VIII
SAMUEL PEPYS
In two books a fresh light has recently been thrown on the character andposition of Samuel Pepys. Mr. Mynors Bright has given us a newtranscription of the Diary, increasing it in bulk by near a third,correcting many errors, and completing our knowledge of the man in somecurious and important points. We can only regret that he has takenliberties with the author and the public. It is no part of the duties ofthe editor of an established classic to decide what may or may not be"tedious to the reader." The book is either an historical document ornot, and in condemning Lord Braybrooke Mr. Bright condemns himself. Asfor the time-honoured phrase, "unfit for publication," without beingcynical, we may regard it as the sign of a precaution more or lesscommercial; and we may think, without being sordid, that when wepurchase six huge and distressingly expensive volumes, we are entitledto be treated rather more like scholars and rather less like children.But Mr. Bright may rest assured: while we complain, we are stillgrateful. Mr. Wheatley, to divide our obligation, brings together,clearly and with no lost words, a body of illustrative material.[59]Sometimes we might ask a little more; never, I think, less. And as amatter of fact, a great part of Mr. Wheatley's volume might betransferred, by a good editor of Pepys, to the margin of the text, forit is precisely what the reader wants.
In the light of these two books, at least, we have now to read ourauthor. Between them they contain all we can expect to learn for, it maybe, many years. Now, if ever, we should be able to form some notion ofthat unparalleled figure in the annals of mankind--unparalleled forthree good reasons: first, because he was a man known to hiscontemporaries in a halo of almost historical pomp, and to his remotedescendants with an indecent familiarity, like a tap-room comrade;second, because he has outstripped all competitors in the art or virtueof a conscious honesty about oneself; and, third, because, being in manyways a very ordinary person, he has yet placed himself before the publiceye with such a fulness and such an intimacy of detail as might beenvied by a genius like Montaigne. Not then for his own sake only, butas a character in a unique position, endowed with a unique talent, andshedding a unique light upon the lives of the mass of mankind, he issurely worthy of prolonged and patient study.
THE DIARY
That there should be such a book as Pepys's Diary is incomparablystrange. Pepys, in a corrupt and idle period, played the man in publicemployments, toiling hard and keeping his honour bright. Much of thelittle good that is set down to James the Second comes by right toPepys; and if it were little for a king, it is much for a subordinate.To his clear, capable head was owing somewhat of the greatness ofEngland on the seas. In the exploits of Hawke, Rodney, or Nelson, thisdead Mr. Pepys of the Navy Office had some considerable share. He stoodwell by his business in the appalling plague of 1666. He was loved andrespected by some of the best and wisest men in England. He wasPresident of the Royal Society; and when he came to die, people said ofhis conduct in that solemn hour--thinking it needless to say more--thatit was answerable to the greatness of his life. Thus he walked indignity, guards of soldiers sometimes attending him in his walks,subalterns bowing before his periwig; and when he uttered his thoughtsthey were suitable to his state and services. On February 8, 1668, wefind him writing to Evelyn, his mind bitterly occupied with the lateDutch war, and some thoughts of the different story of the repulse ofthe Great Armada: "Sir, you will not wonder at the backwardness of mythanks for the present you made me, so many days since, of the Prospectof the Medway, while the Hollander rode master in it, when I have toldyou that the sight of it hath led me to such reflections on myparticular interest, by my employment, in the reproach due to thatmiscarriage, as have given me little less disquiet than he is fancied tohave who found his face in Michael Angelo's hell. The same should serveme also in excuse for my silence in celebrating your mastery shown inthe design and draught, did not indignation rather than courtship urgeme so far to commend them, as to wish the furniture of our House ofLords changed from the story of '88 to that of '67 (of Evelyn'sdesigning), till the pravity of this were reformed to the temper of thatage, wherein God Almighty found his blessings more operative than, Ifear, he doth in ours his judgments."
This is a letter honourable to the writer, where the meaning rather thanthe words is eloquent. Such was the account he gave of himself to hiscontemporaries; such thoughts he chose to utter, and in such language:giving himself out for a grave and patriotic public servant. We turn tothe same date in the Diary by which he is known, after two centuries, tohis descendants. The entry begins in the same key with the letter,blaming the "madness of the House of Commons" and "the base proceedings,just the epitome of all our public proceedings in this age, of the Houseof Lords"; and then, without the least transition, this is how ourdiarist proceeds: "To the Strand, to my bookseller's, and there boughtan idle, rogueish French book, 'L'escholle des Filles,' which I havebought 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 maynot stand in the list of books, nor among them, to disgrace them, if itshould be found." Even in our day, when responsibility is so much moreclearly apprehended, the man who wrote the letter would be notable; butwhat about the man, I do not say who bought a roguish book, but who wasashamed of doing so, yet did it, and recorded both the doing and theshame in the pages of his daily journal?
