Oh What A Time... - #101 Diarists (Part 2)

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

This is Part 2! For Part 1, check the feed!Grab your quill, a notebook and some candlelight, as this week we’re looking at some of the finest diarists history has to offer. We’ve got Einstein! We’ve got Anna Dostoevskaya along with Sofia Tolstaya and the diaries they wrote on their husbands. And no episode on diarists would be complete without the man himself, Samuel Pepys.And this week we’re consumed with: when did shame begin? Was it over a failure to get some decent berries for dinner? Did ancient man once forget to wipe his bum? Please send us your theories: [e-mail] you fancy a bunch of OWAT content you’ve never heard before, why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER?Up for grabs is:- two bonus episodes every month!- ad-free listening- episodes a week ahead of everyone else- And much moreSubscriptions are available via AnotherSlice and Wondery +. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.comYou can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom xSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wandery Plus subscribers can listen to episodes of Oh What A Time early and ad free. Join Wandery Plus in the Wandery app or on Apple Podcasts. Each week we tackle a brand new subject from life in Nelson's Navy to death in ancient Rome. From maniacal monarchs to Soviet spies to the history of milk. And we ask the questions other history shows are too chicken to. How would you feel about consummating your marriage in front of your in-laws in medieval Britain? No thanks. How would your puny little arms fair as part of the crew on a viking longboat? And would you be up for a night out to see a sapient pig in Victorian London?

This is Oh What A Time, the podcast that the Times newspaper described as very funny, if less scholarly than its rivals, probably fair. This podcast is guaranteed to make your life better by reminding you that things in the past were so much worse. That's Oh What A Time, available every Monday and Tuesday on Wondry with two bonus episodes every month on Wondry+. This is part two of Diaries, let's get on with the show. So, today I'm going to talk to you both about a hugely important diary writer from the world of Russian literature. Now, have you read any of the work by Dostoevsky?

I tried to read one. Was it The Idiot? Yes. Have you read Crime and Punishment? I read Crime and Punishment. Crime and Punishment is surprisingly readable, actually Punishment. Crime and Punishment is fantastic. It's surprisingly readable actually. Is it? Absolutely brilliant. I couldn't finish.

Did you? I love it. I think it's a fantastic book. And what about Tolstoy? Have you read any Tolstoy? No. War and Peace on the old list, but I've never read it. It's a touch big for me. Yeah. Massive it is. Whenever I've thought about it. No lift up flaps. Bit of an big for me. Yeah, massive it is. Whenever I've thought about it. No lift up flaps. Bit of an issue for me.

Yeah, it doesn't have that sort of holiday read feel about it, does it? No. Now, what is interesting about these two towering names in the world of Russian literature is that they were not the only writers in their family. Interestingly, Anna Dostoevsky and Sophia Tolstoy or Tolstaya, as she would have been known, wrote diaries or memoirs about their famous husbands. Oh wow. So what makes Sophia, which is Tolstoy's wife's diary, particularly compelling is

that the fact they survive alongside the diaries that Tolstoy himself were writing. So it gives you a direct… Compare and contrast. Exactly. It is that. It gives a direct insight into the kind of conjugal relations, the two points of view on their relationship from the author of War and Peace, Tolstoy, and the woman, his wife, who is compelled to write it all up in longhand. Now there's a job. Thoughts on that, El? Oh man.

If you're doing one of your Guardian articles and you turn to Izzy, would you mind, if I read this out, would you mind typing it up for me? How's she feeling about that? I mean, I don't think she'd even graced that with an answer. Yeah. What did I do? She wanted me to get her a glass of water yesterday and I was in bed and I was reading my book and she was standing up and she said, will to get her a glass of water yesterday. And I was in bed and I was reading my book and she was standing up. And she said, will you get me a glass of water? And I just went, yeah.

You're asking a lot. Yeah, yeah. It's often the face, it's simply the expression that gives it away, isn't it? Oh, yeah. A slight flick of the eyes that says, really? What? But you've got legs as well. Yeah, come on, come on.

