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A UTHOR : LUBBOCK, PERCY TITLE: SAMUEL PEPYS PLACE: NEW YORK DA TE : 1909 Master Negative # COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT ^^3tJP2lQrJi BIBLIOGRAPHIC MICROFORM TARCRT Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record Restrictions on Use: P upM i tyiJii...^wiiii \ " ' -i^ 942.06 'P39839 Lubbock, Percy, IB^o- Sarauel Pepys, by Percy Lubbock ... -toadoHpHodder •ftad-S^ug bton, 1909 . 11 ew York, Scribner, 1909. xi, 284 p. front., pi., ports., ficsim. 20"". {Half-title: Literary lives, i eel. by W. R. Nicoll ...) •5^tle4ti-fed -within -orna menial -border.- 1. Pepys, Samuel, 1633-1703. r,90i7a Library of Congress DA447.P4L8 9-31736/2, f /2'/in TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA REDUCTION RATIO:__^/<___ FILM SIZE: 3.^Cri^r^__ IMAGE PLACEMENT: IA(j5 IB MB DATE FILMED: JZ.Jp3:fh_ INITIALS__£'_'^n FILMED BY: RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS. INC WOODRRinnP cf c Association for information and Image IWanagement 1100 Wayne Avenue. Suite 1100 Silver Spring, Maryland 20910 301/587-82C2 Centimeter 1 2 3 1 LLi I IT 4 iiiii!iiini)iiii [ ||||||[|||| ||iiil i Inches 1 T 5 ml 6 iiiilii 8 M4 iiiiiiiii 10 4 1 1 1 1 1 11 12 13 14 mmMlmjImi^^ TTT 1.0 I.I 1.25 1^ :>.8 15^ 2.5 |S£ |3.2 2.2 ■ 6.3 z: mi ^ Ui 2.0 IS. 1.8 1.4 1.6 15 mm 111 MflNUFflCTURED TO RUM STRNDfiRDS BY RPPLIED IMRGE. INC. -^ -...,^.. I •-.*■, ^._-^ » n 9> 84 102 128 151 196 250 »> 272 XI chapter I ^AMUEL PEPYS holds to-day a curiously ^^_ accidental place in English literature, but it is a place which is all his own. He was not a man of letters ; he was a capable official, business-like and trustworthy, with an insatiable taste for life. But the book which he produced without knowing it to be a book, his matchless Diary, has been claimed without question for literature. A book which in its unconsidered candour is perhaps the most remarkable portrait of a human being that we possess, a book in which there is no page which is not brim-fuU of life and character, is not the less a work of art because its author was unaware of it. For such a book a place must be found, if no place already existed ; if it seems to belong to no recognized form, a new form must be invented. This, to be sure, has 1 I Samuel Pepys long ago been done ; the private letter and the casual diary now compete for fame on equal terms with the tragedy or the epic ; and Pepys, no doubt very much to his surprise, has become one of the figures of our literary history. He has indeed become more than this, for the volumes which 80 picturesque a series of chances has protected for us have a different kind of value as a mere transcript of events, a record of con- temporary gossip about people and things ; and from this point of view Pepys has also become an historical authority. But the pages that fol- low do not, as will be seen, profess to deal with this aspect of his wonderful book. A personal sketch of the man who enjoyed his life so liberally and pictured it so forcibly is all that can here be attempted. Such an attempt is the more worth making that Pepys has so indisputably been made to stand for a type. His name expresses in our day, rightly or wrongly, as marked a conjunction of qualities as the name of Falstail or of Juan. This Samuel Pepys book will aim at giving in as much detail as pos- sible some account of these qualities, and before the end is reached it may perhaps look as though there were more of them than the type in ques- tion would suggest — more of them indeed, and more self -contradictory, than it could seem likely that one human being, typical or otherwise, should embrace. Pepys was surely too exuberant, too many-sided, too greedy of all sorts of incom- patible aspects of life, to be anything but an extraordinary and isolated individual. Yet it is not for nothing that a name becomes thus consecrated as a universal symbol, and Pepys' torrent of self-revelation, with all its peculiar contrasts, may really reflect habitual and general humanity. It at any rate needed a man who adopted the world's standards and respected its hypocrisies as ingenuously as did Pepys, to give the whole convention away so thoroughly. There is not one grain of irony in any line that he wrote, and after so naked and unconscious an exposure of the tacit compromise upon which Samuel Pepys Samuel Pepys our civilized life is based, it should be difficult to treat it solemnly. The difficulty is still some- how solved; but at the same time the v^orld indemnifies itself for its enforced decorum upon this chattering, bustling, self-important man, dead now for more than two hundred years. The place that Pepys occupies in our literature, the place which is all his own, is that, simply and essentially, of the ordinary man. For that place he has, it would seem, as yet no serious competitor. His name is perhaps never men- tioned without an indulgent smile, a twinkle, a half-patronizing, half-roguish implication that we are all like that at bottom, that his Diary is the kind we should all keep if we were honest with ourselves. Other writers are exceptions, brains of special power, imaginations of out- standing strength; he alone is Everyman, the type of average mortality, the sum of all its desires and efforts. If that is so, no wonder that the accidental book which gives his portrait has found a place of its own in our literature. The family of Pepys was a substantial though inconspicuous stock, long established in Cam- bridgeshire, and more especially at the village of Cottenham. Their early history is obscure, but the name is found as far back as the thirteenth century. They were evidently small yeomen farmers, and appear to have owed something to the proximity of the Abbey of Crowland. One of them, we learn, was bailiff of the Abbot's Cambridgeshire lands in the reign of Henry Vni ; but the legend, which Samuel appears to have believed, that this man was born at Dunbar, and that the Pepyses "did certainly come out of Scotland with the Abbot," ^ has no ascertainable foundation. Anyhow, by the beginning of the seventeenth century their posi- tion in the county was ancient and respectable ; and when the Diarist, finding the family un- noticed in Fuller's Worthies, remarks, " I believe, indeed, our family were never considerable," * he does not at all mean, as Mr. Wheatley has 1 Diary, June 12, 1667*. ^ Djajy, February 10, 1662. Samuel Pepys pointed out, that they were not gentlefolk, but merely that they had never risen to distinction. The beginmng of their rise in a wider field was marked by the marriage, somewhere about 1620, of Samuel's great-aunt, Paulina Pepys, with Sir Sidney Montagu, a member of the Long Parlia- ment and a Royalist of some note — ^a marriage which proved of importance to the lady's family, for she became the mother of the first Earl of Sandwich, the influential patron and friend of Samuel. Paulina's brother Thomas " the Black " (so-called to distinguish him from a younger brother, Thomas " the Pvcd ") had a large family. His third son, John, married in 1626 a lady whose maiden name is unknown, and became on February 23, 1633, the father of Samuel Pepys the Diarist. Samuel's immediate family did not by any means share his capacity and spirit. His father seems to have been a good, feeble, muddling kind of man, of indifferent health; and his mother, to whom her son regretfully refers on Samuel Pepys one occasion as " such a fool," 1 did not help to make the world easier for him. John Pepys migrated from Cambridgeshire to London, and later on, at the time when the Diary opens (1660), was settled there as a highly unsuccessful tailor. A year later he inherited from his eldest brother Robert, a house and a small estate, worth about ^80 a year, at Brampton, near Huntingdon. This meant affluence to the barely-solvent tailor, and was the end of his efforts to support himself in trade. Nothing is known of Samuel's childhood beyond what can be gathered from casual references in the Diary. He was probably born in London, but even this is not certain. In the Lije of Colet by Samuel Knight (a connexion of the Pepyses), he is said to have been born at Brampton, but as the Brampton church registers do not go back as far as 1633 this statement cannot now be confirmed. From what we know of his parents it must have been a somewhat disordered household, 1 Diary, April 28, 1661. \ 8 Samuel Pepys Samuel Pepys W more especially as between 1627 and 1641 there were born with dreadful regularity no less than eleven children. Of these only four survived childhood— Samuel (who was the fifth child and second son), Thomas (1634H54), Paulina (1640-80), and John (1641-77). It is not surprising to find ' that two of them, Samuel and Thomas, were boarded out as children with a certain " Goody Lawrence," at Kingsland ; by the time the fifth and sixth arrived it may well have got beyond the harassed parents to cope with so uninter- rupted a succession. But except that in after years, as he walked to Kingsland over the fields from Islington, Samuel recalled how he used to shoot with his bow and arrows there as a boy,2 we hear nothing more of this episode in his life. On another occasion' he mentions meeting a friend, "one that went to school with me at Huntingdon " ; but of this too we learn no more. He was no doubt what is called a " sharp boy," 1 Diary, April 25, 1664. 2 ibid. May 12, 1667. • Ibid. March 15, i66o- well able to take care of himself, and he nowhere gives the impression that his childhood was not a happy one ; but if, as we judge, it was a hand-to- mouth existence, without much of a home for it to centre round, that will account for the matter-of-fact candour with which in his Diary he usually refers to his nearest relations. He was fond of his father in a way, and he felt some natural emotion on his mother's death, but he was highly impatient of their feeble improvidence and generally slipshod ways. Of his brothers, Tom appears to have been fully as ineffectual as his father*, and John not very much better. As for the unfortunate Paulina, usually known as Pall, the allusions to her character, her manners, and her looks are all equally un- flattering. Samuel was for a time an exhibitioner of St. Paul's School, London. This was during the Civil War, and at that period he was a great Roundhead, a fact which he was troubled to be reminded of years later by an old school friend. lO Samuel Pepys " I was much afraid," he says, " that he would have remembered the words that I said the day the King was beheaded (that, were I to preach upon him, my text should be — ' The memory of the wicked shall rot ') ; but I found afterwards that he did go away from school before that time." 1 Pepys kept up an interest in the school in after life; he gave Stef hens' s Thesaurus Graeccs Linguce to the library and attended a speech-day; but no other memories survive of his school days. On June 21, 1650, he was admitted as a sizar to Trinity Hall, Cambridge* but for some reason he changed his mind before going into residence, and on October i, of the same year was admitted, again as a sizar, to Magdalene College. He began to reside on March 5, 1 65 1. A month later he was elected to a Spendluffe scholarship, a foundation dating from 1584, and in October, 1653, to another, founded by John Smith, a recent " President " (what would elsewhere be called Vice-master) of the College. ^ Diary, November i, 1660^ Samuel Pepys II Magdalene at that time consisted only of the picturesque little brick court which fronts upon the street. One angle of it formed part of the Old Master's Lodge ; otherwise the general arrangement of the building was much what it is now. When Pepys was an undergraduate a project was already on foot to add a second court at the back ; but the beauti- ful arcaded building, with which his name is now inseparably connected, was not erected till towards the end of the century. The Master of the College was John Sadler, who was ap- pointed in 1650 and held the post until the Restoration. He had been Town Clerk of London and was favourably looked upon by Cromwell ; during his Mastership he was for a time Member of Parliament for Cambridge. Pepys's tutor was Samuel Morland, a man of some enterprise, who, after having made himself useful in turn to Cromwell and to Charles H, and having received a Baronetcy from the latter, passed his later years and spent his substance in various 12 Samuel Pepys mechanical inventions, speaking-trumpets, calcu- lating machines, perpetual almanacs, and so forth— "very pretty, but not very useful," i remarks Pepys on one occasion. These names hardly imply an atmosphere of academic calm in the little brick College ; the times were moving too fast for that. But some- how or other Pepys must have acquired a fairly good education, to judge from his equipment in languages and letters a few years later. If his knowledge was not particularly accurate, he at any rate carried away from Cambridge a genuine interest in scholarship, as in so much else. He also carried away a lively affection for the place ; and he would have been pained if he had foreseen that the only record of his life there which the college was to preserve, beyond formal notices of his admission and election as a scholar, was the famous entry in the College Register, dated October 21, 1653, in Morland's hand- writing: " Peapys and Hind were solemnly ^ Diary, March 14, i668 Samuel Pepys 13 admonished by myself and Mr. HiU for having been scandalously overserved with drink ye night before. This was done in the presence of all the Fellows then resident, in Mr. Hill's Chamber." The only other indication of his tastes and occu- pations at Magdalene is found in an entry in the Diary (January 30, 1664) : — " This evening, being in a humour of making all things even and clear in the world, I tore some old papers ; among others, a romance which (under the title of Love a Cheats) I begun ten years ago at Cambridge ; and at this time reading it over to-night I liked it very well, and wondered a little at myself at my vein at that time when I wrote it, doubting that I cannot do so well now if I would try." This is all ; but it is enough to show us much the same Pepys as later on we know so well : full of life, making the most of his time, delighted with any new idea, and ready for all the simplest forms of merry-making. Friends he can never have lacked, and some of them, such as Richard 14 Samuel Pepys Cumberland, afterwards Bishop of Peterborough, remained friends in after life. Pepys took his degree in 1653, and for a time disappears altogether from sight. How he spent the next two years is unknown. It is possible that we have a glimpse of them in some lines of the Diary (July 26, 1663) which describe a visit to Epsom, "with great pleasure viewing my old walks, where Mrs. Hely and I did use to walk and talk, with whom I had the first sentiments of love and pleasure in woman's company, discourse, and taking her by the hand, she being a pretty woman." But Pepys was forward for his age, and if we know him this idyll must go back to an earlier time. He only reappears for certain in the registers of St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, where his marriage is recorded, on December r, 1655, with Elizabeth St. Michel.^ 1 We find in the Diary, curiously enough, that both Pepys and his wife believed their wedding-day to have been October 10. It has been suggested as a possible explanation of the discrepancy that the ceremony at St. Margaret's was preceded by a marriage at a French Protestant Church, but this cannot be confirmed. Samuel Pepys 15 Mrs. Samuel Pepys was the daughter of a needy Frenchman, who at twenty-one had been disinherited by his father for becoming a Pro- testant. He never afterwards succeeded in gaining a secure footing in life. He was a member of the household which Henrietta Maria brought over to England on her marriage, but was dis- missed for refusing to attend mass, and, more immediately, for " striking a friar " in argument, so his son afterwards told Pepys.i He married a widow, daughter of Sir Francis KingsmiU, with whom he led a restless and usually necessitous Hfe. His many schemes for raising funds aU ended in disaster, including an attempt to recover Hs patrimony. He settled for a time in Devon- shire, where his children were born. He after- wards transferred them to Paris, and had only returned to England a short while when his daughter married Pepys. She was at this time a pretty girl of fifteen ; Pepys was only twenty- ^^^Letter from Balthazar St. Michel to Pepys, February 8, i i6 Samuel Pepys two, and the match was a highly improvident one on both sides. St. Michel, though he was delighted that his daughter should marry a good Protestant, could certainly make no provision for her. " My father," writes his son Balthazar in the letter already quoted, " at last grew full of whimsies and propositions of perpetual motion, etc., to kings, princes, and others, which soaked his pocket, and brought all our family so low by his not minding anything else^ spending all he had got and getting no other employment to bring in more." It is true that at a later period it was reserved for this unfortunate gentleman (among so many others) to discover " King Solo- mon's gold and silver mines," but it is sad to say that even after that an allowance of four shillings a week from the French church was all that he and his wife had to live upon. Pepys, meanwhile, in 1655 had as yet no settled employment. At this juncture the situation was saved by the one influential connexion of the Pepys family. Sir Edward Montagu, first cousin of Samuel's Samuel Pepys 17 father, was a personal friend of Cromwell, a member of the Council of State and a Commis- sioner of the Treasury. In January, 1656, at the age of thirty and with no previous experience of the navy, Montagu was appointed " conjoint general at sea " with Blake. It is possible that he may before this have come to the assistance of his poor relations ; Mr. Wheatley suggests that it was he who enabled Pepys to go to CoUege : anyhow in this year 1656 he took his young cousin to act as a kind of agent for him during his absences from home. Montagu had already been married for thirteen years and had a growing famUy. There were many ways in which a capable and confidential secretary could be use- ful to the household, and Pepys was eminently fitted for them all. He and his wife were lodged in Montagu's London house, and their future was now provided for. Pepys, in later days of prosperity, teUs ^ how he lay long in bed one morning, talking over old ^ Diary, February 25, 1667. i8 Samuel Pepys times with his wife and recalling " how she used to make coal fires, and wash my foul clothes with her own hand for me, poor wretch ! in our little room at my Lord Sandwich's ; for which I ought ever to love and admire her, and do." It was not for the moment a very brilliant position, but Pepys devoted himself to it with characteristic zest for detail, and had his reward in the sincere and well-deserved attachment with which the family always afterwards regarded him. Later on, when their affairs grew disordered, Lady Sandwich in discussing them with Pepys dolefully recalled " how finely things were ordered . . . when I lived there and my Lord at sea every year." ^ Throughout life any kind of untidiness was distressing to Pepys. Waste of money and muddled accounts afflicted his sense of propriety like a badly-cooked dinner or an unswept room. In this, as has already been seen, he was very unlike his own family, and what was still more ^ Diary, June 29, 1664. Samuel Pepys 19 unfortunate, it was to prove that he was very unlike his wife. Mrs. Pepys was a faithful and on the whole submissive wife under many and severe provocations. She had much to put up with from her husband's masculine blend of jealousy and neglect. But to a man like Pepys this pretty, empty-headed girl, who never could manage to keep *her things in order, was often enough peculiarly irritating. It was inconceivable to him, as it always is to a methodical person, that it should be easier to be untidy than neat, haphazard than punctual, confused and slip- shod in mind than clear and intelligible. Equally it was difficult for him to understand that in order to light fires and wash linen like a good housewife, the " poor wretch " required a differ- ent motive — the desire to please her husband. They were neither of them models of forbearance, but they loved each other well and made up their quarrels almost as easily as they started them. There was always something child-like about their wranglings and reconciliations, and in 20 Samuel Pepys these early days in the little room at the Mon- tagus' they were both very young indeed. The next event in Pepys' life was one on which he ever after looked back with interest and some- thing like pride. On March 26, 1658, he was " cut for the stone." The operation was success- ful, and in spite of occasional alarms the complaint did not trouble him again for more than forty years. The anniversary of this great day was celebrated year by year by a family dinner : he speaks of it as " the day of my solemnity for my cutting of the stone." 1 With ready gusto the stone itself, in a case specially made for it, was exhibited to his friends. More than once it was carried for the inspection of some sufferer from the same complaint, to encourage him to submit to an operation. It was indeed, one of the most highly prized of all Pepys' possessions. In 1659, Montagu was sent with the fleet to the Sound, as one of the commissioners for the negotiation of peace between Sweden and Den- ^ Diary, March 16, 1669. Samuel Pepys 21 mark, and on this expedition Pepys accompanied him. Montagu, who had been a loyal and favoured supporter of Cromwell up to the Protector's death, was by this time thoroughly discouraged by the political outlook, and was beginning to hold communication with Charles II. Pepys knew nothing of this until the following year, after the Restoration, when his respect for his patron's discretion was much enhanced by the discovery. But for the moment all such schemes were premature, and on the return of the fleet to England, Montagu found it prudent to retire for a few months into private life. Pepys, mean- while, obtained a place, with a salary of ^^50, in the office of Mr. (afterwards Sir) George Downing, one of the four Tellers of the Receipt of the Exchequer. He and his wife, with one maid, moved into a house in Axe Yard, West- minster, a site now occupied by Government offices ; and here they were living when, on January i of the following year (1660), Pepys began to keep a diary. :i ) ii 22 Samuel Pepys By this time the world was beginning to enlarge round him, and his character to form. His con- nexion with Montagu had opened a wider circle to him than could have been expected for the son of a small struggling tailor from the provinces. But though he owed his first opportunities to his patron, his steady rise was entirely due to himself. Montagu's influence, indeed, especially just at this moment, was by no means powerful enough to make a man who could not make himself. Pepys' patron was a man of sound parts, but he owed his position, such as it was, more to accidental advantages, his birth, his friendship with Cromwell, and so forth, than to his own brain and character. Pepys was always grateful and attached to him, and never dreams of speaking lightly of him, but he was not in any way a man of natural or commanding distinction. However, a patron to job him into place and fortune was not in the least what Pepys required ; he was extremely well able to make his own way. Once introduced to men of affairs, his own ability Samuel Pepys 23 carried him steadily forward. He had a great qualification for a good ofiicial in his power of grasping confused detail, and of putting it straight. He loved his work, whatever it was ; or perhaps one should rather say he loved to get it satisfactorily finished, which came to much the same thing. He was diligent, or rather he en- joyed diligence so much that he took great pains to induce himself to practise it. By the standard of his day, and, indeed, by a considerably higher standard than that, he was notably trustworthy. If his central motives were seldom disinterested, that did not matter to his employers, for he was sharp enough to see that a reputation for honesty was an effective card to hold. Besides, he had a conscience as well in such matters, which did not like to be disturbed without good reason. Add to all this that he was ready of tongue, and knew how to address his superiors with the right shades of respect and self-importance, and we have the kind of man who will make himself felt in office-work, and whom the staff will regard ) I 24 Samuel Pepys with mixed feelings. To those incontestably above him, he will be a satisfaction and a treasure. To those with whom he competes, he will be an object of suspicion. There is no doubt that Pepys' colleagues must have thought him self-assertive and officious. He certainly was fully conscious of doing better work for his pay than his neighbours held to be necessary. His qualities were a tacit reproach to his fellows, and he did not deny himself a keen appreciation of this fact. But a gift for sociability, a companionable turn, a readiness to share a glass or a joke, may prevail in such cases against the resentment aroused by an unnatural addiction to business. To all but the very jealous, Pepys' convivial soul was disarming ; in his hours of ease no one could call that cheerful, round- faced youth a prig. He could enjoy himself with- out standing upon his dignity. He could drink aiid giggle and romp with the landlord's daughter like any one else. He adored life, he was as much absorbed in it as a child. He was old for his Samuel Pepys 25 years in his sense of responsibility, but in his unwearying curiosity he had never grown up. There was nothing which he could put aside as of no interest to him. He wanted to know every- thing, to go everywhere, to practise all the arts, to cram every moment with something memor- able. The whole surface of existence, as it pre- sented itself to him, was alluring. Books and music, drinking and love-making, serious talk, unmannerly mirth — ^he desired them all in turn, and in turn surrendered himself to their enjoy- ment. He cultivated experience, and cultivated it simply for its own sake. He had no irony, and never pretended to hold the world lightly. The world was his life, and he never thought of questioning its importance. He took it perfectly seriously, and delighted in it without pause or misgiving. To suck the pleasure out of life at this rate, and never to turn in disgust from the dried remains, was a feat which was made possible to Pepys by his complete superficiality. I do not f It iiil 26 Samuel Pepys use this word in a disparaging sense, but merdy as implying that existence for him was entirely concentrated, so to speak, upon the surface of the moment. Just as he was never for an instant detained by the desire for consistency, so he was never shadowed by regret for the moment, as it slipped past and out of sight. Every day as it arrived was something fresh, detached from the rest, to be enjoyed upon its merits. He had a clean sheet for it, not, like most people, a sheet already marked with desires for the past, and apprehensions for the future. He had his troubles, but they were troubles of the surface— his health, his idle servants, his poor relations, and so forth, — ^not the more poisonous troubles which are bred by the imagination. He addressed himself alike to his pleasures and to his sorrows with absolute simplicity — distressed by his sorrows as vividly as he was elated by his pleasures, but in both alike passing with equal ease, an equal absence of preoccupation, from one moment to the next. If he was child-like in his ingenuous surrender Samuel Pepys 27 to things as they came, Pepys at twenty-seven was mature enough in his sense of the world's opinion. His conventionaUty was at least as great as his simplicity, and where his delight in experience clashed with the part he wished to assume in the eyes of the world, he was careful to protect himself as effectively as he could. The part he chose was one of impeccable respect- ability, and he put as much zest into the perform- ance as into his concealed deflections from it. He was highly conscious of what people thought of him, and knew very weU that he was upon his probation, with his career stiU to make. He longed with aU his heart for a soUd position in the world which he loved. He candidly wanted money, plate, servants, a carriage and pair, and did not question the right of the world to reserve its respect for things like these. He respected them himself, and worked for them in aU seriousness. An egoist, a laborious and disinterested friend, a student, a sensuaUst, an upright and God-fear- ing man, a timid opportunist-these were'only Hi I 't\ if. 28 Samuel Pepys a few of the different natures which in turn asserted themselves in Pepys' character. And instead of finding him torn and tormented among so many incompatible instincts, each clamouring for its own, we find him stepping smartly through life, never at a loss, and actually, in some incredible fashion, inducing them one after another to minister submissively to his satisfaction. We may disentangle the motives of such a man, we may watch him in his different moods, we may smile at the simplicity with which he passes from one to the next, we may praise and blame him in turn. We may follow him step by step, daily and hourly, through the years of his intensely vivid life, and measure his exact attitude towards his work and his amusements and his friends. But who can define the central identity which lurks in the middle of it all, or explain the alchemy which can fuse a hundred hostile elements into a single complacent human character ? There we are baffled : the process which seems to be so nakedly revealed is after all beyond us. Sir Samuel Pepys 29 Edward Montagu's promising young cousin had the secret of it, but though he could tell us every- thing else, he could not tell us that. And this, then, is the ordinary man, the com- monplace soul whom we may all patronize, to whom we may give our indulgence because we are all like that at bottom. It may be so ; but if it is, what opportunities we are missing ! If only we could hear more of all the rest ! It is hard that there should be only one Pepys' Diary, if there might be so many. Perhaps a future generation will be more fortunate. Per- haps even now some sedate man of business, some capable official, some unsuspected soldier or sailor or solicitor, is covering the daily page, to reveal to our great-grandchildren what an ordi- nary man is like. Meanwhile, we have only the promising youth who sat down to the first page of his Journal on January i, 1660. I' llii^ f ? If p. Chapter II PEPYS kept his Diary very nearly without intermission from January i, 1660, to June 30, 1669. The manuscript fills six stout note-books of about 500 pages each. The first volume is an octavo, the rest small quartos. It is written throughout in shorthand, the system being that of John Shelton, who pub- lished the first edition of his Tachygraphy in 1620, though it was the sixth edition (1641), revised and re-arranged, which was used by Pepys.^ The writing is, for the most part, extremely close and neat, though it deteriorates towards the end, when his eyes began to trouble him. The proper names are invariably written in longhand. ^ For a full account of the STstem see a paper by the late Mr. J. E. Bailey, F.S.A., " On the Cipher of Pepys' Diary," read before the Manchester Literary Club, December 14, 1875 (published among the papers of the Club, vol. ii, 1876). so iif C' .^ .>/-:-/ / / ''^ A V- u /^ f /% ^ /Y44 // • / ^'f I • T' U ^' X I ■4^ otC » .-. lUt*^ ^ C c / ' i^-Xv ^ 'V > J By perttiission of Messrs. George Belt tr ioHi. Page of the MS. of Pepys' Diary. 'II Samuel Pepys 31 The volumes, with their rubricated pages and clear penmanship, are models of the most scrupulous tidiness. Pepys was an expert in the art of shorthand. He used it extensively in his official work, and we find him preparing a system for the use of his patron. It was no doubt partly for speed and convenience that he used it in his Diary ; but far more it was for concealment. There never was a diary so jealously preserved from all risk of dis- covery. He habitually wrote it at his office, so that even his wife seems to have known nothing of it. He once let out to a friend, Sir William Coventry, whom he found "writing up" his journal, that he also kept one « most strictly " ; this was nine years after he had begun it, and he declares that Coventry was the only man he had ever told, and adds that he regretted it afterwards, " it not being necessary, nor maybe convenient, to have it known." ^ Particularly candid passages, such as seemed to require special 1 Diary, March 9, 1669. 32 Samuel Pepys concealment, he buried still deeper than the rest, by inserting dummy letters, and employing a peculiar jumble of foreign languages. He often, indeed, gives the impression that he uses these devices to disguise the nakedness of his confidences even from himself. There is, undoubtedly, a gulf between entertaining a thought and writing it down in hard material words, which even the most unabashed may prefer to bridge by some such means. Plain words become too like pic- tures, reflecting the actual image of the things they stand for. Remoter symbols are required, ciphers, unfamiliar expressions, and so forth ; they are equally intelligible to the initiated, and some- how less disconcerting. The fact that Pepys clothed his language in shorthand is thus a gain for the Diary itself, a gain in ease and candour and expansiveness. There seems, indeed, as we read on and on, to be nothing whatever that Pepys hesitates to record. I do not merely refer to the indecencies, but to the incredible trivialities which he punctu- Samuel Pepys 33 ■W' ally chronicles. He buys a pair of lobsters for dinner, leaves them behind in the coach, and suddenly remembers them while he is in the middle of saying grace : it takes a dozen lines of graphic description to do justice to the incident.^ His hat falls under the pulpit during the sermon, and the clerk has to help him to recover it with a stick; 2 this he promptly does, and the whole adventure is over, but when the diary is written, it has to be included with the rest of the day's events. A man in the street had " a great and dirty fall over a water-pipe " «— a memory like this cannot be allowed to perish. The same inexhaustible profusion of detail is found upon every page. He starts straight off, from the very first, upon the same liberal scale, and keeps it up daily without a pause for nearly ten years. He was a busy man, and it is not surprising that, at this rate, the Diary often fell into arrear, some- times as much as a fortnight. When this hap- 1 Diary, June 13, 1666. * April 28, 1667 « September 16, 1660 "j^vJ^vs^-^HIBt^Cf . miaMdSiJi^«iii^St^St^'^^-^'''^''''^'^M/iiik 34 Samttel Pepys pened, rough notes were kept on loose sheets of paper, to be amplified and entered upon the first opportunity. Once or twice the opportunity never came, but sooner than have a lacuna, the loose sheets must then be folded and inserted in their proper place. At other times he keeps himself up to the mark by the help of a vow to kiss no woman and drink no wine until the Diary has been brought up to date. How dear the record was to him is measured by the time and trouble which it cost. He loved it as part of his adored life, and he kept it solely because he loved it. He nowhere hints that he has any other object in view, least of all the object of ultimately giving it to the world. Nor does he appear to have kept it for the future pleasure of reading it. He never once speaks of having turned back the pages to live the raptur- ous days over again — exactly the kind of thing he would have recorded if he had ever done so. Sometimes, indeed, it is difficult to believe that this was not his object, as when he describes how Samuel Pepys 35 the bellman passed by under his window " as I was writing of this very line, and cried. Past one of the clock, and a cold, frosty, windy morning " ; * or when he mentions that his candle is going out, " which makes me write thus slubberingly " : * it is hard to think that such loving particularity was not consciously designed to recall later on the very flavour of the moment. But there are no signs that, in after years, the volumes were ever taken down from the shelf. There is no correction of mistakes in the manuscript, no filling in of missing words, no alterations of any kind.3 *. His exacting eye would surely never have tolerated these frequent slips of the pen if it had ever rested on them again. His lust for repro- ducing his whole days seems to have been purely artistic. Just as the artist burns to reproduce 1 January i6, i66o. ^ October 26, 1662. 