Five... of London's new year's resolutions throughout the centuries
Good intentions
Hi and welcome to your weekend newsletter…
As it’s the first of 2025 I’m marking it with a handful of new year’s resolutions made by Londoners of times past — our ancestors have been charging into January with good intentions re. less drinking, swearing, unkindness and excessive partying for centuries.
Giving up wine and theatre
Samuel Pepys, 1661-1662
Putting everybody’s Dry Januarys to shame, here comes Samuel Pepys — profligate wine-drinker and theatre-goer — with a resolution to forswear wine and theatre till the following Michaelmas. The reason seems to be a still pretty relevant mix of 1/ a craving for a more wholesome lifestyle (a common thread in his diaries is wild abandon, followed by mild repentance), and 2/ his spiralling cost of living.
‘…I have newly taken a solemn oath about abstaining from plays and wine, which I am resolved to keep according to the letter of the oath which I keep by me…’
— from the diary of Samuel Pepys, 31st December 1661
Pepys made good on the oath to his own satisfaction, if not abstaining completely for a full year (intermissions include 29th September 1662: ‘This day my oaths for drinking of wine and going to plays are out, and so I do resolve to take a liberty to-day, and then to fall to them again…’), charting it as a huge success, and one he intends to repeat, in his diary at the end of the year:
‘…lived a very orderly life all this year by virtue of the oaths that God put into my heart to take against wine, plays, and other expenses, and to observe for these last twelve months, and which I am now going to renew, I under God owing my present content thereunto…’
— from the diary of Samuel Pepys, 31st December 1662