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pallas_athena ([personal profile] pallas_athena) wrote2010-08-21 02:08 am
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Samuel Pepys is a dick, again

I subscribe to the pepysdiary LJ feed, and we're now up to 1667. Samuel Pepys is now stinking rich and, of course, being a total dick to all and sundry. This week: frottage in church!

[...] and I walked towards White Hall, but, being wearied, turned into St. Dunstan's Church, where I heard an able sermon of the minister of the place; and stood by a pretty, modest maid, whom I did labour to take by the hand and the body; but she would not, but got further and further from me; and, at last, I could perceive her to take pins out of her pocket to prick me if I should touch her again -- which seeing I did forbear, and was glad I did spy her design.


Well done, that resourceful modest maid.

The Restoration, we're all taught, was an age of sexual freedom. Puritanism was over and done with; there were actresses portraying witty, desire-driven characters on the stage; stays and dress styles combined to give one's cleavage the old heave-ho (and breeches did similar things for the male erogenous zones.) The poet's pen, the painter's brush, the engraver's blade and the sculptor's tool all united to celebrate sex. So, loud huzzahs for sexual freedom... right?

What you get from Pepys's diary, however, are a plethora of boastful anecdotes of what would now be called sexual harassment. He talks about handling the breasts of his servant girl; he cops a feel on an actress who's ill and barely conscious in his wife's bed; he gropes strangers in church. He's on fire at the sight of breasts-- but angrily chastises his wife when he perceives her dress to be immodest. If we take Pepys to be a fairly average upper-middle-class Restoration man, then-- well, then we have to concede that Restoration guys were annoying as all fuck.

Anyway, the pins didn't deter Samuel from trying it on with the next girl:

And then I fell to gaze upon another pretty maid in a pew close to me, and she on me; and I did go about to take her by the hand, which she suffered a little and then withdrew. So the sermon ended, and the church broke up, and my amours ended also...


"Amours" must be French for "disgusting strange women with your horndoggery."

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Pepys is missing out on the best part of being cheated on: the guilt gifts. You'd think that, given the amount of extramarital hide-the-smallsword Sam gets up to, he could at least buy his wife something nice, right? But no:

So home... and so called my wife and walked in the garden. She mighty pressing for a new pair of cuffs, which I am against the laying out of money upon yet, which makes her angry. So home to supper and to bed.


Samuel Pepys: tight of fist and fundament, but of breeches mighty loose. Also, a dick.

[identity profile] mirabehn.livejournal.com 2010-08-21 09:52 am (UTC)(link)
Grargh. Really, really a dick.

And YAY for that clever maid.

If we take Pepys to be a fairly average upper-middle-class Restoration man, then-- well, then we have to concede that Restoration guys were annoying as all fuck.

I think, alas, we probably do. :-/

[identity profile] artnouveauho.livejournal.com 2010-08-22 10:11 am (UTC)(link)
Alas, alas. The Restoration is one of my favourite periods for literature, drama and music (to say nothing of costume!) I'd love to believe that not every Restoration man was as annoying as Samuel Pepys...

[identity profile] larissa-00.livejournal.com 2010-08-23 11:37 am (UTC)(link)
I'd second your love of the theatre (I love The Country Wife) and attire, and also it's a fabulous period for the advancement of science and math. Maybe the math geeks weren't such annoying, lewd, idiots: if you're busy at lectures at the Royal Society, you aren't groping stangers at random at the theatre ;->

[identity profile] fairie-ring.livejournal.com 2010-08-21 04:01 pm (UTC)(link)
Hilarious, I'm glad I read this before my trip to Lichfield today. I was learning all about restorationists and thinking "What a bunch of knobs!"

[identity profile] artnouveauho.livejournal.com 2010-08-22 10:08 am (UTC)(link)
Hee hee. Knobs with style, my dear, knobs with style.

[identity profile] mister-jack.livejournal.com 2010-08-21 05:45 pm (UTC)(link)
Ye gads, he's a charmer isn't he?

