Honest to a Fault: Pepys’s journals bear witness to events large and small(neh.gov)
neh.gov
Honest to a Fault: Pepys’s journals bear witness to events large and small
https://www.neh.gov/article/honest-fault
6 comments
This Twitter account is tweeting the diary out a few sentences at a time. I've been following it for a while, with out knowing much about who Samuel Pepys was. https://twitter.com/samuelpepys
Samuel Pepys is mentioned quite often in Bill Bryson's book titled At Home. I had just read this paragraph yesterday:
> By chance, a Cambridge scholar, the Reverend George Neville, a master of Magdalene College, saw Macpherson's passing reference to Pepys's diaries and grew intrigued to know what else might be in them. Pepys after all had lived through momentous times - through the restoration of the monarchy, the last great plague epidemic, the Great Fire of London of 1666 - so their content was bound to be of interest. He commissioned a clever but penurious student named John Smith to see if he could crack the code and transcribe the diaries. The work took Smith three years. The result of course was the most celebrated diary in the English language. Had Pepys not had that cup of tea, Macpherson not mentioned it in a dull history, Neville been less curious, and young Smith less intelligent and dogged, the name Samuel Pepys would mean nothing to anyone but naval historians, and a very considerable part of what we know about how people lived in the second half of the seventeenth century would in fact be unknown. So it was a good thing that he had that cup of tea.
> By chance, a Cambridge scholar, the Reverend George Neville, a master of Magdalene College, saw Macpherson's passing reference to Pepys's diaries and grew intrigued to know what else might be in them. Pepys after all had lived through momentous times - through the restoration of the monarchy, the last great plague epidemic, the Great Fire of London of 1666 - so their content was bound to be of interest. He commissioned a clever but penurious student named John Smith to see if he could crack the code and transcribe the diaries. The work took Smith three years. The result of course was the most celebrated diary in the English language. Had Pepys not had that cup of tea, Macpherson not mentioned it in a dull history, Neville been less curious, and young Smith less intelligent and dogged, the name Samuel Pepys would mean nothing to anyone but naval historians, and a very considerable part of what we know about how people lived in the second half of the seventeenth century would in fact be unknown. So it was a good thing that he had that cup of tea.
Your comment is especially relevant re this quote from the original article:
"Thus do we hear of Pepys’s plan to burn a compromising book so it won’t be found in his library, even though his library includes the diary in which he records the purchase and his plans to conceal it. It’s as if Pepys can’t suppress his compulsive candor."
Pepys wrote in a rare (Shelton) form of shorthand and then used code words as well, for further security. His writings were reasonably secure, in their time.
Pepys wrote in a rare (Shelton) form of shorthand and then used code words as well, for further security. His writings were reasonably secure, in their time.
I ran across this plaque on the "Hung, Drawn and Quartered" pub in London once. Talk about British wit.
http://s0.geograph.org.uk/photos/38/18/381862_cbced004.jpg
http://s0.geograph.org.uk/photos/38/18/381862_cbced004.jpg
https://www.pepysdiary.com/ has annotated daily entries.
They’re all great reading.
They’re all great reading.
Victuals!