We all, whether we write or speak, must somewhat drape ourselves when weaddress our fellows; at a given moment we apprehend our character andacts by some particular side; we are merry with one, grave with another,as befits the nature and demands of the relation. Pepys's letter toEvelyn would have little in common with that other one to Mrs. Knippwhich he signed by the pseudonym of _Dapper Dicky_; yet each would besuitable to the character of his correspondent. There is no untruth inthis, for man, being a Protean animal, swiftly shares and changes withhis company and surroundings; and these changes are the better part ofhis education in the world. To strike a posture once for all, and tomarch through life like a drum-major, is to be highly disagreeable toothers and a fool for oneself into the bargain. To Evelyn and to Knippwe understand the double facing; but to whom was he posing in the Diary,and what, in the name of astonishment, was the nature of the pose? Hadhe suppressed all mention of the book, or had he bought it, gloried inthe act, and cheerfully recorded his glorification, in either case weshould have made him out. But no; he is full of precautions to concealthe "disgrace" of the purchase, and yet speeds to chronicle the wholeaffair in pen and ink. It is a sort of anomaly in human action, which wecan exactly parallel from another part of the Diary.
Mrs. Pepys had written a paper of her too just complaints against herhusband, and written it in plain and very pungent English. Pepys, in anagony lest the world should come to see it, brutally seizes and destroysthe tell-tale document; and then--you disbelieve your eyes--down goesthe whole story with unsparing truth and in the cruellest detail. Itseems he has no design but to appear respectable, and here he keeps aprivate book to prove he was not. You are at first faintly reminded ofsome of the vagaries of the morbid religious diarist; but at a moment'sthought the resemblance disappears. The design of Pepys is not at all toedify; it is not from repentance that he chronicles his peccadilloes,for he tells us when he does repent, and, to be just to him, there oftenfollows some improvement. Again, the sins of the religious diarist areof a very formal pattern, and are told with an elaborate whine. But inPepys you come upon good, substantive misdemeanours; beams in his eye ofwhich he alone remains unconscious; healthy outbreaks of the animalnature, and laughable subterfuges to himself that always command beliefand often engage the sympathies.
Pepys was a young man for his age, came slowly to himself in the world,sowed his wild oats late, took late to industry, and preserved tillnearly forty the headlong gusto of a boy. So, to come rightly at thespirit in which the Diary was written, we must recall a class ofsentiments which with most of us are over and done before the age oftwelve. In our tender years we still preserve a freshness of su
rprise atour prolonged existence; events make an impression out of all proportionto their consequence; we are unspeakably touched by our own pastadventures, and look forward to our future personality with sentimentalinterest. It was something of this, I think, that clung to Pepys.Although not sentimental in the abstract, he was sweetly sentimentalabout himself. His own past clung about his heart, an evergreen. He wasthe slave of an association. He could not pass by Islington, where hisfather used to carry him to cakes and ale, but he must light at the"King's Head" and eat and drink "for remembrance of the old housesake." He counted it good fortune to lie a night at Epsom to renew hisold walks, "where Mrs. Hely and I did use to walk and talk, with whom Ihad the first sentiments of love and pleasure in a woman's company,discourse and taking her by the hand, she being a pretty woman." He goesabout weighing up the _Assurance_, which lay near Woolwich under water,and cries in a parenthesis, "Poor ship, that I have been twice merry in,in Captain Holland's time"; and after revisiting the _Naseby_, nowchanged into the _Charles_, he confesses "it was a great pleasure tomyself to see the ship that I began my good fortune in." The stone thathe was cut for he preserved in a case; and to the Turners he kept alivesuch gratitude for their assistance, that for years, and after he hadbegun to mount himself into higher zones, he continued to have thatfamily to dinner on the anniversary of the operation. Not Hazlitt norRousseau had a more romantic passion for their past, although at timesthey might express it more romantically; and if Pepys shared with themthis childish fondness, did not Rousseau, who left behind him the"Confessions," or Hazlitt, who wrote the "Liber Amoris," and loaded hisessays with loving personal detail, share with Pepys in his unweariedegotism? For the two things go hand in hand; or, to be more exact, it isthe first that makes the second either possible or pleasing.
But, to be quite in sympathy with Pepys, we must return once more to theexperience of children. I can remember to have written, in the fly-leafof more than one book, the date and the place where I then was--if, forinstance, I was ill in bed or sitting in a certain garden; these werejottings for my future self; if I should chance on such a note in afteryears, I thought it would cause me a particular thrill to recognisemyself across the intervening distance. Indeed, I might come upon themnow, and not be moved one tittle--which shows that I have comparativelyfailed in life, and grown older than Samuel Pepys. For in the Diary wecan find more than one such note of perfect childish egotism; as whenhe explains that his candle is going out, "which makes me write thusslobberingly"; or as in this incredible particularity, "To my study,where I only wrote thus much of this day's passages to this *, and soout again"; or lastly, as here, with more of circumstance: "I staid uptill the bellman came by with his bell under my window, as _I waswriting of this very line_, and cried, 'Past one of the clock, and acold, frosty, windy morning.'" Such passages are not to bemisunderstood. The appeal to Samuel Pepys years hence is unmistakable.He desires that dear, though unknown, gentleman keenly to realise hispredecessor; to remember why a passage was uncleanly written; to recall(let us fancy, with a sigh) the tones of the bellman, the chill of theearly, windy morning, and the very line his own romantic self wasscribing at the moment. The man, you will perceive, was makingreminiscences--a sort of pleasure by ricochet, which comforts many indistress, and turns some others into sentimental libertines: and thewhole book, if you will but look at it in that way, is seen to be a workof art to Pepys's own address.
