Samuel Pepys, I Have Cracked Your Secret Sex Code -The Toast

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sammySammy Peeps! The most endearing quality of everyone’s favorite Restoration-era diarist, I think, is his charmingly innocent belief that he was a master of linguistic misdirection.

Pepys’ diary was written in shorthand so could not easily be read by a casual browser. There are, however, some passages of a secretive nature where, for reasons of concealment or because his passion deserves a special language, he resorts to a private code involving words based on Spanish, French and Italian.”

Here is Sammy’s nearly-uncrackable code:

“[Elizabeth] did find me imbracing the girl con my hand sub su coats; and endeed I was with my main in her cunny. I was at a wonderful loss upon it.”

It’s so precious! I can see him now, quill perched between his teeth: “Mustn’t make it obvious what I’m writing about, in case this diary falls into the wrong hands…I blanked my hand blank her clothes and placed it blank her vagina. There. Nigh-incomprehensible to the untrained eye. No one will ever know, except for my wife, who saw us.”

I have never loved Sammil Pipsy more than I do now, when he resembles nothing so much as Joey from Friends trying to describe The Shining without spoiling it for Rachel: “All blank and no blank makes blank a blank blank. Oh no, no, no! The end, when Jack almost kills them all with that blank, but then at the last second they get away?”

Sammington! Your secret is safe with us.

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