Samuel Pepys
His Diary, and the world he lived in
by Dr Judson Sykes Bury (1852-1944)
Published in the Manchester Medical School Gazette, Vol. XIV, May 1933.
From our history books we may get an adequate grip of the chief events of any particular period, but it is into contemporary letters and diaries that we must look for observations and anecdotes bearing on the manners and customs of the time, and on the character and actions of those then living.
In the reading of such documents we feel the charm of becoming intimate with long-past generations; the people described move and act like real human beings, not, as in so many history books, mere shadowy forms which flit across the page.
Charles the Second's reign, during which Pepys' Diary was written, is full of striking events. The century is filled with the strife of King and Parliament. Morality was at a low ebb, and Charles was as profligate as his court; yet he was probably the most astute politician of his reign. It is not surprising, as Macaulay Trevelyan remarks, that when 'debauchery was loyalty, gravity rebellion' there were many loyal courtiers and few grave. In Pepys' Diary we read: 'That the night the Dutch burned our ships the King did sup with my Lady Castlemaine at the Duchess of Monmouth's, and they were all mad in hunting of a poor moth.'
In this century the mortality from wars and epidemic diseases was as great as in the Middle Ages. London, a city of insanitary slums, had a population of less than half a million, roughly one-tenth of that of the present time, and not much more than the present population of Leeds.
Pepys was born in 1632 -- that is, towards the middle of the reign of Charles I, and he died in 1703, the first year of Queen Anne's reign, and the year before the battle of Blenheim.
When Pepys' library of 3,000 volumes was presented to Magdalene College, Cambridge, by his nephew, John Jackson, in 1724, there were, among many other treasures, six small volumes of closely written manuscript in shorthand -- upwards of 3,000 pages in all -- and it is somewhat remarkable that this (his Diary) was not deciphered until the nineteenth century. In the original edition of 1825 scarcely half of the manuscript was printed. The last edition, published in 1899 by Henry Wheatley,* is more complete; it contains the whole of the Diary, with the exception of a few objectionable passages.
The Diary was written not in a private code of Pepys' own contriving, but in Shelton's system of shorthand; one of the several then in vogue. The signs and symbols he used were often difficult to interpret, and in recording the more intimate details of some of his adventures Pepys employed a strange jargon of French, Latin, Greek and Spanish, and, in addition, sometimes inserted dummy letters so as to make the text still more difficult to decipher. The pages were handed to John Smith, an undergraduate of St. John's College, whose labours were completed after working for nearly three years -- usually for 12 to 14 hours a day. The Diary covers the first nine-and-a-half years of Charles the Second's reign, and throws a flood of light upon the history and manners of the middle of the seventeenth century. With the space at my disposal I will limit myself to some of the medical references and to passages which illustrate the psychology of the author, whose thoughts and actions indicate peculiarities of character probably unparalleled in the annals of mankind.
In his picturesque narrative he has included more than a little of medical interest, though much less than he tells us of the court and the stage, and of the frolics of the ladies of his day. Sweet Barbara, later Lady Castlemaine, pretty witty Nell, Deb Willet, and the rest, had an interest for the susceptible Pepys far beyond that excited by anything connected with the medical profession.
Of his own physical infirmities the chief was stone in the bladder, for which he was cut by Thomas Hollier two years before he began the Diary. The operation was done in a room at Mrs. Turner's, in Salisbury Court. The anniversary was ever afterwards celebrated with a dinner, to which Mrs Turner was always invited. Although the stone was successfully removed, Pepys often subsequently suffered from certain symptoms, in part due to the operation, and in part to the formation of fresh stones in the kidney. Evelyn, the contemporary diarist, says that the stone was as large as a tennis ball, a pathological relic which Pepys used to carry about in his pocket and display to his friends. Colonel Macarthur* suggests that if Pepys were alive to-day his ingenuity would be sorely taxed in stowing away other evidences of surgical aggression; his appendix in one pocket, his tonsils in another, a handful of teeth mixed up with his loose money.
Perhaps someday the precious stone may be found, as Pepys treasured it for many years, and in 1664 he paid 24s for a case in which to keep it.