Here, then, we have the key to that remarkable attitude preserved by himthroughout his Diary, to that unflinching--I had almost said, thatunintelligent--sincerity which makes it a miracle among human books. Hewas not unconscious of his errors--far from it; he was often startledinto shame, often reformed, often made and broke his vows of change. Butwhether he did ill or well, he was still his own unequalled self; stillthat entrancing _ego_ of whom alone he cared to write; and still sure ofhis own affectionate indulgence, when the parts should be changed, andthe writer come to read what he had written. Whatever he did, or said,or thought, or suffered, it was still a trait of Pepys, a character ofhis career; and as, to himself, he was more interesting than Moses orthan Alexander, so all should be faithfully set down. I have called hisDiary a work of art. Now when the artist has found something, word ordeed, exactly proper to a favourite character in play or novel, he willneither suppress nor diminish it, though the remark be silly or the actmean. The hesitation of Hamlet, the credulity of Othello, the basenessof Emma Bovary, or the irregularities of Mr. Swiveller, caused neitherdisappointment nor disgust to their creators. And so with Pepys and hisadored protagonist: adored not blindly, but with trenchant insight andenduring, human toleration. I have gone over and over the greater partof the Diary; and the points where, to the most suspicious scrutiny, hehas seemed not perfectly sincere, are so few, so doubtful, and so petty,that I am ashamed to name them. It may be said that we all of us writesuch a diary in airy characters upon our brain; but I fear there is adistinction to be made; I fear that as we render to our consciousness anaccount of our daily fortunes and behaviour, we too often weave a tissueof romantic compliments and dull excuses; and even if Pepys were the assand coward that men call him, we must take rank as sillier and morecowardly than he. The bald truth about oneself, what we are all tootimid to admit when we are not too dull to see it, that was what he sawclearly and set down unsparingly.
It is improbable that the Diary can have been carried on in the samesingle spirit in which it was begun. Pepys was not such an ass, but hemust have perceived, as he went on, the extraordinary nature of the workhe was producing. He was a great reader, and he knew what other bookswere like. It must, at least, have crossed his mind that someone mightultimately decipher the manuscript, and he himself, with all his painsand pleasures, be resuscitated in some later day; and the thought,although discouraged, must have warmed his heart. He was not such anass, besides, but he must have been conscious of the deadly explosives,the gun-cotton and the giant powder, he was hoarding in his drawer. Letsome contemporary light upon the Journal, and Pepys was plunged forever in social and political disgrace. We can trace the growth of histerrors by two facts. In 1660, while the Diary was still in its youth,he tells about it, as a matter of course, to a lieutenant in the navy;but in 1669, when it was already near an end, he could have bitten histongue out, as the saying is, because he had let slip his secret to oneso grave and friendly as Sir William Coventry. And from two other factsI think we may infer that he had entertained, even if he had notacquiesced in, the thought of a far-distant publicity. The first is ofcapital importance: the Diary was not destroyed. The second--that hetook unusual precautions to confound the cipher in "rogueish"passages--proves, beyond question, that he was thinking of some otherreader besides himself. Perhaps while his friends were admiring the"greatness of his behaviour" at the approach of death, he may have had atwinkling hope of immortality. _Mens cujusque is est quisque_, said hischosen motto; and, as he had stamped his mind with every crook andfoible in the pages of the Diary, he might feel that what he left behindhim was indeed himself. There is perhaps no other instance so remarkableof the desire of man for publicity and an enduring name. The greatnessof his life was open, yet he longed to communicate its smallness also;and, while contemporaries bowed before him, he must buttonhole posteritywith the news that his periwig was once alive with nits. But thisthought, although I cannot doubt he had it, was neither his first norhis deepest; it did not colour one word that he wrote; and the Diary,for as long as he kept it, remained what it was when he began, a privatepleasure for himself. It was his bosom secret; it added a zest to allhis pleasures; he lived in and for it, and might well write these solemnwords, when he closed that confidant for ever: "And so I betake myselfto that course which is almost as much as to see myself go into thegrave; for which, and all the discomforts that will accompany my beingblind, the good God prepare me."
