#pepys — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #pepys, aggregated by home.social.
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"I calling her beggar, and she me pricklouse"
Frank exchanges are at the core of every healthy marriage, and you and your wife are doing well, Sam, very well. And "pricklouse" is excellent: your wife is even better with words than you are, Sam.
And I love how you're putting the entire episode into brackets! Without it, we merely read "So up and to my office () and there all the morning." The most subversive use of brackets imaginable.
Either way, your charming entry has made my Saturday morning blues go away. You are a good man, Sam.
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"... word is brought that the King and Duke are come, so they all went away to show themselves, while I staid and had a little dish or two by myself."
Classic comedy, this. One of the more light-hearted scenes in my path-breaking Pepys movie (160min). Everyone rushes out to see the King and the Duke, but Sam stays behind to have a double helping of fish. Not sure whether I want him to be slightly furtive and embarrassed about his greed, or smug and cheeky about beating the system. A good actor will know how to get it right without detailed instructions.
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A generous offering of fine dishes, Sam, truly glorious. Quite an achievement to get it all done in your house! Your friends will have enjoyed the event.
You invite your friends to celebrate the success of the dangerous operation that removed your bladder stone, five years earlier, and I celebrate with you. Looking mortality in the eye changes our outlook on things, doesn't it. Most people forget the lesson once the danger is over. But you keep reminding yourself of the fact that every day alive is a gift, and for that I love you, Sam.
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I don't want to spoil it for Pepys, so I won't ask him about "a leg of mutton boiled". If boiled here means cooked in boiling water, the mutton clearly is being ruined. But perhaps he means slow-cooked or baked? I do appreciate that preparing all those varied meats and pies in his own family kitchen all at the same time may have simply left his cook with no space in the oven or over the fire. -
" ... but am glad to be joyned with them, for I shall learn something of them."
You are a good man, Samuel.
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"Deane walking with me; talking of the pride and corruption of most of his fellow officers of the yard, and which I believe to be true."
Oh, I can feel with Deane. Switch the name of the employer and keep the rest: "pride and corruption of my fellow officers of the university" --- voila, I feel it.
Anthony Deane was a shipwright, acting as a trusted professional to the ambitious administrator Pepys. They were friends, the slightly older Pepys helping to get Deane established.
Deane later was knighted. He was a successful shipbuilder. Pepys and Deane were joint MPs for Harwich twice, in 1678 under Charles II (where both were accused of treason) and in 1685 under James II. They did things!
I can picture these two meritocratic pros walking by the river, talking earnestly, sharing their contempt for all the entitlement and corruption around them.
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"Deane walking with me; talking of the pride and corruption of most of his fellow officers of the yard, and which I believe to be true."
Oh, I can feel with Deane. Switch the name of the employer and keep the rest: "pride and corruption of my fellow officers of the university" --- voila, I feel it.
Anthony Deane was a shipwright, acting as a trusted professional to the ambitious administrator Pepys. They were friends, the slightly older Pepys helping to get Deane established.
Deane later was knighted. He was a successful shipbuilder. Pepys and Deane were joint MPs for Harwich twice, in 1678 under Charles II (where both were accused of treason) and in 1685 under James II. They did things!
I can picture these two meritocratic pros walking by the river, talking earnestly, sharing their contempt for all the entitlement and corruption around them.
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"Deane walking with me; talking of the pride and corruption of most of his fellow officers of the yard, and which I believe to be true."
Oh, I can feel with Deane. Switch the name of the employer and keep the rest: "pride and corruption of my fellow officers of the university" --- voila, I feel it.
Anthony Deane was a shipwright, acting as a trusted professional to the ambitious administrator Pepys. They were friends, the slightly older Pepys helping to get Deane established.
Deane later was knighted. He was a successful shipbuilder. Pepys and Deane were joint MPs for Harwich twice, in 1678 under Charles II (where both were accused of treason) and in 1685 under James II. They did things!
I can picture these two meritocratic pros walking by the river, talking earnestly, sharing their contempt for all the entitlement and corruption around them.
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"Deane walking with me; talking of the pride and corruption of most of his fellow officers of the yard, and which I believe to be true."
Oh, I can feel with Deane. Switch the name of the employer and keep the rest: "pride and corruption of my fellow officers of the university" --- voila, I feel it.
Anthony Deane was a shipwright, acting as a trusted professional to the ambitious administrator Pepys. They were friends, the slightly older Pepys helping to get Deane established.
Deane later was knighted. He was a successful shipbuilder. Pepys and Deane were joint MPs for Harwich twice, in 1678 under Charles II (where both were accused of treason) and in 1685 under James II. They did things!
I can picture these two meritocratic pros walking by the river, talking earnestly, sharing their contempt for all the entitlement and corruption around them.
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"Deane walking with me; talking of the pride and corruption of most of his fellow officers of the yard, and which I believe to be true."
Oh, I can feel with Deane. Switch the name of the employer and keep the rest: "pride and corruption of my fellow officers of the university" --- voila, I feel it.
Anthony Deane was a shipwright, acting as a trusted professional to the ambitious administrator Pepys. They were friends, the slightly older Pepys helping to get Deane established.