To ward off attacks of pain to which he was subject he seems to have had faith in the utility of a hare's foot; but 'Mr Batten showed me my mistake, that my hare's foot hath not the joint to it, and assures me he never had his collique since he carried it about him; and it is a strange thing how fancy works, for I no sooner handled his jointed foot but I become very well and so continue.' After such a proof of its efficacy Pepys got rid of the one he had carried and sent to buy a hare that he might obtain so valuable a remedy in its proper form. Later, however, in celebrating the seventh anniversary of his operation, doubts entered his acute mind, for he writes: 'I am at a loss to know whether it be my hare's foot which is my preservation, or whether it be my taking of a pill of turpentine every morning.'
When Pepys died at the age of 70 the post-mortem examination revealed a nest of seven stones in his left kidney -- an adequate explanation of the pain from which he so frequently suffered.
The second great trial in his life was the trouble he had with his eyesight; a trouble which, gradually increasing, led him to end his Diary at the early age of 36 -- a great loss to history. At first he attributed his defective vision to cold and a variety of causes; for example, in 1662 he writes: 'I was much troubled in my eyes by reason of the healths I have this day been forced to drink.' And four years later, he says: 'My right eye sore and full of humour, I think by my late change of my brewer and having of 8s. beer.'
But after a time he began to suspect the true cause, and consulted the celebrated Mr. Cocker (whose memory we still commemorate when we say 'according to Cocker'). Cocker recommended green spectacles, but they were not very helpful. Of the subsequent numerous references to his eyesight I can only quote a few. On July 13, 1668, he writes: 'This morning I was let blood, about 14 oz., toward curing my eyes.' A month later he was mightily pleased with a tube-spectacles of paper, but the improvement did not last long. From his thirty-sixth birthday onwards the complaints about his eyes become more frequent, and at times they were so painful that he was obliged to curtail even his play-going. In the same year the 'Diary' ends with sorrowful words: He resolves to have it kept by his people in longhand, and adds 'I must, therefore, be contented to set down no more than is fit for them and all the world to know; of if there be anything, which cannot be much, now my amours to Deb are past and my eyes hindering me in almost all other pleasures, I must endeavour to keep a margin in my book open, to add here and there a note in 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 all the discomforts that will accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me!'
His feelings bring to mind a verse of Shelley:
Out of the day and night a joy has taken flight,
Fresh spring, summer, and winter hoar,
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
No more -- oh, never more.
It is, however, satisfactory to know that Pepys' melancholy apprehension that he was going blind was not fulfilled, for 12 years after he had abandoned his Diary he took down, in shorthand, from the King's dictation, the story of his escape after the battle of Worcester. He also wrote the story out in long-hand. What an irony of fate, for here in a little volume in the Pepsian library was the key to the cypher of the diary which, if it been discovered by John Smith, would have saved him three years of labour.
Several years ago Sir D'Arcy Power* fully discussed the cause of Pepys disability, and concluded that it was due to hypermetropia and astigmatism. Now lenses to correct astigmatism were not contrived until well on in the nineteenth century, so that Pepys could not have been cured by glasses at that time. But it is tantalising to think that if anything had caused him to read through a slit while he was wearing his glasses he would have found his eye-strain removed. Then possibly his ingenuity would have led him to paste strips of black paper on each side of his glasses, and thus the Diary might have been continued, whilst, to quote D'Arcy Power, the paper he would certainly have read on the subject before the Royal society would have added still greater lustre to his name, and might have revolutionised the law of dioptrics.
Of his minor ailments one only calls for mention, namely, his liability to catarrhal affections. On one occasion he caught cold from having his hair cut, on another from leaving off his periwig, and even from sitting without his hat at dinner. Another entry in his Diary is: 'I have of late taken too much cold by washing my feet and going in a thin, silk waistcoat without any other coat over it and open-breasted.' Another alleged cause was 'the leaving of my waistcoat unbuttoned one morning,' another 'by sitting too long with my head bare, for Mercer (his attendant) to comb my hair and wash my ears.'
Of superstitious beliefs in certain remedies two are of some interest -- namely, that of pigeons and that of the King's touch.