A LIBERAL GENIUS
Pepys spent part of a certain winter Sunday, when he had taken physic,composing "a song in praise of a liberal genius (such
as I take my ownto be) to all studies and pleasures." The song was unsuccessful, but theDiary is, in a sense, the very song that he was seeking; and hisportrait by Hales, so admirably reproduced in Mynors Bright's edition,is a confirmation of the Diary. Hales, it would appear, had known hisbusiness; and though he put his sitter to a deal of trouble, almostbreaking his neck "to have the portrait full of shadows," and drapinghim in an Indian gown hired expressly for the purpose, he waspreoccupied about no merely picturesque effects, but to portray theessence of the man. Whether we read the picture by the Diary or theDiary by the picture, we shall at least agree that Hales was among thenumber of those who can "surprise the manners in the face." Here we havea mouth pouting, moist with desires; eyes greedy, protuberant, and yetapt for weeping too; a nose great alike in character and dimensions; andaltogether a most fleshy, melting countenance. The face is attractive byits promise of reciprocity. I have used the word _greedy_, but thereader must not suppose that he can change it for that closely kindredone of _hungry_, for there is here no aspiration, no waiting for betterthings, but an animal joy in all that comes. It could never be the faceof an artist; it is the face of a _viveur_--kindly, pleased andpleasing, protected from excess and upheld in contentment by theshifting versatility of his desires. For a single desire is more rightlyto be called a lust; but there is health in a variety, where one maybalance and control another.
The whole world, town or country, was to Pepys a garden of Armida.Wherever he went, his steps were winged with the most eager expectation;whatever he did, it was done with the most lively pleasure. Aninsatiable curiosity in all the shows of the world and all the secretsof knowledge filled him brimful of the longing to travel, and supportedhim in the toils of study. Rome was the dream of his life; he was neverhappier than when he read or talked of the Eternal City. When he was inHolland he was "with child" to see any strange thing. Meeting somefriends and singing with them in a palace near the Hague, his pen failshim to express his passion of delight, "the more so because in a heavenof pleasure and in a strange country." He must go to see all famousexecutions. He must needs visit the body of a murdered man, defaced"with a broad wound," he says, "that makes my hand now shake to write ofit." He learned to dance, and was "like to make a dancer." He learned tosing, and walked about Gray's Inn Fields "humming to myself (which isnow my constant practice) the trillo." He learned to play the lute, theflute, the flageolet, and the theorbo, and it was not the fault of hisintention if he did not learn the harpsichord or the spinet. He learnedto compose songs, and burned to give forth "a scheme and theory of musicnot yet ever made in the world." When he heard "a fellow whistle like abird exceeding well," he promised to return another day and give anangel for a lesson in the art. Once, he writes, "I took the Bezan backwith me, and with a brave gale and tide reached up that night to theHope, taking great pleasure in learning the seamen's manner of singingwhen they sound the depths." If he found himself rusty in his Latingrammar, he must fall to it like a schoolboy. He was a member ofHarrington's Club till its dissolution, and of the Royal Society beforeit had received the name. Boyle's "Hydrostatics" was "of infinitedelight" to him, walking in Barnes Elms. We find him comparing Bibleconcordances, a captious judge of sermons, deep in Descartes andAristotle. We find him, in a single year, studying timber and themeasurement of timber; tar and oil, hemp, and the process of preparingcordage; mathematics and accounting; the hull and the rigging of shipsfrom a model; and "looking and informing himself of the (naval) storeswith"--hark to the fellow!--"great delight." His familiar spirit ofdelight was not the same with Shelley's; but how true it was to himthrough life! He is only copying something, and behold, he "takes greatpleasure to rule the lines, and have the capital words wrote with redink"; he has only had his coal-cellar emptied and cleaned, and behold,"it do please him exceedingly." A hog's harslett is "a piece of meat heloves." He cannot ride home in my Lord Sandwich's coach, but he mustexclaim, with breathless gusto, "his noble, rich coach." When he isbound for a supper-party, he anticipates a "glut of pleasure." When hehas a new watch, "to see my childishness," says he, "I could not forbearcarrying it in my hand and seeing what o'clock it was an hundred times."To go to Vauxhall, he says, and "to hear the nightingales and otherbirds, hear fiddles, and there a harp and here a Jew's trump, and herelaughing, and there fine people walking, is mighty divertising." And thenightingales, I take it, were particularly dear to him; and it was again"with great pleasure" that he paused to hear them as he walked toWoolwich, while the fog was rising and the April sun broke through.
He must always be doing something agreeable, and, by preference, twoagreeable things at once. In his house he had a box of carpenter'stools, two dogs, an eagle, a canary, and a blackbird that whistledtunes, lest, even in that full life, he should chance upon an emptymoment. If he had to wait for a dish of poached eggs, he must put in thetime by playing on the flageolet; if a sermon were dull, he must read inthe book of Tobit or divert his mind with sly advances on the nearestwomen. When he walked, it must be with a book in his pocket to beguilethe way in case the nightingales were silent; and even along the streetsof London, with so many pretty faces to be spied for and dignitaries tobe saluted, his trail was marked by little debts "for wine, pictures,etc.," the true headmark of a life intolerant of any joyless passage.He had a kind of idealism in pleasure; like the princess in the fairystory, he was conscious of a rose-leaf out of place. Dearly as he lovedto talk, he could not enjoy nor shine in a conversation when he thoughthimself unsuitably dressed. Dearly as he loved eating, he "knew not howto eat alone"; pleasure for him must heighten pleasure; and the eye andear must be flattered like the palate ere he avow himself content. Hehad no zest in a good dinner when it fell to be eaten "in a bad streetand in a periwig-maker's house"; and a collation was spoiled for him byindifferent music. His body was indefatigable, doing him yeoman'sservice in this breathless chase of pleasures. On April 11, 1662, hementions that he went to bed "weary, _which I seldom am_"; and alreadyover thirty, he would sit up all night cheerfully to see a comet. But itis never pleasure that exhausts the pleasure-seeker; for in that career,as in all others, it is failure that kills. The man who enjoys sowholly, and bears so impatiently the slightest widowhood from joy, isjust the man to lose a night's rest over some paltry question of hisright to fiddle on the leads, or to be "vexed to the blood" by asolecism in his wife's attire; and we find in consequence that he wasalways peevish when he was hungry, and that his head "aked mightily"after a dispute. But nothing could divert him from his aim in life; hisremedy in care was the same as his delight in prosperity: it was withpleasure, and with pleasure only, that he sought to drive out sorrow;and, whether he was jealous of his wife or skulking from a bailiff, hewould equally take refuge in a theatre. There, if the house be full andthe company noble, if the songs be tunable, the actors perfect, and theplay diverting, this odd hero of the secret Diary, this privateself-adorer, will speedily be healed of his distresses.