And you know where we are exactly. I'm reading the 1989 shoot down here, I'm trying to get to that. Do you think there was a point when Sophia was writing up War and Peace Longhand that she was thinking, well not just one point, she's thinking, bring this in a bit mate. Like, this is taking so long. How is this still going? This chapter. Do we need this chapter? I know two people who have read it. One of those people is

David Schneider, who directed a sitcom that Tom wrote that I was in. The comedian. And I think it's David's favourite ever book. And he will go back and re-read it because he loves it so much. The other person I know who's read it is my friend Carl and he said listen it is incredible but every now and then there'll be like a sort of

50, it'll come out with a story and there'll be like a 50 page discussion on the philosophy of war the morality of war and you're like come on mate let's go. Let's keep it motoring. We keep the pace up a bit here. Yeah. Exactly. Sorry, you know, you know she was writing it up longhand? Yeah. I've just Googled it. It's 1225 pages. Whoa.

And it's not like, Gruffalo sized print. Yeah. It's small print. It's not font size 18. No. Double spaced lines. That is an ordeal isn't it? You're getting RSI after that one of the phrases. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been in status quo.

So some background to the relationship. Sofia was 16 years younger than Tolstoy and went on to outlive him by nine years. She died in 1919, just as the Bolshevik revolution was consolidating its grip on the Russian Empire. And her diaries cover the period from 1860 until her death, thus coinciding with those of her husband, Leo Tolstoy, which runs from 1847 until his death in 1910. Now, if you read Tolstoy's diaries, you get the impression of an older man who's hard at work and thinking. He's a great thinker. That's how he presents himself. And when he writes about his younger self, he talks about himself drinking, being

merry, and paying for sex. Shaggy. Yeah, it is. There's a lot of him paying for sex, a lot of that sort of stuff. In fact, he crams so much detail in that they are the largest set of diaries available for any Russian writer and they comprise all sorts of notebooks, journals, desk calendars, scraps of paper. He keeps all of this stuff. It's like you, Al, you've talked about this before, how you can't chuck away a piece of paper, writing pads. He keeps everything. He cobbles it all together to form a diary in inverted commas, if you can just call it that. He's basically Mr. Trebus from Life of the Prime.

And in Russian, they run to at least 13 volumes. It's all this stuff that he kept and he hoarded all these records from these lives. As we've come to find out, he actually was quite an unpleasant guy. But I do kind of find that quite romantic. There is something quite romantic about keeping all these scraps from your life, these tickets and all these things and keeping them in one place. There is something quite nice about that. Memory box. So much of it will be shit.

No one has just good ideas. So much of it will be crap. But this is Tolstoy, so some of it must have been, must be pretty decent. Some of it's going to be decent, yeah. You know like Tupac died and he'd like, and then he basically had enough stuff that they were like releasing like four or five albums after he died. Is there enough Tolstoy stuff that you could basically go through it and go, you know what, we've got another six or seven Tolstoy books here. There's the book The Decembrists, isn't there, which I don't think he finished.

Oh really? He's not like Solzhenitsyn. He didn't knock off any sort of 120 page novels. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're all big bastards. He was paid by the word, that's why. Now, Tolstoy was a very complex individual. He was prone to sexism, snide commentary, and his diaries are often quite weird. Some of his entries are a weird mix of quite lustful and the mundane. So for example…

Sounds like my level. You got the idea for a diary frog. Ellis James, 16-22 in Carmarthen. Lustful and mundane. So here's an example. Woke up at nine, met some Germans from Bern. We talked about hunting in the Vaterland. Had a bathe with two girls. Flirted with me, one of them with wonderful eyes.

I had bad thoughts and I was immediately punished by shyness. A wonderful church with an organ full of pretty women. There you are. So nice little thing. He pops to a church in Bern. Wow. Thinks it's lovely, likes the organ, but the rest of it isn't just pointing out all the women he fancies. I think if you were finding people attractive in those days, awful lot of emphasis on the eyes because people's teeth would have been horrific.

