‘I keepe a dayere . . . for the expense of my time, as I doe for that money I spend . . .’ This is Bullen Reymes - a courtier, diplomat and politician who died 350 years ago today - explaining why he kept a diary. Interestingly, he was a contemporary of, and friends with, Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn. Reymes’s diary didn’t come to light until the 1950s, when it was used by Helen Andrews Kaufman as the basis for her biography of the cavalier.
Reymes was a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber from 1641 to 1646, and actively supported the King during the Civil War. He helped defend Exeter and was made a freeman in 1645. The city, though, surrendered in 1646 and he laid down his arms. He managed to hold on to his heavily mortgaged estate, and, by the time of the Restoration, had cleared his debts. He took no part in the second Civil War, but was imprisoned in Taunton Castle in 1650, and helped some Royalists to escape across the Channel after the battle of Worcester.
In 1660, Reymes was elected Member of Parliament for Weymouth and Melcombe Regis in a by-election to the Convention Parliament. At the same time, he resumed his position as gentleman of the privy chamber. He served as commissioner for assessment for Dorset from 1660 to 1669. He was commissioner for sick and wounded in Hampshire and Dorset 1664 to 1667 and was appointed commissioner for Tangier from 1664 until his death. He became a freeman of Portsmouth in 1665 and was deputy treasurer of prizes at Portsmouth from 1665 to 1667. He also developed a sailcloth business, and supplied the navy at the time of the second Dutch war.
Reymes was friends with both the great 17th century diarists, Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, and was a keen theatre-goer and gardener. He is mentioned several times in Pepys’s diary. For instance, on 24 January 1668, Pepys wrote: ‘I to the King’s playhouse, to fetch my wife, and there saw the best part of The Mayden Queene, which, the more I see, the more I love, and think one of the best plays I ever saw, and is certainly the best acted of any thing ever the House did, and particularly Becke Marshall, to admiration. Found my wife and Deb., and saw many fine ladies, and sat by Colonell Reames, who understands and loves a play as well as I, and I love him for it.’ Reymes died on 18 December 1672. Further information is available from Wikipedia and The History of Parliament.
In the second half of the 1950s, Kaufman, an English teacher at the University of Washington, came across the archived papers of Bullen Reymes, and edited them for publication as Conscientious Cavalier: Colonel Bullen Reymes (Jonathan Cape, 1962). She says in her foreword to the book: ‘Because Bullen Reymes kept a diary, wrote many and voluminous letters, and because he carefully preserved the scores of papers relating both to his public activities and his private life, there remains an unusually full and exact account of the man himself and of the background and personalities of the seventeenth century. In fact it would be difficult to find, in the first half of that century, an individual who has left so complete a record of himself.’ In the work - which is available to borrow digitally at Internet Archive - Kaufman quotes often from Reymes’s diary, but usually as part of her narrative - the diary entries are usually incomplete and without any date.
Nevertheless, here are three short sections from her book with actual quotes (which I’ve italicised for clarity) from Reymes’s writings.
‘On the first day of the new year Bullen started his diary: “Heare beginneth my Diere it being the first of Janewary in the yeare of our lord 1632 . . .”
“I rise in the morning about 10 of the clock, when afterwards I heard prayers, and then theare dined with us Mr. Gosling and Mr. Barker and Courteane. After dinner La Peare came to see me and about eavning prayer Sr. Thomas Wharton came from Charington whear thear was kept a proclamed fast. And about supper I betoke me to my chamber for to writ into Ingland and came nomore downe that nite and sat up till 12 of the eavene writing.” ’
***
‘Although [a] long letter to his father - almost 1,600 words - was “frayghted” with the old problem of money, it spoke of other things as well. After asking again about his uncle’s legacy, and after pointing out once more that his quarterly payment is long overdue, Reymes describes his new lodgings, “right against Mr. Mervilles of whome I intend to learne of . . . on the lute . . . (who plays best of any one in Paris).” Then, apparently, in answer to some question of his father, Bullen turns to his diary, or rather, to his reason for keeping a diary. He does his best to explain this almost universal urge. Unlike many, he did not write with a wary eye on a possible reader. His scribbled, blotted, and well-nigh illegible entries, with their careless spelling and syntax, were obviously meant for no eye but his own. The reason he gives is neat, to the point, and completely characteristic. His diary is an expense account of his time. “I keepe a dayere . . . for the expense of my time, as I doe for that money I spend . . .” ’
***
‘Whatever their significance, the pages of Reymes’s diary are full of references to the ‘beautiful churches’ whose services he attended [in Venice].
“We were at the church of Nostre Dame [Santa Maria della Salute], where there was a great service to commemorate the late deliverance from the plague. I saw many processions of many different members of all the different orders . . . I was with Mr. Carnarvon and Mr. Montagu at the church of St. Caterina, where I heard wonderful music. The church was beautifully decorated . . . I heard two masses.”
And so on. Stirred though he was by the splendour of the Venetian churches, Bullen was even more profoundly moved by the music he heard in these candle-lit edifices. It is to this that he alludes most often, and little wonder, for much of the religious music of seventeenth-century Venice was inspired by great masters. To one of these, Claude Monteverdi, Reymes alludes often.
“After dinner I was with Mr. Porter and Mr. Jacob to hear the music of the Friars . . . Signor Claude Monteverdi composed the music . . . I was at St. John de Paulau where I heard the beautiful music of Claude Monteverdi.”
On two other occasions he must have seen Monteverdi himself, for one Sunday in December he writes, “I was at St. Johns [SS. Giovanni e Paolo] where I heard Claude Monteverdi and his music,” and another time, “I was at St. Juliano [Giuliano] where Monteverdi conducted.”
The last days of December were crowded with festivities. It was the season of the fairs, of the carnival, of the plays - the theatres had opened on the 22nd - and of la guerre de poignée, the war of fists. “gare”, as Reymes calls it, was a battle on one of the bridges between young men from either side of the Grand Canal, in which no weapons, only fists, were allowed.
“I saw a contest between certain of the common people which is fought now every day. One side is called the Castilean and the other Niccolet. The Castileans won.”
On December 26th Bullen made his first visit to St Stefano, both “in the morning and after dinner”. What interested him was not the old Gothic church but the long, narrow piazza adjoining it. As in Paris at carnival time, he and his friends went in masquerade.
“After dinner we were all at St. Steffino and then we went everywhere and to the house of ___ where we danced with the ladies. I played the lute everywhere we went. . . I paid six realls for our costumes. We went to the comedy but got there only in time for the end.”
The last entry for 1633 reads:
“I was at the Rialto where Mr. Rowlanson asked me to dine with him tomorrow . . . I went out again in masquerade and I played before the whole world in la piazza de St. Steffino. I was also at the Comedy.” ’
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