There are curious folk-tales about the connection of the pigeon with death, based on the old belief that the dove was a messenger from the spirit world. Thus when a ship foundered in the olden times the spectators on shore used to see the souls of the newly drowned ascending to heaven in the shape of doves. An associated belief was that dying people cannot take leave of life if they are lying on a bed of pigeons' feathers. Presumably it is this association which led to the practice mentioned by Pepys of laying pigeons to the feet of anyone dangerously ill. Thus, in writing of the Queen's illness, he says: 'She was so ill as to be shaved and pigeons put to her feet and to have the extreme unction given her by the priests, who were so long about it that the doctors were angry.'
The superstition that scrofula could be cured by the touch of a King or Queen is a very old belief. One of the most successful operators was Charles II, who touched nearly 100,000 persons. His percentage of cures is not recorded. Pepys, who once saw the ceremony, considered it an ugly office. William III had the good sense to discontinue the practice, but Queen Anne resumed it, and among her other patients performed the royal operations upon a child who grew up at last into Samuel Johnson.
Of other medical references in the Diary one is of special interest owing to Pepys' quaint comment. It is a successful experiment of blood transfusion in dogs. This, he says, 'Did give occasion to many pretty wishes, as of the blood of a Quaker to be let into an Archbishop, and such like.' He adds 'that if the experiment takes it might be of mighty use to man's health, by the mending of bad blood by borrowing from a better body'; a prophecy fulfilled only in our own time.
Pepys also speculates regarding the cause of death by hanging in connection with the execution of one, Dillon, a member of an ancient Irish family, who, because of his high descent, enjoyed the privilege of being hanged by a silken rope instead of the hempen one allotted to common persons. But besides the honour, Pepys says that 'silk being soft and sleek, it do slip close and kills quickly, whereas a stiff halter do not come so close, and so the killing takes longer.'
Of the ravages of smallpox, so prevalent in that age, Pepys records outbreaks affecting various notabilities, but he has most to say of the tragic disfigurement of Frances Stewart, the original of the figure of Britannia on our coinage. This lady combined the beauties of a goddess with the intelligence of a child of ten. Seeing her one day 'with her hat cocked, and a red plume, with her sweet eye, little Roman nose, and excellent taille,' he thinks that kisser her would make him the happiest of men. There is no doubt that she attracted the errant fancy of the merry monarch, but the gossip at the time did her the grossest injustice. Distracted by the plots centred around her, the poor lady declared her willingness to marry any one of her own station who would free her from the Court and from the overtures of the King to induce her to join the harpies of his Seraglio. Her kinsman, the Duke of Lennox and Richmond, came to the rescue, and one stormy evening they slipped off from Whitehall to the famous Bear Inn, where a coach was waiting which carried them off to Kent. In this flight, declared Evelyn, she 'hath done as great an act of honour as was ever done by woman.'
In March of 1668, the year after her marriage, Pepys learns that the poor Duchess is 'mighty full of the smallpox,' which, he says sententiously, 'is the greatest instance of the uncertainty of beauty that could be in this age,' but he adds the practical reflection: 'she hath had the benefit of it to be first married.' One day later in the year he goes into the King's garden and steals some apples off the tree, and there walking with the Queen he sees the Duchess of Richmond, noble of person as ever, but her beauty sadly ravaged by the cruel disease.
The most extensive of Pepys' medical interests was concerned with the London Plague of 1665, and his description of it is one of the most valuable contemporary accounts extant. It was the last of a long series of epidemics which had flared up at intervals; the seventeenth century had already seen three great outbreaks. Previous to an outbreak of bubonic plague the disease usually appears in rats; it spreads from them to man through the fleas with which they are infested. It is curious that this was not recognised by medical writers of the day; dogs and cats were destroyed, but no attention was paid to rats. Truly, it may be said of the Restoration citizens that they entertained the devil -- the rat -- unawares.