Equally pleased with a watch, a coach, a piece of meat, a tune upon thefiddle, or a fact in hydrostatics, Pepys was pleased yet more by thebeauty, the worth, the mirth, or the mere scenic attitude in life of hisfellow-creatures. He shows himself throughout a sterling humanist.Indeed, he who loves himself, not in idle vanity, but with a plenitudeof knowledge, is the best equipped of all to love his neighbours. Andperhaps it is in this sense that charity may be most properly said tobegin at home. It does not matter what quality a person has: Pepys canappreciate and love him for it. He "fills his eyes" with the beauty ofLady Castlemaine; indeed, he may be said to dote upon the thought of herfor years; if a woman be good-looking and not painted, he will walkmiles to have another sight of her; and even when a lady by a mischancespat upon his clothes, he was immediately consoled when he had observedthat she was pretty. But, on the other hand, he is delighted to see Mrs.Pett upon her knees, and speaks thus of his Aunt James: "a poor,religious, well-meaning, good soul, talking of nothing but God Almighty,and that with so much innocence that mightily pleased me." He is takenwi
th Pen's merriment and loose songs, but not less taken with thesterling worth of Coventry. He is jolly with a drunken sailor, butlistens with interest and patience, as he rides the Essex roads, to thestory of a Quaker's spiritual trials and convictions. He lends acritical ear to the discourse of kings and royal dukes. He spends anevening at Vauxhall with "Killigrew and young Newport--loose company,"says he, "but worth a man's being in for once, to know the nature of it,and their manner of talk and lives." And when a rag-boy lights him home,he examines him about his business and other ways of livelihood fordestitute children. This is almost half-way to the beginning ofphilanthropy; had it only been the fashion, as it is at present, Pepyshad perhaps been a man famous for good deeds. And it is through thisquality that he rises, at times, superior to his surprising egotism; hisinterest in the love affairs of others is, indeed, impersonal; he isfilled with concern for my Lady Castlemaine, whom he only knows bysight, shares in her very jealousies, joys with her in her successes;and it is not untrue, however strange it seems in his abruptpresentment, that he loved his maid Jane because she was in love withhis man Tom.
Let us hear him, for once, at length: "So the women and W. Hewer and Iwalked upon the Downes, where a flock of sheep was; and the mostpleasant and innocent sight that ever I saw in my life. We found ashepherd and his little boy reading, far from any houses or sight ofpeople, the Bible to him; so I made the boy read to me, which he didwith the forced tone that children do usually read, that was mightypretty; and then I did give him something, and went to the father, andtalked with him. He did content himself mightily in my liking his boy'sreading, and did bless God for him, the most like one of the oldpatriarchs that ever I saw in my life, and it brought those thoughts ofthe old age of the world in my mind for two or three days after. We tooknotice of his woolen knit stockings of two colours mixed, and of hisshoes shod with iron, both at the toe and heels, and with great nails inthe soles of his feet, which was mighty pretty; and taking notice ofthem, 'Why,' says the poor man, 'the downes, you see, are full ofstones, and we are faine to shoe ourselves thus; and these,' says he,'will make the stones fly till they ring before me.' I did give the poorman something, for which he was mighty thankful, and I tried to caststones with his horne crooke. He values his dog mightily, that wouldturn a sheep any way which he would have him, when he goes to fold them;told me there was about eighteen score sheep in his flock, and that hehath four shillings a week the year round for keeping of them; and Mrs.Turner, in the common fields here, did gather one of the prettiestnosegays that ever I saw in my life."
And so the story rambles on to the end of that day's pleasuring; withcups of milk, and glowworms, and people walking at sundown with theirwives and children, and all the way home Pepys still dreaming "of theold age of the world" and the early innocence of man. This was how hewalked through life, his eyes and ears wide open, and his hand, you willobserve, not shut; and thus he observed the lives, the speech, and themanners of his fellow-men, with prose fidelity of detail and yet alingering glamour of romance.
