Who said and so to bed

Up, and at the office all the morning, and so to it again after dinner, and there busy late, choosing to employ myself rather than go home to trouble with my wife , whom, however, I am forced to comply with, and indeed I do pity her as having cause enough for her grief.

So to bed, and there slept ill because of my wife. This afternoon I did go out towards Sir D. Up, and presently my wife up with me, which she professedly now do every day to dress me, that I may not see Willet , and do eye me, whether I cast my eye upon her, or no; and do keep me from going into the room where she is among the upholsters at work in our blue chamber.

So abroad to White Hall by water, and so on for all this day as I have by mistake set down in the fifth day after this mark. With him to see my cozen Turner and The. We past the evening together, and then to bed and slept ill, she being troubled and troubling me in the night with talk and complaints upon the old business.

Up, and Willet come home in the morning, and, God forgive me! I could not conceal my content thereat by smiling, and my wife observed it, but I said nothing, nor she, but away to the office. Presently up by water to White Hall , and there all of us to wait on the Duke of York , which we did, having little to do, and then I up and down the house, till by and by the Duke of York, who had bid me stay, did come to his closet again, and there did call in me and Mr.

Pen , who is now declared to be gone from us to that of the Victualling , and did shew how the Office would now be left without one seaman in it, but the Surveyour and the Controller , who is so old as to be able to do nothing, he told me plainly that I knew his mind well enough as to seamen, but that it must be as others will.

Smith might succeed him, the King did tell him that that was a matter fit to be considered of, and would not agree to either presently; and so the Duke of York could not prevail for either, nor knows who it shall be. I saw them walk up and down the Court together all this morning; the first time I ever saw Osborne, who is a comely gentleman. Having heard all this I took coach and to Mr.

Povy; where the Agent would have me stay and dine, there being only them, and Joseph Williamson , and Sir Thomas Clayton ; but what he is I know not. Here much extraordinary noble discourse of foreign princes, and particularly the greatness of the King of France , and of his being fallen into the right way of making the kingdom great, which [none] of his ancestors ever did before.

And why should we care? It holds nothing back and tells us what people ate, how they relaxed — Pepys was a great musician and theatre-goer — how they spent their money, and all the details of the minutiae of everyday life. Reading Pepys is like looking over his shoulder as he writes; you can almost smell the tallow from his candle.

He wrote with a quill pen in standard notebooks of pages, with hand-ruled margins in red ink. The diary at first looks like impenetrable code — all squiggles and dots with only the occasional recognisable word. He took it all in his stride and was a man who was curious about everything; from investigating the science of dissection, to deciding whether or not the phenomenon of second sight really existed.

Because Pepys moved in scientific and intellectual circles as well as patronising the arts, we get a well-rounded insight into the mindset of the early modern era. Pepys continued his diary for a little over nine years, to 31 May, , when he had trouble with his eyesight, feared he was going blind, and, regrettably, stopped writing it.

In this last entry he states that he will get his clerks to keep a daily record for him, but that, from now on, the entries must be fit for public ears. In his later, more public, writings, one of the things the reader misses the most is the juxtaposition of the mundane with the extraordinary, and how Pepys himself accepts the whole horror and beauty of the day with equal cheerfulness. In this typical example from 19 January, , he goes quite unperturbed from one event to the next:.

Shipton, , by John Hackett:. Bentley for Charles Knight, :. A Satyr. Written in a plain English Stile London: [unknown publisher], :. Jonathan Swift Dublin: George Faulkner, :.

What if a letter from MD 1 should come in the mean time? Why then I would only say, Madam, I have received your sixth letter; your most humble servant to command, Presto 2 ; and so conclude. Sunday Recreations. Jolly good dinner. Jaunt to somewhere—shay or omnibus. Pity poor horses! Blow a cloud 5. Three or four grogs—hot with or cold without. Rattle home again. Pity poor devils of horses; quite blowed, and dead beat; cheap riding though.

Jolly good supper.