Diary of Samuel Pepys — Volume 46: October 1666
Diary of Samuel Pepys — Volume 46: October 1666
Translated by Mynors Bright
October 1666. The Great Fire has just devoured half of London, and smoke still hangs over the ruins. Pepys walks through streets still hot with embers, navigating a city in shock, a navy in disarray, and a Parliament grown hostile over spending. This is history at its most immediate: not a chronicle of events, but a man's live reckoning with catastrophe. Pepys records the chaos of reconstruction, the desperate scramble for resources, the petty frustrations of office politics against the backdrop of national crisis. Yet for all the weight of public affairs, his diary remains irresistibly personal: the theatre tickets, the flirtations, the late-night drinking, the small humiliations and great ambitions of a man who happened to be present at the hinge of English history. Here is Restoration London not as textbook or monument, but as lived experience raw and unguarded.
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“Strange to see how a good dinner and feasting reconciles everybody.””
— Samuel Pepys
“The truth is, I do indulge myself a little the more in pleasure, knowing that this is the proper age of my life to do it; and, out of my observation that most men that do thrive in the world do forget to take pleasure during the time that they are getting their estate, but reserve that till they have got one, and then it is too late for them to enjoy it.””
— Samuel Pepys
“He that will not stoop for a pin will never be worth a pound.””
— Samuel Pepys
“And so to bed.””
— Samuel Pepys
“Great talk among people how some of the Fanatiques do say that the end of the world is at hand, and that next Tuesday is to be the day. Against which, whenever it shall be, good God fit us all!””
— Samuel Pepys
“I find it a hard matter to settle to business after so much leisure and pleasure.””
— Samuel Pepys
“Now public business takes up so much of my time that I must get time a Sundays or a nights to look after my own matters.””
— Samuel Pepys
“neighbour of ours, Mr. Hollworthy, a very able man, is also dead by a fall in the country from his horse, his foot hanging in the stirrup, and his brains beat out.””
— Samuel Pepys
“I saw the girl of the house, being very pretty, go into a chamber, and I went in after her and kissed her.””
— Samuel Pepys