8 The only apparent exception is on November 17, 1662, where Pepys writes of the " Duke of Monmouth," although the title was not officially created until three months later. But the MS. shows no sign of any subsequent alteration or erasure. 36 Samuel Pepys the moment which strikes him as significant, and when he has done so gives it no further thought, so it was with Pepys, only that with him all moments were significant, and not one could be spared. To give form to the life which he tasted so keenly, that was all he wanted, and from this point of view the Diary is a purely artistic creation. Nothing that belonged to life, public or private, could be out of place in it. The Restoration of the House of Stuart, and the loss of the lobsters for dinner, were equally part of his treasured experience, and equally demanded permanent record, although where every minute was so full, there could be no regretful lingering over either. I do not, of course, imply that he was con- scious of all this. Probably, he felt dimly that an accurate diary would be somehow useful. Still more probably, he would merely have said that he kept it because " it do please me mightily," and in that case he would have shovm himself to be more of an artist than ever. Samtiel Pepys 37 Meanwhile, he -begins the new year, 1660, with- out answering any of these questions : " Blessed be God, at the end of the last year I was in very good health, without any sense of my old pain, but upon taking of cold. I lived in Axe Yard, having my wife, and servant Jane, and no more in family than us three." So the curtain goes up, and the household in Axe Yard become suddenly immortal. There follows a short description of the state of public afiairs. Then Pepys puts on his " suit with great skirts, having not lately worn any other clothes but them," and plunges into the exquisite thrills and sensations of life. There were, indeed, plenty of sensations just then, for the most untiring of observers. It was an unsettled moment for every one, the interval between the death of Oliver Cromwell and the Restoration. Militarism had had its day for the first and last time among an essentially civiUan nation. While the divided generals made and destroyed their ephemeral constitutions, 38 Samuel Pepys public opinion was steadily setting towards the only possible^^escape from permanent disorder. " Everybody," says Pepys, " now drinks the King's health without any fear, whereas before, it was very private that a man dare do it." ^ The reaction was fully established, and Pepys himself was easily carried in the stream. The "great Roundhead," as he had hitherto been, slipped without embarrassment into enthusiastic loyalty to the Stuarts. By March of this year, 1660, Pepys was all ready for the next service which his patron Montagu required of him. A few weeb before Downing had told him, with an air of conferring a kindness, that he had got him appointed one of the Clerks of the Council, the explanation of the kindness being, so Pepys be- lieved, that Downing wished to avoid paying his sakry out of his own pocket, as he was then doing. But Pepys was now given a chance which made it unnecessary for him to trouble further about Downing and his office. Montagu, reappointed 1 March 6, 1660 Samuel Pepys 39 in February joint general (with Monk) of the fleet, had need of a confidential secretary. He was now in constant correspondence with the King, and the time for action seemed to be ap- proaching at last. He invited Pepys to go to sea with him, and to take a hand in the great work. Pepys at once set about his preparations in high excitement at the prospect. His enthusiasm for the King, his desire to see life, and his gratifi- cation at Montagu's confidence in him, all con- tributed to the ardour with which he accepted the proposal. When he found what convenient and recognized opportunities he would have for maHng money, as for example, by appointing fictitious servants, and paying their salaries to himself, the cup was indeed full. He dispatched his wife to stay with friends in the country, and on March 23 went on board the %wx\tsure at Gravesend, moving a few days later to the Iffaseh^, the ship on which he had sailed to the Sound the year before. ^ ^ Pepys enjoyed to the full the crowded weeks 40 Samuel Pepys that followed. His secretarial duties kept him busy, but not so busy that he could not have his share of conviviality, while the fleet lay off the Kentish coast during April. There was a delirious scene one night in the " Lieutenant's cabin," where, says Pepys, " I and W. Howe were very merry, and among other frolics he pulls out the spigot of the little vessel of ale that was there in the cabin, and drew some into his mounteere,^ and after he had drank, I endeavouring to dash it in his face, he got my velvet studying cap and drew some into mine too, that we made ourselves a great deal of mirth, but spoiled my clothes with the ale which we dashed up and down." ^ This was pleasant ; but the scene that followed three days later was no less enjoyable in its way. On May 3, Montagu called a council of war, and the secretary, with pride in his heart, read aloud to the assembled commanders a declaration from the King, dated from Breda, containing an " offer * A kind of cap (the Spanish montero). * April 30, 1660. Samuel Pepys 41 of grace to all that will come in within forty days." The commanders voted unanimously for Charles, as Montagu had counted upon their doing. The whole company then went up to the quarter-deck, and Pepys read both the King's declaration and the officers' resolution to the assembled crew, who received them with cries of " God bless King Charles ! " He was at once sent to do the same on all the ships of the fleet, and found a like enthusiasm wherever he went. The next morning he took care to sign his name to all the copies of the council's vote, that it might appear there if any of them found their way into print. These were great times. A week later orders were received from Parlia- ment that the fleet should proceed to HoUand without more delay to bring back the King. On the 14th, Pepys went on shore at the Hague, to use his expressive figure, " with child to see any strange thing." He went sight-seeing assi- duously, in a " heaven of pleasure," and the best sight of aU was when he managed to get admitted, 42 Samuel Pepys with Montagu's son, to kiss the King's hand. The King seemed, he perspicuously remarks, " a very sober man." That is all he has to say of him at first, but a few days later he marks his enthusiasm by taking a personal share in a salute fired by the guns of the whole fleet. " The gun over against my cabin," he says, " I fired myself to the King, which was the first time that he had been saluted by his own ships since this change ; but holding my head too much over the gun, I had almost spoiled my right eye." ^ He also made the acquaintance of the Duke of York, whom he was afterwards to serve so long and so well. The next day. May 23, the King and all the Royal Family, with their whole suite, an " infi- nity of people," came on board. Pepys, his right eye still " very red and ill," spent the day in one prolonged ecstasy of excitement. He saw the Royal party at dinner by themselves, " which was a blessed sight to see." He assisted while the King and the Duke of York re-christened 1 May 22, 1660. Samuel Pepys 43 the ships, substituting names of good omen for the discredited old republican names they had borne, " Charles " for " Naseby," " Mary " for the " Speaker," " Happy Return " for " Winsley," and so forth. He observed, to his surprise, that the King was " very active and stirring." He listened while Charles told the story of his escape from Worcester, the same story which he himself was to write down twenty years later from the King's dictation : this time he was " ready to weep " at the tale of the royal sufferings. Mean- while the fleet with its precious burden had weighed anchor, and " most glorious weather " ushered the KLing back to his own. The following day was given up to mirth and brave discourse, and land was sighted before nightfall. The next morning. May 25, the sun rose upon the great and longed-for day which saw the king once more upon English soil. Some " ship's diet " was exhibited at his breakfast, just to show him how his sailors fared, and behold, the King was a sound Englishman, and would make 44 Samuel PePys his meal of nothing else but pease and pork and boiled beef. The King was generous, too, and gave ;{^SOo to be distributed among the ship's company, of which Pepys got ^^30. The Duke of York was friendly : he promised Pepys his future favour, and called him " Pepys by name."^ About noon the King and the Duke were rowed ashore to Dover in Montagu's barge. Pepys and one or two of the King's attendants went at the same time in another boat, carrying with them a dog " which the King loved." On the way the dog gave occasion to some simple and not over-refined mirth, which made Pepys reflect that " a King and all that belong to him are but just as others are." They got on shore as soon as the King did, and saw him received by General Monk and acclaimed with shouting and joy. The Mayor of Dover came forward and " pre- sented him from the town a very rich Bible, which he took and said it was the thing that he loved above aU things in the world," so it appeared the King was a good Protestant too. Then he stepped Samuel Pepys 45 into a stately coach and roUed away through the town towards Canterbury. The great event had passed off in complete success, " without any the least blur or obstruction in the world, that could give an offence to any." Montagu was transported with joy ; and his faithful secretary proceeded to describe the day in a page that for unconscious irony will not easily be matched. Charles himself would have appreciated it, though he might have found in its innocent loquacity a sharper sting than he would find in all the formal and reasoned condemnations that have been passed upon him since it was written. Pepys meanwhile, as innocent of all ironical intention as the Mayor of Dover himself, remained a few days longer on board with Montagu, setting his public and private accounts in order. He found he was worth iiioo, a great advance upon his estate two months before, and he took occasion to thank Us patron for what he had done for him. Montagu had borne a leading but a very discreet part in the Restoration, and had I il 46 Samuel Pepys Samuel Pepys 47 been careful not to appear too obtrusive, especi- ally to his co-general Monk. " We must have a little patience," he told Pepys, " and we will rise together ; in the meantime I will do you all the good jobs I can." ^ He was as good as his word. A few days later, after they had returned to London, Pepys learned to his satisfaction that Montagu had obtained for him a promise of appointment as " Clerk of the Acts of the Navy." The office was an important and valuable one, and Pepys held it with credit for many years. It had existed at least as far back as the reign of Edward IV, when the Clerk of the King's ships (as he was then known) was the only civil officer specifically in charge of naval matters. Henry VIII, to meet the needs of his growing force, had constituted a " Navy Board," on which the Clerk of the Acts sat in company with six or seven other officers. After the Restoration the Board consisted of a Treasurer, a Comptroller, a Sur- June 2, i66o. veyor, and four Commissioners, as weU as the Clerk, who held equal rank with the rest, besides acting as secretary. Pepys' salary was fixed at £350. the salaries of the other officers ranging from ijiioxv 4^., which was that of the Treasurer,to X500, wHch was that of the Comptroller. In some manuscript « Instructions " of about 1649, now in the Pepysian Library, the duties of the Clerk are thus defined : " The clarke of the Navye's duty depends principally upon rateing (by the Board's approbation) of all bills and recording of them, and all orders, contracts and warrants, making up and .casting of accompts, framing and writing answers to letters, orders, and commands from the CounceU, Lord High Admirall, or Commis- sioners of the Admiralty, and he ought to be a very able accomptant, weU versed in NavaU affairs and all inferior officers' duties." Pepys obtained his patent for the office on July 13, but for a time it seemed doubtful whether the pllce was securely his. The Clerbhip of the Acts had been aboUshed during the Common- 48 Samuel Pepys Samuel PePys 49 wealth, but it presently appeared that the man who had held it in the reign of Charles I was still alive and considered himself to have the first claim. His name was Thomas Barlow, " an old consump- tive man, and fair conditioned," says Pepys, who finally judged it prudent to buy off his claim by giving him ^^loo a year out of his salary.^ This he did until February, 1665, when Barlow died, " for which," writes his successor, with at least as much feeling as could be expected, " God knows my heart, I could be as sorry as is possible for one to be for a stranger, by whose death he gets ;^ioo per annum, he being a worthy honest man."« These uncertainties made it tempting to accept the handsome offers, one of ^£500, another of jf 1,000, which were made him for his post ; but he wisely clung to it, and before long was safely installed. At the worst Pepys had more than one string to his bow just now, for Montagu also obtained for him a Clerkship of the Privy Seal. Neither of them expected much of this at * July 17, i66o. « February 9, 1665. the time, but less than a month later Pepys found that he was making about ^^3 a day out of it — though this rate cannot have been maintained for long — besides his salary from the Navy Office.^ He had before this severed his connexion with Downing's office, and never wanted to see the " stingy fellow " again.* Yet another dignity came his way on September 24 of the same year, when he was sworn in as a justice of the peace, " with which honour I did find myself mightily pleased, though I am wholly ignorant in the duty." If it came to that he was certainly not less ignorant of his other duties. He was neither the " able accomptant " nor the man " well-versed in Navall affairs " which the Clerk of the Acts was expected to be ; but what with his passion for mastering the smallest details of his work and his desire to fortify his position in the world, he was not long in making himself one of the most efficient members of the Board. Meanwhile the household of three in Axe 1 August 10, 1660. * June 28, 1660. 4 50 Samuel Pepys Yard had been broken up, for among the rest of his privileges Pepys was now entitled to a residence in the Navy Office, then (and later, until its removal to Somerset House) situated close to Tower Hill, between Crutched Friars and Seething Lane. On July 4 he went to view the accommo- dation which it offered, and found the worst very good. A fortnight later he moved in with his wife, and as soon as possible got rid of the house in Axe Yard. His new house fronted upon Seeth- ing Lane. Pepys, who loved to have everything handsome about him, found a perpetual delight in its gradual decoration and arrangement, as well as a recurring source of annoyance in his wife's untidiness and the carelessness of his servants. Thus in the first years after the Restoration, while his country was being re-made round him, politically, socially, and ecclesiastically, Pepys began to make his way to the front, by virtue of his conscientious diligence and also of his very clear idea of what he desired. He was troubled with no wishes that were not precise and defined, Samuel Pepys 51 no vague impulses towards intangible things, no impracticable ambitions for which life was too small. The common round of Pepys' existence was in one respect very unlike the modern working day. There seem to have been no fixed hours for anything except the midday dinner. It would be curious to know exactly what difference be- tween ourselves and our forefathers is implied by the fact that they were so much more able than we are to take the day and its hours as they came, without planning them out beforehand. No doubt the change is partly due to the greater elaboration of life, so that we have to pack more into the day than will go into it unless we pack neatly and with forethought. Perhaps something is due to the fact that we are not so dependent as of old upon daylight or even upon fine weather : we make our own daylight more effec- tively than did Pepys and his friends, and if we do not make our own weather we are at least more ingenious in circumventing it. But either 52 Samuel Pepys as cause or effect there must also be a difference in habit of mind, some love of familiar ways and settled engagements in place of the old adventurous spirit that could face a life with nothing fixed in it but the hour for dinner. Pepys, with all his love of precision and method, arranged no two days alike. Sometimes he was up and at work in his office by four o'clock in the morning ; sometimes he lay in bed late into the day. Sometimes his work was compressed into a few early hours ; sometimes it kept him up late at night. On the whole, the working day seems to have begun and ended earlier than it does now, which again might be explained either as the cause or the effect of the concentration of all meals into one. Wherever in the day the principal meal is placed, there are the best reasons for supposing that more work will be done before it than afterwards. Pepys' dinner at noon was not merely his principal but almost his only meal. For breakfast he had a " morning draught " at a tavern, and in the evening nothing but a supper > Smmiel Pepys 53 so slight that he seldom finds it worth mentioning. But dinner was a very different matter, and on all special occasions a careful account is given of it. Who will deny that there is something seductive as well as heroic, a glamour, a gush of imagination, about such an entry as this, describing one of his yearly parties in memory of the day when he had been " cut for the stone " ? " Very'merry at, before, and after dinner, and the more for that my dinner was great, and most neatly dressed by our own only maid. We had a fricassee of rabbits and chickens, a leg of mutton boiled, three carps in a dish, a great dish of a side of lamb, a dish of roasted pigeons, a dish of four lobsters, three tarts, a lamprey pie (a most rare pie), a dish of anchovies, good wine of several sorts, and all things mighty noble and to my great content." ^ Nine people sat down to this admirable meal. How thin and exhausted they would think the fancy that would stop short at a poor plateful of soup, the wing of an inconsiderable partridge, 1 April 4, 1663. 54 Samuel Pepys if they were entertained by a modest young married .couple of to-day. These differences of times and dishes are not trivial. Nothing is that, no detail is too homely, which in any way helps to catch the savour of Pepys' days ; and I do not believe it is fantastic to say that this barbaric profusion, these off-hand methods of dividing the day, do really stand for something that has been softened down almost out of existence in our own time. No doubt it has been made up for in other ways by the hundred opportunities of adventure open to us which were not open to Pepys. But the process of allaying the discomforts, and of refining to some extent the pleasures, of the ordinary day, must in the long run mean a loss as well as a gain. We have other things which we presumably like better, but in this one matter, in the colour and vibration of the ordinary familiar atmosphere, it looks as though something has escaped us. We have to go further afield for excitements. If Pepys found perpetual excitement (not merely pleasure) Samuel Pepys 55 in his house and home, it was not solely because he was Pepys, but partly because of the seventeenth century air which he breathed. Some quaUfi- cation of this kind must be made, or we run the risk of treating him too much as an absurd child. He was not that, he was a respected man, be- ginning at this time to be treated as an equal by some of the most distinguished people of his day. This has to be remembered, though truly it 5s not always easy, in putting together from his descriptions some picture of his domestic life. I have already spoken of one constant trial of his patience, his wife's untidy habits. Here is a typical incident : " After that I went by water home, where I was angry with my wife for her things lying about, and in my passion kicked the little fine basket which I bought her in Holland, and broke it, which troubled me after I had done it." ^ And again, a few days later : " I took occasion to be angry with my wife before I rose about her putting up half-a-crown 1 October 13, 1660. 56 Samuel Pepys Samuel Pe^ys 57 of mine in a paper box, which she had forgot where she had lain it. But we were friends again, as we are always." ^ Her dress, too, was often a matter of dispute. She had the fatal tendency of untidy people towards an injudicious use of finery, a sore offence to her husband's discriminating eye, who again " took occasion to fall out with my wife very highly about her rib- bands being ill-matched and of two colours, and to very high words "—grossly high, indeed— " for which," he adds, " I was afterwards sorry." « On the whole Mrs. Pepys seems to have shown more forbearance in these matters than he did, but the poor lady never succeeded in reaching her husband's standard of what was fitting, for years later we find her putting on half-mourning too soon after some one's death, and appearing in a " black moyre waistcoat, and short petticoat, laced with silver lace so basely that I could not endure to see her." ^ What is surprising is that 1 October 24, 1660. ^ December 19, 1661. 3 March 29, 1667. these constant frictions, which did not always stop short at mere words, had no more last- ing effects after they had been repeated a hun- dred times than they had in their early married days. It is a high tribute to the affection of Pepys and his wife to say that it was strong enough to resist this perpetual wear and tear in small things, the more so because it was not helped out by much community of tastes or interests. It was a real survival of their boy-and-girl love which stood the strain, and which managed to stand it alone. Pepys suffered from an exaggerated idea that it was his right and his duty to be master in his house. He meant to have no insubordination either from his wife or his servants. It was part of his ideal of orderliness that not only should his house be neat and clean, and his servants attentive, but that his wife should remain at her post and not be allowed much freedom. To this two other considerations also contributed, one his horror of extravagance, the other his lively jealousy, so that on the whole Mrs. Pepys' 58 Samuel Pepys \ i; 3, chances of amusement were not many. Dunng her husband's absences from home she was usually sent off to stay with his relations in the country, where she had nothing to do but to quarrel with them. Otherwise, if his supervision was removed for any length of time, he would find cause to reflect sadly "on my wife's neglect of things, and impertinent humour got by this liberty of being from me, which she is never to be trusted with ; for she is a fool." ^ It cannot be denied that Pepys' meanness in regard to money grew upon him with his growmg fortunes during the ten years covered by the Diary. He loved to note the steady increase of his balance when he made up his accounts month by month, and for years the amount is regularly recorded in the Diary. His opportunities of making money over and above his official salary were so numerous that during the first five years of his work in the Navy Office he managed to put by about ^^200 a year, more or less ; so that 1 June 17, 1668 Samuel Pepys 59 whereas on December 31, 1660, he found himself worth about i;300, by February 28, 1665, his savings had reached to i;i,270. After that they increased by leaps and bounds, what with prizes during the Dutch war and fees in connexion with the Victualling Office, and by the end of 1666 he had accumulated ^6,200. Much as he en- joyed cutting a figure in the world, he equally enjoyed laying up the money for which he worked so industriously, and he was horrified at the thought that a penny of it should be wasted. His wife was deliberately kept short of money, and not allowed to know too much about the prosperous state of his affairs. One day Sir W. Warren, a merchant who was under various obligations to Pepys for navy contracts, gave him a pair of gloves for his wife, wrapped up in a paper parcel. This, says Pepys, " I would not open, feeling it hard When I came home. Lord ! in what pain I was to get my wife out of the room without bidding her go, that I might see what these gloves were; and, by and by, she 6o Samuel Pepys Samuel Pepys 6i being gone, it proves a payre of white gloves for her and forty pieces in good gold, w^hich did so cheer my heart, that I could eat no victuals almost for dinner for joy to think how God do bless us every day more and more. ... I was at great losse what to do whether to tell my wife of it or no, which I could hardly forbear, but yet I did and will think of it first before I do, for fear of making her think me to be in a better condition, or in a better way of getting money, than yet I am." ^ He had no confidence, doubtless with reason, in Mrs. Pepys' powers of management, and kept all such matters carefully in his own hands. His occasional twinges of compunction were allayed by the thought that it was a duty to keep her modest and sober in her ways. Moreover, he also had his moments of generosity, and when one day she proudly exhibited to him her stock of jewels, mostly pres- ents from himself, to the value, they reckoned, of £150 in all, he was glad she should have them, ^ February 2, 1664, " for it is fit," he adds pleasantly, " the wretch should have something to content herself with." ^ Pepys is in nothing more incredibly ingenuous, much as it is to say that, than in the revelations of his jealousy as a husband. Mrs. Pepys, so pretty and so unbusiness-like, was, as a matter of fact, surprisingly discreet in her behaviour. Her husband's frequent uneasiness was per- fectly groundless, and this, in his heart of hearts, he knew quite well. With him, as with others, jealousy was not a thing that could be argued away by reason. He could only say, with real pathos, " This is my devilish jealousy, which I pray God may be false, but it makes a very hell in my mind, which the God of heaven remove, or I shall be very unhappy." » His particular ingenuousness does not lie in this sort of inconsis- tency, which indeed he shares with the rest of mankind. It is in his unfailing power of placing his suspicions of his wife side by side with his own more or less serious infidelities to her, without 1 February 23, 1668. « May 26, 1663. 62 Samuel Pepys drawing any kind of comparison between them. He could be an injured husband one moment, and a furtive man of pleasure the next, with no sense of incongruity whatever. In this as in other matters, each moment was securely separated from the next, each successive emotion could be tasted absolutely without reference to the rest. His most prolonged attack of jealousy was occa- sioned by a course of dancing lessons which in a luckless hour he allowed his wife to take from a man called Pembleton. The sentence I have quoted above occurs during this episode, and it is one of many equally touching outbursts. It seems quite clear that nothing could have been more unjust to Mrs. Pepys, who did all she could to reassure him, and finally refused to admit the danc- ing-master unless Pepys himself could be present. Pepys did indeed try to be reasonable, and went so far as to vow to himself that he would not give way to high words on the subject of the dancing lessons, "in pain of is, 6d, for every time";^ ^ May 21, 1663. Samuel Pepys 63 but they were miserable days, and the sight of Pembleton, even after the course was over, remained for some while a recurring cause of alarm. None the less the memory of these troubles and of others Uke them never cast the smallest shadow over his own private adventures. His only preoccupation, either at the moment, or when he came to dweU merrily upon them in his Diary, was his anxiety that they should remain private. There is something great about this whole-hearted absorption in one thing at a time. It is not every one who could describe on the same page how he went to church one Sunday after- noon, contrary to his intention, in order to see a pretty woman whom he heard would be there, and how he suffered, when he got there, at the sight of the odious dancing-master leering at his wife from the gallery— all without its even so much as occurring to him that there was any paraUel between the two parts of his description.* The disastrous dancing-lessons were a warning to 1 May 24, 1663. 64 Samuel Pepys Samuel Pepys 65 Pepys that he and no man else should provide his wife with entertainment. He accordingly devised an agreeable plan for combining occupation with culture by giving her lessons in arithmetic. Mrs. Pepys, if not strong intellectually, was touchingly docile, and before long her husband notes that " she is come to do Addition, Subtrac- tion, and Multiplication very well." He adds : " I purpose not to trouble her yet with Division, but to begin with the Globes to her now." ^ He also at different times tried to teach her to sing and play the flageolet. He was an exacting musician, and her ear was not good enough for her performances to give him much satisfaction ; sometimes the lessons ended in trouble and tears ; but here again her diligence was such that on the flageolet, at any rate, she reached a certain proficiency. The quarrels and sulks, the abusive words, the actual personal violence— Mrs. Pepys had her nose pulled more than once, and once she 1 December 6, 1663. threatened her husband with a pair of red-hot tongs— the kicks and cuffs, of which the servants usually had their share, are all so constant and so punctually recorded, that the casual reader of the Diary is probably on the whole left with the impression of a disordered and unhappy home. Unsettled according to modern ideas it certainly was, but Pepys' sense of domesticity was vigorous enough to flourish there. He was at any rate just as much interested in his home life as in everything else that came his way, and through all the many agitations of his household his dwn fireside did not cease to be agreeable. '' So home to dinner with my wife," he writes, " very pleasant and pleased with one another's company, and in our general enjoyment one of another, better we think than most other couples do." ^ Their quarrels were violent but brief, and however incompetent his servants might be, they did not interfere with his perennial pleasure in adorning and enriching his house. 1 December 27, 1663. 5 66 Samuel Pepys Samuel Pepys 67 I The staff grew gradually in numbers. He had three or four maids, a boy, and at different times a "companion" for his wife. Perhaps Mrs. Pepys did not manage them particularly well ; among them they certainly gave from first to last a good deal of trouble ; the incapable maddened their master with their sluttishness, the capable were apt to become overbearing, the good-looking only too fatally troubled the domestic harmony. Some, on the other hand, were entirely satisfactory, and Pepys knew well what gratitude is due to a good servant. Before even an agreeable personal appearance he preferred that they should show some musical talent, for Pepys had to the full the admirable passion of his day for part-singing and concerted playing. The " companion " for his wife was an extravagance which he could only admit if this qualification was offered. One of them, by name Gosnell, who made a very brief appearance in the household in 1662, was so proficient that she soon afterwards took to the stage. Another, Mary Ashwell, was equally : \ accomplished ; she could play the harpsicon and the triangle, and had what Pepys cafls "very good principles of [musique." ^ She could also dance, taught her master and mistress to play cards, and was altogether a " very witty girl." But her master paid her too much attention, and her mistress too little, and she, too, disappeared before long. A less agitating presence was that of Tom Edwards, for several years Pepys' excellent boy, until he suddenly became a man, and with his master's approval married one of the maids. This boy had been a chorister in the Chapel Royal, and was a favourite in the household both on ac- count of his singing and lute-playing, as also for his « innocently clownish " behaviour.^ Satisfactory or the reverse, the servants shared to the full in the general Ufe of the home ; they had not learned, two hundred years ago, to construct a jealously guarded life of their own ; they were human all the day, not only in each other's society. 1 AprU 3, 1663. By " triangle " is probably meant a tri- angular spinet. * September 2, 1664. 68 Samuel Pepys Samuel Pepys 69 As for the house itself, it was gradually enriched in accordance with Pepys' neat but substantial tastes. The closet was hung with purple, the books were arranged in glazed presses, Pepys' own room was lined with tapestry— Alderman Crow's " second>uit of Apostles," price £83 for the set. Presents of plate, complimentary marks of gratitude which could not be called bribes, poured in from the various contractors to whom the Clerk of the Acts had extended his favour, so that by the end of 1666 Pepys found that his dinner-parties could be served entirely upon silver. Portraits of himself and his wife adorned the walls. They were painted by John Hales, esteemed the rival of Lely, and both were imaginative in treatment. Mrs. Pepys was repre- sented " like a St. Katharine," ^ with pearls in her hair, a palm in her hand, and an ample display of her charms— a fashionable mode of the day, out of compliment to the Queen. " Her face and neck," writes Pepys, " which are 1 February 15, 1666. ' now finished, do so please me that I am not myself almost, nor was not all the night after in writing of my letters, in consideration of the fine picture that I shall be master of." ^ As soon as it was finished his own was begun : " I sit to have it full of shadows, and do almost break my neck look- ing over my shoulder to make the posture for him to work by." « This is the celebrated picture now in the National Portrait Gallery, in which we may still see Pepys looking over his shoulder, his plump features full of importance, his hand hold- ing the manuscript of his famous song, " Beauty retire!" He is dressed in what he describes as an " Indian gown," hired for the occasion. A landscape background was first inserted, but this Pepys preferred to have painted out, and " only a heaven made in the roome of it." ' It was a very fine picture, he declared, though " whatever the matter is, I do not fancy that it has the ayre of my face." * It never needed much 1 March 8, i666. 3 April 20, 1666. 2 March 17, 1666. 