Pepys' earliest notices of the epidemic are in April and May when he mentions the great fear and dread in the city, many houses being shut up and marked with the plague sign. One day in June, the hottest day he ever felt in his life, he visited Drury Lane, where he saw several houses with the dread red cross on the doors, and 'Lord have mercy upon us' writ up. So alarmed is he 'that he buys some roll tobacco to smell and chaw,' which removed his apprehension. The disease spread rapidly, shut-up houses and red crosses everywhere, always the creaking and rattling of the loaded dead-carts, the delirious cries of the suffering, and that awful cry of doom 'bring out your dead'; the church bells continually clanging, and, most distressing of all to Pepys, the bell of his own church, St. Olave, tolling and ringing so often, 'a sad noise,' he says. But the morning after writing this doleful note he cheers up and is off betimes in his new coloured silk suit and coat trimmed with gold buttons and gold broad lace round his hands, very rich and fine.
To Pepys' credit be it said that he remained either in town or in its neighbourhood during the whole time of the raging of the pestilence. On the 4th September he wrote a letter to Lady Carteret which reveals courage and tenacity. This letter does not appear in his Diary but in a volume of his correspondence in which there are 379 letters still preserved. In his letter he says: 'I have stayed in the city till above 6.,000 died of the plague in one week, till the streets were almost deserted and little noise heard day or night but tolling of bells, till whole families have been swept away, till my very physician, Dr. Burnet, died himself of the plague, till the nights are grown too short to conceal the burials of those that died the day before … lastly, till I could find neither meat nor drink safe, the butcheries being everywhere visited, my brewer's house being shut up, and my baker with his whole family dead of the plague.'
On the 20th of this September we read in his Diary: 'But Lord what a sad sight to see no boats upon the river, and grass grows all up and down White Hall, and nobody but poor wretches in the streets. In Westminster there is never a physician and but one apothecary left -- all being dead.'
One Sunday in December he attended Church to hear his fugitive rector's excuse for his flight -- 'a very poor and short excuse,' he says, 'and a bad sermon.'
In his great history of the plague, Bell* states that in the seven months when 100,000 persons died, thrice only did the Privy Council, sitting with the King, concern itself with the plague. In two of these three instances the concern shown was solely to secure from infection the place wherein the sovereign and the Court happened to be lodged. The Court removed to Salisbury in July, and Bell considers that this abandonment of the stricken city must ever remain a black stain on Charles' Government.
The situation was saved by the courage of Monck, Duke of Albemarle, who stayed to share the lot of the afflicted people. He was the sole representative in London of the Government. The Earl of Craven also played a man's part, and so did Archbishop Sheldon, the Rev. Thos. Vincent, Doctor Nathaniel Hodges, and many other self-denying men and women.
There were heroic deeds, but, alas! also much that was evil. In the streets quacks abounded, selling their noxious wares at extraordinarily dear rates, and making sad havoc both of purses and bodies. Many of the nurses are painted as monsters of iniquity, even by such a fair-minded and skilled doctor as Nathaniel Hodges. In his note-book he writes: 'These wretches out of greediness to plunder the dead would strangle their patients and charge it to the distemper in their throats.'
The recollection of Hodge's death in a debtors' prison, after his heroic conduct during the plague, is said to have brought tears to the eyes of Dr. Johnson.
One of the saddest stories of the great plague is that of Eyam, in Derbyshire, but brightened by the nobleness and steadfastness till death in a group of simple villagers, and by the heroism and inspiring example of the Rector, Wm. Mompesson, and his wife, Catherine. In the Diary I have found only one reference to the Peak. It is this: Lord Chesterfield to remove his wife from the attentions of the Duke of York packed her off to Bretby Hall, near the Peake, which is becoming a saying at Court, to send a man's wife to the Peake when she vexes him.
His Personal Characteristics
In forming an opinion of a man's character and behaviour we must know something of his heredity, that is, of what is born within him of the times in which he lived, and of the people around him who might have influenced him.
Samuel came of a good family, which had been connected for many generations with Cottenham, in Cambridgeshire, and can be traced back to the reign of Henry VI. The branch from which Samuel was descended had not much money, and his father came to London and became a tailor. Some of his enemies taunted him for his connection with tailoring and called him a parvenu, overlooking the evidence of his gentle ancestry, including the fact that the Earl of Sandwich, the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, and John Pepys, the tailor, owned the same grandfather. That Samuel was proud of his ancestry is shown by his book-plates on which is written 'Samuel Pepys, of Brampton, in Huntingdonshire, Esquire, Secretary of the Admiralty to his Majesty Charles II; descended from ye antient family of Pepys, of Cottenham, in Cambridgeshire.' The title Esquire was rare in his day, as indicated by the following entry in his Diary: A letter 'for me from Mr. Blackburne, who with his own hand superscribes it to S. P. Esq., of which God knows I was not a little proud.'