The company being all gone to their homes, I up with Mrs. Pierce to Knipp, who was in bed; and we waked her, and there I handled her breasts

(24th January 1666/67)

So not only does he pop up to grope and harass the poor ill actress but he takes along a friend's wife to watch.

[identity profile] artnouveauho.livejournal.com 2010-08-22 10:07 am (UTC)(link)
Seriously. Stay classy, Sam!

...also, using the pepysdiary.com search function to search for rude words is way more amusing than it should be.

[identity profile] speedlime.livejournal.com 2010-08-21 08:11 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, god, there MUST be some way, some how to combine this with the Superdickery website. I'm envisioning a series of one-panel "Samuel Pepys is a Dick" comics drawn in sort of vintage-engraving style.

I also love it when he uses cod-Spanish in a sad attempt to mask the dirty bits:

February 9, 1668: Lord's Day. Up, and at my chamber all the morning and in the office, doing business and also reading a little of L'escholle des Filles, which is a mighty lewd book, but yet not amiss for a sober man once to read over to inform himself in the villainy of the world....[later that afternoon] I to my chamber, where I did read through L'escholle de Filles a lewd book, but what doth me no wrong to read for information sake but it did hazer my prick para stand all the while, and una vez to decharge; and after I had done [the book], I burned it, that it might not be among my books to my shame; and so at night to supper and then to bed.

[identity profile] artnouveauho.livejournal.com 2010-08-22 09:55 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah! I always think "It doesn't matter how many languages you say it in, Sam, you're still a dick."

[identity profile] breltard95.livejournal.com 2010-08-22 04:22 am (UTC)(link)
He didn't want to buy her the cuffs because that would be a good place for her to hide pins.

[identity profile] artnouveauho.livejournal.com 2010-08-22 09:49 am (UTC)(link)
!!! I think you're onto something. Have you considered presenting a paper at the next "Samuel Pepys: A Dick Or What?" conference?

[identity profile] larissa-00.livejournal.com 2010-08-23 11:31 am (UTC)(link)
Ah, no, nothing he's done this month horrifies me as much as this from last month (6th July)

My joy in this made me send for wine, and thither come her sister and Mrs. Cragg, and I staid a good while there. But here happened the best instance of a woman’s falseness in the world, that her sister Doll, who went for a bottle of wine, did come home all blubbering and swearing against one Captain Vandener, a Dutchman of the Rhenish Wine House, that pulled her into a stable by the Dog tavern, and there did tumble her and toss her, calling him all the rogues and toads in the world, when she knows that elle hath suffered me to do any thing with her a hundred times.

So just because Doll's been his lover, by choice, she has no right to complain of rape! She's 'false' because she is distressed: WTF?
Kind of also infers that Sam would consider it ok to have non-consensual sex with any lass who he knew to already have taken lovers, and that's _really_ not a good thought (although arguably a judgement on women that persisted long after the Restoration).

[identity profile] artnouveauho.livejournal.com 2010-08-24 08:01 pm (UTC)(link)
Volumes could be (and have been) written about historical concepts of consent. To some Restoration guys, it seems that consent only matters if she's your social status or higher and/or a virgin.

[identity profile] library-keeper.livejournal.com 2010-08-23 09:03 pm (UTC)(link)
Samuel Pepys: not just a dick, but a gobsmackingly self-incriminating dick.

[identity profile] artnouveauho.livejournal.com 2010-08-24 08:01 pm (UTC)(link)
Ain't he though?

[identity profile] slightlyfoxed.livejournal.com 2010-08-25 08:27 am (UTC)(link)
Thank you for this gob-smacking dickery. Any small interpersonal squabbling that happens at my workplace, today, will be put into perspective by this (but will also, now, be met with a fistful of pins).

[identity profile] artnouveauho.livejournal.com 2010-08-25 02:08 pm (UTC)(link)
Pins are a remarkably useful thing to have about one! Of course, if Pepys tried anything with you, you'd easily best him in the ensuing duel.

[identity profile] orkamedies.livejournal.com 2010-08-25 09:11 am (UTC)(link)
Nice one.

[identity profile] artnouveauho.livejournal.com 2010-08-26 12:16 am (UTC)(link)
*courtly bow*