It was "two or three days after" that he extended this passage in thepages of his Journal, and the style has thus the benefit of somereflection. It is generally supposed that, as a writer, Pepys must rankat the bottom of the scale of merit. But a style which is indefatigablylively, telling, and picturesque through six large volumes of everydayexperience, which deals with the whole matter of a life, and yet israrely wearisome, which condescends to the most fastidious particulars,and yet sweeps all away in the forthright current of thenarrative,--such a style may be ungrammatical, it may be inelegant, itmay be one tissue of mistakes, but it can never be devoid of merit. Thefirst and the true function of the writer has been thoroughly performedthroughout; and though the manner of his utterance may be childishlyawkward, the matter has been transformed and assimilated by hisunfeigned interest and delight. The gusto of the man speaks out fierilyafter all these years. For the difference between Pepys and Shelley, toreturn to that half-whimsical approximation, is one of quality but notone of degree; in his sphere, Pepys felt as keenly, and his is the trueprose of poetry--prose because the spirit of the man was narrow andearthly, but poetry because he was delightedly alive. Hence, in such apassage as this about the Epsom shepherd, the result upon the reader'smind is entire conviction and unmingled pleasure. So, you feel, thething fell out, not otherwise; and you would no more change it than youwould change a sublimity of Shakespeare's, a homely touch of Bunyan's,or a favoured reminiscence of your own.
There never was a man nearer being an artist, who yet was not one. Thetang was in the family; while he was writing the journal for ourenjoyment in his comely house in Navy Gardens, no fewer than two of hiscousins were tramping the fens, kit under arm, to make music to thecountry girls. But he himself, though he could play so many instruments,and pass judgment in so many fields of art, remained an amateur. It isnot given to any one so keenly to enjoy, without some greater power tounderstand. That he did not like Shakespeare as an artist for the stagemay be a fault, but it is not without either parallel or excuse. Hecertainly admired him as a poet; he was the first beyond mere actors onthe rolls of that innumerable army who have got "To be or not to be" byheart. Nor was he content with that; it haunted his mind; he quoted itto himself in the pages of the Diary, and, rushing in where angels fearto tread, he set it to music. Nothing, indeed, is more notable than theheroic quality of the verses that our little sensualist in a periwigchose out to marry with his own mortal strains. Some gust from braveElizabethan times must have warmed his spirit, as he sat tuning hissublime theorbo. "To be or not to be. Whether 'tis nobler"--"Beautyretire, thou dost my pity move"--"It is decreed, nor shall thy fate, ORome";--open and dignified in the sound, various and majestic in thesentiment, it was no inapt, as it was certainly no timid, spirit thatselected such a range of themes. Of "Gaze not on Swans," I know no morethan these four words; yet that also seems to promise well. It was,however, on a probable suspicion, the work of his master, Mr.Berkenshaw--as the drawings that figure at the breaking up of a youngladies' seminary are the work of the professor attached to theestablishment. Mr. Berkenshaw was not altogether happy in his pupil. Theamateur cannot usually rise into the artist, some leaven of the worldstill clogging him; and we find Pepys behaving like a pickthank to theman who taught him composition. In relation to the stage, which he sowarmly loved and understood, he was not only more hearty but moregenerous to others. Thus he encounters Colonel Reames, "a man," sayshe, "who understands and loves a play as well as I, and I love him forit." And again, when he and his wife had seen a most ridiculous insipidpiece, "Glad we were," he writes, "that Betterton had no part in it." Itis by such a zeal and loyalty to those who labour for his delight thatthe amateur grows worthy of the artist. And it should be kept in mindthat, not only in art, but in morals, Pepys rejoiced to recognise hisbetters. There was not one speck of envy in the whole human-heartedegotist.
RESPECTABILITY
When writers inveigh against respectability, in the present degradedmeaning of the word, they are usually suspected of a taste for claypipes and beer-cellars; and their performances are thought to hail fromthe _Owl's Nest_ of the comedy. They have something more, however, intheir eye than the dulness of a round million dinner-parties that sitdown yearly in Old England. For to do anything because others do it, andnot because the thing is good, or kind, or honest in its own right, isto resign all moral control and captaincy upon yourself, and gopost-haste to the devil with the greater number. We smile over theascendancy of priests; but I had rather follow a priest than what theycall the leaders of society. No life can better than that of Pepysillustrate the dangers of this respectable theory of living. For whatcan be more untoward than the occurrence, at a critical period, andwhile the habits are still pliable, of such a sweeping transformation asthe return of Charles the Second? Round went the whole fleet of Englandon the other tack; and while a few tall pintas, Milton or Pen, stillsailed a lonely course by the stars and their own private compass, thecock-boat, Pepys, must go
about with the majority among "the stupidstarers and the loud huzzas."