To the corrupt times in which he lived I have already alluded. There was much hard drinking and riotous living, but there was also much literary and scientific activity, and Samuel had many eminent contemporaries and friends. The personal characteristics resulting from his heredity and environment are faithfully recorded in the Diary.
If he were living now no psycho-analyst would be needed to unravel his complexes. The unravelling is in his Diary. He is his own psycho-analyst; he tells us the bold truth about himself with intimate detail and unflinching sincerity. His most trifling thoughts, his vanities, his numerous lapses from propriety are set down with a frankness and fullness that almost pass comprehension even when we know that the catalogue was never meant for publicity, and did, in fact, escape the knowledge of the world for more than 200 years.
Reading his frank confessions we have no difficulty in visualising his unending struggled, to stick to his business in such a beautiful garden as he found this life. On the one hand we see a vain egotistical being romping through life with the gusto of a schoolboy, eyes and ears open to observe everything whether good or bad, seeking every pleasure, loving frolics and pretty women, and driving away all care and sorrow by frequent visits to the theatre; during the nine-and-a-half years of the Diary he went to the theatre 351 times. A pretty face would seduce him from the service of his country. With a new coat on his back he would saunter down Whitehall exchanging smiles with beauty as it passed.
There was much of the child about him; witness this entry: 'But Lord, to see how much of my old childishness hangs upon me still, that I cannot forbear carrying my new watch in my hand in the coach and seeing what o'clock it is 100 times.
Pepys has been accused of being a money grabber, and of obtaining money by doubtful dealings, but we must not appraise his financial transactions by modern standards, and may remember that the Crown admittedly owed him £28,000 2s. and 11/4d., not a penny of which was ever paid. The original vouchers still remain an heirloom in the family.
But, on the other hand, we see that associated with pleasure seeking and childish curiosity there was industry and capacity and a great ability for administrative organisation. Pepys worked hard and did his best o equip himself for the duties of his various appointments. His story is one of a steady rise in life. To his clear capable brain was owing much of the greatness of England on the seas. He was loved and respected by some of the best and wisest men of his day.
He had a lively interest in music and literature, and considerable culture in both. He says 'Music is the thing of the world that I love most,' and writing of the wind music in the 'Virgin Martyr' he reaches the climax of devotion: 'It is so sweet that it did wrap up my soul so that is made me really sick, as I had previously been when in love with my wife, so that neither then nor all the evening was I able to think of anything, but remained all the night transported, so as I could not believe that ever any music hath that command over the soul of a man as this did upon me.'
This may not be elegant literature, but the words; how wonderfully expressive! I am sure there have been similar times in the lives of everyone of us -- times when our souls have been almost rent by some overpowering emotion, be it the effect of beautiful music, thrilling oratory, love, or any other piercing force.
Pepys was accustomed at all times and in all places to break into song, and often hummed the trills to himself. He was very fond of singing in the company of friends -- e.g., 'It being very fine moonshine my wife and Mercer come into the garden and we sang till 12 at night with mighty pleasure to ourselves and neighbours, by their casements open and so to supper and to bed.' He also played with a skill on several instruments -- the lute, the viol, the flageolet, the harpsichon. Thus, 'in a coach with two very pretty ladies, very fashionable and with black patches, who merry sang all the way, and I took out my flageolet and piped to them.'
Pepys studied the theory of music and took lessons in composition. He composed 'Gaze not on Swans,' but his grand achievement was the setting to music of the song beginning:
Beauty retire, thou doest my pitty move;
Believe my pitty, and then trust my love.
He was so proud of this that he had his portrait painted with the music in his hand, but 'I do almost break my neck looking over my shoulder to make the posture for Hales to work by.'
