Samuel Pepys is not known to have had any children, despite his decades of marriage, his subsequent long-term relationship, and his many affairs with other women. On 26 July 1664 he records a merry lunch at his cousin’s (for which he himself had supplied a substantial amount of booze) and then his decision to talk with the women of the company rather than the men once the meal was finished (he had recently helped his male cousins out of a spot of legal difficulty, but did not especially like them; their wives, who were themselves sisters, were a different matter). The meal was to celebrate the recent birth of a child to one of the cousins, so it’s perhaps easier to understand the context in which Pepys decided to raise the subject, which I imagine people were normally as reserved about discussing in his day as in ours. (It may also be relevant that his wife was away visiting relatives, and he had been making the seventeenth century equivalent of booty calls over the previous few days, with some success.)
I began discourse of my not getting of children, and prayed them to give me their opinions and advice, and they freely and merrily did give me these ten, among them
- Do not hug my wife too hard nor too much;
- eat no late suppers;
- drink juyce of sage;
- tent and toast;
- wear cool holland drawers;
- keep stomach warm and back cool;
- upon query whether it was best to do at night or morn, they answered me neither one nor other, but when we had most mind to it;
- wife not to go too straight laced;
- myself to drink mum and sugar;
- Mrs. Ward did give me, to change my place.
The 3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th, and 10th they all did seriously declare, and lay much stress upon them as rules fit to be observed indeed, and especially the last, to lie with our heads where our heels do, or at least to make the bed high at feet and low at head.
I love #7; good practice, I think, whether or not you are planning on having children! Not sure about some of the rest, though. (In #4, “tent” means “a Spanish wine of a deep red colour, and of low alcoholic content”, from vino tinto.)
I thought the prologue with Varamyr Sixskins was a definite hint that Jon is not dead, but will go into Ghost and survive.
I’m still enjoying the series, but I thought this was a weak installment with a lot of setup – like you, I’m hoping there is a good reason for not showing us the battle outside Winterfell, which had been building up for so long. I’ll still be reading the next one, whenever it comes out.