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He had affairs with staff and found his wife annoying. Is that what you're referring to?

tialaramex 1y ago
Ah yes, "affairs" with staff. He has sex with young female servants who, if they resist him can expect to have their employment immediately terminated, it's an enormous power imbalance. It's a problem that you look at that and see an "affair".
- jasonfarnon 1y ago
  OK but taking advantage of a "power imbalance" definitely isn't what I had in mind when reading 'he would be called a "sexual predator" and he was almost certainly also a rapist.' Which perhaps was the goal of using that kind of language.
rsynnott 1y ago
Have you read the _unabridged_ version? (Versions published before the 80s were heavily censored). He, ah, gets up to a lot more than that.
drabbiticus 1y ago
From https://www.neh.gov/article/honest-fault https://www.neh.gov/article/honest-fault > In an incident that is difficult to interpret as anything but rape, Pepys recounts entering the home of a ship’s carpenter—a man very much under his control, since Pepys was a naval official—and noting that, after a struggle, “finally I had my will of her.” His only recorded regret is “a mighty pain” in his finger, which he injured during the apparent assault. > The victim, identified only as Mrs. Bagwell, had been instructed to offer herself to Pepys by her husband, who thought it would help his advancement. “The story,” notes Tomalin, “is a shameful one of a woman used by two bullies: her husband, hoping for promotion, and Pepys, who was to arrange it. Pepys did not present it in quite those terms, but it is clearly how it was.” > Another obvious victim of Pepys’s sexual involvements beyond his household was his wife. In 1665, he had married fifteen-year-old Elizabeth St. Michel, the daughter of a French immigrant. Loveman describes the marriage as a “love match, albeit a tempestuous one.” The diary records the couple’s arguments over Pepys’s infidelities, and there were other tensions in the marriage. In an especially heated quarrel over Elizabeth’s management of the household, Pepys gave her a black eye. > The full record of Pepys’s mistreatment of women is too extensive to detail here. That grim record could fill a book—and, in fact, it has. In The Dark Side of Samuel Pepys, author Geoffrey Pimm explores Pepys’s predations at length, drawing on the diarist’s own accounts of his misdeeds to build the case against him. Pepys, writes Pimm, “faithfully recorded acts of moral turpitude that in later centuries might have caused his name to be blazoned across the newspapers and in some instances, most probably lead him to be arraigned in the courts.”
- Veen 1y ago
  Yes, Pepys was a charming, fascinating, funny, highly intelligent man who was also a rapist.

Ah yes, "affairs" with staff. He has sex with young female servants who, if they resist him can expect to have their employment immediately terminated, it's an enormous power imbalance. It's a problem that you look at that and see an "affair".

jasonfarnon 1y ago
OK but taking advantage of a "power imbalance" definitely isn't what I had in mind when reading 'he would be called a "sexual predator" and he was almost certainly also a rapist.' Which perhaps was the goal of using that kind of language.

rsynnott 1y ago

Have you read the _unabridged_ version? (Versions published before the 80s were heavily censored). He, ah, gets up to a lot more than that.

drabbiticus 1y ago

From https://www.neh.gov/article/honest-fault https://www.neh.gov/article/honest-fault > In an incident that is difficult to interpret as anything but rape, Pepys recounts entering the home of a ship’s carpenter—a man very much under his control, since Pepys was a naval official—and noting that, after a struggle, “finally I had my will of her.” His only recorded regret is “a mighty pain” in his finger, which he injured during the apparent assault. > The victim, identified only as Mrs. Bagwell, had been instructed to offer herself to Pepys by her husband, who thought it would help his advancement. “The story,” notes Tomalin, “is a shameful one of a woman used by two bullies: her husband, hoping for promotion, and Pepys, who was to arrange it. Pepys did not present it in quite those terms, but it is clearly how it was.” > Another obvious victim of Pepys’s sexual involvements beyond his household was his wife. In 1665, he had married fifteen-year-old Elizabeth St. Michel, the daughter of a French immigrant. Loveman describes the marriage as a “love match, albeit a tempestuous one.” The diary records the couple’s arguments over Pepys’s infidelities, and there were other tensions in the marriage. In an especially heated quarrel over Elizabeth’s management of the household, Pepys gave her a black eye. > The full record of Pepys’s mistreatment of women is too extensive to detail here. That grim record could fill a book—and, in fact, it has. In The Dark Side of Samuel Pepys, author Geoffrey Pimm explores Pepys’s predations at length, drawing on the diarist’s own accounts of his misdeeds to build the case against him. Pepys, writes Pimm, “faithfully recorded acts of moral turpitude that in later centuries might have caused his name to be blazoned across the newspapers and in some instances, most probably lead him to be arraigned in the courts.”

Veen 1y ago
Yes, Pepys was a charming, fascinating, funny, highly intelligent man who was also a rapist.