Pepys was a great reader of every variety of literature -- Chaucer was a particular favourite -- and a great collector of books, to which his library, at Magdalene College, containing 3,000 volumes, bears ample witness. The library also contains his fine collection of prints, which, with his models of ships, are to this day some of the most interesting of the treasures of the University. He had a passion for fine bindings and well-ordered shelves. To cover expenditure upon books Pepys had a system of vows. On one occasion he wrote: 'Whereas before my delight was in a multitude of books I am become a better husband and have left of buying.' But later he broke his vow, and promptly fined himself 5s. for the benefit of the poor box.
During the earlier years of the Diary Pepys was a regular attendant at Church, but as his official business increased he often assigned Sunday either to arrears of public business or to writing up his Diary. For doing this he often says: 'May God forgive me.' No less than 316 sermons are commented on in the Diary. Under the infliction of silly, dull, or bad sermons Pepys either read in some book, say Latin plays or the story of Tobit, or went to sleep or took pleasure in gazing at fine ladies. One preacher annoyed him with 'a great deal of false Greek.' A reader made him laugh by desiring of God that He would imprint his word on the thumbs of our right hands and on the great toes of our right feet.
'To Putney Church where I saw some pretty girls of the schools but I was sleepy and a little out of order at my hat falling down through a hole beneath the pulpit, which however after sermons by a stick and the help of the clerk I got up again and so by water to Deptford.'
'At St. Dunstan's Church and stood by a pretty modest maid whom I did labour to take by the hand, but she would not and at last I could perceive her to take pins out of her pocket to prick me if I should touch her again, which seeing I did forbear. In the afternoon to the French Church, where much pleased with the three sisters of the parson -- very handsome, especially in their noses, and sing prettily.'
Our hero was very fond of pretty Betty Mitchell, and one Sunday went to St. Margaret's in hopes of seeing Betty, and stayed for an hour in the crowd thinking she was there 'by the end of a nose,' he said; but at last he head turned towards him and to his great vexation it was only her mother.
On September 30th, 1666, he fails to find in Church 'one handsome face as if indeed there was a curse upon our parish.'
But these extracts must not give the impression that Pepys did not appreciate good preaching. He speaks of many sermons in terms of the highest praise; thus referring to a sermon preached at St. Olave's by Robert Frampton, he says: 'The best sermon for goodness and oratory that ever I heard in my life. The truth is he preaches the most like an apostle that ever I heard man, and it was much the best time that ever I spent in my life at Church.'
The system of vows, to which I have referred, was applied not only to books but to drink and theatres.
During the first two years of the Diary Pepys was too much addicted to the bottle. The habits of the age were all against him. For example, the Captain of the Naseby came on board quite fuddled, and told Pepys that the Admiral, Rear Admiral, and he had been drinking all day, thus justifying Prince Rupert's fiery protest: 'God damn me if they will turn out every man that will be drunk they must turn out all the Commanders in the fleete.'
On the day of the King's coronation Pepys wondered to see how the ladies did tipple, and, later, was concerned to see a sober man like his surgeon, Mr. Hollier, a little fuddled, and so did talk nothing but Latin and laugh, though he was not drunk to scandal.
On Sunday Pepys writes 'I drank so much wine at dinner and supper that I was even almost foxed and durst not read prayers for fear of being perceived by my servants in what case I was, so to bed.' Then he took a solemn oath to abstain; this he kept for a time, but soon began to waver, 'finding reason to fear that by my too sudden leaving off wine I do contract many evils upon myself:; but he persevered, and felt changed in all respects for the better. There were occasional backslidings, and he made exceptions which he regarded as justifiable. Thus he allowed himself a 'cup of good drink' during plague time, and held that hippocras (a mixture of wine, sugar, and spices) was no breach of his vow, it being to the best of his judgment only a mixed compound drink; 'if I am mistaken God forgive me, but I hope and do think I am not.: Sir W. Scott likened this piece of casuistry to that of Fielding's Newgate Chaplain, who preferred punch to wine because punch was a liquor nowhere spoken against in scripture.