4 March 20, 1666. \ \ 70 Samuel Pepys to rouse a new interest in Pepys, and fresh from this episode he wandered with a critical eye, under Hales' guidance, in the picture-gallery at Whitehall. Such was his steady and rapid increase in posi- tion and substance during the first seven years of the Diary, from the day when in his new official dignity he had ordered a fine Camlett cloak with gold buttons, and added feelingly, " I pray God to make me able to pay for it," to the day when, in casting up his accounts, he found that in the year i666 he had spent ;£i,i54. "which is a sum not fit to be said that ever I should spend in one year," » though indeed the year's income had been considerably more than twice as much. There were domestic frictions, official troubles, anxieties about his family. For a time there was constant distress about his health, though apparently not on very serious grounds ; he was extremely susceptible to chills— to stand bare- legged, for example, for a few moments while he 1 December 31, l666. \ Samuel Pepys 71 looked out a clean pair of stockings meant a certain cold. But vivid as these troubles were, the per- petual flow of pleasures that ran in and out among them was far more so ; and in a fresh chapter a few of the hundred interests shall be iUustrated . which occupied him outside the domestic interior. \ Chapter III WE have already seen that Pepys' sound capacities were far from being shared by the rest of his family. He was constantly exasperated by the state of muddle and general dishevelment which they seemed fated to carry with them wherever they went. His father's business as a tailor was evidently upon its last legs, when in 1661 came the oppor- tune legacy which released him from the losing struggle. Robert Pepys, the tailor's elder brother, died in July of that year, and the small property which he left at Brampton, in Huntingdonshire, was enough to support a modest household. A good deal of troublesome business which arose in connexion with it naturally all fell upon Samuel ; but he managed to get his father settled there without loss of time, and superintended the transfer of the tailoring, such as it was, to his 72 Samuel Pepys 73 brother Tom. "I have great fears," writes Samuel, " that he will miscarry for want of brains and care." ^ With timely help from his brother, Tom managed to keep going ; the clothes, how- ever, which he delivered at the Navy Office were not always satisfactory, and his neglect of the business comes in for some sharp comment in the watchful Diary. Samuel was perpetually trying to arrange a profitable marriage for him, but always without success. He died unmarried, though not childless, in 1664, and, as usual, the prudent brother had to bear all the trouble of his illness, as well as the disposal of his bastards. Pepys certainly makes the most of his family's inroads upon his time, his purse, and his patience. Yet he bore them well, and a little occasional asperity was possibly not unwholesome for these poor Impracticable folk. Moreover he had a good deal of fondness for them, though that sometimes appeared only when they were beyond the reach of it. At any rate, when Tom's incon- 1 August 31, 1661. 74 Samuel Pepys venient illness finally proved fatal, his emotion burst out quite sincerely in a " very great trans- port of grief and cries '' ; and when his mother, whose failing wits had often been a source of annoyance, died in 1667, with a last blessing for " my poor Sam," his relief that she had not in her helplessness survived his father and himself broke down in honest and natural tears.^ Would even this extremity, one may well wonder, have betrayed him into any tenderness for his sister, the ill-starred Paulina ? Her place in the family was difficult to determine. Nobody seemed to want her, apparently she could be of no use or value to any one. Samuel at first offered her accommodation in his household, on the strict understanding that she was to come as a servant and not as a sister, and this proposal was joyfully accepted. When she arrived her brother rigidly held her to the bargain, and re- fused even to let her sit at table with him.* But ! 1 March 15, 1664; March 27, 1667. • November 12, 1660 ; January 2, 1661. Samuel Pepys 75 he speedily discovered that she had no brighter gifts as a servant than as a sister, and a few months later she found herself packed off to her parents at Brampton with a present of 20/. and some good advice as to how to behave herself there.i After this Samuel seldom visits his father in the country without being further impressed by her lack of all the graces of character or person. It is really affecting to picture the blankness, the fretful uselessness, the dreary discomfort, which Ufe in the dull little village must have meant for this poor unwelcome girl. She was not much more than twenty when she arrived at Brampton, but her youth, unsupported as it was by any other attraction, seemed to her family, at any rate, to offer small possibiUties. None the less, Samuel, though he would not have her as a servant, worked loyally to find some one wiUing to take her as a wife, and promised her a dowry if he was successful. Matters were becoming des- perate when six years later her hand was still 1 September 5, 1661. 76 Samuel Pepys unclaimed. Her father and her brother had a candid talk, on one of the latter's visits to Bramp- ton, "about a husband for my sister, whereof there is at present no appearance ; but we must endeavour to find her one now, for she grows old and ugly." i One possible match after another was suggested, her dowry was raised, no eflFort was spared. At last a certain John Jackson was discovered, and to the universal relief, a dowry of ^£600 was found to settle the business. Samuel paid the money without a murmur — he evidently thought it cheap at the price. Jack- son, he writes, " is a plain young man, handsome enough for Pall, one of no education nor discourse, but of few words, and one altogether that, I think, will please me well enough." 2 The mar- riage was promptly concluded,—" so that work is, I hope, well over," is her brother's only com- ment on the news— and by the time the Diary comes to an end there is the expectation of an heir, a piece of news which Pepys receives with 1 October 10, 1667. 2 February 7, 1668. Samuel Pepys 77 mixed feelings. We hear no more directly of Mrs. Jackson, who thus disappears into the void, an unchampioned victim to brotherly candour. But she had her reward, if the prospect would have been any consolation to her, in becoming the only member of her family to perpetuate the stock of the unsympathetic Diarist. She bore her husband two sons, Samuel and John, the elder of whom was Pepys' natural heir. But Samuel Jackson married in course of time against his uncle's wishes, and his brother supplanted him. John , Jackson, the younger, inherited, as we shall gee later on, the bulk of the Diarist's fortune, and his blood flows to-day in the veins of the well-represented family of Pepys Cockerell. It is to be hoped that the tribute of a sympathetic thought sometimes goes out to the poor despised ancestress who won so little favour as a sister or a daughter. Pepys' youngest brother, John by name, was rather more satisfactory. When the Diary opens in 1660 he is still at St. Paul's School, but shortly 78 Samuel Pepys afterwards he is admitted as a sizar at Christ's College, Cambridge. While he was in residence there, he was several times visited by his brother, Cambridge being conveniently taken on the way from London to Brampton. It must have seemed to him a little unreasonable that Samuel should arrive, on one such occasion, at eight o'clock in the morning, and be vexed at finding him still in bed ; ^ or again, that he should be displeased with him for being " not so thorough a philosopher, at least in Aristotle, as I took him for, he not being able to tell me the definition of final, nor which of the 4 Qualities belonged to each of the 4 Elements." 2 But Samuel's reprimands were delivered in a strong sense of duty, which John ungratefully repaid by writing spiteful letters about him to his parents. Perhaps it was natural that the family should at times rebel under Samuel's bracing attempts to rouse them to some show of energy ; but the game of abuse was a thing in which, as in everything else, 1 July 15, 1661. « August 7, 1663. Samuel Pepys 79 he was more than a match for them, and when John's underhand disloyalty was discovered, he was severely banished from favour. Months later we find his mother pleading for him in vain.^ However, whether or no as a result of Pepys' efforts, John began before long to give more satis- faction. On leaving Cambridge he was to take holy orders, and Samuel proceeded to look out for " spiritual promotion " for him, meanwhile decreeing that he should wear " canonical dress " that he might be fitter to go about with him.* One day a. sudden illness as usual surprised the elder brother into a tone of affection ; the incident is thus graphically described : " Talking with my brother upon matters relating to his journey to Brampton to-morrow ... I looking another way heard him fall down, and turned my head, and he was fallen down all along upon the ground dead, which did put me into a great fright ; and, to see my brotherly love ! I did presently lift him up from the ground, he being as pale as 1 June 22, 1665. « February 21, September 27, 1666. }fl 80 Samuel Pepys Samuel PePys 81 H( death ; and, being upon his legs, he did presently come to himself, and said he had something come into his stomach very hot." By night he had quite recovered, and Pepys, not without emotion, gave him 20/. for books, and as much for his pocket. " Poor fellow ! " he adds, " he is so melancholy, and withal, my wife says, harmless, that I begin to love him, and would be loth he should not do well," ^ John did not get spiritual promotion after all ; the canonical dress was abandoned, and in 1670 his brother obtained for him the office of Clerk to the Trinity House. Three years later, when Samuel himself was pro- moted from the Clerkship of the Acts to be Secre- tary of the Admiralty, the former office was con- ferred on John Pepys, who held it jointly with Thomas Hayter, till then Samuel's clerk. John Pepys died in 1677, and even he proved true at his death to the family characteristics against which Samuel struggled alone : he left a debt of ^300 due to the Trinity House to be settled by his prudent brother. 1 February 7, 1667. Outside this immediate circle there was a wide fringe of uncles and aunts and cousins, most of them in humble circumstances, and some of them liable to be troublesome. Pepys condemns him- self on one occasion for his " pride and contempt " for his poor relations,^ and it must be admitted that, as his prosperity carried him above their heads, he preferred the higher world which was gradually thrown open to him. But he was ready to be of use when needed, and his willingness involved him in more than one vexatious business. Moreover, many of them were pleasant enough, and to such his house was always hospitably open. There were constant gay parties, singing and dancing and eating, in which the humbler mem- bers of his circle had their full share. The Turners and the Joyces especially, two families of cousins, appear continually in the Diary, though, like every one else, they come in for plenty of plain speaking first and last. " So to my brother's, and there I found my aunt James, a poor, religious, ^ September 5, 1664. ^^"^^SirsSir 82 Samuel Pepys well-meaning, good soul, talking of nothing but God Almighty, and that with so much innocence that mightily pleased me " ^—felicitous sketches of this sort are common. Pepys' attitude to these folk was that with which we are now familiar — affection and a strong sense of family responsi- bility, struggling with the irritation which a practical and ambitious man inevitably feels at the sight of mismanaged affairs, or even of con- tented acquiescence in obscurity and narrow conditions. The larger world, the world in which people live with dignity, the world from which fuss and worry and squalid troubles are at any rate super- ficially absent, was that which Pepys enjoyed not exactly out of snobbishness, but from the mere satisfaction which it gave to his love of seeing things decently and handsomely ordered. He had plenty of proper pride, and his relish at finding himself in high company never betrayed itself by servility or nervous effusiveness. More- 1 Majr 30, 1663. Samuel Pepys 83 over, he was as exacting a critic of behaviour in circles of rank and fashion as in his own social degree. Nothing is more readily to be illus- trated from the Diary than his severe sense of the proper way for people of position to comport themselves. It was not precisely moral, this sense, it was rather artistic. He objected to effrontery and loose talk, not so much as being wrong in itself, as being unbecoming and out of place. It is, perhaps, a slender distinction, but it is enough to save his disapprobation from being pharisaical. His professions of respectability, placed side by side in the Diary with the loving record of his own lapses, are thus not entirely unreal. He did not take his stand, in his condenmations of the morals and manners of high life, solely on the ground that they were offensive to his sense of right and wrong. He would doubtless have said that he did, but then he was not clearer in his knowledge of his own motives than other people. His copious outpourings give the reader a juster view of him, because a more comprehensive, than 84 Samuel Pepys n ' \ ^ he, at close quarters with himself, could possibly get ; and it is this that enables us, even though we have only his own utterances to go upon, to claim to know more about his feelings in some respects than he did himself. At least this high standard which he expected from the highly placed saves him from the charge of mere servi- lity. He enjoyed finding himself more and more upon equal terms with the rich and great ; but his enjoyment was less due to the power which it gave him of looking down on those whom he had left behind than to the fact that his promotion brought him into an atmosphere that was soothing to his irritated nerves. His relations with his patron's family, the Montagus, to whom he owed so much, were admirable throughout. He began, as we have seen, by being the humble dependant, expected to make himself useful in return for his keep. This he did so well that he rapidly rose in the family's confidence, was entrusted with their most intimate aflFairs, and was constantly looked Sir Edward Montagu, first Earl of Sandwich. From the painting by Sir Peter Lely (National Portrait Gallery). ( I i : Samuel Pepys 85 to for help and even advice. Meanwhile, his rise in the world went forward, and he on his side never forgot the share that Montagu had had in it. Even when he had long found his feet, and was quite independent of his patron's favour, his attitude was still one of graceful deference towards him. He never felt the very human temptation to insist on a familiar equality with those who had helped him in the days of his obscurity. If he sometimes, like the under-servants in a wise and witty play of recent times, enjoyed being able to " take it out of the odds and ends," he was perfect in his connexion with these good people. Two incidents especially illustrate the happy quality of this relation. The first occurred late in 1663. Lord Sand- wich, as he must now be called (he was so created shortly after the Restoration), had fallen into bad courses, to the distress of his family and friends. In particular he had become entangled with a woman of as little birth as character, in whose company he dawdled at Chelsea when he I / ^j:dij!»«..'-jij!*. ■A<-i.>-^j^- -.^.^-^ .». 86 Samuel Pepys I ii| I should have been minding his affairs and showing himself at Court. This double neglect of his duties was beginning to tell upon his public as well as his private reputation. Pepys felt this bitterly, and debated long whether he could not do something to bring his patron to a sense of his obligations. Finally he decided, with some trepidation, to write him what he called a " great letter of reproof," risking out of sincere devotion what might easily be a strain upon Sandwich's friendship for him. The great letter is duly inserted in the Diary (November i8, 1663). It is a model of tact and judgment. Pepy« carefully refrains from making any allegations, he simply tells him what is being said, and how his absence from Court is being commented upon. There followed some anxious days, but it soon became clear that Sandwich was taking the friendly warning to heart ; though his actual answer to Pepys, at an interview at which they talked it over, was an emphatic assertion that it was a matter which concerned himself and not others. The Samuel Pepys 87 meaning of this, however, Pepys shrewdly judged, was " that he might not seem to me to be so much wrought upon by what I have writ." Any- how, an improvement in Sandwich's behaviour was noticeable before long, and his position was recovered. He did, indeed, for a time, revenge himself upon the faithful Pepys by treating him with undeserved coldness ; but his good sense triumphed when this tribute had been paid to self-respect, and their relations became again as cordial as ever. The other incident was a more genial one. In 1665 a match was arranged for one of Sand- vrich's daughters. Lady Jemima, with the eldest son of Sir George Carteret. Everything was happily settled, the young people had liked the look of each other, the parents on both sides were highly contented ; but a fortnight before the wedding, it seemed time for the bride and bridegroom to become rather more intimately acquainted with one another. Pepys, whose help had been most useful during the previous V 88 ¥l Samuel Pepys negotiations, accordingly escorted young Car- teret on a visit to Lady Jemima, who was then staying with an aunt at Dagnams, near Rom- ford. The account in the Diary of this two days' visit is brimful of friendly, half-fatherly humour. Pepys had his work cut out for him to rouse some sign of enterprise in the lover, who was shy with all the shyness of extreme and unusually modest youth. " Lord ! " says Pepys, who had certainly never suffered from this disability, " what silly discourse we had by the way as to love-matters, he being the most awkerd man I ever met with in my life as to that business." It was like introducing a pair of children to each other. " To supper, and after supper to talk again, he yet taking no notice of the lady. ... So they led him up to his chamber, where I staid a little, to know how he liked the lady, which he told me he did mightily ; but. Lord ! in the dullest insipid manner that ever lover did." Next morning Pepys was deter- mined no more time should be wasted : '* I Samuel Pepys 89 taught him what to do : to take the lady always by the hand to lead her, and telling him that I would find opportunity to leave them two to- gether, he should make these and these compli- ments." After this the young gentleman made a little more progress : though he had not yet the confidence to take the lady by the hand. But before they left Lady Jemima blushingly confided to Pepys that " she could readily obey what her father and mother had done; which was all she could say, or I expect." When Pepys and Mr. Carteret reached home again, there was " mighty mirth at my giving them an account of all ; but the young man could not be got to say one word before me or my Lady Sandwich of his adventures, but, by what he afterwards related to his father and mother and sisters, he gives an account that pleases them mightily." 1 A few days later the wedding was celebrated with what was evidently an unusual degree of decorum, for Pepys takes occasion to mention ^ November 15, 16, 17, 1665. '; f 4 90 Samuel Pepys that the modesty and gravity of it all was " ten times more delightful than if it had been twenty times more merry and joviall." The whole episode forms a picture of that distant life which seems to bring it very close indeed, and Pepys with his humour and his kindly feeling does it full justice. He had a less friendly spirit for some of his other distinguished friends. His colleagues of the Navy Office in particular, with the one and notable exception of Sir William Coventry, are treated with fine scorn in the Diary, though he was more prudent in his actual dealings with them. If they were less competent than he was, he certainly made the most of their incompetence. He even on occasion took a kind of Machia- vellian pleasure in hugging his contempt of them while he openly treated them with all politeness. He describes a dinner at Sir William Penn's with the air of an intriguer in a melodrama which sits amusingly upon his rosy and genial countenance : " Here," he says, " as merry as in so false a place. Samuel Pepys 91 and where I must dissemble my hatred, I could be." ^ Another time, when he himself was enter- taining the Penns and Sir W. Batten, he observes : " I had an extraordinary good and handsome dinner for them, better than any of them deserve or understand ... and not much mirth, only what I by discourse made, and that against my genius." ^ Pepys' caustic descriptions of people must always be taken with a good deal of reserve ; he scattered his epithets with great recklessness, and had a considerable taste for scandal. He sometimes covers pages together vdth tattle about the court and society retailed to him by some casual acquaintance as he drank his morn- ing draught at a tavern, all of which he swallows in perfect faith. At the same time he knew how to appreciate goodness as well as good company. One of the friends who stands out most clearly in the Diary, though as yet he did not see so very much of him, is the admirable John Evelyn. It is agreeable to 1 June 6, 1667. * September 11, 1667. l'> < } 92 Samuel Pepys tl find the two Diarists, of character so diametrically opposed, enjoying each other's friendship, and appreciating each other's qualities. Each, more- over, rendered the other an unsuspected service, for each recorded in his diary an aspect of the other, very necessary for our full understanding, which neither chose nor was able to give of himself. In Evelyn's Diary we get the external view of Pepys, the view of him as a worthy, respectable, serious man, which is so easily missed among the thousand indiscretions of his own record. In Pepys', to the still greater advantage of his friend, we find the other side of Evelyn's impeccable - deportment, a welcome indication or two that he also had his occasional lapses from perfect sedateness. These lapses were not, indeed, very grave, but if we have most of us found Evelyn's gentlemanliness a little oppressive, compared with Pepys' whole-hearted self-abandonment, they deserve to be made the most of. Let us give the following its full due : " The receipt of this news," writes Pepys on Samuel Pepys 93 September lo, 1665, referring to the capture of the East India prizes, " did put us all into such an extacy of joy, that it inspired into Sir J. Minnes and Mr. Evelyn such a spirit of mirth, that in all my life I never met with so merry a two hours as our company this night was. Among other humours, Mr. Evelyn's repeating of some verses made up of nothing but the various acceptations of may and ca% and doing it so aptly upon occasion of something of that nature, and so fast, did make us all die almost with laughing, and did so stop the mouth of Sir J. Minnes in the middle of all his mirth (and in a thing agreeing with his own manner of genius), that I never saw any man so out-done in all my life ; and Sir J. Minnes' mirth too to see himself out-done, was the crown of all our mirth." It is delightful to have Evelyn for once so completely given away — caught unawares by his indiscreet friend in a moment which he did not himself choose to perpetuate. Evelyn little knew that any one who wished to survive as a (' j.i ll ll^' 94 Samuel Pepys model of grave behaviour should be careful not to have Pepys for a friend. Sooner or later those blabbing pages of shorthand would be sure to catch and preserve some unguarded moment which the model would prefer to let die. Evelyn's appearance as a sociable rattle, capping puns amidst applauding laughter, is passed over in silence in his own Diary, but Pepys did him good service in describing it. Here is another glimpse of this excellent man, a sketch which could hardly be surpassed for its vividness and humorous appre- ciation : "JBy water to Deptford, and there made a visit to Mr. Evelyn, who, among other things, showed me most excellent painting in little ; in distemper, Indian incke, water-colours ; graveing ; and above all, the whole secret of mezzo-tinto, and the manner of it, which is very pretty, and good things done with it. He read to me very much also of his discourse, he hath been many years and is now about, about Guardenage ; which will be a most noble and pleasant piece. He read Samuel Pepys 95 me part of a play or two of his making, very good, but not as he conceits them, I think, to be. . . . In fine, a most excellent person he is, and must be allowed a little for a little conceitedness ; but he may well be so, being a man so much above others. He read me, though with too much gusto, some little poems of his own, that were not transcendant, yet one or two very pretty epi- grams ; among others, of a lady looking in at a grate, and being pecked by an eagle that was there." ^ A more illuminating moment could hardly have been chosen for us to watch the two friends together — ^the restless, insatiable Pepys, condemned to temporary silence and repose, while his host insists on reading aloud to him, not without complacency, his unpublished plays and poems. Their friendship was lifelong, and when Pepys died, Evelyn marked the event in his Diary by a deliberate and dignified eulogy. During the years covered by his own Diary Pepys saw something of the King and rose high ^ November 5, 1665. 96 Samuel Pepys I I in the confidence of the Duke of York. But his relations with both were official, and the society of the Court he knew only from outside. Yet it was easy for him, Court life in those days being a matter of such open-door publicity, to see as well as to hear a good deal of what went on there. He was perfectly familiar with the appearance of the various royal personages, the statesmen and favourites, the obsolete or still triumphant beauties, as well as with their reputations. There was little guarded privacy in the huddled collec- tion of buildings which did duty for the Palace of Whitehall, and Pepys could wander as he chose in the Matted Gallery and satisfy to the full his gust for distinguished life. The London world was very small, and the approaches to it were not intri- cate. Pepys' delight was, as usual, discriminating. He was interested to see the King " touching for the evil," but he was not carried away ; his con- clusion was that it seemed to be " an ugly office and a simple one." ^ He had his standard for ^ April 13, 1661. Samuel Pepys 97 royal personages, and even at the height of excite- ment, however thrilling and intimate his glimpses of the august interior, he did not relax it. Charles' humour, such echoes of it at least as reached him, was broad enough in all conscience to tickle his own simple sense, but it was hardly of a kind which could be called kingly. Pepys laughed, and while he laughed, reflected, with his passion for appropriateness, that a king should indulge in a higher strain than one which might be good enough for private citizens. The Court manners, too, the whole easy-going display of wit and licence and brutality, were an offence to his taste, even while his human inquisitiveness greedily asked for the details. All this was in character, as I have already tried to show, the character being neither that of a snob, eager to accept new standards, if these great people seemed to demand it, nor that of a hypocrite, ready with moral censure which he did not apply to his own prac- tices. For royalty, indeed, he had a standard which, with unwonted vestiges of humour at his 7 h f s\ !| \ I ' f I 98 Samuel Pepys own expense, he could half admit to be ludicrous. When he notes that it seemed, as he watched a royal progress along the river in pouring rain, to lessen his esteem for the king that he could not command the weather,^ we must not take him as entirely serious. Such instinctive pieces of simplicity recur now and then, as when he heard Lord Chancellor Clarendon ask the Duke of York, " not how the Princes or the Dukes do, as other people do, but ' How do the children ? ' which methought was mighty great, and like a great man and grandfather." * What, however, was a perfectly serious matter for Pepys was his principle that a king must not be lightly spoken of, be his behaviour what it might — that it was " not a thing to be said of any Soveraigne Prince, be his weaknesses what they will, to be called a sot." ' But with all his opportunities of watching and noticing — of peering over people's shoulders, 1 July 19, 1662. * May 14, 1667. ' October 26, 1663. Samuel Pepys 99 so to speak, to see the unfortunate little Queen affronted by the blemished ladies with whom her husband surrounded her, or to hear the King bandying full-flavoured pleasantries with Buck- ingham — Pepys did not, at any rate during the time of the Diary, arrive at jnuch real knowledge of the Court. Whitehall was to him only a theatre for vivid little episodes watched from a distance. Of the political forces at work there he had small means of judging, his work bringing him into contact merely with administrative affairs. The great drama of conflict, the conflict of king and people, which was now being played out to an end, was beyond him, or rather it presented itself to him only as the perennial shortage of money for the navy, with which he was but too well acquainted. Besides, he was not one to look far for reasons or origins, or to desire generalizations which should illuminate his particular fragments of experience. He collected the pictures of life which came his way, and stored them up in his treasured manusciipt, without caring to explain "t 100 Samuel Pepys u r. I or to compare them. He had no sense of per- spective, and his Diary is like a mediaeval minia- ture in the way in which every detail, significant or of no importance whatever, is rendered with equal tone and distinctness. Thus, while we read it critically — constantly, that is, placing it in relation to the larger problems and strifes of the time — it is important to remember that Pepys himself did nothing of the kind. The foreground was all in all to him, relative values were nothing. There is, therefore, no need to inquire what the relative value may have been in its time of the blooming and brazen figure of Lady Castle- maine. Whether she was or was not of real importance, whether Charles' ironic wit sur- veyed her coolly, or (as indeed it might well seem) surrendered entirely to her, was a distinc- tion with which Pepys was not concerned. She is not, in truth, a personage of much reality for us now, and as Pepys' acquaintance with her was all at a distance, she might appear to be not much more so to him. But, as a matter of fact, she Samuel Pepys lOI represented for him, in the early years of the Diary, a sort of ideal, — very earthly and limited, as indeed they neither of them had much share of the divine, — but still an ideal. Pepys was highly conscious of the " strange slavery," as he calls it, " that I stand in to beauty, that I value nothing near it," ^ and the tarnished allure- ments of Lady Castlemaine for a long while set the standard. He watched her where he could, at the play or in the park, a luxurious feast for the eyes. His devotion to women was as little chivalrous as could be. Of the many he pursued not one was an occasion of any romance whatever. His amorous adventures had no accom- paniment of poetry, and he does not attempt to create one for them in his Diary, though the romping and giggling which they entailed are dwelt upon with loving particularity. In his very elemental vision of feminine beauty Castle- maine was, no doubt, an appropriate queen ; but we must allow to Pepys one spark of imagination, ^ September 6, 1664. 'si. I02 M i Samuel Pepys if no more than that, in the homage he paid her. After all, she was not within his reach, as all the others were so easily and completely. " Here," he writes of a visit to Sir Peter Lely's studio, " (I) saw the so much desired by me picture of my Lady Castlemaine, which is a most blessed picture ; and that I must have a copy of." i An attach- ment which had to subsist solely upon distant glimpses and a blessed picture by Lely deserves to be emphasized as appearing, in contrast with Pepys' other experiences in this region, positively almost ethereal. In the days of this delicate passion, his more substantial enterprises were few and prudently conducted. It was only by slow degrees that he arrived at the hazardous promiscuity indicated in the later volumes of the Diary. In 1662 he could still, with perfect simplicity, mention that he liked the looks of one of his maids, but dared not make any advances "for fear she should prove honest, and refuse and then tell my wife." « 1 October 20, 1662. 2 August I, 1662. 1 f#l Photo Lnury Walker, Lutuion. Duchess of Cleveland (Lady Castlemaine). From the painting by Sir Peter Lely (National Portrait Gallery). f1 \ \ \k\ i II 'I J ) Samuel Pepys 103 As such scruples as these were left further and further behind, this ingenuous tone gives place to the famous devices which he invented for hiding the baldness of his confessions. An intermediate stage is marked in a cautious account of an outing one afternoon to Tothill Fields, which it was most important should not come to Mrs. Pepys' ears. His companion on this occasion is guardedly- referred to as " the fairest flower." ^ Later on, he required something obscurer than mere fancies of expression like this. The shorthand in which he wrote seemed insufficient ; he confused it in particularly private passages by inserting alternate " dummy letters," so that even if the first disguise was pierced and the cipher translite- rated, the intruder would still be thwarted by — " sjo drikd kqitsgs hwepr bhemhridnxd tnhse dcovofr " (or something of the sort). This modest veil was used to supplement another method of concealment, which truly is the most surprising of all. Pepys seems to have thought ^ June I, 1665. A \ ril 104 Samuel Pepys that the risks of discovery could be lessened by sprinkling the more dangerous revelations with a shower of foreign words, French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, and even Greek, or at least with such approximations to foreign words as most readily presented themselves. Exactly in what way he supposed that expressions like "Betty whispering me behind the tergo de her mari," or " There did baiser la little missa," would con- trive to baffle suspicion he might have found it hard to explain, but clearly the method was some- how reassuring. Under this cunning shelter he felt able to be as expansive as he chose, and, indeed, he availed himself of it to such purpose that it has not yet been judged possible to follow his most extreme excursions in print. The omissions, however, if frequent, are of small extent, and moreover, what is more to our point, they do not in the least affect our opportunities ot estimating Pepys' character. From this point of view, for example, the details of the actual scene, as old as the fall of man, which took place \ \ X. Samuel Pepys 105 one memorable day at a cabinet-maker's across the river, have little biographical value compared vdth the terrified account which follows, in a whirl of mangled languages, describing his narrow escape from detection at home.