Yeah, absolutely. So it's not going to be like, oh, you know, I walk up next to a German, he had an absolutely fantastic smile because that's so unlikely. So this was the summer of 1857. It's a few years before he met and married Sophia. And she was soon to discover that his views on women weren't exactly sophisticated. This is what he wrote in 1893. They can do anything and like apes they have copied everything from man. Sounds like a really great guy, doesn't he? Tolstoy, getting a real feeling for what he's like. He compelled Sophia to breastfeed all 13 children even when she found it painful. And she also hated his vegetarian

diet as it meant doubling up on every meal she had to cook for the family. She wrote in her diary, all the things that he preaches for the happiness of humanity only complicate life to the point where it becomes harder and harder for me to live. His vegetarian diet means twice the expense and twice the work. His sermons on love and goodness have made him indifferent to his own family and mean the intrusion of all kinds of riff-raff into our family life. And his purely verbal renunciation of worldly goods." That's a brilliant slam, isn't it? Yeah.

"...have made him endlessly critical and disproving of others." So you can see she's starting to write in her diary what she really feels about this guy. Wow. Okay. Oy, oy, oy. His purely verbal renunciation of worldly goods. That's a slam. His diaries also tell us that he was the sort of husband who went out at a moment's notice without telling anybody and without leaving any sense of when he'd return. So, she also wrote this, I would wait an hour after hour in agony of suspense and

to all my passionate and loving words, his ironic reply was, so what if I went out? I'm not a little boy. Oh my gosh, it's like having a cat. Yeah, it is. It's like Gary from Men Behaving Badly. Listen to his response here. Now, bearing in mind he's an adult and this is one of the great writers. Okay. So what if I went out? I'm not a little boy. I don't have to tell you. It's unbelievable. He's like a sort of a fourth, petulant 14 year old. I'm now imagining Tolstoy is being played by Martin Clunes.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She says, I felt angry with him. I devote so much love and care to him and his heart is so icy. However, for many years, people didn't hear about any of this. They had no idea about this. Would you like to guess why? I guess I always think back there, like now, if you're a bono, you don't really have social media and you're able to maintain some mystery about you. And I guess if you're a famous writer, you could easily just have a whole shroud of mystery around who you are. But why did nobody know about her diaries and the things she'd written about him? Oh, people not interested in publishing them because she's a woman and not a famous novelist.

Will Barron Well, actually, it was because, yes, you're almost right. It was because her diaries were hidden away and they were censored basically due to her honesty. It was felt that a writer with the status of Tolstoy just couldn't be criticised. It couldn't be allowed to be criticised. So it was only in the 21st century that her diaries came to rest side by side with her husband. And they are genuinely incredible. She's an amazing writer. They reveal not only the difficulties of her marriage, but also her own sense of purpose, how separate she felt. And as she put it in 1865, I can hear him writing now

his diary too, probably. And this is what we talked about earlier about what a diary is for. And I think this is a really interesting point she makes here about the honesty of diaries. I hardly ever read it now. As soon as you read each other's diaries, you become dishonest. And I've become much more honest lately, which makes my life much happier and easier. He puts down all his latest ideas about his novel. And it's all so clever and makes me horribly aware of my peterness and inferiority. So it's kind of her point there is if you're reading each other's diaries, the honesty saps away. So what is the point? So she's finding it cathartic and useful to be honest now knowing that he's not reading her stuff. Which is kind of really what I think diary keeping should be about.

Will Barron I tell you one thing. That the idea that such a great novelist and a novelist of his standing shouldn't be put up for public criticism. I wish they would do that for radio presenters having presented on radio five live and had access to the text console. Yeah. Can they build that into the text console? Yeah. Cause Andy- Do you ever get things coming in that you shouldn't read? Andy from Oldham certainly didn't agree with that.