Pepys often suffered remorse for breaking his vow against frequent attendance at the theatre, and tried to satisfy his conscience by ingenious sophistries, holding, for example, that his oath did not apply to the new Theatre Royal because at the time of swearing 'it was not then in being,' and also that his oath did not apply if he went to a theatre at a friend's expense. Sometimes at a play he held his cloak over his face for fear of being seen. Eventually Pepys became a moderate drinker and reformed in other ways, and I think that the story of his resolutions and oaths so often broken, so courageously renewed, is worthy rather of admiration than the contempt it has received in some quarters. At any rate the story is very human and nothing is concealed. I think that his career shows that he was something more than a garrulous gossip, a libertine, and a tap-room companion as some writers seem to have regarded him. We do not get rid of Pepys in that was any more than we get rid of Charles Lamb by saying that he led a frivolous life and drank too much gin and water, ignoring his charming essays and the beautiful heroism with which he watched over his imbecile father and half-mad sister, Mary.
It is the very frank revealing of misdemeanours that makes the Diary so remarkable. Pepys gets drunk, visits doubtful places, buys naughty books, and afterwards feel ashamed. Other people may do these things and suffer remorse but do not record them, whereas Pepys chronicles the whole affair, both the moral lapse and the remorse, on the pages of his daily journal.
Take this entry* on February 8th, 1886. It begins with blaming the madness of the House of Commons and the base proceeding of the House of Lords, and then, without the least transition, our diarist proceeds: 'To the Strand, to my bookseller's and there bought an idle roguish French book 'L'Escholle des Filles,' which I have bought in plan binding, because I resolve as son as I have read it, to burn it, so that it may not stand in my list of books to disgrace them if it should be found.' He took the precaution of reading it through first himself as 'not amiss,' he says, 'for a sober man to inform himself in the villany of the world.'
What an anomaly in human action! To buy a naughty book, to be ashamed of doing it, to take precaution to conceal the disgrace of his purchase, and yet to record both the doing and the shame with pen and ink.
The sudden transition in this entry from grave to gay is characteristic of other entries in the Diary. Thus, after a touching tribute to the great seaman, Sir Christopher Mings, with reflections upon the swift passing of human greatness, he concludes with this anti-climax: 'On my way home I called on a fisherman and bought three eeles, which cost me three shillings.'
These transitions have been regarded as peculiar to the author, but surely anyone keeping a diary would enter things in the same haphazard way. For example, a golfer might write in Pepysian language as follows: 'In the afternoon, to the Links, a splendid round, beat the Captain 3 and 2, having had 10 bogies and 3 birdies; afterwards to No. 19, where all very merry. Then home to dinner to a most excellent dish of tripe of my own directing covered with mustard, of which I made a very good meal. Later to my Literary Club, where a lecture on Evolution -- dull and very absurd, as if we could come from monkeys. But I had the pleasure of gazing at many pretty women, and what with that and sleeping did pass away the time. Then home in coach, where I took two night caps above the usual, and not troubling about solemn swearings and other matters to my great content and so to bed, to-morrow being washing-day.'
I mention washing day because Pepys often alludes to it, sometimes as a reason for a cold supper, sometimes as an excuse for not reading prayers -- thus 'all to bed without prayers, it being washing-day tomorrow.'
It has been a question whether Pepys had any sense of humour, but probably there is more involuntary humour in the Diary than in any other book. Witness the following entries:--
1. 'This day Captain Grove sent me a side of pork -- the oddest present that was ever made any man; the next I told my wife would be a pound of candles or some mutton, but the fellow did it in kindness.'
2. 'Had some red herring to breakfast, while my boot-heel was mending, by the same token the boy left the hold as big as it was before.'
3. Mrs. Pepys was ignorant and ill-educated, and Samuel took infinite pains to improve her mind, giving her lessons in arithmetic and reading geography to her after dinner, which she takes very prettily. On one occasion they had high words about her costume, but Samuel hit on the ingenious device of reading Boyles' Hydro-statics aloud and letting her talk till she was tired.
4. When the King was caught in the wet upon the river, Pepys remarked: 'Me thought it lessened my esteem of a King that he should not be able to command the rain.'
And what naive human touches in the following:--
1. 'Vexed at my wife's neglect in leaving of her scarfe and night dressings in the coach today though I confess she did give them to me to look after.'
2. 'To Sir Wm. Batten's to dinner, he having two servants married today; after dinner a collection for them and I did give 10s., though most of the rest did give more and did believe that I did so too.'