* Whether there are or are not other reasons for printing a book of such importance absolutely in full is, of course, a different matter, on which opinions may naturally disagree. Of the objects of Pepys' pursuit some were entirely unashamed in character, others were unprotected and at his mercy. He took as few risks as he conveniently could, and did not waste his time over difficult conquests. The lowness, the crudity of his taste, were only equalled by the intensity of his enjoyment. To carry off some over-blown flower of the town to a tavern, or to damage the virtue of a servant-girl — the excitement he discovered in such triumphs as these seems inexhaustible. He had far too much reverence for the laws of outward respectability ^ February 11, 1667. ^1 r I io6 I 7 Samuel Pepys to be tempted by higher flights or more dashing enterprises. He could extract all the amusement he needed out of the lowliest and least expensive of intrigues. It may, indeed, be doubted whether, if his taste had been more fastidious, his desire for propriety in the eyes of the world, fortified by his horror of extravagance, would not have been strong enough to keep him in the paths of virtue. The interesting element, indeed, in all these highly commonplace adventures is his unques- tioning acquiescence in the demands of convention. It is surprising to find all the timidities and sub- terfuges natural enough to an ordinary man in an age which has learnt to be self-conscious and ashamed, so faithfully reproduced in exactly that period which we commonly think of as the most unrestrained, the most indecorous in our history. What was Pepys, with his supremely cautious defiance of the proprieties, doing in the saturnalia of the Restoration ? What penalties had he to fear in an age which, as it seems now, Samuel Pepys IQT] demanded about as little sacrifice to the powers of convention as any that the world has known ? Pepys' unconscious portrait of himself, in this aspect, would be quite appropriate to the London of Victorian satirists ; but what was the London of Charles II if not a place where manners ran riot at everybody's unchallenged will ? Two considerations we may indeed discern which had weight with the kind of man Pepys happened to be — one his pecuniary thriftiness, the other his dislike of domestic troubles. Even in the most favouring atmosphere, such habits cannot freely luxuriate without expense of solid cash, and Pepys' fondness for his increasing pile was not lightly to be trifled with. As for the harmony of his home, that, too, was a state of things he fully appreciated ; it agreed with his taste for the orderly appointment of the whole routine of life, and to disturb it meant worry and discomfort in a hundred small ways. To do him justice, he also desired, as far as conveniently might be, to spare distress to his wife, though it cannot truth- ' f '^ iii» li P «. / yi 'I >f 1 08 Samuel Pepys fully be said that this restraining influence was as powerful as the other. But over and above all this there remains his evident and undeniable fear of opinion, and we are accordingly forced to infer that opinion in this sense existed, a real strength of convention with which it was necessary for a rising man of the middle class to reckon. Our national hypocrisies are thus not as young as we sometimes suppose, perhaps not even as national. If the spectre of convention had power in London at the Restoration, in what age and what country may it not flourish ? .'H Chapter IV THE crowded, red-roofed, walled town, with its spires and vanes gleaming in clean air, which Pepys knew from hi« earliest childhood and liked well, has hardly left a single trace of itself, beyond the intricate windings and ancient names of its streets, in the smoke-hung city by which it has been overlaid. The Great Fire destroyed mediaeval London in a few days ; but the renovated London, too, the London of the end of the seventeenth century, is, for any attempt to picture it now, hardly less thoroughly obliterated. Certain buildings and landmarks remain, the dome of St. Paul's and the splendid forest of Wren's church-towers stand as they stood ; but their effect for the eye, their pictorial grouping as Pepys saw them, has been utterly changed in two centuries. It is not merely that the red roofs and gables have vm 'I, no Samuel Pepys vanished, nor even that the clean air has become thickened and stained. It is rather that the actual point of view has shifted with the abandon- ment of the one great curving majestic street which old London possessed, and which, for aesthe- tic value, modern London has done nothing to replace. Two hundred years ago London life centred round its beautiful water-way almost as much as that of Venice itself, and the Thames was simply a wider and ampler Grand Canal. Its single bridge, clustered with shops, stood on a long line of narrow arches, through which the piled-up stream poured in tumultuous rapids. Above and below, the river was sprinkled with boats and barges, while on either bank London and Southwark faced each other across the water, not entrenched behind embankments or blank warehouses, but pushing out into the stream a broken fringe of dwelling-houses and landing- stages. Higher up, towards Charing and West- minster, big new palaces drew back from the edge, with gardens that sloped to the water-gate Samuel Pepys III or steps which formed their principal approach. Not picturesque, perhaps, as we understand the word, for the general look of the higher reaches, as of the lower after the rebuilding of the city, must have been extremely spruce and modern. But the line of the river was what with its superb natural advantages it should be, the dominating line of the city, towards which the whole place directed its best effects. Such was the unrivalled street which formed Pepys' most usual means of communication be- tween east and west, from his own house near the Tower to Westminster, where his business or his pleasure constantly took him. If for any reason he did the journey by land he says so expressly, but it was always pleasanter, if possible, to avoid the dirty and disagreeable lanes, which were so much too small for the heavy coaches which splashed and jolted along them. At night they were entirely dark, and the less frequented quarters were none too safe. By day the busier streets, though not convenient for walking, were II I r ' r 112 Samuel Pepys vivacious places to loiter in, life having then much of that friendly publicity in its details of which in our island it has now lost the secret. The frequent taverns were as little like the modern restaurant as they were like the modern public-house, a great deal more genial than the one and equally more genteel than the other. Pepys was familiar with a large number of them. He habitually took his " morning draught " at some Cock or Mitre^ often dined there, and often entertained his wife or friends there at supper after the play. First and last he spent many hours in these hospitable haunts, talking and drinking with friends. It was really the talk he loved more than the drink, for he was by no means intemperate ; indeed, out of considera- tion for health and pocket he at different times bound himself by solemn resolutions to abstain from wine altogether. Yet he could enjoy, occasionally only too well, the sweet spiced and doctored drinks, the sugared wine or the buttered ale beloved of the age's untender palate. French, f Samuel Pepys 113 Spanish, and German wines were all familiar, but all had to be well coarsened before they were acceptable. Gaming was also common at the taverns, but this had no attraction whatever for Pepys, who played none but the most inno- cent games, and few of them. Ninepins, parlour forfeits, and the like were enough to satisfy his frugal mind in this respect. He did, however, most enthusiastically share the widespread love of the theatre which was such a feature among all classes of the people. The " King's Company " under Thomas Killi- grew, and the "Duke's Company" under Sir William Davenant, were performing, during the greater part of the period covered by the Diary, at theatres in Drury Lane and Lincoln's Inn Fields respectively, and at both Pepys was a constant attendant. Mr. Wheatley has drawn up a list of a hundred and forty-five plays which Pepys mentions having seen, many of them several times, ^ and this though he constantly ^ Samuel Pfpys and the World he Lived iity Appendix vii. 8 VA f 114 Samuel Pepys refrained from going as often as he desired, partly out of economy, partly because he found it un- settled him and took his mind off his work. The theatres had been suppressed during the Com- monwealth, though Davenant had been able to make a start during its later years with a kind of mixed dramatic entertainment. When they were reopened at the Restoration a great advance was made in their equipment, an expenditure then considered profuse being lavished on wax candles, scenery, dresses, and music. But an easy infor- mality of arrangements still prevailed. " Orange Moll," selling her fruit at 6^. apiece and cracking jokes with the audience, was a familiar institution. Once, when Pepys -was at the King's Playhouse, she had to come to the rescue of a " gentleman of good habit," who, in the middle of the play, choked on an orange and "did drop down as dead ... but with much ado Orange Moll did thrust her finger down his throat, and brought him^to life again." ^ A few weeks later he notes 1 November 2, 1667. Samuel Pepys 115 that at the same theatre, where Nell Gwynn was acting, " it pleased ^us mightily to see the natural affection of a poor woman, the mother of one of the children brought on the stage : the child crying, she by force got upon the stage, and took up her child and carried it away."^ When plays were given by either of the companies at Whitehall, the performance took place in the evening and often was not over till midnight. Otherwise the usual time was three o'clock in the afternoon, and if the play was a popular one, the pit began to fill up some hours beforehand. The theatre was lit by daylight, the roof being open to the weather or at best very incompletely glazed, so that the attention of the audience would often be distracted by a fall of rain. The prices of admission to the pit were a shilling, eighteenpence, and half-a-crown, and Pepys for several years went no higher than the first. It was not until 1667 that he found himself for the first time in the upper boxes, for which he paid 1 December 28, 1667. !': fl M \, ii6 Samuel Pepys Samuel PePys 117 4/., and then only because the cheaper places were full. The crowd in the pit, 'prentices, citizens and their wives, with a sprinkling of men of fashion, was democratically mixed, but very orderly. It was not such a fine audience, perhaps, not such an overflowing wealth of ripe and ready imaginations, as the Elizabethan theatre had known in the previous century ; taste was less poetical and less romantic by this time. But people still knew how to enjoy themselves at the play with vividness and enthusiasm. The drama held a real place in their lives, and they had a clear idea of the kind of entertainment they desired. Pepys' criticisms of the plays he saw are haphazard and far from profound, but they are always spirited ; while on the subject of acting he seems to have possessed a good deal of real discrimina- tion. The neglect of the great old dramatists at the Restoration has been often exaggerated. Evelyn's remark after seeing Ramlet, that " the old plays \ begin to disgust this refined age," ^ is famous, but none the less we ^ find from Pepys that Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Ben Jonson were constantly being acted, as well as Marlowe, Shirley, Ford, and Massinger. Pepys saw at different times no less than eleven of Shakespeare's plays, though it is true that he had not much opinion of them on the whole. Romeo and, 'Juliet^ he pronounced, was the worst play he had ever heard in his life ; the Midsummer Nighfs Dream was " the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw"; Twelfth Night he thought silly, and remarked with surprise that it was " not related at all to the name or day," while Othello seemed " a mean thing " after Tuke's Adventures of Five Hours^ Macbeth he did indeed consider " a most excellent play for variety," ^ but then Macbeth had the advantage of having been brought up to date by Sir William Davenant, .^ Evelyn's Diary, November 26, 1661. * March i, 1662 ; September 29, 1662 ; January 6, 1663 > April 20, 1 666. ^ December 28, 1666. ) t 9 ii8 Samuel Pepys with new songs and dances, and flying machines for the witches. The lemfest, which had re- ceived similar embellishment, he found "the most innocent play that ever I saw." ^ For Ben Jonson, however, he had immense admiration ; he delighted in The Alchymist and Every Man in his Humour ; The Silent Woman seemed, when he saw it, the best comedy ever written, though it finally had to give place, as the crown of the world's achievement in this respect, to the Duke of Newcastle's Sir Martin Mar-all These are sufficiently random judgments ; they hit or miss the mark indifferently, and are doubtless represen- tative of a generation which had not as yet had time to produce a really living drama of its own. For the moment the public had to be satisfied with makeshifts, old or new, a livelier edition of Macbeth or a ponderous adaptation from Comeille, neither of which gave any sound standard for criticism. But if good new plays were still to seek, there already existed a notable school of actors, whom 1 November 7, 1667. Samuel Pepys 119 the crowd in the pit, and Pepys among them, were quite capable of appreciating. Acting was indeed, among the arts, the firstborn child of the Restoration, and while Dryden was still experimenting in the dark, Betterton, Hart, and Harris were at their prime. Moreover, the great step, unheard of in Shakespeare's time, of casting women for women's parts, had now been effected. Early in 1 661 Pepys was present at the perform- ance of a comedy of Beaumont and Fletcher, which he notes as being " the first time that ever I saw women come upon the stage," though as a matter of fact an actress had taken part in Davenant's first tentative beginnings in 1656. The various queens of song and dance lost no time in taking possession of their kingdom, and with the rise of Nell Gv^n their rule was established once for all. It was a cowp d'etat eminently agreeable to Pepys. " So great performance of a comical part," he writes, referring to the production of Dryden's Secret Love^ " was never I believe, in the world before as Nell do I H II I20 Samuel Pepys Samuel Pepys 121 this, both as a mad girl, then most and best of all when she comes in like a young gallant ; and hath the motions and carriage of a spark the most that ever I saw any man have." ^ Another actress, a certain Mrs. Knipp, of whom little is elsewhere heard, was not only a great favourite of his upon the stage, but also a personal acquaint- ance. The gay manners of this " excellent, mad- humoured thing" enlivened various delightful gatherings at Pepys' own house, where he taught her to sing "Beauty retire" with entrancing effect. Her only drawback was an " ill, melancholy, jealous-looking " husband, who kept a disapprov- ing eye upon her mirth.^ Among actors the great Betterton was supreme, and Pepys' admira- tion for him unbounded. Perhaps the most ecstatic of all his references to him is an account of his incomparable performance in Eenry the Fifth, a play " the most fuU of height and rap- tures of wit and sense that ever I heard "—written, as we discover with a certain drop in interest, by 1 March 2, 1667. * December 6, 8, 1665. Lord Orrery .1 His Hamlet (by Shakespeare) was also notable, and possibly suggested to Pepys the valiant idea of singing " To be or not to be " to the theorbo, in which form it is to be found in his manuscript collection of music. But a love of the theatre has, like so many other amusements, two disadvantages to a prudent man : it is expensive and it is distracting. We may accordingly be certain that sooner or later it must conflict with two of Pepys' master- passions. To keep his mind upon his work, thereby ensuring both the increase of his sub- stance and the satisfaction of his lively sense of duty done, he devised the famous system of vows and penalties of which we hear so much in the Diary. These obligations were solely between himself and his conscience, but he derived a good deal of support from them, and showed the extent of his respect for them by the elaborate fineness of the casuistry he employed when, as 1 August 13, 1664. V J \\ \ i I 122 Samuel Pepys would sometimes happen, they were disregarded. One of the articles of his ritual was that the list of oaths should be read over, in a serious frame of mind, every Sunday. They were not officially chronicled in the Diary, but for years the references to them are so frequent that we can follow their history more or less completely. Drinking and play-going were the two indulgences chiefly aimed at, and as early as 1661 we find him trying to deny himself in these respects. On Michael- mas Day, 1662, he notes that his " 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." Accordingly he goes to see two plays, the Midsummer Nighfs Dream^ and the Duchess of Malfy, but at once begins to find himself growing unsettled. "Strange," he ex- claims, " to see how easily my mind do revert to its former practice of loving plays and wine having given myself a liberty to them but these two days ; but this night I have again bound myself to Christmas next, in which I desire God Samuel Pepys 123 to bless and preserve me." 1 This oath was broken two days later, when he went to see 7he Cardinally a play of Shirley's, and again on October 20 when he heard a tragedy by Porter, called TA^f Villaine, so much praised by Killigrew, " as if there never had been any such play come upon the stage," that he could not resist it. He went, but candidly ovms that " though there was good singing and dancing, yet no fancy in the play, but something that made it less contenting was my conscience that I ought not to have gone by my vow." As soon as he got home he duly paid his crown to the poor-box, " so no harm as to that is done, but only business lost and money lost, and my old habit of pleasure wakened, which I will keep down the more hereafter, for I thank God these pleasures are not sweet to me now in the very enjoying of them." This time he held out to the end, with only one lapse on December i, when he went to The Valiant Cidd (translated from Corneille), a " most dull thing," 1 September 30, 1662. > 1 S\ 124 Samuel Pepys M It which did not make the King or Queen smile once. At Christmas he allowed himself two plays before renewing his oaths once more. As time went on Pepys grew very artful in fastening on any loophole of escape left by his self-imposed obligations. Every precaution was honestly taken to prevent the old Adam from cheating the new, but it was sometimes impossible to foresee all contingencies. For instance, on May 8, 1663, the baser Pepys observed that the newly opened Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, was not really under the ban, not having been in existence when the vow was recorded, — ^and accordingly hurried ofi to see The Humerous Lieu- UnanU When the diary for the day came to be written his wiser self severely pointed out that the intention of the vow, if not the actual wording, had been against all theatres of any sort, and decreed that two plays more, which had been admittedly owing to him, must be forfeited. In the celebrated case of the " hypocras," the benefit of the doubt was, with some hesitation, allowed. Samuel Pepys 125 The incident took place at the Guildhall, where he went with some friends to see the preparations for the Lord Mayor's dinner. "Wine was offered,'* he writes, " and they drunk, I only drinking some hypocras, which do not break my vowe, it being, to the best of my present judgment, only a mixed compound drink, and not any wine. If I am mistaken, God forgive me ! but I hope and do think I am not." ^ As the drink in question was only not wine in the sense that it was wine with the addition of sugar and spices, it will be observed that the old Adam knew how to make the most of his opportunities. The vow against plays was more and more carefully thought out : in 1664 he decided that he would not " see above one in a month at any of the publique theatres till the sum of SOJ. be spent, and then none before New Year's Day next, unless that I do become worth j^i,ooo sooner than then, and then am free to come to some other terms." * There was a certain latitude, however, even here, for I 1 October 29, 1663. * January 2, 1664. 126 Samuel Pepys the monthly play meant one for his wife as well as for himself, so that he could have two if he could get her to surrender her turn. When, later on, his eyes began to trouble him, and work by candlelight became impossible, this stringency grew gradually relaxed, and less is heard about the necessity of vows. He made an attempt to renew them, however, in 1667, finding that his purse and his reputation were suffering. The conditions were now more lenient— a play every other week,— but the penalty was ^10 to the poor-box if they were infringed. He was only saved from losing his money one day by arriving at the theatre too late to find a place. Like his love of play-going, Pepys' still deeper love of music was also at times a matter of some compunction. The frame of mind in which he was capable of being blissfully absorbed by his work was very difficult to keep up for long, with so many other interests clamouring for attention ; and music, the most innocent of them aU, some- times gave the most trouble. Now and then m Samuel Pepys 127 he made an efiort to resist it, as when he refused to buy a " Basse Viall " which Mr. Hunt the instrument-maker pressed upon him, " because of spoiling my present mind and love to busi- ness. 1 But, on the whole, music was allowed to have its way with him, and the result is a mass of allusions, scattered over the whole length of the Diary, which give a most agreeable pic- ture of the place then held by music in Eng- lish society. It was a higher place, generally speaking, than it holds now. Not, indeed, that the love of music was more widely spread ; the difference is rather that it seems to have been backed by sounder taste and knowledge. It is impossible in such a matter to distinguish sum- marily between cause and effect ; it must be enough to point to the most significant change in the conditions of the art, the change from the various instruments in use in Pepys' day to that one which for domestic purposes has practically superseded them all. The voluminous voice ^ April 17, 1663. if i 128 Samuel Pepys of the pianoforte, reinforced by that consolation of the amateur, the loud pedal, covers a multitude of offences impossible in a time when mere effective splashes of sound were not at the service of the performer. The lute, the viol, and the harpsichord were severer trainers of taste. It would be absurd to belittle the immense debt which we nowadays owe to the piano, but we have only to read Pepys to see how we have paid for it in other ways, in the loss, for example, of any general sense of musical structure. The very inferiority of the old instruments, as far as richness of tone was concerned, involved a double advantage. In the first place, no one of them was supreme, and the ordinary amateur was familiar with a far greater variety than he is likely to be at present, so that a knowledge of concerted music was easily obtained. Pepys himself played half a dozen different instruments, and as many others were constantly to be seen and heard in his own and his friends' houses. Amateur music was thus not dominated by any Samuel Pepys 129 single type of tone or method of production, and the result was a greater flexibility and freedom of resource. Moreover, in the second place there was one instrument, while all the others were stiU imperfect, which was just as highly developed then as now. The human voice, at any rate, was limited by no faultiness of construction, and full use was made of its possibilities. The habit of part-singing is a better guide to a knowledge of music than the habit of acquiring and render- ing in public a few selected pianoforte pieces, and Pepys, as we shall see, never lost an oppor- tunity of song. We must not, indeed, take him as representing no more than the average skill of his day ; but it is clear from many descriptions that a good technical knowledge of the way in which concerted music is put together was far commoner than it is now. Pepys was personally acquainted with the best musicians of the time, and in the Diary we see him constantly in the company of the group of men who kept up the English tradition I xf I 130 Samuel Pepys between the death of Henry Lawes (1662) and the rise of Purcell (born 1658). Matthew Locke, Christopher Gibbons, John Banister, and the elder Purcell, father of Henry, were all his friends, so that he had every means of understanding the course which music was taking at an important moment in its history. The influence which Charles H, who hated the old English formality, exerted in favour of the livelier French methods is well illustrated by the spirited sketches of the young Pelham Humfrey or Humfreys which occur in the Diary. Humfrey was a choir-boy in the Chapel Royal who showed such promise of talent that the king sent him abroad to study under LuUy. On his return in 1667 Pepys invited him to his house and gives a graphic account of the evening. " Thence I away home . . . and there find, as I expected, Mr. Caesar and little Pelham Humphreys, lately returned from France, and is an absolute Monsieur, as full of form, and con- fidence, and vanity, and disparages everything, and everybody's skill but his own. ... I had a Samuel Pepys 131 good dinner for them, as a venison pasty and some fowl, and after dinner we did play, he on the theorbo, Mr. Caesar on his French lute, and I on the viol, but made but mean musique, nor do I see that this Frenchman do so much wonders on the theorbo, but without question he is a good musician, but his vanity do offend me." 1 Humfrey afterwards became the master of the great Purcell, but his own talent did not reach maturity, for he died in 1674, at the age of twenty- seven. Pepys was equally enthusiastic both in the theory and the practice of music. We have seen how he demanded that aU his household should be musicians, and he worked industriously m extending his own acquirements. He took singing lessons, and we have an admirably char- acteristic sight of him in an entry of June 30, 1661 : " Hence I to Graye's Inn Walk, aU alone, and with great pleasure seeing the fine ladies walk there. Myself humming to myself (which ^ November 15, 1667. S\ > l/l ^ \- 132 Samuel Pepys nowadays is my constant practice since I begun to learn to sing) the trillo, and found by use that it do come upon me." His taste for pleasant things could hardly be more felicitously summed up than in these lines ; if we could choose a moment out of the Diary in which to see him alive, this would perhaps be the most repaying. Almost as good would be the following, when he and his wife were being shown over Audley End, and found it below their expectation : " Only the gallery is good, and, above all things, the cellars, where we went down and drank of much good liquor ; and indeed the cellars are fine : and here my wife and I did sing to my great content," ^ doubtless for the sake of the resonance of the brick vault. A more poetical opportunity occurred late one summer night, as he went by water to Deptford : " There being no oars to carry me, I was fain to call a skuUer that had a gentleman already in it, and he proved to be a man of love to musique, and he and I sung to- 1 October 8, 1667, Samuel Pepys 133 gether the way down with great pleasure, and an incident extraordinary to be met with."* Of the instruments which he played himself the flageolet was the one he loved best ; he carried it with him on many happy excursions, and was always ready with a tune. He also played several stringed instruments, including three varieties of the viol— treble, lyra (or tenor), and bass— the lute, the theorbo (a bass lute), and the guitar. After long deliberation he bought a spinet (price ^5), but seems to have wanted it only that he might pick out chords on it, and does not speak as though he could perform on it with any freedom. He gives incidentally much information about other instruments in vogue and criticizes them with perspicacity. Such seductive words as bandore, cittern, and dulcimer recur from time to time, and of the oddly named trumpet-marine (not a trumpet at all, but a single-stringed instrument which owed its sonorous tone to its long pyramid- shaped body and a vibrating bridge), he gives an ^ July 13, 1665. ) 134 Samuel Pepys W admiring account. The power which music had over him could not be more vividly expressed than in the following most characteristic sentence, from a description of a performance of The Virgin Martyr^ a tragedy by Massinger and Dekker : " But that which did please me beyond anything in the whole world was the wind-musique when the angel comes down, which is so sweet that it ravished me, and indeed, in a word, did wrap up my soul so that it made me really sick, just as I have formerly been when in love with my wife ; that neither then, nor all the evening going home, and at home, I was able to think of anything, but remained all night transported, so as I could not believe that ever any musick hath that real com- mand over the soul of a man as this did upon me : and makes me resolve to practice wind musique, and to make my wife do the like." ^ Pepys had before this begun to study composi- tion. Early in 1662 he took his first lesson in the art from John Berkenshaw, an Irishman, mentioned in * February 27, 1668. Samuel Pepys 135 Evelyn's Diary (August 3, 1664) as a " rare artist who invented a mathematical way of composure very extraordinary, true as to the exact rules of art, but without much harmonic." This hardly sounds an inspiring influence ; none the less, after no more than a month's study Pepys began to compose songs, the first being " Gaze not on Swans," a poem by Noel, which had already been set by Henry Lawes. Pepys' version of this has disappeared, and his next song, the famous " Beauty retire," was not written until three years later. During the interval he tried intermittently to free himself from his " old dotage " on music, but towards the end of 1665 we find him once more absorbed in the delights of composition. On December 9 he sang the new song to his musical friend Mr. Hill, who liked it, " only excepts against two notes in the base." Of this song a copy fortunately survives in the Pepysian Library at Magdalene. The words were taken from the second part of Davenant's ^iege of Rhodes^ where Solyman addresses Roxolana — I? i \} \ 'I Ml I 136 Samuel Pepys f :: (1 Beauty retire ; thou dost my pitty more, Believe my phty, and then trust my love. Att first I thought her by our Prophet sent. As a reward for valour's toiles, More worth than all my Father's spoiles • .But now shee is become my punishment ; But Thou art just, O Pow'r divine. With new and painful arts Of studied war I breake the hearts Of halfe the world, and shee breakes mine. Pepys' setting is a piece of grave and effective declamation, in which the movement of the voice is skUfuUy fitted to the accent of the words. The manner was one popular at the time, dramatic rather than lyrical, the manner, not so much of a song, as of an excerpt from an opera, in which melody was less considered than appropriateness of colour. On these lines Pepys' second attempt at composition was highly successful. He taught it to two actresses, Mrs. Knipp and Mrs. Coleman, and some months later the former told him thai it was « mightily cried up," which made the composer justly proud. By that time he had almost finished a new song, which he considered I ) Samue/ Pepys 137 better than the first. This was a setting of Ben Jonson's words It is decreed— nor shall thy fate, O Rome, Resist my vow, though hiUs were set on hiUj. The air of this cost him a great deal of trouble and it was only after weeks of work that he was finaUy satisfied. Even then he could not please himself with the accompaniment, and had to get John Kingston, the organist, to write a bass. This was the last of Pepys' compositions so far as the years of the Diary are concerned. But te spent a good deal of time and thought upon the theory of music, though the line which his speculations took is not very clear. "This confirms me," he writes after a conversation with Mr. Kingston, « that it is only want of an ingenious man that is master in musique, to bring musique to a certainty, and ease in composition."* Perhaps he himself might be that ingenious man ; at any rate we find him a few weeb later resolving to "go on and make a scheme and theory of * December 10, 1667. r h" I Vl 138 Samuel Pepys ( musique not ever yet made in the world." i He seems to have been in search of a new method of notation, for later on he spends an evening in making Tom, his boy, " prick down some Httle conceits and notions of mine, in musique, which do mightily encourage me to spend some more thoughts about it ; for I fancy, upon good reason, that I am in the right way of unfolding the mystery of this matter, better than ever yet." » We do not know what result these experiments may have had, but we must not suppose them to have been fantastic or unpractical. Pepys' in- stinct in musical matters was sound and good. His judgment of plays, like his judgment of people, was erratic. But in music he praised or blamed less irresponsibly, and had clear reasons to give for his preferences. His views on the importance, in composing vocal music, of giving the words their proper value, show that he understood the advance which the school of Lawes had made in that direction. His sensitiveness in this matter 1 March 29, 1668. 2 January 11, 1669. Samuel Pepys 139 was indeed very acute. He held, for example, that it was impossible to criticize foreign vocal music without a knowledge of the language for which it was written, music to which words are to be sung being rightly affected by national differences of stress and intonation. He even carried his particularity to the point of declaring that concerted singing, where the parts moved unevenly, was a mistake, inasmuch as, the words being lost, the voices were not given their proper function, but were treated simply as musical instruments.^ This may be an exaggera- tion, but his views show considerable insight into the nature of song. His choice of solid and digni- fied words for his own compositions is yet another instance of the justice of his taste. Love-making, play-going, and music formed in Pepys' life the main constellation of pleasure. The crowd of smaller delights which surrounded them and filled up every unoccupied moment defy enumeration. He could go nowhere, he could ^ February 16, September 15, 1667. c If (I «1 ' '/ I ^ 140 Samuel Pepys make no fresh acquaintance, he could meet no friend, without a whole crop of experiences which, in his perpetual phrase, « do please me mightily."' They throng in his Diary with a breathless profusion that stops for neither style nor grammar. " A great deal of company,'^ he writes of a visit to Vauxhall, " and the weather and garden pleasant : that it is very pleasant and cheap going thither, for a man may go to spend what he wiU, or nothing, aU is one. But to hear the nightingale and other birds, and here fiddles, and there a harp, and here a Jew's trump, and here laughing, and there fine people walHng, is mightily divertising." 1 A pretty woman or an eloquent preacher, an ingenious method of measuring timber or a chance talk with a one-eyed Frenchman, a new periwig or a new book, a nightingale or a Jew's trump, it was all one to Pepys. Each was a fresh jewel of remembrance, not a thing to hnger over and regret, for there were a hundred others to take its place, but yet a thing which must imperatively ^ May 28, 1667. Samuel Pepys 141 be preserved. He dances for the first time in his life, and wonders to see himself do it. He dines off a brave collar of brawn. He pays a visit to the Mint and masters the whole process of coining money. He buys a watch and laughs at his child- ishness when he finds he cannot help carrying it in his hand the whole afternoon. He shaves himself for the first time, and with such ease that this too pleases him mightily. No informa- tion comes amiss : he makes one friend tell him about the art of gardening, and another about the " principles of Optickes " ; with another he can only say that he discoursed " of most things of a man's life," and we can believe it. Some one gives him some joiner's tools, and he has a cup- board made for them, " which will be very hand- some." He carries a "perspective glass" to church, and entertains himself by gazing up and down the congregation at a great many very fine women. He is shown a mummy, a thing he had never seen before, "and therefore it pleased me much, though an ill sight." He \ \ )h 142 Samuel PePys watches his coach being cleaned and oiled, and hears some poor people " call their fat child Punch, which pleased me mightily, that word being become a word of common use for all that is thick and short." He was easily worried by anxieties of all kinds, his health, his work, his family ; by these his joy in life was sometimes clouded. But never for one moment was it clouded by fatigue. He might be vexed and exasperated, but it was impossible for him to be bored. It does not appear that he was much given to reading, at any rate during'the years of the Diary, though he was already beginning to form the col- lection of books which his college now possesses. For certain solid works, such as Fuller's Church History^ he had a great respect, and he occasion- ally speaks of having passed the evening in read- ing something of the kind. Plays, indeed, he read freely, but poetry other than dramatic he cared little for. He kept up his Latin, too, and read French with ease. But he was more of a col- lector than a reader. He liked to see his books Samuel Pepys 143 neatly ranged behind the glass doors of the two oak presses to which he at first designed to restrict his library. He wished to make it the model ot what a gentleman's collection should be. He once bought " an idle, rogueish book," called " L'escholle des filles," for the pleasure of read- ing it ; but took care to buy it " in plain binding, avoiding the buying of it better bound, because I resolve as soon as I have read it, to burn it, that it may not stand in the list of books, nor among them, to disgrace them if it should be found." 