Thanks Mary:
Glyn: nutin' 'appened, just some readjusting of the housing market, the money makers had to find new digs to keep the coffee vendors happy, the lads from across from the white cliffs decided to take sail, lost sight of those windmill makers, nah same old boring news.
Terry Foreman • Link
“Has anything happened while I was away”
Glyn, apparently you'll have to review the last three weeks and decide for yourself. Welcome back to ambiguity. ;-)
Terry Foreman • Link
Glyn, a suggestion: skim this. http://www.pepysdiary.com/archive…
Nix • Link
Samuel's unbounded joy at the recovery of his books is a hint why his library, in toto and intacto, was the centerpiece of his estate (and, because it contained those funny little shorthand books, his fame).
Mr. Gunning • Link
"This morning I read of U. of Chicago genetics researcher, who worked with attenuated palgue bacteria, admitted to hospital on 13th this mo. and died later that day of what is believed to be the disease."
Good grief JWB.....all those people died who had no idea what killed and would have done anything to avoid the disease if they could and here we have, in this day and age, researchers who no exactly what it is and flirt with it and die, what a tragedy.
Mr. Gunning • Link
Aaaargh! Killed THEM....and it's know not no! Don't you just hate posting bad English?
Robert Gertz • Link
Can't say how careful the UChicago researcher was but particularly in our interconnected world it remains critically important to keep studying pathogens like plague, even as it remains very dangerous. Even my little bug of choice, S. pneumoniae, still kills many, many, many more than H1N1 (maybe now even in cahoots with the new virus, look for our coming report via Pub Med), and constantly finds clever ways of outwitting us. It's hard to imagine how the men and women who first took on these bugs did so without the protections we take for granted today.
***
Laptop, was it Mr.G? My wife's does that to me constantly.
CGS • Link
For want of a better explanation: the number of variables in life is 'umungus, take C. H. O. N. and mix 'em and you have nearly unlimited subjects of interest, mix in light , heat , sound and higher waves and that will keep people 'untin' for ever.
'Tis survival of luckiest to be in the "rite" place and at the right nano second.
Second Reading
john • Link
Modern plague deaths are unusual. Y. pestis is endemic in the ground squirrels of the southern U.S. and easilly diagnosed there but less well-known elsewhere. However, later reports indicate that Malcolm Casadaban may have died from other causes.