The respectable are not led so much by any desire of applause as by apositive need for countenance. The weaker and the tamer the man, themore will he require this support; and any positive quality relieveshim, by just so much, of this dependence. In a dozen ways, Pepys wasquite strong enough to please himself without regard for others; but hispositive qualities were not co-extensive with the field of conduct; andin many parts of life he followed, with gleeful precision, in thefootprints of the contemporary Mrs. Grundy. In morals, particularly, helived by the countenance of others; felt a slight from another morekeenly than a meanness in himself; and then first repented when he wasfound out. You could talk of religion or morality to such a man; and bythe artist side of him, by his lively sympathy and apprehension, hecould rise, as it were dramatically, to the significance of what yousaid. All that matter in religion which has been nicknamedother-worldliness was strictly in his gamut; but a rule of life thatshould make a man rudely virtuous, following right in good report andill report, was foolishness and a stumbling-block to Pepys. He was muchthrown across the Friends; and nothing can be more instructive than hisattitude towards these most interesting people of that age. I havementioned how he conversed with one as he rode; when he saw some broughtfrom a meeting under arrest, "I would to God," said he, "they wouldeither conform, or be more wise and not be catched"; and to a Quaker inhis own office he extended a timid though effectual protection.Meanwhile there was growing up next door to him that beautiful nature,William Pen. It is odd that Pepys condemned him for a fop; odd, thoughnatural enough when you see Pen's portrait, that Pepys was jealous ofhim with his wife. But the cream of the story is when Pen publishes his"Sandy Foundation Shaken," and Pepys has it read aloud by his wife. "Ifind it," he says, "so well writ as, I think, it is too good for himever to have writ it; and it is a serious sort of book, and _not fit foreverybody to read_." Nothing is more galling to the merely respectablethan to be brought in contact with religious ardour. Pepys had his ownfoundation, sandy enough, but dear to him from practical considerations,and he would read the book with true uneasiness of spirit; for conceivethe blow if, by some plaguy accident, this Pen were to convert him! Itwas a different kind of doctrine that he judged profitable for himselfand others. "A good sermon of Mr. Gifford's at our church, upon 'Seek yefirst the kingdom of heaven.' A very excellent and persuasive, good andmoral sermon. He showed, like a wise man, that righteousness is a surermoral way of being rich than sin and villainy." It is thus thatrespectable people desire to have their Greathearts address them,telling, in mild accents, how you may make the best of both worlds, andbe a moral hero without courage, kindness, or troublesome reflection;and thus the Gospel, cleared of Eastern metaphor, becomes a manual ofworldly prudence, and a handybook for Pepys and the successful merchant.
The respectability of Pepys was deeply grained. He has no idea of truthexcept for the Diary. He has no care that a thing shall be, if it butappear; gives out that he has inherited a good estate, when he hasseemingly got nothing but a lawsuit; and is pleased to be thoughtliberal when he knows he has been mean. He is conscientiouslyostentatious. I say conscientiously, with reason. He could never havebeen taken for a fop, like Pen, but arrayed himself in a manner nicelysuitable to his position. For long he hesitated to assume the famousperiwig; for a public man should travel gravely with the fashions, notfoppishly before, nor dowdily behind, the central movement of his age.For long he durst not keep a carriage; that, in his circumstances, wouldhave been improper; but a time comes, with the growth of his fortune,when the impropriety has shifted to the other side, and he is "ashamedto be seen in a hackney." Pepys talked about being "a Quaker or somevery melancholy thing"; for my part, I can imagine nothing somelancholy, because nothing half so silly, as to be concerned aboutsuch problems. But such respectability and the duties of society hauntand burden their poor devotees; and what seems at first the veryprimrose path of life, proves difficult and thorny like the rest. Andthe time comes to Pepys, as to all the merely respectable, when he mustnot only order his pleasures, but even clip his virtuous movements, tothe public pattern of the age. There was some juggling among officialsto avoid direct taxation; and Pepys, with a noble impulse, growingashamed of this dishonesty, designed to charge himself with L1000; butfinding none to set him an example, "nobody of our ablest merchants"with this moderate liking for clean hands, he judged it "not decent"; hefeared it would "be thought vain glory"; and, rather than appearsingular, cheerfully remained a thief. One able merchant's countenance,and Pepys had dared to do an honest act! Had he found one brave spirit,properly recognised by society, he might have gone far as a disciple.Mrs. Turner, it is true, can fill him full of sordid scandal, and makehim believe, against the testimony of his senses, that Pen's venisonpasty stank like the devil; but, on the other hand, Sir William Coventrycan raise him by a word into another being. Pepys, when he is withCoventry, talks in the vein of an old Roman. What does he care foroffice or emolument? "Thank God, I have enough of my own," says he, "tobuy me a good book and a good fiddle, and I have a good wife." Andagain, we find this pair projecting an old age when an ungratefulcountry shall have dismissed them from the field of public service;Coventry living retired in a fine house, and Pepys dropping in, "it maybe, to read a chapter of Seneca."
Under this influence, the only good one in his life, Pepys continuedzealous and, for the period, pure in his employment. He would not be"bribed to be unjust," he says, though he was "not so squeamish as torefuse a present after," suppose the King to have received no wrong. Hisnew arrangement for the victualling of Tangier, he tells us with honestcomplacency, will save the King a thousand and gain Pepys three hundredpounds a year--a statement which exactly fixes the degree of the age'senlightenment. But for his industry and capacity no praise can be toohigh. It was an unending struggle for the man to stick to his businessin such a garden of Armida as he found this life; and the story of hisoaths, so often broken, so courageously renewed, is worthy rather ofadmiration that the contempt it has received.