He thought I was a complete wanker. There's no filter on the text console. It's direct. You can get direct... I almost don't want to admit that. Shouldn't that be going through a producer though? Occasionally. Occasionally you see them flash up and then they delete.

I've had that happen. Yeah, yeah. And then, because you're curious, they're like, no, go on, what's it say? And they're like, no, no, you don't want to know. No, no, go on, what's it say? We'll play a track. Tell me dear in the news what it said. Oh, it's deleted now. Let's try to remember. Now, here is the maddest bit of all this diary writing between Sophia and Tolstoy himself. Bearing in mind that Tolstoy's diary was so full of the stories of his many sexual conquests, including with servants on the estate, on the eve of their wedding he gave her his diary to read so that she could know all about it. Which is not the most romantic thing to do. It does really make him seem like quite the asshole, doesn't it? So he's handing

this diary and going, just so you know, here's a list of everyone I've ever slept with, if you'd like to go through it. It's a mud thing to do. It is, man. Very petty. Very petty man. It does feel like a weird sort of power play, like this is the notches on the bed. It's just sort of like... Also the eve of their wedding. I suppose maybe, and I'm being generous here, but I'm trying to be generous. Maybe thought, you know, marriage is a big thing.

It's better she knows, at least I can say that I've been on this, but it's the timing of it. Also, the three of us are married. The night before, you're stressed. You've got a lot of stuff to do. Is it true, Al, on the eve of your wedding you gave Izzy a post-it note with a list of all the people you slept with? Yeah, I was ugly. I was an ugly teenager. I had a bad… you know, not great in my 20s,

thanks. But she loves me for who I am. I'm a bad, you know, not great in my 20s, thanks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But she loves me for who I am. I'm a good guy. I'm a good man and people didn't recognise that. And I know that saying that makes me sound a bit incelly. Now, after Tolstoy died, Sophia continued to keep a diary. When we read her writing from 1914, after the outbreak of the First World War, we get a very different diarist, one who must adjust to the sort of solitude and fear of her life. This is what she wrote in 1914, I spent the whole evening alone, I shall never get used to this painful solitude. Yet to go away and leave the servant and all my things will be unthinkable.

I have the same ache in the pit of my stomach, the same sense of hopelessness. And so it was from Sophia Tolstoy, not Leo Tolstoy, that we get a view of the Russian Revolution of 1917. So it's kind of a really interesting time for her to be writing these diaries. In the early part of the year, she wrote, "'Everyone is talking revolution. "'It's impossible to buy anything. "'There's no bread or kerosene to be found

"'and all the shops are closing.' She adds a few weeks later, "' I conscientiously read all the newspapers. Everything is so frightening. The war and the famine, there is menace in the air. At the moment, I must admit, on a global sense, it does feel that we are, we're living in a time where there is menace in the air again. It does feel, obviously it's different to what they're going through there, but it does feel like there's, it's an uncomfortable time.

There is, there are political movements and leanings that do feel worrying. Well, write a contemporary diary, Crane. This is your moment. This is his contemporary diary. Exactly, yeah, it's an audio diary. And then during the Bolshevik Revolution, something has changed. Her writings change again. My sister and I have had an idea of reading something to the village boys, but it's hard to know what. Our peasants come here this evening and held elections to the committee.

None of this is all very clear to me. I'm living in a dream in a state of terrible turmoil." So she's really going through the mill, isn't she? And in many respects, just to close, this is why historians read diaries. This is why they use them, basically to gain firsthand flavor of major events. Yes, on one hand, the Tolstoy family were often odds with each other, but they also

had to, what's interesting, confront two seminal moments of the 20th century and then react to them basically through 19th century eyes. Because obviously this was quite modern experience that they were going through despite the fact they were born in the 19th century. And it's no wonder that the 73-year-old Sophia failed to understand the Bullshit Revolution. In her old age, it was one change too many, I suppose. Yeah. That's how I feel about Snapchat. I did Facebook, I did Twitter, I'm doing Instagram. Snapchat is just one too many.