As I have previously indicated, Pepys, like many other great men, was susceptible to the charm of pretty women. When he landed at Gravesend he kissed a good, handsome wench because she was the first he had seen for a great while. Referring to Nell Gwynne, after her acting the part of Coelia, he says: 'I kissed her and so away pleased with the sight and especially kissing of Nell.'
To check this kissing tendency Pepys fined himself 12 pennies a kiss after the first, but meeting the lady with the Roman profile 'who indeed is a pretty lady I did adventure upon a couple and paid the fine.' He frequently laments the strange slavery that he stands in to beauty, so that he values nothing near it.
His judgment was discriminating. Thus, in the theatre, when a lady by a mischance spat backward upon his clothes, he was immediately consoled when he had observed that she was pretty. Referring to this episode, a French writer sarcastically remarks: 'He is perhaps the only man to whom the omnipotence of beauty has been revealed by expectoration.'* But at a Lord Mayor's dinner Pepys went away early, being weary with looking upon a company of ugly women.
When the Diary came to an end, three months after the author's 36th birthday, he still had 34 years before him, 20 of which were to be spent either in high office or in close association with naval affairs. No one in England exceeded him in knowledge of the Navy. The judgment of his contemporaries is shown by the honours they bestowed on him, Secretary to the Admiralty, President of the Royal Society, Baron of the Cinque Ports, Member of Parliament for both Harwich ad Sandwich, and Deputy Lieutenant for Huntingdonshire.
The revolution of 1688, owing to Pepys' intimate relations with James II, led to his final retirement at the age of 56. There we must leave him sitting down at last to an honoured old age, among his books, prints, and music, and corresponding with some of the most learned and distinguished men of the day; with Sir Hans Sloane, President of the Royal College of Physicians, John Dryden, the poet, Sir Geoffrey Kneller, the painter, Henry Purcell, the greatest musical genius of English birth, and with his faithful friend and fellow diarist, John Evelyn. He corresponded also with Sir Isaac Newton on the doctrine of chances, and with Lord Reay and other about second sight in the Highlands.
What were his thoughts in those days? Having ever a romantic passion for old associates his memories would go back to Magdalene ale and his acquaintances at Cambridge, to how his father used to carry him to cakes and ale at the King's Head, Islington. He would recall his early struggles with poverty in the little room at his patron's, Lord Sandwich, where he and his wife used to dine on pease pudding and nothing else, and where during frosty weather they often had no coal in the house. He would be still mindful of his old walks with Mrs. Hely in the woods at Epsom, and sometimes he would fancy he heard again the air that once so much upset him and thrilled him at the recollection of his love for his wife.
Pepys died at Clapham, on May 26th, 1703, and was buried in a vault by the communion table in St. Olave's, just beneath the monument to the memory of his wife who died at the early age of 29.
Let us remember him with affection and charity, and not unduly condemn his moral lapses. Such daily struggles as he had between the flesh and the spirit have been graphically pictured by Plato in the comparison of a man to a charioteer driving a pair of winged horses, one of which is noble and of noble breed, the other ignoble and of ignoble breed, so that the driving of them gives a great deal of trouble to him. I think we may say that Pepys ultimately kept the ignoble one in check. At all events let us put in for him the kindly plea of Robert Burns:--
Then gently scan your brother man,
Still gentler sister woman;
Though they may gang a kenin wrang,
To step aside is human
One point must still be greatly dark,
The moving why they do it!
And just as lamely can ye mark
How far, perhaps they rue it!
*It is to Wheatley's writings that I am mainly indebted for information relating to the Diary.
*W. P. Macarthur, Irish Journal of Medical Science, May, 1982.
*D'Arcy Power, The Lancet, June, 1911.
*Walter G. Bell, 'The Great Plague in London in 1665,' 1924.
*See comments by R. L. Stevenson, 'Familiar Studies of Men and Books.'
*J. Lucas Dubreton, 'Samuel Pepys.' London: A. M. Philpot, Ltd.
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Editorial note: this text was transcribed in April 2003 by Richard M. Leveridge from Selected Addresses by Dr. Judson Sykes Bury, Preston: Privately Published, 1940.