Deane later was knighted. He was a successful shipbuilder. Pepys and Deane were joint MPs for Harwich twice, in 1678 under Charles II (where both were accused of treason) and in 1685 under James II. They did things!
I can picture these two meritocratic pros walking by the river, talking earnestly, sharing their contempt for all the entitlement and corruption around them.
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It's not shaming him. The grumpy old dude is dead, and has been for 350 years.
It's merely accepting that history isn't complete, and sometimes new things are found about historical figures, and that sometimes your beloved historical "free speech" is pretty abhorrent when you frame it in modern terms.
It's not rewriting history; it's looking at it with the benefit of a few centuries of learning and medical advances in treating bladder stones. All of which I accept that Andrew Doyle is desperate to roll back and erase as quickly as possible.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/02/08/samuel-pepys-censorship-cancel-culture/
#History #London #Pepys #Opinion #Bezos #WashingtonPost #FreeSpeech #Writing #Shitty #Journalism #News
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"How time and example may alter a man: he being now acquainted with all sorts of pleasures and vanities which heretofore he never thought of or loved, nor has allowed."
Samuel, you are a good man. You gladly share with us (*) how you take childlike pride in new posessions, and how you love indulging your interests; but you also know the importance of steering the ship, not letting it drift.
You understand the dangers and your aim is to manage them, not to taboo them. You are the pleasure-allowing Puritan, the pre-modern modern.
(*) Your diary entries are of course toots for us.
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"My wife and I to read 'Ovid's Metamorphoses' ..."
As one does.
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"... whom they did play upon for his surrendering of Dunkirk."
Surrender of Dunkirk not the scene of tragedy and heroism from 300 years later, rather a sober transaction between Charles II and Louis XIV. When the Treaty of the Pyrenees ended the long Franco-Spanish in 1659, it happened to assign Dunkirk to England. Just one of those semi-random outcomes of a war. Charles sold Dunkirk to Louis a few years later, cleaning things up.
Henry Norwood, a loyal Royalist from the time the Civil War, was deputy governor of Dunkirk during the short period of English rule. And here our Sam has dinner with him, a little later, joking about the surrender of Dunkirk.
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"... whom they did play upon for his surrendering of Dunkirk."
Surrender of Dunkirk not the scene of tragedy and heroism from 300 years later, rather a sober transaction between Charles II and Louis XIV. When the Treaty of the Pyrenees ended the long Franco-Spanish in 1659, it happened to assign Dunkirk to England. Just one of those semi-random outcomes of a war. Charles sold Dunkirk to Louis a few years later, cleaning things up.
Henry Norwood, a loyal Royalist from the time the Civil War, was deputy governor of Dunkirk during the short period of English rule. And here our Sam has dinner with him, a little later, joking about the surrender of Dunkirk.
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"... and I did here see the great pleasure to be had in discoursing of publique matters with men and women that are particularly acquainted with this or that business."
Indeed. Sam, you are a fine Mastodonian.
"Discoursing of publique matters" is what the Fedi lets us do, and being "particularly acquainted with this or that business" is what we bring into it.
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"laughing and jeering at everything that looks strange"
You are right to be upset, Sam. Bigotry and narrowmindedness are so annoying.
And that is why I warm to you, Sam: the complete absence of such narrowness in your outlook on life; your unbounded curiosity; your childlike joy in experiencing new things. Bless you, Sam.
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"She [poisened herself] because she did not like herself, nor had liked herself, nor anything she did a great while."
Pepys very precise here, in such few words. We can feel the loss, centuries on.
[EDIT: adding warning hashtags, for those who wish not to read about #suicide or #selfharm. Sorry, should have done so from the start.]
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" ... against which I find no objection but their ignorance and unwillingness to do anything of pains and what is out of their ordinary dull road."
`Twas ever thus, Sam. Hard to get approval for anything that isn't on the "ordinary dull road" familiar to committee members.
#Pepys #inertia #TheOrdinaryDullRoad -
"Midsummer’s Night’s Dream [...] is the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life."
Disagreeing with you on the artistic value of the play, Sam, but I will make "insipid" part of my active vocab, and for that I thank you. As I thank you for all your posts. You are a good Mastodonian, Sam.
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"On all hands, by God's blessing, I find myself a very rising man."
Oh, Sam, you are a poet.
I remember feeling like you do today, Sam, at one or two points earlier in my life. It's great to feel on top of the world, isn't it. I don't feel like that any more and I don't really need to feel like it any more. Age does that to you. But I rather treasure the memory of those past moments, where a young Roamer felt "a very rising man". Bless you, Sam.
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"On all hands, by God's blessing, I find myself a very rising man."
Oh, Sam, you are a poet.
I remember feeling like you do today, Sam, at one or two points earlier in my life. It's great to feel on top of the world, isn't it. I don't feel like that any more and I don't really need to feel like it any more. Age does that to you. But I rather treasure the memory of those past moments, where a young Roamer felt "a very rising man". Bless you, Sam.
