Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 4,606 pages of information about Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete.

Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 4,606 pages of information about Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete.
the fleet now going out, I did my business as I could wish, both for the persons I had a mind to serve, and in getting the warrants signed drawn by my clerks, which I was afeard of.  Sat late, and having done I went home, where I found Mary Ashwell come to live with us, of whom I hope well, and pray God she may please us, which, though it cost me something, yet will give me much content.  So to supper and to bed, and find by her discourse and carriage to-night that she is not proud, but will do what she is bid, but for want of being abroad knows not how to give the respect to her mistress, as she will do when she is told it, she having been used only to little children, and there was a kind of a mistress over them.  Troubled all night with my cold, I being quite hoarse with it that I could not speak to be heard at all almost.

13th.  Up pretty early and to my office all the morning busy.  At noon home to dinner expecting Ashwell’s father, who was here in the morning and promised to come but he did not, but there came in Captain Grove, and I found him to be a very stout man, at least in his discourse he would be thought so, and I do think that he is, and one that bears me great respect and deserves to be encouraged for his care in all business.  Abroad by water with my wife and Ashwell, and left them at Mr. Pierce’s, and I to Whitehall and St. James’s Park (there being no Commission for Tangier sitting to-day as I looked for) where I walked an hour or two with great pleasure, it being a most pleasant day.  So to Mrs. Hunt’s, and there found my wife, and so took them up by coach, and carried them to Hide Park, where store of coaches and good faces.  Here till night, and so home and to my office to write by the post, and so to supper and to bed.

14th.  Up betimes and to my office, where we sat all the morning, and a great rant I did give to Mr. Davis, of Deptford, and others about their usage of Michell, in his Bewpers,—­[Bewpers is the old name for bunting.]—­which he serves in for flaggs, which did trouble me, but yet it was in defence of what was truth.  So home to dinner, where Creed dined with me, and walked a good while in the garden with me after dinner, talking, among other things, of the poor service which Sir J. Lawson did really do in the Streights, for which all this great fame and honour done him is risen.  So to my office, where all the afternoon giving maisters their warrants for this voyage, for which I hope hereafter to get something at their coming home.  In the evening my wife and I and Ashwell walked in the garden, and I find she is a pretty ingenuous

     [For ingenious.  The distinction of the two words ingenious and
     ingenuous by which the former indicates mental, and the second moral
     qualities, was not made in Pepys’s day.]

girl at all sorts of fine work, which pleases me very well, and I hope will be very good entertainment for my wife without much cost.  So to write by the post, and so home to supper and to bed.

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Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.