1 When he bought books expressly for his library his selection was more circumspect. On one such occasion, having resolved to spend two or three pounds in this way, he describes how he sat for hours in the bookseller's shop, "calling for twenty books to lay this money out upon," and resisting the temptation to buy " books of pleasure, as plays, which my nature was most earnest in." « Finally he chose worthy and respectable books, "all of good use or serious pleasure," which 1 February 8, 1668. 2 December 10, 1665. V If I / 7 IK- fi 144 Samuel Pepys should do credit to his shelves. A large part of the excitement of possessing a library, it is need- less to say, was the arrangement and numbering and cataloguing of it, in which his wife was allowed to help him. But though various books men- tioned in the Diary are to be identified in the library as it now exists at Magdalene, the bulk of the collection belongs to later days, when he had more leisure and more money to spend upon it. If there was little poetry in Pepys' nature, of religion, in any intimate sense, there certainly was no more. A lively sense of gratitude to Heaven for favours bestowed never, indeed, deserted him. An unexpected present of plate, an opportunity of besting a rival, or an increase in the year's balance, he regarded as direct signs that he was being watched with approval from above. This attitude is ingenuously shown in an outburst of thankfulness which occurs in the midst of a certain very enjoyable time, when among other causes of satisfaction the match be- Samuel Pepys 145 tween Sandwich's daughter and Carteret had been just brought to a successful conclusion, the whole circle of delight being made only the more vivid by the fact that the Plague was meanwhile raging with increasing violence. " Methinks," exclaims Pepys, " if a man would but reflect upon this, and think that aU these tHngs are ordered by God Almighty to make me contented, and even this very marriage now on foot is one of the things intended to find me content in, in my life and matter of mirth, methinks it should make one mightily more satisfied in the world than he IS." 1 Sandwich's comment upon this view of his daughter's marriage might have been worth hearing. The habit of thus appropriating the impartial gifts of Providence is evidence, at any rate, of Pepys' ecstatic enjoyment of them, if rot the mark of a pecuHarly spiritual humihty. But Pepys' creed, rudimentary though it might be, was perfectly sincere. It included a respect for rehgious observances which, though it cer- ^ July 26, 1665. 'r s 10 1 • t 146 Samuel Pepys tainly weakened with the increasing laxity round him, remained strong enough to take him regu- larly to church, and usually to make him feel com- fortable and virtuous when he was there. In this, as elsewhere, it is hard on Pepys that we should be able to dissect his motives so minutely. He suffers from his sincerity in recording the mean ingredients to be found in the most worthy impulses, and we might easily argue him out of all credit for his religious practices. He undoubt- edly appreciated the official pew which the members of th^ Navy Board occupied at St. Olave's, Hart Street, no less than the oppor- tunities of merry adventure which he some- times found among the women of the congrega- tion when he attended other churches unofficially. He also enjoyed spending a Sunday morning in slipping in and out of a dozen different churches, listening to a dozen different sermons, a little here and a little there — ^just as he enjoyed sleep- ing through a single one. For all that he truly reverenced the serene sense that things were, Samuel Pepys 147 on the whole, ordered well for the Clerk of the Acts, and that honesty was profitable in both worlds, which he called his religion. He was a materialist to the backbone, but his belief in the religious character of his materialism was unshakable. It must be counted to him for righteousness that he knew how to enjoy the things which he prized. To us, as we watch him, there may seem to be something more hke religion in his ever-fresh delight in the world than in his complacent orthodoxy. We return, indeed, again and again to Pepys' amazing power of extracting pleasure, and no- thing but pleasure, out of every part of life. To crown the list of " things that do please me mightily " let us quote his description of a walk on Epsom Downs which he took, one July after- noon, with his wife and two or three other com- panions — " So the women and W. Hewer and I walked upon the Downes, where a flock of sheep was ; and the most pleasant and innocent sight that ever X 148 Samuel Pepys I saw in my life — we find a shepherd and his little boy reading, far from any houses or sight of people, the Bible to him ; so I made the boy read to me, which he did, with the forced tone that children do usually read, that was mighty pretty, and then I did give him something, and went to the father, and talked with him ; and I find he had been a servant in my cozen Pepys' house, and told me what was become of their old servants. He did content himself mightily in my liking his boy's reading, and did bless God for him, the most like one of the old patriarchs that ever I saw in my life, and it brought those thoughts of the old age of the world in my mind for two or three days after. We took notice of his woolen knit stockings of two colours mixed, and of his shoes shod with iron shoes, both at the toe and heels, and with great nails in the soles of his feet, which was mighty pretty : and, taking notice of them, * Why,' says the poor man, * the downes, you see, are full of stones, and we are faine to shoe Samuel Pepys 149 ourselves thus ; and these,' says he, ' wiU make the stones fly till they sing before me.' I did give the poor man something, for which he was mighty thankful, and I tried to cast stones with his home crooke. He values his dog mightily, that would turn a sheep any way which he would have him, when he goes to fold them : told me there was about eighteen scoare sheep in his flock, and that he hath four shilhngs a week the year round for keeping of them : so we posted thence with mighty pleasure in the discourse we had with this poor man, and Mrs. Turner, in the common fields here, did gather one of the prettiest nose- gays that ever I saw in my life." 1 And this is Pepys, the dissolute, the greedy, the selfish, the unimaginative. Some years before he had spent a Sunday morning in trying to com- pose " a song in the praise of a HberaU genius (as I take my own to be) to aU studies and plea- sures " ; 2 and when we see the perennial eagerness * July 14, 1667. • November 3, i66i. \ 150 Samuel Pepys which he brought to the enjoyment of every day of his life and to all varieties of experience, we can only agree that his estimate of himself was no more than just. V i^ /' X ! Chapter V THE Navy Board of the Restoration had charge of all civil business connected with the navy, and was quite distinct from the office of the Lord High Admiral. Later on, as the Admiralty grew in importance, the civil office was gradually merged into it, though not finally abolished until the reconstitution of the whole department early in the nineteenth cen- tury. The mark which Pepys' ability left upon its organization also endured until then. His memory lived on at the Navy Office after his death for the century during which his present fame was shut up in six volumes of undecipherable manuscript in his library at Magdalene. Pepys had that hall-mark of the born official, an absolute confidence in his power of doing his own work, and the desire to do it without in- terference from other people. He wanted no 152 Sajuuel Pepys help from any one, and would sooner undertake the work of the whole office than allow any of his colleagues to meddle with his. He had the defect of his qualities in this respect. He not only felt equal to his own task, but he also felt perfectly certain that the other members of the Board were one and all quite unequal to theirs. Doubt- less he was not so entirely unrestrained in his contempt for them when he was in their presence as he was when he was writing his Diary, but his sentiments could not be altogether disguised. He was accused, not without reason, of working for his own hand, to gain favour with the King and the Duke of York. His devouring industry, moreover, raised the standard of what might be expected from the Board in general ; so that, on all accounts, it was unlikely that the other members would look on him with favour. But Pepys, whose value was soon recognized by the Duke, was before long in a position to disregard their jealousy. It did not, after all, matter from the Duke's point of view whether his motives Samuel Pepys 153 were chiefly selfish or patriotic; there was no doubt about the good quality of his worL The Board consisted, as we have seen, of a Treasurer, a Comptroller, a Surveyor, the Qerk of the Acts, and a certain number of additional Commissioners. The Duke of York, as Lord High Admiral, issued revised Instructions, early in 1662, determining the functions of the diflFerent officers. Pepys' duties were partly secretarial, partly those of accountant. He started with httle or no knowledge of the work and a very imperfect gift for figures. But he was quite ready to begin from the beginning. He engaged a mathematical tutor toteachhim the multiplication table, and with this much preparation he set to work to master the intricacies of his business. His position gave him every opportunity of obtain- ing an insight into the management of the navy in aU its details, and the more he saw the more incisive became his criticisms of the foUy and incapacity of his colleagues. To judge from the Diary, it would seem that. 154 Samuel Pepys ) with the exception of Pepys himself, the Board was filled at this time with a set of picked scoun- drels and imbeciles. The Treasurer, Sir George Carteret, comes off reasonably well; after the marriage of his son with Sandwich's daughter he is even credited with honesty and a pleasant humour; but before that there are many dis- paraging comments on his ignorance and ineffi- ciency. Sir John Minnes, the Comptroller, was excellent company, a good mimic, a judge of art and letters, but in his official capacity he was beneath contempt, at any rate beneath Pepys'. He is called an old coxcomb, a doting fool, " nothing but a jester or a ballad-maker." The Surveyor, Sir William Batten, is habitually referred to as a corrupt and underhand knave, till death removed him in 1667. Sir William Penn, one of the Commissioners, the father of William Penn the Quaker, is also lashed with these and similar epithets. He is a hypocrite, a coward, a knave, a counterfeit rogue. The very dishes which he set before the Clerk of the Acts for Samuel Pepys 155 supper one evening were " so deadly foule that I could not endure to look upon them." ^ He and Batten are again and again alluded to as " our two doting knights." Penn was, however, well regarded by the Duke, and was successful at sea in the Dutch war. Pepys' gift for vituperation certainly ran away with him in this case. Lord Brouncker, another of the Commissioners, was a celebrated mathematician and the first Pre- sident of the Royal Society ; also, according to Pepys, " a rotten-hearted, false man as any else I know, even as Sir W. Penn himself." > Lord Berkeley was " the most hot, fiery man in dis- course, without any cause, that ever I saw " ; • while Commissioner Pett, whose special charge was the Chatham Dockyard, was a very knave, who deserved to be hanged. It cannot be said that these wholesale vilifi- cations were due to jealousy, for they continue long after Pepys' position was assured. But * January 17, 1664, * January 29, 1667. ' December 2, 1664.. 156 Samuel Pepys neglect, carelessness, inexactitude in business, at all times affected him with exasperation, and appeared to his excited mind as deliberate roguery and deceit. Of all the officers with whom he was brought into contact. Sir William Coventry, the Secretary to the Lord High Admiral, is the only one who is never referred to with disrespect. He is spoken of as a man of real worth and nobility, and Pepys is gratified to have his approval, still more his good offices with the Duke. The latter, indeed, he took the precaution to secure in early days by the present of a " state dish and cup in chased work," costing over ^19. In modern speech this would no doubt be called a bribe ; but the most censorious could then hardly call it more thafi a piece of natural courtesy, and among the most censorious in these matters was Pepys himself. As Clerk of the Acts he, in his turn, soon became the object of many such courtesies. He allowed his plate-cupboard to be enriched by sail-makers, slop-sellers and the like ; but the time came when with honourable Samuel Pepys 157 integrity he preferred to refuse their presents, ^' resolving not to be bribed to despatch business."^ His code allowed him to receive tokens of gratitude for benefits conferred in the ordinary way of business, but not to sell such benefits at the expense of efficiency. It is true that, ingenuous as ever, he sometimes carefully explains that he refused a particular present partly because he did not think those who offered it " safe men to receive such a gratuity from." a But we know his way of giving equal emphasis both to the worthy and to the unworthy motives which prompted him ; and his standard was so unusually high for his times that it is only just to be less impartial. The truth is that in his official capacity he was energetic and conscientious to a degree that would have marked him out in the purest of ages. He identified himself heart and soul with his work, as though out of his office he were not doing precisely the same with a dozen other in- terests. He searched out the minutest details, 1 August 7, 1665. 2 February 5, 1667. 158 Samuel Pepys \\ t he acquainted himself with all manner of technical information, he was assiduous in visiting the docks at Chatham, Woolwich, Deptford, and Ports- mouth. Wherever there was room for abuse or an opportunity of what he called " cheating the King," he set himself to see that the public money was properly accounted for. Small wonder that he rapidly reached the confidence of the Duke, that he was not on good terms with his more easy-going colleagues, or that he earned the courteous attentions of tradesmen and contrac- tors. So much as he could do was thoroughly well done. But the effectiveness of his work was constantly interfered with by circumstances beyond his control. The continual shortage of money for the fleet, which at every turn ham- pered the work of the Navy Board, was largely due to a deadlock between the House of Commons and the King. It was not so much that the coun- try could not ailord it, as that Parliament grudged supplies which Charles, when he got them, always preferred to lavish on Lady Castlemaine rather Samuel Pepys 159 than on the public services. Their suspicion of the King resulted in the starvation of the fleet during the years in which Pepys was coming to the front. When the Dutch war broke out in 1665, money was indeed forthcoming, but it came too late to be properly effective, and was saddled with demands for inquiry and investigation which had to be attended to in the middle of hostiHties. In a surprisingly short time the needy relative and factotum of Lord Sandwich thus arrived at dignity and substance. The dignity was for the world, and was not allowed to trouble him in his hours of privacy. The substance, on the other hand, the steadily accumulating hundreds which ran so smoothly into thousands, formed a mat- ter for satisfaction which he kept as far as pos- sible to himself. He wished his house and manner of life to be handsome in its appointments, but he would give no one the opportunity of caUing him extravagant or fond of display. Year by year his position became further consolidated. In 1662 he was sworn in as a Younger Brother of i6o Samuel Pepys the Trinity House, while his business capacities were :fecognized by his appointment to the Com- mission for inspecting the " Chest," a fund origin- ally instituted by Drake for the relief of wounded men, which had been mismanaged and abused. In the same year he was made a member of the Commission for the management of the affairs of Tangier, a town which was part of the dowry of Charles IPs unfortunate little Portuguese queen. Povy, the Treasurer of this Commission, involved the accounts in such confusion that three years later Pepys was put in his place. Meanwhile, in 1664 he was made an assistant to the " Corpora- tion of the Royal Fishery " which had just been appointed, the Duke of York being Governor, with thirty-two assistants, some of them ** very great persons." In 1665, after the outbreak of the Dutch War, he was appointed Surveyor- General of the Victualling Office, which, he writes (October 27), " do make me joyful beyond myself that I cannot express it, to see that as I do take pains, so God blesses me, and hath sent me masters Samuel Pepys 161 that do observe that I take pains." He was now a rich man ; but there was no relaxation of his habits of economy, and it was not until 1668 that with much hesitation he allowed himself the luxury of a carriage. The year 1665 was one of great excitement and eventfulness for the Clerk of the Acts, as well as for the nation. The world-wide rivalry of the merchants of England and Holland had culmi- nated in the seizure by the English of the Dutch colonies in America, and war was eagerly demanded upon both sides. Early in the year it was offi- cially declared. During the next two years the struggle continued in the North Sea. Lack of money, administrative corruption, and official recriminations at home could hinder a decisive result, but it could not hinder a display of heroism and endurance worthy of the past history of both countries. Pepys played his own part in the crisis so well that the Duke of Albemale called him " the right hand of the Navy." 1 Moreover, ^ April 24, 1665. II % I rl t 162 Samuel Pepys before the war had lasted many weeks he had an opportunity of showing that he could face with composure more unmanning dangers than con- fronted the fleet upon the high seas. " This day," he writes on June 7, 1665, " niuch against my will, I did in Drury Lane see two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors, and * Lord have mercy upon us ' writ there ; which was a sad sight to me, l^eing the first of the kind that, to my remembrance, I ever saw." A few days later he notes that he sees coaches and wagons full of people escaping into the country from the Plague. The appalling calamity which afflicted the city during this summer was not unprecedented, even in Pepys' lifetime, for in 1636 there had been a similar though a slighter visitation. Before then the attacks of the sickness had been frequent, though irregular. But the Plague of 1665, com- ing in its fury after an interval of thirty years' immunity, made a deeper impression in men's minds, an impression intensified by the swiftness Samuel Pepys 163 with which the still more striking disaster of the next year foUowed upon its heels. Pepys, writing to Lady Carteret on September 4, when the sickness was at its height, gives some vivid details : " The absence of the Court and the emptiness of the city takes away aU occasion of news, save only such melancholy stories as would rather sadden than find your Ladyship any diver- tisement in the hearing ; I having stayed in the city tiU above 7,400 died in one week, and of them above 6,000 of the plague, and little noise heard day or night but toUing of beUs ; till I could walk Lumber Street and not meet twenty persons from the one end to the other, and not 50 upon the Exchange ; till whole families (10 or 12 together) have been swept away ; ... till the nights (though much lengthened) are grown too short to conceal the burials of those that died the day before, people being thereby constrained to borrow daylight for that service; lastly, tiU I could find neither meat nor drink safe, the bucher- ies being everywhere visited, my brewer's house i! f 'f \ 164 Samuel Pepys shut up, and my baker with his whole family dead of the plague." In July Pepys sent his wife, with her two maids, to Woolwich, to be out of the way of infection. His clerks he established at Greenwich, and as far as possible conducted the work of his office from there. " The sickness in general thickens round us," he wrote to Coventry, ** and particularly upon our neighbourhood. You, sir, took your turn of the sword ; I must not, therefore, grudge to take mine of the pestilence." His courage, which was not generally imitated by his colleagues, was rewarded in peculiar mea- sure. He not only escaped untouched by the infection, but from a variety of causes, chief among which was the pleasant affair of superintending young Carteret's courtship of Sandwich's daugh- ter, he spent a more than usually delightful summer. " These last three months," he writes in his Diary on September 30, " for joy, health, and profit, have been much the greatest that ever I received in all my life in any twelve months almost in my life, having nothing upon me but Samuel Pepys 165 the consideration of the sickness of the season during this great plague to mortify mee." Some- thing of a mortification, indeed; but by this time the violence of the sickness was akeady beginning to decrease, and as the cold weather set in it graduaUy disappeared. When aU danger was at an end the household returned once more to Seething Lane. On casting up his accounts on the last day of the year he finds himself, to his great joy, " a great deal worth above ^^4,000, for which the Lord be praised ! " He was by this time deep in the work of sur- veying the Victualling Department and making searching inquiry into aU the details of its adminis- tration. As an example of the discoveries he made he notes that " a Purser without professed cheating is a professed loser, twice as much as he gets." 1 As the war went on the money difficulty grew ever more acute and the general outlook more threatening. Popular discontent ran very high. The hated press-gang was at ^ November 22, 1665. m I i i i66 Samuel Pepys work, and Pepys remarks that only women venture abroad, the " men being so afeared of the press." Even when a large number had been secured— many of them, he notes with shame, « people of very good fashion "—the smaU sum required to pay them the " pressed-money," which was legaUy due, was not forthcoming. Pepys had to come to the rescue of the incompetent Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Budworth, and pay the money out of his own pocket, "which is a thing worth record of my Lord Mayor," he adds, acidly. He energetically supervised the business of shipping the pressed men off from the Tower, and grieved to see the despair of their wives, who came "running to every parcel of men that were brought, one after another, to look for their hus- bands, and wept over every vessel that went off." i It was a great tyranny, he reflected, but there was- no help for it. Only a day or two later his office was beset by a crowd of women, over three hundred in number, who came with much clamour and 1 June 30, July 1, 6, 1666. I W Samuel Pepys 167 vituperation to implore money for their husbands who were prisoners in Holland. Their distress smote Pepys till he was ready to weep to hear them. It was too true that they had suflEered for the King, that they had been starved and ill-treated, and that they were offered more to fight for the Dutch than they had got for fighting against them. All Pepys could do was to keep the King and the Duke of York steadily informed of the way in which his department was suffering for lack of money. He received compliments on his ability from both, but as for money, the House of Com- mons seemed more ready to demand inquiry into previous expenditure than to grant the means for more. It was a sad state of affairs ; but Pepys kept up his spirit, conscious that the Victual- ling Department at any rate was being better managed than it had been managed before, and that at the worst a decent competence was safely laid up in his own strong box. He had good grounds for private satisfaction when, on Septem- ber I, he went with his wife and maid to see 1 1 i ii \^\\ 1 68 Samuel Pepys Pohchinelly, and returned home singing~^f;;7; cheerful supper at Islington. A dinner-party at his house had been arranged for the next day and he went to bed leaving his maids sitting up late at the preparations for it. At three o'clock in the morning (Sunday, September 2, ,666) one of them called him up to see a fire which was visible from her window Pepys went to look, but judged it far enough off to be safe, and returned to bed. When he rose about seven there was less of it to be seen, so he busied himself in putting his things straight in ^^ closet without troubhng further about it Presently the same maid hurried in with the report that three hundred houses had been destroyed in the night, and that the fire was still burnmg. On this Pepys made off to the Tower to a spot which commanded a view of the city From there he could see a great fire raging all round the city end of London Bridge. He took a boat and went up the river to watch it. Every- tJiing was in the wildest confusion. The fire Samuel Pepys 169 leapt from one house to a^^ih^^^^i^T^^^^i^ burn stone-built churches as easily as lath and plaster. No one made any attempt to cope with it ; people stopped in their houses tiU the fire reached them, and then tried to save their belong- ings by flinging them into the boats that lay by the water-side. Pepys watched it for an hour, and then went up the river to Whitehall. The account he gave was carried to the King, who presently sent for him. Pepys described what he had seen, and said that unless His Majesty com- manded houses to be pulled down nothing could stop the fire. The King at once authorized him to go to the Lord Mayor with directions to this effect. Pepys hurried off accordingly, and found him, incompetent as before, exhausted and out of temper, vainly trying to exert his authority. There was nothing for Pepys to do but to make his way home through the crowds who were pouring out of the city with such of their possessions as they could carry with them. He found that his dinner-party had actually assembled, and declares i •c-Ba^ I 170 Samuel Pepys that they had an extraordinary good dinner and were as merry as could be expected. They then crossed the river to the Surrey side, from where, as it grew dark, they watched the great arch of fire which spanned the city—" a most horrid mah- cious bloody flame," says Pepys, " not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire." When they reached home he and his wife began to prepare their goods for removal, as the fire still continued to spread. They stacked their things in the garden, it being " brave dry, and moonshine, and warm weather." Sleep was impossible, and with the first light Pepys conveyed his money and plate on a cart to the house of Sir W. Rider, a coUeague of his on the Tangier Commission, at Bethnal Green, where he stored them in safety. The whole of the day was employed in removing the rest of his be- longings by water, with the exception of his wine and " Parmazan cheese," which, with some of his office papers, he buried in the garden. He and his wife slept that night in a denuded house, without so much as a dish off which to eat the remains of the Sunday dinner. Samuel Pepys 171 The fire had begun, on that disastrous Sunday morning, in Pudding Lane, which was not far from Pepys' house and office. By the evening of the tHrd day Cheapside and St. Paul's were in ruins, and the fire had reached Fleet Street. Its main progress was thus towards the west, away from the Navy Office ; but when on the morning of the sth (Wednesday), Pepys found that it had reached the church of All Hallows, Barking, at the bottom of Seething Lane, he had smaU hope of saving his house and office. He at once took his wife, his clerk W. Hewer, and his maid Jane, down to Woolwich by boat, and returned with the full expectation of seeing the whole place in flames. To his joy he found that Seething Lane was still untouched, efforts having at last been made to check the fire by blowing up the houses in its path. The next day it was possible to measure the full extent of the destruction. From Seething Lane to the Temple not a house or a church was standing, which meant practically that the whole of the city within the walls had \ ■%\\ 172 Samuel Pepys h been burnt. Tlie fire had spared for the most part the crowded suburbs outside the walls, where the larger part of the population, and that the poorer, were by this time settled ; so that gener- aUy speaking it was the weU-to-do classes who now found themselves homeless. The flourishing commercial world of London had to take shelter where it could; Moorfields and other vacant spaces round the city were soon covered with tem- porary habitations. The catastrophe was, on the whole, borne with extraordinary fortitude. But it seemed to the people impossible that its origin could have been (as it certainly was) accidental. A rumour that it was part of a French Cathohc plot, to be followed by a general massacre of Protestants, ran round at once, and Pepys mentions that it was dangerous for any foreigner to show himself in the streets. Meanwhile, he was soon able to restore his belongings to the Navy Ofiice, which had been thus left untouched on the verge of the space destroyed. The city lay for months and even Samuel Pepys m years in entire ruin, haunted by s'h^dj^^h^ters, which made it dangerous to cross at night. As late as 1668 (April 23) Pepys found it necessary to walk home- aU round by the wall, to avoid " two rogues with clubs » whom he encountered among the ruins. Many schemes were proposed for rebuilding the city upon improved lines, but they all ultimately feU through, and the new streets which at last arose preserve to this day the old intricacies and the old picturesque names. As soon as it was possible to settle down to work again, after the fire had been got under, Pepys was faced with the duty of preparing an account of the naval expenditure for the inspection of a Parliamentary Committee. The prospect filled him with agitation. The Navy Board held hasty consultations, and each ofiicer made out his state- ment. To Pepys' relief it finally seemed that they would be able, with a little judicious management, to justify their expenditure. The scrutiny was held on October 3, 1666. Pepys' colleagues left him to face the Committee alone, which was pos- 174 Samuel Pepys sibly their wisest course. The result was, on the whole, satisfactory, and a few days later the Board had an opportunity of laying the desperate state of the Navy's needs before the King and Council in person. Pepys, in a spirited account of the scene, tells how he made " a current, and I thought a good speech, laying open the ill state of the Navy : by the greatness of the debt ; greatness of work to do against next yeare ; the time and materials it would take ; and our incapacity, through a total want of money." 1 This he followed up by a " great letter " to the Duke of York, setting forth the same considerations in forcible terms. Parliament voted the King large sums of money ; but as usual it was doubtful how much would find its way to the fleet. Charles was at this moment more interested in his plan of devising a new fashion for clothes at Court, which was never afterwards to be departed from. He and other members of his circle first appeared in it on Octo- ber 15, 1666, and Pepys soon followed suit. " A ^ October 7, 1666. Samuel Pepys long cassocke close to the body," so he describes It, " of black cloth, and pinked with white silk under it, and a coat over it, and the legs ruffled with black riband like a pigeon's leg " i_« a comely dress after the Persian mode," says Evelyn.^ Pepys afterwards heard that Louis XIV had thereupon dressed his footmen in the new style, a malicious stroke which was the end of the Persian mode at WhitehaU. But for those less easily diverted than the King the outlook appeared more and more ommous. The seamen were growing disaffected for want of pay, and the fleet could not be pro- perly re-fitted for the New Year. Pepys began to expect the worst ; it seemed hopeless that the country could hold its own. His anxiety about pubhc matters breaks out in many entries in the Diary this winter, one so characteristic that it must be quoted. " So to supper and to bed " he writes on April 3, 1667, " vexed at two or three things, viz. : that my wife's watch proves so bad as It do ,. the ill state of the office ; and King- ^ October 15, ,e^^ . Evel^^, ^.^^^ ^^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^ I' 176 Samuel Pepys dom's business ; at the charge which my mother's death for mourning will bring me when all paid." The crisis came on June 1 1, when the Dutch sailed up the Medway, broke the chain at Chatham, and burnt the ships which lay there at anchor. The King was supping that day with Lady Castlemaine, and spent a hilarious evening in hunting a moth. The city was panic-stricken at the news, and rumours of treachery and massacre were again heard on all sides. Pepys evidently felt that his own position and even his life were doubly in- secure. Even if the city were not attacked from without, wliom would the populace most naturally turn and rend if not the defenceless Navy Board ? He might feel that he had personally done his duty, but things would look badly for any one who had had a share in the control of the fleet. He at once decided to send his wife into the country, to Brampton, with as much of his money as was in his own hands, and to dispose of his most valuable plate and papers (including the precious Diary) elsewhere, " that so, being scattered what I Samuel Pepys have, something might be ^2^^^dJ^^~~P^ later his wife returned from Brampton. She had been directed to bury the money in the garden, and the account she gave of her errand was very unsatisfactory. She and her father-in-law had buried it on Sunday in open daylight, while the others were at church, where, for aught they knew, many eyes might have seen them. Pepys was in a fever of agitation, but he could only wait for public affairs to grow quiet. This they did sooner than had seemed possible ; the Peace of Breda was signed on July 31, 1667. In October Pepys made the journey to Brampton to recover his money. He teUs, in a most graphic piece of description, how he and his wife and father pro- ceeded to dig it up at night : how at first they could not remember the exact spot ; how he sweated and fumed with anger ; how at last they found it, by prodding the ground with a spit, carelessly buried not six inches underground; how the bags were all rotted by the damp, and the gold ^ June 13, 1667. 