Yeah. You never get your head around it. But that's the point about diaries, I suppose, is they, at their best, they show people's emotional reaction to change, don't they? People trying to make sense of the world shifting as they get older. And, you know, that's just an experience everyone has to go through, I suppose. So there you are. That's the work of Sophia Tolstoy. Well worth reading, fascinating person and difficult husband, I think I'll say. Bummed me out a bit, to be honest. Reminded me of, because I quite respect Tolstoy, but it reminded me of the time I met Timmy Mallett. I was at Butlins and there was a strict, you have to buy merchandise that he will sign rule. But I was on my own, didn't have my parents with me. And so I just asked Timmy Mallett

if he'd sign a piece of paper and he said no. Oh, no way. And that was quite disappointing. And that's how I now feel about Tolstoy. Rushes Timmy Mallett. Alright, final part of this episode I'm going to be talking about, perhaps the most celebrated diarist of all time. It's that man Peeps, Samuel Peeps. Now I went to the Museum of London on a school trip when I was about 14, and that's where I first learned about Samuel Pepys, and there was an exhibit there about the fire of London,

I remember, and it kind of demonstrated how the fire of London spread, and it had excerpts from Samuel Pepys' diary, and I was just getting into reading, and I was like, great, I'll buy a Pepys' diary, and I bought it in the shop at the end of the museum. Oh nice. And I started reading it and I look back now and I think I was definitely not old enough to be reading Samuel Peeps because it is absolute filth. Is it? As we'll get into.

Yeah, it's mad. I could, like even going back over this, it really is shocking the stuff that he was writing about and as we'll learn, Samuel Peeps diaries became massive in hundreds of years later, but in particular, the Victorians were just shocked by the sex in it, the farting. I also thought I had read all of his diaries. I realize now, having researched this, kindly Dr. Daryl Leeworthy has provided me with some additional research. I realised I definitely didn't read all of it because he, over 10 years, filled one million pages of diaries.

What? Wow! Yeah, Craig. That's amazing. You were swinging your wiener a few minutes ago about the Tolstoy's wife's diaries. Well, hey, here we've got one million pages of diaries. But how big were the pages? They could have been tiny pages. You need to be specific. Yeah. So almost 10 years worth, from the 1st of January 1660 through to the 31st of May

1669. That's quite also a fittingly rude year as well for him to finish 1639. Very boredy man. It's all filth, isn't it? The fascinating thing I find about Peeps, and it's something we touch on this show, is that he would have been a forgotten man of history. He's not especially important. He was a civil servant, a Tory politician in the 17th century. His immediate predecessor as MP for Harwich was a guy called Cappell Luckin and he's absolutely

been forgotten by history despite having a very striking name for someone from Essex. These are the events that Samuel Peep's diaries cover. It's nine and a half years but my word, Peep's is in the right place at the right time for this nine and a half year period. In 1660 you've got the restoration of King Charles II, an astonishing development and he's a government official there dealing with the change. You've also got the coronation of Charles II and Peepes describes the lavish coronation ceremony, which we'll touch on some of that in a bit. Then in 1665, the great plague of London. And as we'll touch'll touch on Peeps has significant health anxiety

Which is exacerbated by the plague the actual plague 1666 the Great Fire of London. Yeah, then you've got the second Anglo-Dutch war 1665 to 1667 And he peeps at this point is a naval administrator So you've got he recording naval battles military, military failures, all that kind of, the lack of funding, corruption. He's got the raid on the Medway in 1667 with a Dutch fleet sailed up the River Medway into the shopping centre, burned down Clifton's cards. And then you've also got-

