In Which Samuel Pepys Is A Dick
Mar. 2nd, 2010 04:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pallas_athenaI've had the pepysdiary feed on my Friends page for about a year now, and I have to say that Pepys is being a real dick lately.
There are a lot of things to like about Samuel Pepys. He likes music, and composes a bit; likes singing (one of his criteria for engaging a servant girl was whether she could sing); likes the theatre; likes actresses. He's a total horndog, of course, but horndoggery was within acceptable parameters for the married Restoration-era male-- as long as you treated your spouse with respect. Tonight we got this:
Nice work, Sam.
Of course, you could always try expressing your contrition to your wife instead of to the pages of your diary. Just a thought.
Later that same entry Sam discloses that his wife that day was "ill with those." (Those = menstruation.) During menstruation, women's vocal cords swell slightly, making it harder for them to meet cleanly and produce a clear sound. This problem affects even professionally trained singers. Elizabeth Pepys might not have known it, but on this particular evening the physical odds were stacked against her performance from the start.
So basically, Pepys comes home to his on-the-rag-and-in-pain wife; demands that she stand up in front of him and sing, about which she's far from confident; loses patience and criticises her till she's in tears.
Samuel Pepys: Simon Cowell of the seventeenth century. You heard it here first.
There are a lot of things to like about Samuel Pepys. He likes music, and composes a bit; likes singing (one of his criteria for engaging a servant girl was whether she could sing); likes the theatre; likes actresses. He's a total horndog, of course, but horndoggery was within acceptable parameters for the married Restoration-era male-- as long as you treated your spouse with respect. Tonight we got this:
So to the office till dinner-time, and then home to dinner, and before dinner making my wife to sing. Poor wretch! her ear is so bad that it made me angry, till the poor wretch cried to see me so vexed at her...
Nice work, Sam.
...that I think I shall not discourage her so much again, but will endeavour to make her understand sounds, and do her good that way; for she hath a great mind to learn, only to please me; and, therefore, I am mighty unjust to her in discouraging her so much...
Of course, you could always try expressing your contrition to your wife instead of to the pages of your diary. Just a thought.
Later that same entry Sam discloses that his wife that day was "ill with those." (Those = menstruation.) During menstruation, women's vocal cords swell slightly, making it harder for them to meet cleanly and produce a clear sound. This problem affects even professionally trained singers. Elizabeth Pepys might not have known it, but on this particular evening the physical odds were stacked against her performance from the start.
So basically, Pepys comes home to his on-the-rag-and-in-pain wife; demands that she stand up in front of him and sing, about which she's far from confident; loses patience and criticises her till she's in tears.
Samuel Pepys: Simon Cowell of the seventeenth century. You heard it here first.
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no subject
on 2010-03-02 05:29 am (UTC)no subject
on 2010-03-02 01:46 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2010-03-02 08:39 am (UTC)no subject
on 2010-03-02 01:41 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2010-03-02 05:27 pm (UTC)I'm singing in a rather groovy Bach Matthew this Saturday... http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=286697447860
no subject
on 2010-03-02 09:05 am (UTC)no subject
on 2010-03-02 12:40 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2010-03-02 05:42 pm (UTC)And he can hardly complain if her eye doth wander!