12 178 Samuel Pepys \ If i ;' pieces scattered loose in the earth ; how he carried what they could find up to his chamber, to wash and count them, and found the total short by about a hundred pieces. Mad with indignation Pepys went out again, it being now midnight, with Hewer, his clerk, and by the light of a candle succeeded in collecting forty-five pieces more. With the first light of morning they were at it again, sifting the earth " just as they do for diamonds in other parts of the world," and at last brought the number up to seventy-nine, with which he had to be contented. He carried the money back to London the same day, satisfied, on the whole to have got off with no greater loss.* He had not as yet, however, nearly heard the last of the general outcry which had been raised by the disastrous mismanagement of the later stages of the war. Once more the principal burden fell upon him of defending the action of the Navy Board before a Parliamentary Committee. On October 22, and again on the 30th, he was ^ October 10, 11, 1667. Samuel Pepys / }19 examined upon various points of administration and came off reasonably well, none of his coUeagues intervening except Commissioner Pett, who made a lamentable display of ineffectiveness, and Lord Brouncker, who put in « two or three silly words." On January 31, 1668, he was confronted with the Commissioners for Accounts, and was able to give them satisfaction. A few days later came "a damned summons to attend the Committee of Miscarriages to-day, which makes me mad, that I should by my place become the hackney of this office, in perpetual trouble and vexation, that need it least." 1 It was the penalty he paid for having th£ clearest head and the widest knowledge of any of the naval officials ; though it was certainly hard that so much vexation should faU upon him, " who have best deported myself in aU the King's business," as he says with reason. But the House of Commons were still unappeased ; on February 28 Pepys learnt that there had been a storm " all this day almost against the Officers of the Navy," * February 11, 1668. ■ i '1 i8o Samuel Pepys and that finally it had been decided that the Board should be called upon to defend itself at the bar of the House. Again there were hasty consulta- tions, and Pepys saw to his discontent that all his colleagues relied upon him, as before, to extricate them from their difficulties. When the appointed day arrived (March 5, 1668) Pepys rose in great depression and anxiety, and proceeded to West- minster, where the Board were already assembled. With half-a-pint of mulled sack and a dram of brandy, he found himself " in better order as to courage." Between eleven and twelve o'clock the Board were summoned before a crowded and unfriendly house. After the Speaker had read the report of the Committee, Pepys delivered his carefully-prepared speech. " I began our defence," he says, " most acceptably and smoothly, and continued at it without any hesitation or losse, but with full scope, and all my reason free about me, as if it had been at my own table, from that time till past three in the afternoon ; and so ended, without any interruption from the Samuel Pepys 181 Speaker ; but we withdrew. And there all my Fellow-Officers, and all the world that was within hearing, did congratulate me, and cry up my speech as the best thing they ever heard ; and my FeUow-Officers overjoyed in it." 1 It was a personal triumph, and Pepys keenly rehshed the weU-deserved compliments and congratulations which were showered upon him. " Good-morrow, Mr. Pepys, that must be Speaker of the Parlia-^ ment-house," said Coventry, the next morning. " Mr. Pepys, I am very glad of your success yesterday," said the King. Mr. G. Montagu kissed him on the mouth and called him another Cicero, protesting that all the world said the same. The Speaker had never heard such a defence made in the House, and the Solicitor-General "do commend me even to envy." The House was finally satisfied of the innocence of the Board, and all further proceedings were dropped. The next few months passed uneventfully as far as official matters were concerned. But a ^ March 5, 1668. 1 i\ 1 1 82 Samuel Pepys •\ very real trial now began to claim more and more of Pepys' attention. For some time past his eyesight had intermittently given him trouble. He had consulted Cocker, the famous master of arithmetic, upon the subject, and had tried green spectacles for work by candlelight. During 1668 this trouble grew persistently worse, till reading or writing at night became practically impossible, even with the help of what he calls a " tube-spectacall of paper," which was another expedient he tried. He now more readily allowed himself indulgence in the way of play- going and music than he had done in former years, when the system of vows had been in force in all its rigour. During this summer, moreover, he took an unwontedly long holiday. Except for his periodic visits to his father at Brampton, Pepys rarely left London for more than a day or two at a time. But in June, 1668, he and his wife, accompanied by W. Hewer, a young cousin named Betty Turner, and Deb Willet, Mrs. Pepys' maid, went for a fortnight's Samuel Pepys 183 tour in the West of England. The rough notes for his Diary which Pepys took on this journey are inserted in their proper place in the volume, and are all we have by way of description, for the fair copy was never made, though several pages were left blank for it. The notes give careful details of all disbursements, as thus : "9th (Tuesday). When come to Oxford, a very sweet place : paid our guide, ^i is, 6d, ; barber, 2s. 6d. ; book, Stonage,i 4/. To dinner ; and then out with my wife and people, and landlord : and to him that showed us the schools and library, los. ; to him that showed us All Souls' College, and Chichly's picture, 5^." And so on, with liberal gratuities wherever they went, missing none of the sights of the towns through which they passed. From Oxford they went by Abingdon and Hungerford to Salisbury, where Pepys thought the cathedral " most admir- able," which in a man so thoroughly the child of his 1 i.e., Stonehenge. Inigo Jones published a book on the subject in 1655, and Walter Charleton, M.D., another in 1663. i fi I li 184 Samuel Pepys generation is noteworthy. On Salisbury Plain they were benighted, and had to sleep at a wayside inn, where the beds were "good, but lousy; which made us merry." They certainly trav- elled in the right spirit. They proceeded to Bath, where they bathed in fashionable com- pany; and Bristol, where they admired the shipping. They returned home by Marlbor- ough and Newbury. By the time they reached London it was clear that Mrs. Pepys was put out and vexed by something, her husband could not tell what. A hint, this, of impending dis- aster, by which Pepys failed to take warning. Soon after his return to work Pepys was called upon to undertake a delicate matter. In an interview with the Duke of York, on July 24, he enlarged on the failings of the Navy Board, and urged him to call the officers to account. He had defended them before the public, but before the Lord High Admiral he spoke openly and unmercifully of all his colleagues. The Duke accordingly asked him Samuel Pepys 185 to draft a letter of inquisition, to be presented to the Board in his name. Pepys readily did this, and the Duke adopted his draft without altering a syllable. An artful verisimilitude had been given to the references to the Clerk of the Acts ; no specific charges, it seemed, could be made against this officer, who appeared to have acquitted himself diligently; but at the same time the Duke will be willing to consider any information against him which other offi- cers may have to offer. But the Board natur- ally guessed at once who was at the bottom of this indictment, Pepys' opinion of his colleagues' work and his confidential relations with the Duke being equally well known to them. How- ever, the viper who had thus been "taking notes " among them was too secure in his posi- tion and too obviously in the right to have much to fear. Each officer of the Board was to send in a separate reply, and Pepys artfully tock the precaution of getting the Duke to let him see the others before depositing his own ; but he found, E I 1 86 Samuel Pepys as he expected, that they had little to charge him with. It now remained for him to draw up the Duke's final rejoinder, which he did in trenchant language. It was presented on Nov- ember 28, and the matter was closed. The whole aflfair shows how completely Pepys had by this time taken his place as the most import- ant member of the Board. It was a long way from the time when he had had to be watchful and circumspect in his outward behaviour to- wards his colleagues. And now at last Pepys was overtaken by a domestic catastrophe which he had for years escaped only by a succession of chances. At the time when he began his Diary he appears to have been a faithful if not a very attentive husband. But we have already seen how soon he began to fall away, and how, by steady degrees, his in- fidelities became a regular part of his life. Again and again, as time went on, detection by his wife had seemed imminent. He never con- ceals his terror at the thought of such a dis- Samuel Pepys 187 aster, but the immediate danger once past he would go on his way again without ever laying the warning to heart. He grew more and more imprudent, and when he began to prosecute his adventures under his very roof and to attack the virtue of his own maid-servants, it was certain that it could only be a matter of time before his good luck should fail him. It will be remembered that on their holiday excursion Mrs. Pepys had taken her maid. Deb Willett. It was this unfortunate girl, out of so many other victims, who brought about the tragedy. "After supper," writes Pepys on October 25, 1668, " to have my head combed by Deb, which occasioned the greatest sorrow to me that ever I knew in this world, for my wife, coming up suddenly, did find me embracing the girl. . . . I was at a wonderful loss upon it, and the girle also, and I endeavoured to put it off, but my wife was struck mute and grew angry, and so her voice came to her, ^grew quite out of order, and I to say little, but to bed, and f i • i i Sl^ ir 1 88 Samuel Pepys my wife said little also, but could not sleep all night." Pepys was found out. The gay life was shat- tered, the blow which he had avoided for so long crushed him to the ground. His wife, infuriated by jealousy and by the remembrance of the rigid discipline he had always imposed upon her, made the utmost of the situation, and kept her husband in a state of abject and fluc- tuating misery which certainly did something to avenge her. He was not at first quite certain how much, as he bluntly put it, she had seen, but it was very soon clear that there would be no peace as long as the unhappy girl remained in the house. With a twinge of genuine com- punction that she should suffer by his fault he agreed to discharge her, and for a few days there was comparative calm. But Pepys had not yet learnt his lesson. A week later he had dis- covered her abode and had hurried once more in pursuit. The next day his wife taxed him with it, calling him " all the false, rotten-hearted rogues in the world." Pepys held out for a time, " but at last did, for the ease of my mind and hers, and for ever to discharge my heart of this wicked business, I did confess all, and above stairs in our bed chamber there I did endure the sorrow of her threats and vows and curses all the afternoon." ^ The rest of the story is not to the credit of poor Mrs. Pepys, with every allowance to which she was entitled. Her fury was still unappeased, and her submissive husband was made to write Deb an insulting letter, full of bad names. A spark of manliness arose in Pepys, and though he wrote the letter he took care to send it by the trusted Hewer, with direc- tions that he was to read it aloud to Deb and in reading to omit the grossest insult. But except for this small show of spirit, Pepys' subjection was complete and unconditional. There is plenty of plain speaking about his wife on other occasions in the Diary, but at this climax he never suggests that there was anything unreasonable in ^ November 19, i668. i I li 190 Samuel Pepys R/j I' her behaviour, even when, weeks after the whole incident might have been thought closed, she followed up a torrent of random abuse by ap- pearing at his bedside " with the tongs red hot at the ends," and " made as if she did design to pinch me with them." 1 Her conduct had been so excessive, and withal so uncertain, for she had constantly agreed to bury the past and as often raked it up again, that it is really to Pepys' credit that he could conclude his account of the affair of the tongs, "I cannot blame her jealousy, though it do vex me to the heart." She had further made him uneasy by letting out, in one of her passions, that she was really a Roman Catholic, a matter which proved of some moment years afterwards. Even now — the Diary is there to prove it — Pepys had not learnt his lesson beyond the pos- sibility of forgetting it again. But at least for a while there are no further lapses. With his peculiar dramatic appreciation of respectability 1 Januar/ 12, 1669. Samuel Pepys 191 it is probable that he even got enjoyment out of playing the part of a sober and domesticated husband. He had certainly done so when he was nothing of the kind. Robert Louis Steven- son, in his penetrating essay on Pepys, points out how, in the right company, especially that of the admired Sir William Coventry, Pepys would at any time talk in the vein of an old Roman. "Thank God," he had once said, with an air of republican simplicity, " I have enough of my own to buy me a good book and a good fiddle, and I have a good wife." 1 His coach, which he had now set up with a pair of black horses, " very genteel and sober," was a further source of pleasure. Another thing which caused him both mirth and profit was his formal appoint- ment as Captain of one of the King's ships, in order that he might sit on a Court-martial where his presence happened to be desired. What with his now assured competence and his faUing eyesight he began to think seriously of 1 February 18, 1668. i; n ! 192 Samite I Pepys retirement. He was only thirty-six, but he had to face the prospect, or believed that he had, of some day being entirely blind, at any rate un- less he took care not to over-tax his sight. More- over, he had long formed the design of writing a history of the Navy, and had made a collection of documents to that end. There was no hope of being able to do this while he was still occupied with official work. The first stage, however, should be leave of absence for three or four months, to include a tour in France and Holland with his wife. His devoted services, not to speak of the serious condition of his eyes, thor- oughly entitled him to this, and the Duke of York made no trouble about allowing it. Pepys and his wife set to work to prepare for departure. But before they started Pepys was forced to relinquish something more important to us, something indeed which had grown dearer and more interesting to him, than his office work. The manuscript of his Diary shows in its later pages how severe a tax upon his eyesight that i Samuel Pepys 193 loving labour was beginning to be. The nea^ and minute shorthand of the earlier volumes becomes large and straggling. There was no help for it, the friendly companion must be laid aside. In nine years and five months Pepys had covered some three thousand pages, filling six substantial volumes. In all that time he had never left a day without some record, with the solitary exception of a fortnight's excursion into the country in the autumn of 1668.' The description of a single day would often run to many hundreds of words. Solely for his own personal and private satisfaction, so we are forced to conclude, Pepys had produced one of the most living and extraordinary books in the English language, a book which is not merely the chief of its kind but one of which no other of its kind has nearly approached. In a sense, no doubt, he may be said to have lacked all literary skill- he had no conscious knowledge, that is, of the 1 Between September 29 and October 11, 1668, there is no entry at all, though several blank pages are left. I' If 11 1 r I 'l.' ffj. ^*l. H I ■ u !' i? 194 Samuel Pepys process by which he translated his impressions into words— but given his intense relish for life, his copious flow, his vivid vocabulary, that lack only enhanced the artistic value of his work. If a literary self-consciousness were anywhere perceptible, the force of the whole amazing portrait would be impaired, and so its value for art. It is no more than true to say that Pepys loved it as he loved his life. It was, in fact, his life : absorbing, irrepressible, variegated, a thou- sand strands twisted into one, a life lived among the world, and yet his very own, known only to himself. In characteristic words, true to himself to the last, he says as much. His account of May 31, 1669, in which, be it noted, he mentions quite simply that he was bafiled in an amorous attempt upon a woman of his acquaintance, closes with these genuinely heart-felt sentences — " And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my own eyes in the keeping of my Journal, I being not able to do it any longer, having done now so long as to undo my eyes Samuel Pepys _i95 almost every time that I take a pen in my^handT; and, therefore, whatever comes of it, I must for- bear : and, therefore, resolve, from this time for- ward, to have it kept by my people in longhand, and must therefore be contented to set down no more than is fit for them and all the world to tnow ; or, if there be anything, which cannot be much, now my amours to Deb are past, and my eyes hindering me in almost aU other plea- sures, I must endeavour to keep a margin in my book open, to add, here and there, a note m shorthand with my own hand. ^ " And so I betake myself to that course, which is almost as much as to see myself go into my grave : for which, and aU the discomforts that will accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me ! " S. P." ,i Chapter VI AVERY different personage now appears upon the scene from the man who wrote the doleful words quoted at the end of the last chapter. Better than by any description the difference can be shown by turning to a letter written to John Evelyn in February, 1668 : — " Sir, — ^You will not wonder at the backward- ness of my thanks for the present you made me, 80 many days since, of the Prospect of Medway, while the Hollander rode master in it, when I have seriously told you that the sight of it hath led me to such reflections on my particular in- terest (by my employment) in the reproach due to that miscarriage, as have given me little less disquiet than he is fancied to have, who found his face in Michael Angelo's Hell. The same IM ^3 permission of Messrs. George Bell & Sons. Samuel Pepys. From the painting by Sir G. Kneller (Magdalene CoUege, Cambridge). h t 1 1 m Samuel Pepys 197 should serve me, also, in excuse for my silence m the celebrating your mastery shewn in the design and draught, did not indignation rather than courtship urge me so far to commend them, as to wish the furniture of our House of Lords changed from the story of '88 to that of '(>T, (of Evelyn's designing,) till the pravity of this were reformed to the temper of that age, wherein God Almighty found his blessing more opera- tive, than (I fear) he doth in ours, his judgments. Adieu ! "Your most affectionate and most humble servant, " S. P." It is in such weary periods as these that Pepys henceforward shows himself—the literary armour which he puts on for the benefit of the outside world. When he sent this letter he had akeady written several volumes of livelier Enghsh than this. The style in which he wrote the Diary was entirely natural to him ; it flows as easily at the beginning as after nine years of <# w 198 Samuel Pepys daily practice. Grammar, punctuation, or the balance of his sentences were of no account : the one necessity was that nothing of interest or delight which the day had contained should be allowed to escape ; and his language, the racy words and loose structures of ordinary talk, was poured forth with the sole object of pre- venting any such loss. The result was a style which, with almost every literary fault it is pos- sible to name, possesses the one essential virtue — ^life. This style he unfortunately felt it neces- sary, when addressing his friends, to lay aside ; and his letters were generally written in the crabbed and coagulated manner affected by his contemporaries. A large number exist, which illustrate the events of his later life ; but in their careful attitudinizing they do not illustrate the liberal genius which absorbed experience with such keen voracity. Of that we have now seen the last. So far as we can tell, Pepys did not continue his diary, as he proposed, by the hand of others, and the promised "notes Samuel Pepys 199 in shorthand " of matters not fit for every one to know do not exist. He did, indeed, later on, keep another diary himself for a time, but that was on a special occasion — his journey to Tangier — and the record is not intimate enough to be entertaining on personal grounds. There is nothing for it but to follow the outward events of his long life, with the help of no more than an occasional hint to suggest that its interior was still as rich and variegated as ever. The Diary ended, as we saw, with prepara- tions for a holiday abroad. It was not, however, till the autumn of the same year (1669) that Pepys and his wife set out, armed with letters of introduction from Evelyn to friends of his in Paris. In earlier years, when life abroad had been less agitating for a peaceable loyalist than in England, Evelyn had been much in Paris, and besides introducing Pepys to men who might be useful to him there, he provided him with some notes to help him in sight-seeing. The manuscript, a slim pamphlet, is still to be seen in 200 Samuel Pepys the Pepysian Library. In the letter which accompanied it, Evelyn further urged Pepys to visit the print-shops and collect pictures of palaces, churches, and gardens, to refresh him- self with by the fireside after his return. Of the journey we have no record beyond the fact, mentioned later on in a letter, that it was " full of health and content," and that in France and Holland Pepys made a collection of papers rela- ting to the navies of both countries. He reached home again before the end of October. On the very day of their arrival in London Mrs. Pepys fell ill. "I beg you to believe," Pepys writes to Evelyn on November 2, " that I would not have been ten days returned into England without waiting on you, had it not pleased God to afflict mee by the sickness of my wife, who, from the first day of her coming back to London, hath layn under a fever so severe as at this hour to render her recoverie desperate." She died on November 10, 1669, aged twenty- nine, and was buried in the neighbouring church I u Samuel Pepys 201 of St. Olave's, Hart Street. The monument which Pepys erected to her memory is on the north wall of the chancel. It consists of an elaborately shaped bracket with a bust, and an inscription on a medallion below. The latter runs as follows — H. S. E. Cui CuNAS DEDiT SOMERSETIA, Octob : 23, 1640. Patrem e praeclarA familiA Matrem e nobili Stirpi DE St. Michel, Cliffodorum, ANDEGAVIA, CUMBRIA, ELIZABETHA PEPYS, Samvelis Pepys (Classi Regiab ab Actis) Uxor. Quae in Coenobio primum, AulA dein educata GallicA, Utriusque unA claruit virtutibus, FormA, Artibus, Linguis, cultissima. Prolem enixa, quia parem non potuit, nullam. huic demum placid^ cum valedixerat (CONFECTO PER AMAENIORA FER^ EuROPAE ITINERE) POTIOREM REDUX ABUT LUSTRATURA MUNDUM. ObIIT X NOVEMBRIS, TAetatis 290. Anno -JConjugii xv^. [Domini 1669°. It is only just to take the difference between this language and the tone in which the poor 202 Samuel Pepys woman is referred to over the length and breadth of the Diary, as measuring the depth of Pepys' sorrow for her loss. It is not otherwise easy to read the imposing lines without an unworthy smile. Like other epitaphs, it commemorates the bereaved more than the dead. Her death left Pepys entirely solitary. He had no children to share his home, his father lived far away in the depths of the country, his one surviving brother (who soon after this became Clerk to the Trinity House) was of little use to him as a companion. Though he did not, as he had apparently anticipated, lose his sight, his eyes seem to have continued to trouble him, and the long hours of idleness which they forced upon him were chiefly relieved by music. He abandoned his idea of retirement, and con- tinued for a while to live on at the Navy OflSce. His public career went forward as before, but in the routine of his private life he must have missed his wife deeply. He had lost his temper with her and called her names and neglected / I Samuel Pepys 203 her, we know exactly how often in ten years, but all the time she had been a very real part of his life ; his affection for her had remained a permanent background even for their quarrels and recriminations. It is not very likely that he was troubled with self-reproaches as he looked back on his married life — that was not his way — but his house must have seemed desolate and silent. A few years later (the exact date does not appear) Pepys moved from his house in the Navy Office to York Buildings, a block of houses in Buckingham Street, overlooking the river,' erected on the site of York House after its demo- lition in 1672. There he had the company of his old friend and former clerk, William Hewer, with whom he thenceforward lived till his death. Meanwhile, before the death of his wife, Pepys had made his first appearance as a candi- date for Parliament. Neither he nor his friends had forgotten his triumph at the bar of the House in the previous year, and when Sir Robert Brooke, member for Aldborough, died in 1669, 204 Samuel Pepys i Pepys presented himself to fiU the vacancy. He was supported by the express recommendation of the Duke of York and by the favour of Lord Henry Howard (afterwards sixth Duke of Norfolk). But at the time of the election Pepys was occu- pied by his private sorrow and could take no active part, so that the seat was lost. A few months later (November, 1670) he appears for a moment in a very unlikely light. It seems that for some reason a dispute had arisen between him and the Swedish Resident in England, Leyenbergh ; and a letter exists from Matthew Wren (who had succeeded Coven- try as Secretary to the Duke of York) to Pepys, conveying the King's command that he was neither to offer nor accept a challenge. It is difficult to imagine Pepys only restrained from a duel by royal command ; his diary, if he had stiU been keeping one, would surely have been good read- ing at this point. No more is heard of this curious matter ; a possible explanation, suggested by Lord Braybrooke, is that it arose out of a dis- Samuel Pepys 205 pute about money, Leyenbergh having married the widow of Sir WilHam Batten, who had died in Pepys' debt. In 1672 came the third Dutch war, in which, against the sense of the people, England was momentarily allied with Louis XIV against Holland. On May 28 Sandwich, who was under the Duke of York as second in command of the English fleet, died in action in Sole Bay. His body was washed ashore a few days later and was buried with full honours in Henry VIPs Chapel, Westminster Abbey, Pepys taking part in the long funeral procession as one of "six BanneroUes." Sandwich had had his fluctuations in public favour; during the second Dutch war he had been denounced for appropriating without permission a share in some East Indian prize-ships which had fallen into his hands, and Albemarle especially had done what he could to prejudice the King and the Duke against him, with the result that he had had for a time to relinquish his command of the fleet. His . » 2o6 Samuel Pepys patronage had long ceased to be of any practical importance to Pepys, but in their relations the latter had, as we have seen, always preserved a certain deference. When at Brampton, Pepys was careful to pay his respects to the family at Hinchingbrooke, Sandwich's house near Hun- tingdon, and he took an active interest in the affairs of the growing sons and daughters. It had been altogether a happy and mutually profitable connexion, the harmony of which, strange to say, had not been disturbed even by Pepys' discovery that his wife had received un- necessarily warm attentions from both Sandwich and his eldest son.* But Mrs. Pepys had ap- parently known how to look after herself, and no harm was done. In 1673, when the Test Act was passed, the Duke of York resigned all his appointments, and the office of Lord High Admiral was put into commission. Pepys was thereupon raised from the Navy Office to be Secretary of the Admir- * Diary, November 10, 1668. Samuel Pepys 207 alty.i -It is not easy to see why he did not receive the honour of knighthood, which had fallen to so many of his associates. Pepys would surely have enjoyed such a distinction, and both the King and the Duke were fully aware that he, if any one, had earned it. By this time he was an acknowledged authority on aU matters relating to the business of the navy, and his pro- motion to the Hgher post was obvious and just. He succeeded in bequeathing his former office to his brother John, and Thomas Hayter, one of his clerks, who held it jointly. In the meantime another opportunity had offered itself of obtaining a seat in Parliament. For some months it had been expected that Sir Robert Paston, member for Castle Rising, in Norfolk, would be given a peerage, and Pepys had been preparing to stand whenever the » TTie Admiralty had before this been more than once !n comm.ss:on. When, a, during the years 1660-73, the office was held by one person, the " Secretary of the Admiralty » wa, represented merely by the private secretary of the Lord H.^ 208 Samuel Pepys vacancy should occur. Lord Henry Howard's influence was strong at Castle Rising, and might be relied on to be more effective than it had been at Aldborough. Unfortunately, when the Duke of York bespoke it for Pepys, Howard had already pledged himself to the King for one candidate and to the Duchess of Cleveland (Lady Castle- maine) for another. However, by the time that the sitting member had obtained his peerage (he became Viscount Yarmouth in 1673) the difficulty had been solved, other seats having been obtained for both the other candidates ; and on November 4, 1673, Pepys was duly elected, though not unopposed. The defeated candidate, whose name was Offley, brought a petition against the return, and the election, for reasons which do not appear, was declared by the Committee of Privileges to be void ; but as the House had come to no decision on the matter when Parliament was shortly afterwards prorogued Pepys was allowed to retain his seat. It was in this affair that the facile charge of Samuel Pepys 209 Popery was first brought against Pepys. To us, who have such far greater opportunities of know- ing his inner opinions than had any of his con- temporaries, it seems decidedly incongruous that Pepys of aU men should have suffered religious persecution. There certainly was nothing in his unobtrusive orthodoxy to provoke it, nor was he of the stuff of which martyrs are made. Yet a large part of the proceedings in the House with regard to the Castle Rising election was taken up in considering a vague statement to the effect that an altar and a crucifix had been seen in Pepys' house. This entirely irrelevant matter- for even if the statement could be substantiated it did not prove Pepys to be a Papist-was debated at length, and Pepys had to set to work to clear himself. He undoubtedly had at one time possessed something which he called a crucifix, though he seems by that to have meant a picture of the Crucifixion. « So I away to Lovett's," he had written in his Diary, July 20, 1666, « there to see how my picture goes on to •4 I /■' 2IO Samuel Pepys be varnished, a fine crucifix which will be very fine." And again on November 3, " This morn- ing comes Mr. Lovett and brings me my print of the passion, varnished by him, and the frame which is indeed very fine, though not so fine as I expected ; however, pleases me exceedingly." But in spite of this, the Journals of the House of Commons record that when the charge was brought, " Mr. Pepys, standing up in his place, did heartily and flatly deny that he ever had any Altar or Crucifix, or the image or picture of any Saint whatsoever in his house, from the top to the bottom of it." He suggested as a possible explanation of the report that what had been taken for an altar was really a small table which stood in his closet, with a Bible and Prayer Book and The Whole Duty ofMan^ also a basin and ewer, and his wife's portrait hanging above it. It appeared that the report originated with the Earl of Shaftesbury, and Sir J. Banks was also mentioned as having given similar in- formation. Upon examination Shaftesbury said Samuel Pepys 211 he had an indistinct remembrance of something which he believed to be a crucifix, but added that his memory was too vague for him to give testimony upon oath. Banks entirely denied having ever seen or reported anything of the kind. Sir W. Coventry, who had been deputed to question Shaftesbury, sensibly observed that there would be a great many more Catholics than thought themselves so, if having a crucifix would make one ; and the matter was dropped. Pepys' repudiation of the charge was undoubt- edly disingenuous, for he could hardly have for- gotten all about the fine crucifix which had not been so fine as he expected, but in the conscious- ness of his real orthodoxy he kept to the spirit if not to the letter of the truth. He probably felt that in the excited temper of the times it was prudent to keep well on the safe side, and to admit nothing that could by any possi- bility be used to damage him, however unjustly. The barest suspicion of Popery was by this time a real danger, and Pepys' position was 212 Samuel Pepys now too conspicuous to allow him to take any risks. There further exists among Pepys' papers an interesting document of this time which shows that he was also laid under the imputation of having perverted his wife to Popery. A letter, dated February 8, 1674, f^*^^ ^^^ brother-in- law, Balthazar St. Michel, is endorsed by Pepys to the effect that it was written particularly to clear him from this charge, of which we hear nothing elsewhere. During the year before her death Mrs. Pepys had, as we have seen, alarmed him by announcing that she was really a Roman Catholic, though he was afterwards relieved to find that she still went to church with him as a matter of course. Vague as it was, her Catho- licism had apparently been known to others, and was now to be used as a handle against her husband. Her brother Balthazar (known in the family as Baity), a needy personage in various ways indebted to Pepys, could be relied upon for help in this matter. He was married and Samuel Pepys 213 settled at Deal as " muster master," and seems to have enjoyed acting up to the part of the humble and grateful relative. There is a Micaw- ber-hke volubility and relish in a letter from him to Pepys of August 14, 1672. " Hon'd Sir," he begins, " you dayly and howerly soe comble me with (not only expressions but aUsoe) deeds of your worthyness and goodness, as weU to my selfe as the rest of your most devoted humble creaturs heare," and so forth, leading up to a postscript : " LiteU Samuel (whoe speakes now very pretely) desiers to have his most humble duty presented to his most honrd. Uncle and God- father, which please to accept from your most humble liteU disiple." Not Micawber only, it will be observed, but a decided touch of Uriah. We can imagine the faithful creature readily sitting down, upon invitation, to a letter in his most exalted vein upon the strong unsulUed Protestantism which had aU her life been Mrs. Pepys' most remarkable characteristic. It is an egregious document, but gives useful details of 214 Samuel Pepys the early history of the St. Michel family, some of which have