He stole the diaries from Clifton Cars, didn't he? Made it off with those. You've got his own rising career throughout the diary as well, which is really interesting. You see he's on a trajectory. But also it's filled with gossip, the diary, about the Royal Court, corruption and his own personal affairs, which just give an incredible insight into the 17th century. He only stopped writing interestingly enough because he thought he was going blind because he had spent, I mean if he's written a million pages he's spending hundreds of thousands of hours scribbling in candlelight. He wrote, thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my

own eyes in the keeping of my journal, so I but take myself to that course, which is almost as much as to see myself go into the grave, for which, and all the discomforts that will accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me." So when he finished it, he thought it was because he'd been writing by candlelight, he thought he was going blind. He did not go blind. He basically just needed glasses, which your 17th century

optometrist is going to struggle to sort that out. Yes, of course. Writing by candlelight must be a bit of a nightmare though, mustn't it? It's not enough light. It's tricky though, isn't it? Because a diary comes at the end of the day, because your option is to wait till the next day and try and remember it all and write it in the sunlight, but then there's a chance it's not as fresh. Yeah, and then these diaries are absolutely fresh. So you're forced to use the candlelight, but the candlelight is not enough light. Oh no,

what am I going to do? You've got to try and fit, basically, ideally fit it in around sort of half, four, quarter to five before the light starts to fade. But then the problem, you'll miss the evening stuff. Often some good stuff will happen in the evening. Oh, it's an absolute nightmare. And, you know, the lack of electric light would have meant that there was an awful lot of emphasis on getting stuff done in daylight, especially in the winter. Yes, yeah.

So you're like, yeah, well, I've got to do, yeah, fine, but I've also got to do that. I can't really write in my diary or my wife will get very angry with me actually, so I'm going to have to do it by bloody candlelight and go blind. Yeah, absolutely. Craig, you said something earlier in this episode, like what do you write in the diary?

Peeps has the approach of, I'm going to write absolutely everything, including his numerous affairs and sexual liaisons. But how does he do that when he's got a wife? What he does is he writes it in a combination of European languages, shorthand, like rough coded stuff that's fairly easy to figure out if you know what he's trying to say. The full translated version of the Peeps diary didn't emerge until 1983. Wow! Really? Yeah. And yeah, he gets into all sorts of stuff, especially the absolute gross out of his bodily functions. So one thing that Peeps had that comes up again and again is the fact that he had bladder

stones in his 20s. And obviously you've got to remember this is 1600s. So he had to undergo, I think it was the age of 25, he had an operation which was so dangerous and it was a big decision for him to do it because there was a very high chance he wouldn't survive it. But basically he was in so much for him to do it because there was a very high chance he wouldn't survive it. But basically he was in so much agony that he did it. And he celebrated every year the fact that he'd had this operation and it had been successful. But this anxiety about his health came back again and again.

On the 26th of March 1668, he wrote, this morning I was in great pain as I used to be with my old pain, which made me think that my stone was returning again. But it proved only wind, and so I was well again, which pleased me mightily." Wow. But there's more guff stuff. Now, 2nd of October 1663. I did keep my bed, and my pain continued on me mightily that I kept within all day in great pain, and could break no wind, nor have any stool.

But having a good fire in my chamber, I began to break six or seven small and great farts." At least it's in reference to medical pains. It's not like Did a fart held my wife's head under the duvet. It was hilarious. Yeah, loved it. It's clearly a man who has worries about travel. We had a bloody good laugh actually. Exactly. So to give him his defence, yes, he's talking about farts, but it is at least in terms of the pain and comfort of his body. Do you know, the other thing that's weird to think about with Peep's is that he's a 30-something

throughout these diaries. He's a 30 something Londoner. You know, in the same way, although this is 60, 61, it could easily have been 1985. It's tricky for me to wrap my head around that. Having that operation, think about the risks involved and whether you were going to, you know, you're weighing up. I want an infection alone, El. Oh my God. It was a bladder stone.

So they had to, yeah, I think they cut through his perineum. He did. Oh dear, dear. What's the anesthetic vibe? Ah, mate. Stick and whiskey, what we thinking? Yeah, I think you're, I think you're just having to get drunk.