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The only Easter Pepys this Old Coot can stomach. Original Digital Art. #peep #peeps #easterpeeps #marshmallowpeeps #pepys #diary #diarist #history #england #Brittan #britishisles #historian #london #greatfire #greatfireoflondon #plague #blackplague #bubonicplague #londonplague
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"But methought it lessened my esteem of a king, that he should not be able to command the rain."
What a sentence!
Sam is sheltering off the river, watches the King being drenched still on the river, very possibly worries about being seen as a whimp. Or he just is disappointed that the King gets drenched like anybody else (if it rains).
I am reminded of Racine saying, "Je n'ecrit que pour le Roi", I only ever write for the King." Oh the disapointment if the King gets his silk clothes all drenched.
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"But methought it lessened my esteem of a king, that he should not be able to command the rain."
What a sentence!
Sam is sheltering off the river, watches the King being drenched still on the river, very possibly worries about being seen as a whimp. Or he just is disappointed that the King gets drenched like anybody else (if it rains).
I am reminded of Racine saying, "Je n'ecrit que pour le Roi", I only ever write for the King." Oh the disapointment if the King gets his silk clothes all drenched.
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"But methought it lessened my esteem of a king, that he should not be able to command the rain."
What a sentence!
Sam is sheltering off the river, watches the King being drenched still on the river, very possibly worries about being seen as a whimp. Or he just is disappointed that the King gets drenched like anybody else (if it rains).
I am reminded of Racine saying, "Je n'ecrit que pour le Roi", I only ever write for the King." Oh the disapointment if the King gets his silk clothes all drenched.
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"But methought it lessened my esteem of a king, that he should not be able to command the rain."
What a sentence!
Sam is sheltering off the river, watches the King being drenched still on the river, very possibly worries about being seen as a whimp. Or he just is disappointed that the King gets drenched like anybody else (if it rains).
I am reminded of Racine saying, "Je n'ecrit que pour le Roi", I only ever write for the King." Oh the disapointment if the King gets his silk clothes all drenched.
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"But methought it lessened my esteem of a king, that he should not be able to command the rain."
What a sentence!
Sam is sheltering off the river, watches the King being drenched still on the river, very possibly worries about being seen as a whimp. Or he just is disappointed that the King gets drenched like anybody else (if it rains).
I am reminded of Racine saying, "Je n'ecrit que pour le Roi", I only ever write for the King." Oh the disapointment if the King gets his silk clothes all drenched.
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Sometimes that is what we have to do, Sam. Those of us who still feel bad about the falsehoods we are forced to perform are ok. It's those who don't feel the remorse anymore who are the problem.
"There is no right life in the false one." TW Adorno
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Yeah, lit feels good to be singled out by a senior and seen by everyone as someone who matters. Happens rarely enough!
[Note to self 1: show those who work with you that they matter.]
[Note to self 2: dig out your old notes on David Cooperrider's and Suresh Srivatva's model of "Appreciative Inquiry". They served me well when I had a management role.]
#Pepys #appreciation #AppreciativeInquiry
#DLCooperrider #SSrivatva -
"I find it a hard matter to settle to business after so much leisure and pleasure."
A simple fact, simply stated.
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"The sermon was so long, that after an hour of it we went away."
Good English pragmatism. Many lesser people would say to themselves, "Having stayed so long, I may as well stay for the rest." Not our Sam. He's a Bayesian updater and infers from the way the sermon went in the first 60 minutes, chances are it would continue like that for another 60, 90 or 120 minutes.
We also note the absence of regret: he gave the man a chance, he saw that nothing good came from it, and he moved on. Very mature. Our Sam would make a good equity investor.
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"... and that being done, I left him with his Torys and went to the Opera ..."
Good choice, Sam.
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"[...] in the praise of a liberall genius (as I take my own to be) to all studies and pleasures, [...]"
So sweet. A liberal genius to all studies and pleasures. You're doing it right, Sam. All studies and pleasures, yes, all studies and pleasures.
And I love the double L.
To be a "liberall genius".
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I'll have 'em, please! Salted and lightly smoked herring --- yes please! Anytime, but preferably for breakfast. Herring is one of the things that make life worth living.
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The power and self-affirming violence of the new state, whom he serves, is never far in Pepys's diary.
Pepys, constantly counting the handsome income he receives from being with the King, and constantly being reminded of the price of being on the other side.
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What a wonderful passage by our friend Mr #Pepys. He fears he was too unrestrained with the priest, and his admission of that fear is covered by layer upon layer of #hesitation and grammatical #SelfRestraint.
- it comes to my mind ...
- to observe ...
- that I sense ...
- to have been a little ...... too free. Finally it has come out: "I have been too free."
In the construction "I observe ... that I sense", #introspection becomes sentence structure, #diary becomes #style.
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Are you sure you're not me? The newish Kate Loveman edition of Pepys' Diary has been my bedside read-a-bit book for months!
I don't recall his dorveilles, though: maybe haven't got to them yet, this time. Thanks! Looking forward to it.
What did his friends make of those nighttime knock-ups?
Staring at the ceiling can be OK, as long as one avoids spiralling into self-loathing. Or, relatedly, thinking about money. Or death. Fine time for a good midnight mull.