been quoted in a previous chapter. All this disturbance is a valuable sign of the times, showing the extent to which popular imagination could be worked upon by the barest suggestion of Popish practices. There could be no heartier advocate of conformity than Pepys, who had always desired before all things to hit the right mean between heterodoxy and an inconvenient bigotry. Such matters, he con- sidered, ought not to be so prominent one way or another as to call for special notice. Any obtrusion of them was indecent and uncomfort- able. " I would to God," he had once written, on seeing the arrest of a party of schismatics, " they would either conform, or be more wise and not be catched," ^ and it was a cry from the heart. Quakers he felt to be dangerous people, as likely to upset that conventional respect- ability of beliefs which was at once so easy and so safe. After reading the younger Penn's 1 Diary, August 7, 1664. Samuel Pepys 215 Sandy Foundation Shaken he makes the character- istic remark that it is " a serious sort of book, and not fit for everybody to read." ^ Yet the tension of public anxiety was such that it was worth an enemy's while to raise a scare even against a man so little inclined to be subversive as Pepys. In this case, indeed, it was not clear who had been at the bottom of the rumour ; but inasmuch as Shaftesbury reappears presently in another attack on Pepys, his refusal to identify himself with the charge may have been merely diplomatic. Anyhow, Pepys had not reached his distinguished office without incurring a certain amount of ill-will, and his bearing was not always judicious. An amusing piece of evidence to this effect survives in the Parliamentary Debates a few years later. On May 11, 1678, Pepys had occasion to speak on a question of naval supply, and delivered himself in a somewhat pompous manner, as though the navy and every- thing to do with it depended solely upon him- ^ Ibid. Februaiy 12, 1669. ^ ( t] ( /^ 2l6 Samuel Pepys self. " Pepys," interposed another member, Sir Robert Howard, "here speaks rather like an Admiral than a Secretary, * I' and ' we.' I wish he knows half as much of the Navy as he pre- tends." Whether it was as much as he pretended, it certainly was more than any one else knew, and it is easy to believe that he made the most of it in his behaviour. But after the affair of the varnished crucifix had been dropped, his Protestantism at any rate was for some years free from attack. In 1676 he became Master of the Trinity House, and in 1677 Master of the Clothworkers' Company. To the latter he presented a fine set of plate— cup, rose-water dish, and ewer— which is still in use at the dinners of the Com- pany. We also hear of him in the same year officiating as steward at the Feast of the Hon. Artillery Company, which was held at Merchant Taylors' Hall and attended by a distinguished party of guests. Except for these brief glimpses, we learn Samuel Pepys 217 nothing of Pepys' public life between 1674 and 1679. Sut a correspondence between him and a friend of his, a merchant named Thomas Hill, throws light on his domestic interior at this time. Writing from Lisbon in 1673, and again in the following year, Hill recommends to Pepys' notice a young Italian musician, Cesare Morelli, who desired to find employment in England. " I am certain you will like his voice," he says; " his manner of singing is alia Italiana di tutta perfettione:' Pepys, who now principally de- pended for recreation upon music, was pleased with the idea of taking a trained performer into his service, to be always at hand when wanted. But he was careful not to raise too high expecta- tions. "I have only one thing," he answers, " by way of preface, to note to you ; namely, that nothing which has yet, or may further happen, towards the rendering me more con- spicuous in the world, has led or can ever lead to the admitting any alteration in the little methods of my private way of living ; as having \A I i|1 V i 2l8 Samuel Pepys not in my nature any more aversion to sordid- ness than I have to pomp, and in particular that sort of it which consists in the length and trouble of such a train (I mean of servants for state only) as the different humour of some, and greater quality of others, do sometimes call for." The upshot is that he offers Morelli ^30 a year to enter his service. The offer was promptly accepted, and Morelli was installed in the simple household of York Buildings. A large collec- tion of music, copied, arranged, or composed by the young Italian, and still to be seen in the Pepysian Library, testifies to the long evenings which the two spent in making music together. " I have entertained myself harmlessly with him," said Pepys later on, " singing with his lute, till twelve o'clock, when it was time to rest." This peaceful picture is certainly in strong contrast with the less idyllic pleasures of a few years before, when music had only been one of the crowd of delights with which his days were filled. But it is likely enough that with middle s i\ Samuel Pepys 219 age (he was now past forty) and the increasing publicity of his position he may have kept, both from inclination and from prudence, to pur- suits which could be freely revealed to the world. In those excited times, however, there was no telling what innocent habits might not be misinterpreted. Pepys' long and intimate assor elation with James was enough in itself to throw doubt on his Protestantism. "Whether I will or no," he writes to the Duke, " a Papist I must be, because favoured by your Royal Highness." It appeared in the autumn of 1678 that the same kind of reasoning was to be applied to Morelli ; a priest he must be, because a Papist and a foreigner, and if a priest, a spy and Jesuit in Pepys' employ. The best refutation of such a slander would be to make a Protestant of him before further trouble came of it. Pepys accordingly invited James Houblon, one of the well-known Hugue- not family of that name, to sound him on the subject. Houblon, in a letter dated November 2, 1678, describes how he tried to shake Morelli's 15 \\ ^ / 220 Samuel Pepys \ faith in the Roman doctrines by urging the wicked and unlawful policies with which so many Popes and Cardinals had pursued their aims. It was an unsound argument, as indeed he ad- mitted to Pepys ; and Morelli was not convinced. Failing his conversion, it was necessary, in view of a proclamation now issued, warning all Roman Catholics to leave town, that he should retire from his employer's household, at any rate for a time. He was accordingly dispatched into the country, with directions to occupy his leisure in arranging Pepys' collection of music. But the terror of the Popish Plot was by this time at its height, and accusations of Catholicism were as difficult to repel as they were easy to make. The murdered body of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey had been discovered on October 17, and rumours of an imminent massacre of Protestants flew round as in the time of the Great Fire twelve years before. London hummed with preparations for defence. The train-bands patrolled the streets at night, and kept a fierce n Samuel Pepys 221 look-out for suspicious characters. Pepys him- self was busily employed, as is shown by the collection of naval correspondence which he preserved in his library, in taking precautions against a surprise of the fleet.^ The southern coasts were narrowly watched in fear of a French invasion. That there might be no chance of Popish inclinations among the officers, the Test Act was carefully enforced throughout the fleet. Pepys was as active in all these alarms as a good Secretary and a good Protestant could be. But he ran the risk of being involved in dangerous suspicions when in December of this year (1678) his own head clerk, Samuel Atkins, was brought to trial on the charge of having been accessory to the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey. Pepys' old enemy, Shaftesbury, duly tried to implicate him in the matter by an attempt to extract evidence against him out of Atkins. The latter was able, with Pepys' active help, to estab- 1 See " Pepys and the Popish Plot," by J. R. Tanner (English Historical Review, April, 1892). ii 1:, 222 \' i i l\ Samuel Pepys lish an alihi^ and was eventually acquitted after having been examined before a committee of the House of Lords. But the incident, ground- less as was the charge, served to keep Pepys' name associated with ideas of treachery— an association of which his enemies were ready to take advantage when occasion offered. The opportunity came before long. Early in 1679 ^^ general election took place for the short Parliament of that year. Two candidates who appeared in opposition to Pepys at Castle Rising had been busily spreading there the report of his Popish sympathies. But as he was now invited to stand for three other constituencies- Portsmouth, the Isle of Wight boroughs, and Harwich— he was able to bid Castle Rising a dignified adieu. He accepted the invitation of Harwich, where he was accordingly elected, his colleague being Sir Anthony Deane. The old prejudices followed him there, however, and shortly after the election we find him writing to one of his constituents, "touching the dis- ii Samuel Pepys 223 courses you have met with in your neighbour- hood, about the election Harwich has made in their choice of Sir Anthony Deane and me, as if he were an Atheist, and myself a Papist." Pepys indignantly repudiates both charges. Sir A. Deane, he says, « hath too much wit to be an Atheist ... and as for my being a Papist, let them but examine the entries in the Parliament books, upon occasion of a controversy some time happening between a great Lord and myself upon that subject ; and they shall find such a trial and proof of my Protestancy, as I doubt no private man in England can show but myself upon record in Parliament."! Harassed by suspicion and ill-wiU, Pepys pours out his troubles in a long and interesting letter, dated May 6, 1679, to his faithful friend the Duke of York, who had retired from popular outcries to the Hague. The Admiralty Commission had lately been reconstituted, and Pepys gives a pathetic account of the increasing difficulties of his position. Of » Pepys to Captain I,angley, March 6, 1679. 'f! »l % \ 1 ill 1 1 / ff ''I ». 224 Samuel Pepys Samuel Pepys the Commissioners, some kept up an appear- ance of friendliness towards him, but that, he judged, was only due to the " necessaryness of my service to them till they have obtained a stock of knowledge of their own ; and then farewell ! '* others were frankly hostile, making no secret of their opinion that the old confi- dential relations between Pepys and the Duke were a source of danger, and that as long as Pepys was Secretary James remained in eflfect Admiral. In another way, too, it was an impos- sible situation. Pepys had a far wider know- ledge and longer experience of naval matters than most of the Commissioners, and found himself " charged with a new piece of duty, and that not a little one, of informing those who should inform and are to command me," besides being held accountable for any ill success that might result from their commands, if his advice were disregarded. The upshot of his lament is that he longs to be relieved of " this odious Secretaryship," and begs the Duke to 225 support the application he is making to the King to grant him either a place upon the Admiralty Commission itself or at least some other pro- vision " as one superannuated in his service." The Duke at once wrote a letter to the King, pointing out how necessary it was, in view of the rawness of the new Commissioners, that Pepys' services should be retained, and urging that he should be given the promotion he asked for. This letter was dated from Brussels, May 22, 1679. On that very day Pepys and Sir Anthony Deane were committed to the Tower under the Speaker's warrant on a charge of having conducted a treasonable correspondence with the French Government. Thomas Hayter was at the same time promoted to be Secretary of the Admiralty in Pepys' place. The prime instigator of this new attack appears to have been a certain Mr. William Harbor d. Member of Parliament for Thetford, and afterwards Surveyor-General of the Land Revenues of the Crown. He was a bitter opponent 15 i / 1 > 226 '/ I; iH n Samuel Pepys of Pepys, and at this juncture was able to join forces against him with an adventurer and swindler named John Scott. This man, who called himself Colonel Scott, had an old grudge against Pepys. Some time before he had been dis- covered in a fraud by a Kentish widow named Dorothea Gotherson, to whose husband he had sold lands in the State of New York over which it appeared that he had no rights. The petition for redress which she presented had been entrusted by the Duke of York to Pepys for investigation. With the help of Samuel Atkins, Pepys collected a large body of evidence against Scott, which showed him to have been convicted at different times of various fraudu- lent proceedings in America, France, Holland and England. At the time of the Popish Plot this same man was associated with Titus Oates and the whole flourishing school of black- mailers and informers. He welcomed an oppor- tunity of revenge against Pepys, and could be trusted to produce circumstantial charges. i \ Samuel Pepys 227 The charges whichl^T^^^^^dh^^ a Parliamentary " Committee of Enquiry into the miscarriages of the navy " were fuU of lurid detail.^ He aUeged that the Treasurer-General of the French navy had shown him a number of papers, containing drawings of English ships, maps of the coast, and information as to the strength and condition of the fleet, which had been sold to the French Government by Pepys, Sir Anthony Deane acting as an intermediary. Evidence was further given by John James, a former butler of Pepys', to shew that the Secretary of the Admiralty was reaUy a secret Papist. James based his accusation solely on the suspicious pre- sence of Morelli in Pepys' household. This man he declared, used to say mass at the Queen's Chapel, and was frequently closeted with Pepys tiU a late hour, singing psalms. MorelH had beads and pictures, and a private door to his room, which apparently was considered to savour of Jesuitry. Pepys made Hs defence in the ^ Grey's DehaUs, rol. vii, p. 303 ff. I 228 Samuel Pepys V \^ <^ House of Commons on May 20. He pointed out that the House had nothing but Scott's word for the charges. "He tells you," exclaimed Pepys, " that the papers in France, etc., were signed by me. 'Tis Scott's 'Tea, by report ' ; 'tis my ' No, before God Almighty.' " As for James, he had been dismissed from Pepys' service for misbehaviour, and this was his retaliation. Pepys gave the true and simple explanation of Morelli and the psalm-singing ; the innocent musician, who was living in the country in all harmlessness and virtue, should appear, he said, before the House whenever they pleased. Sir Anthony Deane followed with the no less simple reasons for his visit to France. He was a shipbuilder, and had been commissioned to build '' two boats for the Canal at Versailles, the depth of his stick, about three foot and a half." He had gone over to see them launched, at the desire of the King of France, and had tried to improve the occasion by learning something about the French Fleet. Not having one word of the \ \x Samuel PePys 229 language, he had been unable to discover much, though he had seen enough to show him that the French had no need for instruction in naval matters from the English. He never carried script nor scroH from Mr. Pepys, if it was the last word he should ever speak. An inconclu- sive debate ensued, and two days later it was ordered that Pepys and Deane should be sent to the Tower, to await prosecution by the Attor- ney-General for the crimes of which they were accused. The burden of proof clearly rested in justice upon Pepys' traducers. He was, however, ex- pected to produce positive evidence that the charges were without foundation, and he had to incur considerable expense in hunting up witnesses. A certain Edward D'Oyly chose this inopportune moment to beg for a loan of fifty pounds, but Pepys assured him that his imprison- ment had been so sudden and unexpected that his affairs had been thrown into great disorder, and that he had to be beholden to friends to pay !■ 1 % !| IH 11 230 Samuel Pepys his very expenses in the Tower for him. His friends indeed rallied round him and did what they could. Evelyn notes in his Diary (June 4, 1679) • " I dined with Mr. Pepys in the Tower, he having been committed by the House of Commons for misdemeanours in the Admiralty when he was Secretary; I believe he was un- justly charged " ; and again on July 3, " Sending a piece of venison to Mr. Pepys, still a prisoner, I went and dined with him." Pepys and Deane had before this been brought before the King's Bench, but had been refused bail. They 'were afterwards, however, allowed to_ find security for ;^30,ooo. Their first necessity was to send some one to France to collect proofs of their innocence. For this task Pepys selected Balthazar St. Michel, who, with his knowledge of the language and his grateful affection for his brother-in-law, was the obvious person to undertake it. He had next to repel the insinuation that he had harboured a disguised priest in his household. In a letter to Samuel Pepys 231 Morelli (still in retirement in the country), dated September 25, 1679, ^^ ^'^^ ^"^ ^^ ^^^ down particulars of his life and condition before coming to England. In the following month, when term began, Pepys had his case in readiness and only desired that the trial should come on as soon as possible. But neither Scott nor Harbord appeared, and there was apparently nothing for it but to wait till the end of term in expectation of their coming forward by that time. "My friends, indeed," writes Pepys, " please themselves with an opinion of my being then discharged ; and by the course of the court, I am told I ought to be, in case my adversaries continue silent. But then, (which is an evil equal to any I have sustained,) my being discharged in that manner, without a trial, leaves me liable to the same vexation whenever the same malignity of my enemies shall meet with the like juncture of state circumstances, and prompt them to my mischief." ^ Pepys, as he feared, was denied ^ Pepys to Mrs. Skinner, October 24, 1679. 1 i J I /, r in > ,1 u .f 232 Samuel Pepys the satisfaction of establishing his innocence in public. The prosecution never took place, for Scott refused in the end to stand to his depo- sition. On February 12, 1680, Pepys and Deane obtained their discharge. It was an unsatisfactory climax, and, as Pepys foresaw, did not preclude the possibility of similar vexations in the future. But his present accusers, at any rate, were thoroughly discredited. Only a few days after Pepys' release from bail, news reached him that John James was on his death-bed and desired to ease his conscience of a burden. Pepys sent an impartial friend to hear his confession, which was to the eflFect that he had been bribed by Mr. William Harbord to come forward with his fabrications about his former master's Popery. Pepys might well bless Provi- dence, as he did in a letter to Morelli, for this prompt and unlooked-for vindication. Nor had he to wait long to see trouble overtake the malig- nant Scott. The Colonel's next public adven- ture was the murder of a hackney coachman in • Samuel Pepys 233 1682. He escaped justice only by flight, and had to spend many years in seclusion in Norway, till in 1696 he obtained a pardon and returned home. Mr. William Harbord never properly suffered for his calumnious attack on Pepys, though incriminating documents were found among Scott's papers after his flight. Harbord sat on in Parliament for Thetford, became a Privy Councillor, and finally Ambassador to Turkey. He died at Belgrade in 1692. But after the failure of his instruments, Scott and James, he appears to have left Pepys alone. <\ I 31, ^ i i I ♦l M f '\ Chapter VII AFTER nearly twenty years of continuous association with naval affairs, Pepys in 1680 found himself out of office. He had latterly, since the resignation of the Duke of York, been brought into much closer contact with the King than before. We know what he thought of Charles in earlier days, of his neglect of public affairs, of his moth-hunting at Lady Castlemaine's ; and it is unfortunate that we have no means of discovering his maturer opinion now that he came to know him well. We have not even any of the frequent correspondence which must have passed between them. Unregenerate as he was in other ways, Charles' practice in the matter of public business was by this time very different from what it had been twenty years before. He was a politician now, giving full 131 Samuel Pepys 235 play to his great abilities in that line as the issue between the nation and his house grew more and more acute. He had no legitimate children, and the heir to the throne was an avowed Roman Catholic, two circumstances the effect of which was to make him surrender his leisure and face years of laborious intrigue. With politics, strictly so called, Pepys had no doubt very little to do ; but he must have had plenty of opportunities of appreciating the King's shrewd- ness and capacity, for in everything connected with the navy, shipbuilding in particular, Charles was by nature keenly interested. It would be their personal rather than their official relation, however, that would be the more interesting to watch, being at the same time the more difficult to infer. As the first authority on naval affairs, Pepys would obviously be welcome to Charles, while Charles would certainly know how to make his own knowledge and intelligence welcome to Pepys. But when it was not a question of the navy, what did they think of each other as com- j 9 j\ i 236 Samuel Pepys panious \ Both, we know, had, as companions, very particular qualities : Charles had his irony, his powers of criticism and observation, his conversational charm when he chose to exert it ; Pepys had his promiscuous relish for life, his over- flowing interests, his greedy appreciation of mirth. We can hardly believe that these diverse gifts failed altogether to interact or to throw each other into agreeable relief. This is not the place to explore the speculative possibilities of their intercourse ; but for a novelist, of the variety known as " historical,'' such a quest should surely have attractions worth ascertaining. Pepys several times visited the King at New- market during these years when he was out of office, so that it was not only in connexion with official matters that his company was desired. One of these visits gave him the opportunity of adding a peculiarly interesting volume to his library. In October, 1680, he was at Newmarket for some days, trying to induce the King to consider the question of certain long outstanding Samuel Pepys 237 arrears of pay due to him.^ To judge from the amount still owed him by the Crown when he died, he was unsuccessful in this attempt. But if he could not get money from Charles, he got in leisurely detail the story of the King's romantic escape after the Battle of Worcester— the story which he had heard in his youth, and had been " ready to weep " to hear, on the ship that had brought the exile home. This time he took it down in shorthand from the King's dictation. The manuscript, with a transcript in longhand, and some additions from other sources, was suit- ably bound, and is still to be seen on the very shelf of his library on which he placed it.* In this same autumn (1680), Pepys' father died at Brampton, in his eightieth year. The house and property at Brampton which the old man had inherited from his brother nearly twenty 1 Pepys to James Houblon, letter dated Newmarket, October 2, 1680. ' It is published, in the same volume with Grammont's Memoirs, in Bohn's Standard Library. I \ i H f • I 238 Samuel Pepys years before he bequeathed to Samuel, the rest of his possessions being divided equally among his three surviving children, Samuel, John, and Paulina Jackson. The house in question is still standing in the village of Brampton, three miles from Huntingdon. It was too small and too remote for Pepys to care to retire there now, and we find him a few months later offering to let it to a cousin. It seems, however, to have been occupied by the Jackson family during the years that followed. From Brampton, meanwhile, on November 14, 1680, Pepys wrote a particularly delightful letter, part of which must be quoted. James Houblon, one of the large and honoured family of that name, had been a very good friend to Pepys during his troubles of the preceding year. Pepys now sent him a portrait of himself as a mark of gratitude, explaining that this seemed the kind of present that would best serve to remind his benefactor of his good deeds. Otherwise, he declares, Houblon will certainly forget all the kindly I Samuel Pepys _239 offices he performed for his friend in distress" " Nay, in my conscience," he goes on with affec- tionate vivacity, « if he tnew this were the design of my present, he would turn his head a' one side every time he comes in sight on't. « And even, lest he should do so, I have been fain to think of an assistant device ; and that is, to send a smaU bribe to every one of his family^ to get them, in such a case, to be putting in some word or other as he passes by, to make him look upon it ; as thus :-< Was Mr. Pepys in these clothes, father, when you used to go to the Tower to him ? ' Or thus :-« Lord, cousin, how hath this business of Scott altered my poor cousin Pepys since this was done ! ' Or thus :— ' What would I give for a plot, Jemmy, to get you laid by the heels, that I might see what tLs Mr. Pepys would do for you.' With these helps I don't doubt but it wiU do ; at least, so far as to stick an impression upon the young ones of what, in their father's right, (if he won't,) they may challenge from me as they shaU grow big enough r I'i l\ !) fH,* ' **' 240 Samuel Pepys to make work for me, and find me become not too little to do them any." In the following year, 1 68 1, there was a chance that Pepys might find a highly congenial retreat at Cambridge, where he would have leisure to devote himself to his long-planned history of the navy. A friend of his, by name Maryon, a Fellow of Clare Hall, wrote to say that Sir Thomas Page, Provost of King's, was just dead, and to suggest that Pepys might like to succeed him ; the Pro- vostship was worth ^£700 a year, and he felt sure that Pepys* candidature would be acceptable to the college and to the whole university. The proposal was a tempting one ; Pepys modestly declared that his " stock of academic knowledge " was not such as a Provost of King's ought to possess, but he was evidently pleased with the idea. To another acquaintance. Colonel Legge (afterwards Lord Dartmouth) with whom he corresponded on the matter, he wrote that if he were chosen for the post he should hand over the whole of the first year's emoluments for the Samuel Pepys 241 benefit of the College, and not less than half of every succeeding year's. Whatever he might say, Pepys, with his " liberal genius," would have made an admirable head of a college. But the idea came to nothing, we do not learn why; and the appointment went to Dr.John Coplestone. In 1 68 1, we find Pepys taking the precaution of obtaining from Daniel Milles, Rector of St. Olave's, Hart Street, a certificate of his regular attendance at Holy Communion from the begin- ning of his connexion with the Navy Office. St. Olave's was officially attended by the mem- bers of the Navy Board and Admiralty, so that Pepys had continued to go there even after his removal from Seething Lane. It does not appear that he required this certificate for any immediate purpose, but, doubtless, he felt it would be a useful document to have by him in case the old attacks should at any time be renewed. In the spring of 1682, the Duke of York went to Scotland on public business, and Pepys was among those who accompanied him. The jour- 16 I }i I ' 11 \ 242 Samuel Pepys Samuel Pepys 243 ney was made by sea. The Duke invited Pepys to sail with him on board the Gloucester^ but he preferred to go in one of the attendant yachts, the Catherine^ where he had roomier accom- modation. His choice was fortunate, for the Gloucester was wrecked, through the negligence of the pilot, on a sand-bank near the mouth of the Humber, and many of the passengers were drowned. The Catherine happened, fortunately, to be near at hand at the moment, and the Duke, with two companions (one of them the future Duke of Marlborough), was promptly and safely transferred thither by boat. At Edinburgh, Pepys was allowed to be present at two Councils, though he was not there in an official capacity, after which he made a tour in the neighbourhood, visiting Stirling, Linlithgow, Hamilton, and Glasgow. He was impressed with the beauty and prosperity of Glasgow — for Scotland ; but the Scotch displeased him in general, for blunt reasons which he gives in a letter to Hewer.* 1 Pepys to W. Hewer, May 19, 1682. He returned home by land, visiting Durham on the way, where the Bishop, he says, " seems to live more like a prince of this, than a preacher of the other world." 1 Pepys' next mission was of more importance. It will be remembered^that in the time of the Diary he had been one of the Commissioners for the affairs of Tangier ; and in 1683 he was at last to see the place which had for so long been a source to him both of trouble and of profit. Tangier, like Bombay, had passed, as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza, from Portuguese to Eng- lish hands. Its value was that it provided a key to the Mediterranean, but it did not prove the secure harbour for English shipping that was expected. Money was poured out for the con- struction of a large breakwater, but the work was from the first involved in every kind of misman- agement and abuse. The Commissioners at home had no practical knowledge of the place, and the successive governors on the spot had 1 Pepys to W. Hewer, May 26, 1682. % 244 Samuel Pepys usually no care but to get what they could out of it for themselves. The breakwater was still incomplete when, in 1680, Tangier was attacked by the Moors. It began to be evident that the place was costing more than it was worth, and, in 1683, it was resolved to abandon it. Lord Dartmouth was accordingly sent in August of that year with secret orders to blow up the harbour works, and bring home the garrison, and Pepys was directed to accompany him. During this expedition, the object of which was not revealed to him till they were at sea, Pepys once more kept a diary in shorthand.^ This diary, though valuable for the information it gives, is very different from its great predecessor. It is a mere record of facts, presumably kept for future refer- ence, and Pepys* personal peculiarities, which can- not be supposed to have altogether disappeared, are hardly allowed to emerge at all. When they arrived at Tangier, Pepys was at once struck 1 The original is among the Rawlinson MSS. in the Bodleian Library. It was deciphered and published by the Rev. John Smith in 1841 (see Preface). Samuel Pepys 245 with the obvious uselessness of the place. " Lord ! " he exclaims, with a touch of the old spirit, " how could anybody ever think a place fit to be kept at this charge, that, overlooked by so many hUIs, can never be secured against an enemy." All he saw only confirmed him in this opinion. The town was at this time under the charge of the notorious Colonel Kirke, and the whole place was in a state of scandalous disorder. Pepys was constantly finding fresh instances of the way in which it had been systematicaUy exploited by its governors for their private profit. The unfinished mole was partiaHy destroyed by Lord Dartmouth, the remains of it being dis- cernible to this day. Pepys crossed the straits for a short visit to Cadiz and Seville, and on his return to Tangier Dartmouth was ready to depart. They set sail on March 5, 1684, and the Emperor of Morocco praised God that the place had reverted again to those to whom it had belonged. Pepys returned home with a much enlarged experience of frauds and abuses, and some trenchant opinion t ll u n i 246 Samuel Pepys Samuel Pepys 247 on the undesirability of placing amateur " gentle- men commanders " over experienced seamen— « tarpaulins," as they were called— in the navy. Shortly after his return Pepys was once more appointed Secretary of the Admiralty, Charles himself taking up the office of Lord High Admiral. Pepys' patent is dated June 10, 1684 ; his salary was fixed at ^£500 a year. • In the same year he was elected President of the Royal Society, of which he had been a FeHow since 1665. His own Diary, as well as the records of the Society, show that he had always been a keen attendant at its meetings, and that he had often placed at its service his stock of curious knowledge. He held the presidency for two years, and began the practice, which he continued in after years as long as his health allowed it, of entertaining the FeUows on Saturday evenings at his house in York Buildings. Pepys was in no sense a scientist, but at a time when science was chiefly occupied in preparing itself, with the universal inquisitiveness of an intelligent child, for its later systematization, a man of his quick and perpetual interest, made exactly the kind of president that was needed. Evelyn was regu- larly present at the Saturday evenings, at which Isaac Newton, a whale among a great many irresponsible fishes, was also to be seen. In February, 1685, Charles died with his famous jest upon his lips, the cleverest man, in the strict sense of the word, who has ever been King of England. Pepys remained in office during the whole of James' short reign, the new King him- self resuming his old post of Lord High Admiral. One of his first acts was the appointment of a special commission to deal with the disorder left by the inexperienced Admiralty Commissioners who had held office from 1679 ^o ^684. At James' coronation Pepys took part in the state procession as one of the Barons of the Cinque Ports. In the same year he was, for the second time. Master of the Trinity House, which had 3 ust been re-constituted by a new charter. Evelyn describes how the Brethren dined in state on this 'it V I 248 Samuel Pepys Samuel Pepys 249 occasion, with many distinguished guests, above eighty people sitting down to table. ^ It is not altogether easy to realize that Pepys was now a great man. We know him so well as the ingenuous young official of the Diary that it is difficult to think of him as an elderly and influ- ential servant of the Crown. Whether, beneath his impressive exterior, he was still the same Pepys, still the same epicure of life and experience, there is little enough to show ; we have seen that his letters keep that secret. Anyhow, to the world at large he was now a personage to be approached with deference, to be courted with complimentary presents, to be sued for place and preferment. The wife of the Governor of Bombay sends him a velvet carpet, our old friend Philip Carteret, the hero of the idyll which Pepys had so skilfully directed, sends partridges and a barrel of carp from Jersey, " the onely things this poor island can affoard." His correspondence contains many letters from needy people, with ^ Evelyn's Diary, July 20, 1685. favours of various kinds to ask. Among them is the ever-luckless Samuel Morland, who had been tutor at Magdalene in Pepys' day and who in his old age had been involved in difficulties by his wife, reputed an heiress, but in the event shown to be a coachman's daughter of neither fortune nor character. With James on the throne, Pepys was all-powerful; and in the general election of 1685, so far from having to court a constituency, he was spontaneously re- turned both by Harwich and by Sandwich. He chose to sit, as before, for Harwich. This Parlia- ment was dissolved in July, 1687, and was the last in which Pepys found a place. His public life, like James', was approaching its end. The events that led up to the Revolution are very meagrely represented in Pepys' correspond- ence as we have it. All we possess in this con- nexion are some of the letters which passed, in that critical autumn of 1688, between him and Lord Dartmouth, who