Yeah, wow. He celebrated, he celebrated the removal of his bladder stones every year, though he had a little celebration. Other things he does in the diary, so when after the king's coronation, by his own account, he got very, very drunk. On the 23rd of April, 1661, we drank the king's health and nothing else, till one of the gentlemen fell down stark drunk and lay there spewing. But no sooner a bed than my head began to hum and I to vomit. And if ever I was foxed, it was now, which I cannot say yet, because I fell asleep and slept

till morning. Only when I waked, I found myself wet with my spewing." Oh, who are these guys? It's like an episode of Skins. Yeah, he's actually, I'd like to retract it, he's getting a bit full on. Yeah, that's how he spent coronation day for Charles II. So he also writes in his diary that he would often wake in the middle of the night after a heavy one needing the loo. Often he wouldn't traipse over to the chamber pot. Instead he would, and I quote, forced himself to rise and piss in the chimney.

Right. Like again, who's this for? This is Britain's grossest diary. In September 1666, he would measure how much he was weeing and he would record how much piss he'd had. And in September 1666, like an example of that is, strange with what freedom and quantity I pissed this night. I don't know, again, I don't know who this is for.

Why is Samuel Peep's record- Yeah. It's the word pissed, a word that was used then. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. It's in Peep's diary. And in one diary entry, he records staying over at someone else's house and having to get up in the middle of the night again, being a bit worse for wear. He says, in the night I was mightily troubled with a looseness,

I suppose from some fresh damp linen that I'd put on this night. And feeling for a chamber pot, there was none. I called the maid up out of her bed. She had forgot, I suppose, to put one in there. So I was forced in this strange house to rise and shit in the chimney. Jesus Christ. Wow. Twice. And then the next page of the diary is ripped out, is it? Twice. Yeah, he stayed around someone's house and then wrote that he just had a poo in the chimney

because there wasn't a chamber pot there. Just to be absolutely clear, the chimney's not on the roof, is it? He's not going out the window and up the top. You just be absolutely clear here. If you stayed in my house, and you're both welcome to stay at my house. Thank you, that's nice. I've got my own house. If you shut in my chimney, our relationship would be A, irreparably damaged and B, changed

forever. Well, there's a simple fix for that. Make sure there's a chamber pot there. So I mentioned at the top, Victorians were aghast when they read some of this because of the sexual behaviour that Pepys was engaging in. And not only sexual behaviour with the maids and others, it was his regular self exploration, shall we say. And in one passage of his book, he acquired a contemporary French erotic novel. You can't read that bit because the pages are stuck together.

That really is good stuff. Pages 100 and 143. So you didn't do anything between March 1st and March 3rd? No. Just stay there. Yeah. Peeves got hold of a contemporary French erotic novel called Les Skoal de Filles, The Girl's School, in which two young French women discuss sexual liaisons with each other.

It was known in English in Peep's day as The School of Venus. This is his diary entry from the 9th of February 1668. Sunday. Up at my chamber all the morning in the office to doing business and also reading a little of Les Skoal de Filles, which is a mighty lewd book, but yet not amiss for a sober man who wants to read over to inform himself in the villainy of the world. So he's, yeah, he's going, oh, this is horrible business, this book. A little later though, he adds to his diary, drank mighty good store of wine, I to my chamber where I did read through that lewd book again.

And what to do, no wrong, once to read for information's sake, but it did haze my prick parastand all the while, and universe to discharger, and after I had done it, I burned it, that it might not be among my books to my shame, and so at night to supper and to bed." Is that the first example of someone clearing their history? Wow. That's hilarious. This is an or- This burned it!