Elsewhere, and beyond the sphere of Coventry's influence, we find himlosing scruples and daily complying further with the age. When he beganthe Journal, he was a trifle prim and puritanic; merry enough, to besure, over his private cups, and still remembering Magdalene ale and hisacquaintance with Mrs. Ainsworth of Cambridge. But youth is a hot seasonwith all; when a man smells April and May he is apt at times to stumble;and in spite of a disordered practice, Pepys's theory, the better thingsthat he approved and followed after, we may even say were strict. Wherethere was "tag, rag, and bobtail, dancing, singing, and drinking," hefelt "ashamed, and went away"; and when he slept in church he prayed Godforgive him. In but a little while we find him with some ladies keepingeach other awake "from spite," as though not to sleep in church were anobvious hardship; and yet later he calmly passes the time of service,looking about him, with a perspective-glass, on all the pretty women.His favourite ejaculation, "Lord!" occurs but once that I have observedin 1660, never in '61, twice in '62, and at least five times in '63;after which the "Lords" may be said to pullulate like herrings, withhere and there a solitary "damned," as it were a whale among the shoal.He and his wife, once filled with dudgeon by some innocent freedoms at amarriage, are soon content to go pleasuring with my Lord Brouncker'smistress, who was not even, by his own account, the most discreet ofmistresses. Tag, rag, and bobtail, dancing, singing, and drinking,become his natural element; actors and actresses and drunken, roaringcourtiers are to be found in his society; until the man grew so involvedwith Saturnalian manners and companions that he was shot almostunconsciously into the grand domestic crash of 1668.
That was the legitimate issue and punishment of years of staggering walkand conversation. The man who has smoked his pipe for half a century ina powder-magazine finds himself at last the author and the victim of ahideous disaster. So with our pleasant-minded Pepys and hispeccadilloes. All of a sudden, as he still trips dexterously enoughamong the
dangers of a double-faced career, thinking no great evil,humming to himself the trillo, Fate takes the further conduct of thatmatter from his hands, and brings him face to face with the consequencesof his acts. For a man still, after so many years, the lover, althoughnot the constant lover, of his wife,--for a man, besides, who was sogreatly careful of appearances,--the revelation of his infidelities wasa crushing blow. The tears that he shed, the indignities that heendured, are not to be measured. A vulgar woman, and now justlyincensed, Mrs. Pepys spared him no detail of suffering. She was violent,threatening him with the tongs; she was careless of his honour, drivinghim to insult the mistress whom she had driven him to betray and todiscard; worst of all, she was hopelessly inconsequent in word andthought and deed, now lulling him with reconciliations, and anon flamingforth again with the original anger. Pepys had not used his wife well;he had wearied her with jealousies, even while himself unfaithful; hehad grudged her clothes and pleasures, while lavishing both uponhimself; he had abused her in words; he had bent his fist at her inanger; he had once blacked her eye; and it is one of the oddestparticulars in that odd Diary of his, that, while the injury is referredto once in passing, there is no hint as to the occasion or the manner ofthe blow. But now, when he is in the wrong, nothing can exceed thelong-suffering affection of this impatient husband. While he was stillsinning and still undiscovered, he seems not to have known a touch ofpenitence stronger than what might lead him to take his wife to thetheatre, or for an airing, or to give her a new dress by way ofcompensation. Once found out, however, and he seems to himself to havelost all claim to decent usage. It is perhaps the strongest instance ofhis externality. His wife may do what she pleases, and though he maygroan, it will never occur to him to blame her; he has no weapon leftbut tears and the most abject submission. We should perhaps haverespected him more had he not given way so utterly--above all, had herefused to write, under his wife's dictation, an insulting letter to hisunhappy fellow-culprit, Miss Willet; but somehow I believe we like himbetter as he was.
The death of his wife, following so shortly after, must have stamped theimpression of this episode upon his mind. For the remaining years of hislong life we have no Diary to help us, and we have seen already howlittle stress is to be laid upon the tenor of his correspondence; butwhat with the recollection of the catastrophe of his married life, whatwith the natural influence of his advancing years and reputation, itseems not unlikely that the period of gallantry was at an end for Pepys;and it is beyond a doubt that he sat down at last to an honoured andagreeable old age among his books and music, the correspondent of SirIsaac Newton, and, in one instance at least, the poetical counsellor ofDryden. Through all this period, that Diary which contained the secretmemoirs of his life, with all its inconsistencies and escapades, hadbeen religiously preserved; nor, when he came to die, does he appear tohave provided for its destruction. So we may conceive him faithful tothe end to all his dear and early memories; still mindful of Mrs. Helyin the woods at Epsom; still lighting at Islington for a cup of kindnessto the dead; still, if he heard again that air that once so muchdisturbed him, thrilling at the recollection of the love that bound himto his wife.
FOOTNOTE:
[59] H. R. Wheatley, "Samuel Pepys and the World he Lived in." 1880.
The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 3 Page 9