was in command of the fleet. Pepys was fully aware of the gravity of the I 2SO Samuel Pepys situation, though even towards the end of Novem- ber he could still " firmly hope . . . that God Almighty has it in his gracious purpose to support the King and his government." ^ On December 10, James ended his reign by the dramatic flight which was in reality so carefully ensured him by his enemies. Pepys had lost his best and one of his oldest friends. James has, on the whole, suffered considerable injustice in our history books — ^an injustice which Pepys' Diary and cor- respondence do much to right. Just before the end the King had been sitting to Kneller for a portrait intended for Pepys ; but Pepys himself, in his Diary and his correspondence, had drawn a better portrait of him than he was likely to get from Kneller. His own career was at an end — ^that he must have seen clearly — ^but it was not only for himself, it was also for his excellent master, that he was troubled. At this agitated moment two other old friends sent him affection- ^ Pepys to the Mayor and Corporation of Harwich, Novem- ber 27, i688. • '■ ".At/, LuHUi^n. James II. Fru,„ the painting by John Riley (National 1 4 ii Portrait Gallery). Samuel Pepys 251 ate letters ^ of sympathy. On December 12, Evelyn writes " on purpose to learne how it is with you, and to know if in any sort I may serve you in this prodigious Revolution " ; and a note from William Hewer, dated December 19, is pathetically docketed in Pepys' hand, " A letter of great tendernesse, at a time of difficulty." It was, of course, impossible that one who had been so intimately associated with James II should find a place in the new order, even if he had desired it. When the election for the new Convention Parliament took place early in 1689, the Corporation of Harwich were determined to be represented by some one more likely to be acceptable to those in authority. The cry of " No Tower men, no men out of the Tower ! " was raised against Pepys, and a large majority declared against him. On March 9, he was ordered by the Commissioners of the Admiralty to hand over his papers to Phineas Bowles, who became Secretary in his place. Still, he did not give up all hope of returning to Parliament. V \ P I r H /' \\ li i f\ i 252 Samuel Pepys On February 8, 1690, he writes to Sir Edward Seymour, a former Speaker, to ask whether he could " spare an interest anywhere " to help him to a seat. But the old charges against him were easily revived. Evelyn mentions in his Diary that on June 10, 1690, Pepys read him a " Remonstrance " which he had drawn up to clear himself and Sir Anthony Deane against accusations made in connexion with the building of certain ships. This Remonstrance may have been the work which Pepys issued at this time, his only publication during his life,i under the title of Memoires relating to the State of the Royal Navy of England for ten years, determined December ^ 1688. This little book ^ was the one fragment of Pepys' projected history of the navy which he finally put into shape, and it was called forth by the needs of the moment. He undertook to 1 7he Portugal History, or a Relation of the Troubles that Happened in the Court of Portugal in the years 1667 and 1668, by S. P. esq. (1677), has been attributed to him, without reason. * It has lately been reprinted, with an introduction by Dr. J. R. Tanner (Clarendon Press, 1906). Samuel Pepys ( i 253 expose in it the mismanagement of the navy between 1679 ^^^ 1684, and to vindicate the action of James' Special Commission of 1686, with particular reference to the part played by himself, Deane, and Hewer. His indictment and defence are alike temperately expressed, and he winds up with an eloquent summary of the manner and spirit in which alone a state of efficiency can be maintained. The book in its original form is scarce ; a copy on large paper, with manu- script corrections in the author's hand, is preserved in the Pepysian Library. Whatever effect its publication may have had, it was not enough to save him from being committed to the Gate-house at Westminster, on June 25, 1690, under the now familiar imputation of betraying naval secrets to the French. He was allowed bail in the following month on account of ill-health, four friends (one of them the good James Houblon) standing surety for him. As usual, there was no kind of evidence against him, and the charge was dropped. On October 15, 1690, he wrote ^^^i ^1 V ^( \ 254 Samuel Pepys to the friends who had come to his rescue, invit- ing them to " a piece of mutton " to celebrate the occasion of his being " once again a free man in every respect." We hear no more of any desire to return to public life. Thus, at the age of fifty-seven, Pepys at last retired in good earnest. His health was still sound enough to enable him to enjoy his leisure and his friends' society to the full. Moreover, he had, besides his health, the right temperament for relaxation. Devoted as he had been to his work, it had never absorbed him entirely, and when it was necessary to lay it aside, he had plenty of other interests to fill the gap. He settled down — ^with a revival, we may perhaps imagine, of his old dramatic zest for a part that appealed to him — into a life of cultured and distinguished freedom. He conducted a frequent correspond- ence with Evelyn, in which philosophical maxims, stray scraps of literary and scientific lore, moraliza- tions on old age, friendship, and the like, blend together in a pleasant Ciceronian suavity. The Samuel Pepys 255 two friends met regularly, and Pepys took a fatherly interest in Evelyn's grandson, who as an Oxford undergraduate sent him a Latin letter, with a copy of elegiacs. He was also in constant communication with the principal men of science and letters. We find him writing to Sir Isaac Newton to ask for an exposition of the mathe- matical law of hazards, which Newton gives in much learned detail. At another time he collects, in a whole series of letters, the experiences of various friends on the subject of the Scotch " second sight." Sir Godfrey Kneller, Dr. (after- wards Sir Hans) Sloane, Tanner and Wanley, the celebrated antiquarians, are also among his cor- respondents. Dryden addresses him as " Padron mio," and sends him his adaptation of Chaucer's Good Parson, which he had made at Pepys' request. Pepys, in reply, begs him to come and share " a cold chicken and a salad " any day at noon. His patronage of literature is, moreover, illustrated by the various books dedicated to him in these and earlier years. Paul Lorrain, a translator ) < II ! i 1 Samuel Pepys 256 both of French into English and of English into French, dedicated two of his publications to him. Thomas Phelps' T:rue Account of his Captivity at Machaness in Barhary (1685), Wil- loughby's Historia Piscium (1685-6), Dr. Richard Cumberland's Essay on Jewish weights and meas- ures (1686), and, lastly, the South Sea Voyages and Discoveries of Sir John Narborough (1694), are all headed with complimentary dedications to Pepys. In his various public capacities, his patronage had, of course, been valuable, and even when he no longer commanded official influence, he still remained an admirable Maecenas, whose opinion had weight in the literary world. But the chief interest of his later years was, without doubt, his famous library. It is impos- sible to say when it first occurred to him that he would bequeath his collection in a way that should preclude all chance of its dispersal after his death. There is no hint of any such idea in the Diary, though it would have been like him, with his intense love of his own possessions, to Sa^miel Pepys ^Sl have felt in quite early days the desire to provide for their permanent preservation. It is probable, at any rate, that long before his death he decided he would not collect for himself alone. It is difficult to explain why it is that his library, in spite of its intensely personal stamp, gives the impression that its founder was guided in forming it by further considerations than his own imme- diate preferences. Its wide range of subjects might seem dictated by the mere wish to make it representative and complete in itself, if it were not for the fact that Pepys' own interests undoubtedly ranged just as widely. Yet it is impossible to feel, as one becomes familiar with the aspect of the shelves, with the elaborately methodical arrangement, and the countless signs of minute forethought and exactitude, that the library grew, so to speak, from within. With all its intrinsic interest it seems designed to be looked at rather than to be used. It is these very details, no doubt, which most account for its personal savour, such excess of precision being obviously 17 ill ill \ t| n ^ Samuel Pepys 258 the mark of an individual taste ; but they also, by the same token, give the collection its air of being dressed up for exhibition. We return to the inference, suggested by the Diary, that Pepys did not solely or even chiefly care for books for their own sake. He enjoyed the fact of possessing them, the gratification, of seeing them uniformly bound and exactly fitted into the shelves, the sense that the various collections and series were complete and neatly indexed with plenty of ruled red lines-all this before he enjoyed the act of using them. It would follow from this apprecia- tion of his library as a catalogued, ticketed " piece," displayed to the best advantage in glazed cupboards that he would particularly shrink from the idea of its being disarranged and broken up after his death. The only certain safeguard would be to leave it, with careful restrictions as to its use, to some public institution. A uni- versity would obviously be the most fitting place for it, and of universities his natural incUnation would be for Cambridge. He might present it I"! Samuel Pepys 259 to the University Library, but a college was more to his mind. If it came to a choice of colleges, Trinity was the most important, but then his own private connexion was with Magdalene. On the whole, it seemed indicated by a process of elimination that Magdalene was the supremely appropriate resting-place for his library. Pepys, in his will, placed before his nephew and heir, John Jackson, this actual series of alternatives, indicating in each case his own preference, though without binding him necessarily to follow it. Jackson, however, was himself to keep it for his lifetime, to make a few specified additions, and to see that the catalogue was made finally complete. Wherever the library eventually went, it was to be placed in a separate room of its own, to be called "Bibliotheca Pepysiana," and no other books were to be added to it. If the choice fell on Magdalene, it was to be housed in the new building then in course of construction. This building, which was to form a second court at the back of the old college, had been planned Ill \\ 26o k ' Samuel Pepys and designed many years earlier, but its erection had been delayed. It was begun in 1677. Pepys not only contributed ^60 towards the cost, but also lent the college a sum of money for the same purpose. Here it was that, twenty-one years after Pepys' death, his library was finally deposited beyond all risk of future disturbance. Pepys accordingly set to work to bring his col- lection into the neatest possible shape for its assured perpetuity. He managed that it should exactly fill twelve handsome presses of unpolished red oak. In these presses the books were arranged with extreme neatness, most of the shelves containing a double rank of volumes, folios at the back, small octavos and duodecimos in front. They still stand in their places exactly as Pepys left them. An arrangement according to subject would have resulted in a displeasingly irregular appearance, so they are ranked solely by their stature; in one case, where certain members of a series happened to be shorter than the rest, they are actually propped upon small Safnuel Pepys 261 wooden supports, gilded to imitate the backs of the volumes, in order to bring them up to the exact level. The volumes are numbered conse- cutively on the fly-leaves, from i to 3,000, most of them showing, by various erased figures, that they had often been re-arranged before being established in their final positions. Nearly all are bound in dark brown calf, the backs tooled and gilded and the sides stamped with Pepys' arms. Each volume contains two bookplates. The first, pasted on the back of the title-page, bears an engraving of Pepys' portrait by Kneller, with the inscription '' Sam. Pepys. Car. et. Jac. Angl. Regib. A Secretis Admiraliae," and the motto (from Cicero's ^omnium Sciponis) " Mens cujusque is est quisque." The second, which is inserted on the last page of each volume, has the initials " S. P.," intertwined with two anchors and cables, and a ribbon bearing the same Ciceronian motto. Of the three thousand volumes about two hundred and fifty are manuscripts. A few of these latter are mediaeval books on vellum ; among i ..1 f I 1 1 |i 262 Samuel Pepys them are a Bible or two, a curious fifteenth-century Kalendar, and an illuminated copy of the Apoca- lypse with a French metrical commentary. There is also a collection of sermons bearing the name of Wyclif, and some volumes of old poetry. But Pepys was not greatly interested in the Middle Ages, and most of his manuscripts belong to his own day. He collected by various means, not all of which would perhaps have borne investiga- tion, over a hundred volumes of naval papers. Many of these represent material which he had had copied from the originals with a view to his history of the navy ; but Pepys' conscience was not very strict in the matter of annexing borrowed books, and an important collection of State papers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, lent him by Evelyn, found a permanent place in his library, in spite of requests from their owner for their return. It is impossible to say how Pepys became possessed of one of the most curious of his books — the original list of the provisions carried by the Spanish Armada of 1588, bound Samuel Pepys 263 in vellum . boards and pierced with a hole by which to hang it up. Among the collection of musical manuscripts is a relic of his suspected Italian assistant — " Songs and other Compositions, Light, Grave, and Sacred, for a single voice adjusted to the particular compass of mine ; with a thorough base on y« ghitare, by Cesare Morelli." One of the best known curiosities of the library is a copy of Henry VIII's letters to Anne Boleyn, from the originals in the Vatican ; an- other is a little pocket-book with an almanac and a chart of the French and Spanish coast, used by Sir Francis Drake, and bearing his autograph. Pepys collected some fine early-printed books, among which Caxton, Wynkyn de Worde and Pynson are well represented. It is notable that though he was by no means an antiquarian himself, he knew how to make good use of the judgment of his antiquarian friends. He did not amass books unintelligently, even when they were of a kind of which he had no special knowledge. He had a clear idea of the scope he wished for hi* ,h 1 T 264 Samuel Pepys library, and if certain sections of it lay beyond his own experience, he understood where to go for help. When it was a question of matters fami- liar to him, connected with his own time and tastes, his eye for what would be of permanent interest was remarkably just, with the result that his library is very rich in pamphlets and " news- letters " of great documentary value. He seems to have clearly foreseen the interest to posterity of the ephemeral and the frivolous. It is not as though he collected at random whatever chanced to amuse him. He had a strict sense of the dignity of his book-shelves ; notes and erasures in his manuscript catalogue show that nothing was admitted without careful considera- tion of its claims. Later and fuller editions were substituted for earlier, not always to the satis- faction of the modern student, — and here, indeed, Pepys' foresight was at fault. But his volumes of Penny GodlinesseSy Penny Merriments, Old Novels, Vulgar ia, and the like, just the kind of things, one might suppose, that he would have Samuel Pepys 265 rejected as. unworthy, were evidently preserved as being representative of their day. So, too, with his famous collection of broadside ballads, considerably the largest in existence. These are bound up in five folio volumes, the title-page of the first bearing the following note in Pepys' writing : " Begun by Mr. Selden : Improved by Y* addition of many Pieces elder thereto in Time, and the whole continued down to the year 1700, when the Form till then peculiar thereto, viz., of the Black Letter, with Picturs, seems (for cheapness sake) wholly laid aside, for that of the White Letter, without Pictures." The ballads, some eighteen hundred in number, are classified under different headings, " Devotion and Morality," " Love, pleasant," " Love, unfor- tunate," " Humorous frolics and mirth," and so forth. They form a picture of life, of popular amusements and misfortunes, as well as of current street-talk on public events, which has inexhaust- ible value for political or social history. Litera- ture, strictly so called, had no very prominent I ii i. f L^ 266 Sj. I Samuel Pepys place in Pepys' scheme. He included authors of acknowledged eminence, ancient as well as modern, but he did not go much beyond the best known names. Plays, indeed, he collected in large num- bers, as also books of travel and science, French, Italian and Spanish, besides English. Topo- graphical works are well represented, especially those dealing with Italy, a country in which he took a deep interest all his life, though he never saw it. In addition to the twelve presses, the library also contains a large writing-table belonging to Pepys, fitted with special shelves at either end for his collection of scrap-books. In these are arranged, with annotations in his own hand, and a free use of ornamental red ink, a splendid series of engravings— portraits, maps, views of London, street-scenes and processions. Biblical and alle- gorical pictures. Three volumes are devoted to a curious collection of engraved specimens of ' caligraphy, by different English and foreign writing-masters. Prefixed to these, as examples Samuel Pepys 267 of handwriting, are some fragments of fine mediaeval manuscripts, with explanatory com- ments contributed by Dr. Wanley, the best authority of his time on such matters. Two of these fragments bear a note to the effect that they were presented to Pepys by his honoured friends, the Dean and Chapter of Durham ; they were neatly cut from the pages of two books still to be seen in the Chapter Library at Durham — a remarkable instance of the kind of use considered appropriate to ancient manu- scripts. The collection of portraits, many of which are of great rarity (though their value is impaired by the fact that all are shorn of their margins), include the Kings and Queens of Eng- land, from William I to Anne, and a large number of celebrities of the day, male and female. The maps and panoramas of London, both before and after the Fire, form another very valuable series, in which the transformation of the city can be seen at different stages. But, after all, the most interesting and the most I V 268 i Samuel Pepys valuable book in the library is not any of these — ^it is the manuscript of the Diary. When Pepys left it off in 1669, the six volumes, duly bound, numbered, and adorned with their book- plates, were allotted their place in Ms shelves, and, for all the evidence there is to the contrary, were never thought of again. There are no allusions to them in his correspondence ; he appar- ently left his heir no directions with regard to them. It is hardly conceivable that he can have looked forward with equanimity to their publica- tion; yet he cannot have imagined either that his shorthand protected them from all chance of being read, or that, supposing the key to be dis- covered, the volumes would have no interest for the world at large. Any one who happened to be acquainted with the system of shorthand which he had used would have it in his power to lay certain years in the life of a high public official absolutely bare before the inquisitive gaze of his countrymen. Enough of the myriad indiscre- tions of the record must surely have lingered in Samuel PePys 269 Pepys' mind to make this an uncomfortable reflection. He might have destroyed his Diary altogether, he might have kept merely a cautious selection from it, he might have taken elaborate precautions against its seeing the light ; the one impossible course was to do nothing in the matter at all. If we suppose him to have been so much pleased with the notion of posthumous fame as to have entirely forgotten his usual circumspection, why did he not take steps to preclude the possible chance that his manuscript might 'escape attention altogether ? As it turned out, the fruition of his fame was, as we know, delayed for over a century. In his minute care for the future of his books it is impossible to imagine that the question of the Diary was not fully considered in all its bearings. Perhaps it was natural that he should go on considering it, and finally die before he had decided on the answer. Pepys' younger nephew, John Jackson, though not definitely adopted as his heir until 1703, was for years a constant companion and assistant to r If 1 i 270 Samuel Pepys his uncle in retirement. We hear nothing of Paulina Jackson's eldest son, Samuel, who was eventually passed over as Pepys' heir in view of his having married against his uncle's pleasure. John was more submissive, and Pepys treated him very handsomely. He sent him to Magdalene, and afterwards helped him to an extended tour abroad, in Italy and Spain. Pepys, who felt that his own travelling days were over, took a great interest in the young man's itinerary, and gave him a free hand in purchasing books and prints for his collection. At Rdme, among various other commissions, Jackson was particularly directed to verify in the Vatican Library Pepys' copy of Henry VHI's letters. He was to visit various personages to whom his uncle obtained introduc- tions for him, and generally to acquire a stock of experience and culture which should be a life- long advantage for himself, and a reflected pleasure for his benefactor. When he arrived home again, bringing his spoils with him, it can be imagined with what delight Pepys set to work on the Samuel Pepys 271 arrangement and classification of his " Roman marketings." The library was now approaching its final form, and Jackson was employed in helping to compile and copy fair the elaborate catalogue, with its complicated systems of subject-index and cross-reference. The services of Paul Lor- rain, the translator, who had placed himself under Pepys' patronage, were also engaged for like secretarial work. In the original catalogue, which is preserved at Magdalene with the rest of the books, are inserted two charming views of the room in which Pepys stored his collection. They show a high wainscoted apartment with two windows at one end; the famous presses are ranged round the walls, with a line of por- traits above them. The room has the clear and unencumbered distinction of its period, and must have formed a most attractive setting for the Saturday evening receptions, of which it was, no doubt, the scene. We can form a very good idea of Pepys' per- sonal appearance in his later years from the \ 'I- ^1 I A i i 272 Samuel Pepys excellent portrait of him, dated 1687, which now hangs in the official residence of the First Lord of the Admiralty. This portrait— it is not known who painted it — shows a plump fresh countenance, with full lips and a twinkle of inquisitive humour in the wide-set eyes, a most comfortable and engaging expression. Pepys had evidently the kind of face which improves with age. The por- trait painted by John Hales in 1666 (now in the National Portrait Gallery) of which we heard in the Diary, is equally expressive, but far less genial ; and the same may be said of that by Lely (now hanging in the Hall at Magdalene), which must have been painted soon after the Diary was brought to a close. There also exist several portraits of. him by Kneller ; one of these, a rather grim like- ness, is in the Pepysian Library ; one is in the possession of the Royal Society ; another is in private hands. The portrait mentioned in the Diary as having been painted by Savill in January, 1662, is probably the one, formerly attributed to Kneller, belonging to Mrs. Frederick Pepys I. 1 ■i J I ^1 % Byp cnnissioii Samuel Pepys. 2g|( ■ From the painting by Sir Peter Lely (Magdalene Cllege. Can.hridge) \ 4 Samuel Pepys 273 Cockerell. Verrio's picture at Christ's Hospital of James II receiving the mathematical scholars contains a figure of Pepys, who had been very useful in obtaining for the School the patronage both of Charles and of James. An ivory carving of Pepys' profile, dated 1683, is preserved in a collection of relics belonging to one of his col- lateral descendants. Pepys' serene and busy retirement was unhap- pily disturbed in 1700 by a recrudescence of his old malady, the stone, for which he had under- gone an operation more than forty years before. He was now bed-ridden for several months, and a fresh operation was necessary. On his recovery it was judged prudent that he should leave London for the fresh air of Clapham, where his old friend Hewer, who had long been his companion at York Buildings, now possessed a house. Here he estab- lished himself for the remainder of his life. His infirmities gradually increased, but he kept up to the end his correspondence with his friends. In 1 701 he commissioned Kneller to paint a 18 274 Samuel Pepys portrait of John Wallis, Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford, to be presented to the University, for which he received a grandiloquent letter of thanks in Latin. The end came on May 26, 1703, after a long and painful illness. " His stamina in general," wrote Jackson two days later to Evelyn, " were marvel- lously strong, and not only supported him, under the most exquisite pains, weeks beyond all expec- tations ; but in the conclusion, contended for nearly forty hours (unassisted by any nourish- ment) with the very agonies of death, some few minutes excepted, before his expiring, which were very calm." During his illness Pepys received the ministrations of Dr. George Hickes, the non- juring Dean of Worcester, who declared that he " never attended any sick or dying person that dyed with so much Christian greatnesse of mind, or a more lively sense of immortality, or so much fortitude and patience." Dr. Hickes was with him at the last. The body was brought to London, and was buried on June 5 in St. Olave's Smmie/ Pepys ^IS Church, Hart Street, in the vault where Mrs. Pepys had been laid thirty-four years be- fore. Rings and mourning were presented to a large number of relations and friends. Evelyn was invited to be one of the pall-bearers, but he was prevented by illness from attending the funeral. His entry in his diary on the day of his friend's death must be quoted : — " This day died Mr. Sam Pepys, a very worthy, industrious, and curious person, none in England exceeding him in knowledge of the navy, in which he had passed thro' all the most considerable offices, Clerk of the Acts and Secretary of the Admiralty, all which he performed with great integrity. When K. James H went out of England he laid down his office, and would serve no more, but withdrawing himselfe from all public aflfaires, he liv'd at Clapham with his partner Mr. Hewer, formerly his clerk, in a very noble and sweet e place, where he enjoyed the fruits of his labours in greate prosperity. He was universally be- "M 276 Samuel Pepys lov'd, hospitable, generous, learned in many things, skill'd in music, a very greate cherisher of learned men of whom he had the conversa- tion. >j This is finely and justly said, though the stately compliments take no account of the insati- ably desirous and inquisitive spirit, vibrating to all the appeals of life, and only anxious to let no moment pass without its separate thrill — ^the spirit which for us is Pepys. We are left to speculate, in the phrase used by Walter Pater of a very different man, how he " looked forward now into the vague land, and experienced the last curiosity." Pepys' will was dated August 2, 1701, with two codicils dated May 12 and 13, 1703. In 1 70 1 he still regarded his sister's eldest son, Samuel Jackson, as his heir, and the bulk of his property, including his house and grounds at Brampton, were accordingly in the original will assigned to this nephew. But in the first codicil this bequest was changed for an annuity of ^^40 Samuel Pepys 277 only, in view of the fact that Samuel Jackson " has thought fit to dispose of himselfe in mar- riage against my positive advice and Injunctions and to his own irreparable prejudice and dis- honour." We do not know the details of this unfortunate occurrence, the result of which was to instal the younger brother John as chief heir in his place. To Hewer, who was made sole executor, was left a sum of ;^S00, " as a very small instance of my respect and most sensible esteem of his more than filial affection and tender- ness expressed towards me through all the occur- rences of my life for forty years past unto this day." Small bequests were also made to various servants. But in spite of his life-long prudence, Pepys had not very much money to dispose of, for a sum of no less than ^^28,007 is, iji,, was owing to him from the Crown, which after the Revolution there was small chance of his ever receiving. This sum probably represented not only arrears of salary, but large amounts advanced to Charles II and James II, which their successors 1 1 I ^1 %.. m 278 Samuel Pepys did not feel called upon to pay. Pepys made bequests to several friends contingent on this debt being paid, but though vouchers for the full amount were in his possession they were never redeemed. Pepys also left careful directions in writing with regard to the disposal ol his library. Jackson was in the first place to review the whole collection, to see that nothing was missing, and to complete any series that might be still in course of publication. The books were then to be re-numbered through- out, and an additional press provided if neces- sary. He was to decide where he would finally leave it atter his death by the help of the process of exclusion already described. If either Trinity or Magdalene was finally selected, Pepys provided that the two colleges should have " a reciprocal check upon one another," the college in possession of the library to be subject to an annual visita- tion from the other, and to forfeit the whole collection if it appeared that his directions for its safe keeping were being disregarded. Samuel Pepys 279 John Jackson afterwards married a certain Anne Edgeley, and from their eldest daughter Frances, who married John Cockerell, the present family of Pepys Cockerell are descended. Jack- son himself died in 1724, in which year the Pepysian Library was deposited at Magdalene. A certain number of Pepys' papers had for some reason never found a place in the collection, and were consequently dispersed. Some fifty volumes of them form part of the Rawlinson collection in the Bodleian Library, and others are in private hands. The twelve presses were duly set up in the new building at Magdalene, in a room facing the court. No doubt it was from the first appreci- ated as a valuable ornament to the college, but Pepys had been so particular that no books should be allowed for any purpose to be removed from the room except by the Master (and by him never more than ten at a time) that it could be put to no great practical use. It was carefully looked after, however, even though there is no ■ ^h'kJI I -. . ]. fci l lll il i I p 280 Samuel Pepys record to show that Trinity ever paid it the directed visits of inspection. Magdalene can thus claim that Trinity has in any case forfeited its reversionary rights, though it is to be hoped and believed that no opportunity is given for questioning the vigilance with which the library is protected. In 1835 it was moved from its original resting-place to a ground-floor room in the old court, which had till then formed part of the Master's Lodge. The present Lodge, a detached building at a little distance from the college, was erected in that year, and in 1847 the Pepysian Library was, with the consent of Trinity, transferred thither. In 1853 it was restored to the building in which it had first been housed, but was placed in a room at the back, looking on to the Fellows' Garden, where it has since remained. But meanwhile a very different interest had been given to the collection from that which it had possessed in the eighteenth century. It had then been merely the collection of a distin- Samuel PePys 281 guished public official, remembered for his valu- able services to tTie navy and for his enlightened patronage of science and letters. Curiously enough, the six manuscript volumes which were to change all this attracted, as early as 1728, the attention of a visitor who might have been able, if he had had time and opportunity, to decipher them. This was a certain Peter Leices- ter, who in examining the library came upon the unread Diary, and but for the fear of being troublesome to the librarian would have set to work there and then to discover the key to the shorthand. He described the episode in a letter to John Byrom, the poet, who was an expert in stenography, but nothing more came of it at the time. It is not for these pages, at any rate, to suggest that the librarian was to blame, but the result of his impatience was to defer for nearly a hundred years the resuscitation of the Diary. No one, apparently, took the trouble to examine the manuscript any further until 1819. Evelyn's Diary had then just been published for the first k 282 Samuel Pepys time, and it occurred to the Master of Magdalene, the Hon. and Rev. George Neville, that the volumes lettered " Journal " in the Pepysian Library might possibly conceal memoirs of no less interest. He did not know the system of shorthand used by Pepys, nor did he know that there was another volume in the library which would have readily given the key — Charles H's account of his famous escape, which Pepys had taken down in shorthand and afterwards copied out in full ; but he showed the Diary to his rela- tive Lord Grenville, who deciphered a few pages and explained the method. John Smith, an un- dergraduate of St. John's, was entrusted with the extremely laborious task of transcribing the whole Diary. He accomplished it after three years of incessant work, and in 1825 a selection (gradually enlarged in later editions) was pub- lished under the superintendence of the third Lord Braybrooke.^ At once the distinguished ^ A fresh transcription was made by the Rev. Mynors Bright for the edition published by him in 1875-9. Sa7nuel Pepys 283 public official sprang into a new fame, and from having been a dignified but in no way peculiarly interesting personage, rapidly receding, more- over, into the mists of time, became, of all the figures of the past, perhaps the most clearly to be seen and intimately to be known, the man who has most fully and completely shown us the extraordinary jumble of desires and anxieties, of impulses mean and generous, of self-conflicting ambitions, of powers so unbounded and so Hmited, the sum of which is human nature. Pepys' fame has steadily grown since then. To close this story, mention should be made of the monument which after long years was erected to him in the church where he was buried. It is curious that nothing was done at the time of his death to record the fact that Pepys, as well as his wife, lay in St. Olave's Church, beneath the stones of the chancel. In 1883, however, a memorial medallion, designed by Sir Arthur Blomfield and paid for by a public subscription, was fixed in the south aisle, where in Pepys' day \ ) 284 Samuel Pepys was a gallery containing the official pew of the Navy Board. His wife's bust looks across from the opposite side of the chancel, where he him- self placed it. ) THE END. li Butler and Tanngr, Tfu iitlwoed Printing IVtrks, Promt, nnd L9ndM* j^-n^d \ jH COTTTT^^^^^ 942.06 i tjL P39839 B ^^^■nitDOHOX r'^O OOOP^ JUL m? t^