This is not- these stuff, this stuff did not need to be published. Knit this stuff out, just keeping the stuff about the Great Fire of London, about how he suggested the King should start a fire break or whatever it is he did. We don't need all this stuff, do we? It's too real. Did you know it was this bawdy? Did you have any idea? No, absolutely not. This is the rudest book I've ever heard of. No, I thought it was very serious. So, I've not read it. So, when you were reading it when you were 13, how did this make you feel? I could not believe what I was doing. It's easily, and this is before I've probably even seen you're a trash on Channel 4 on a Friday night. This is my opening, understanding the world. This

is how I began to understand what's actually at play here, through the eyes of Peeps. The funny thing about that particular book that he'd bought is that Peeps had acquired the book from Martin's, a London bookseller, thinking it would be something he might get his wife to translate. But he wrote, when I come to look in it, it is the most bawdy lewd book ever that I ever saw, rather worse than Putana Irant, so that I was ashamed of reading in it. But of course he did make use of the contents. Wow, I can't get over this. I'm absolutely staggered. It's a real window into the life of an unfaithful laddie, 30-something in London.

He once wrote, I walked a little to Westminster, but met with nobody to spend any time with, and so by my coach homeward, and in seething lane met a young Mrs. Daniel, and stopped and she had been at my house but found nobody within and she tells me that she drew me for her Valentine this year. So I took her into the coach and was going to the other side of town thinking to have her taken aboard but remembering that I was to go out with my wife this afternoon." So he's just, he's a horny man and he's just picking up girls a lot of the time. And he got young Mrs. Daniel into the carriage with him and he wrote, "'Haze has a hara para to car, my prick con her hand'."

Basically, yeah, horny dude. You don't need to write about all this stuff. I thought it was amazing. I thought it was all about politics and current affairs and I had no idea it was this stuff. Will Barron That's extraordinary. Mason Fierce The most memorable bit to me, before going back to research it again, was what happened on the October 25th, 1668, which is that he gets caught touching, fondling the maid by his wife. This is his diary entry from that day, the 25th of October 1668.

Coming up to my wife's chamber I found Deb sitting, Deborah Willett is the maid, I found Deb sitting on my side of the bed and my wife not being there I took her into my arms and laid her on the bed and I might have gone further but then my wife by providence came in at that very moment with the greatest rage in the world fell upon me with claws and fists and nails and I was forced to take her hands off my hair Which she held so fast that she pulled me down to the floor and his wife elizabeth this this Cued up a huge domestic crisis and she furious and physically attacked peeps He wrote in the book. He wrote in his diary rather

She parted from me in the most bitter rage vowing never to see my face anymore and went into her closet I did go and tell her that I was sorry and that I deserved all that she could do to me." So yeah, there's lots of his sexual liaisons and subsequent guilt about what his actions were. Do you know what? I think what puts off a lot of especially children or teenagers of history is that they think it's all going to be economics and it's going to be wars and it's going to be governments and it's going to be stuff that might not seem especially relevant to you as a 13 or 14 year old.

Or it's going to be about things that happened so long ago you can't relate to it. That's very relatable. It doesn't stop him being a bastard. That kind of thing will be happening right now. People have affairs all over the shop. It's of great historical interest. I'm so surprised that it's this and not what I thought it was that I must admit I'm now going to have to read it. It's a riveting read. It's mad. Yeah. I just had no idea.

He should count himself lucky that the stuff that's remembered is the firebase stuff. Yeah. In a general sense. To your laymen, and I would include myself as one of them, that really what you remember is that. Is there an entry as to why we call him Samuel Peeps and not Samuel Pepys, which is how I referred to him until I was about 25.

There you go, that was Diaries. If we've missed anything, if you've got anything to contribute to the show, you can email us at hello at owhatatime.com. And if you want bonus episodes, if you want next week's episodes early, if you want all loads of good stuff, a whole archive of bonus episodes, you can become an O What A Time full-timer. For all your options go to owhatatime.com where you can sign up via Wondery Plus or another slice. Otherwise, we'll see you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye. So So Follow Oh What A Time on the Wondry app, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts and you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or to the world.