Jem (and Sam)

by Ferdinand Mount

  I wanted to hear more of this strange Land-Admiral, but just then I was called for downstairs and brought into the presence of a low dull stocky man, more like a butcher than an admiral. He looked at me with a black choleric sort of suspicion. Charts, you say? Charts of Dutch waters?

  Yes, sir, and I began to expatiate upon my wares – their exactitude, their originality, their hydographical science, etc., etc.

  Do you have a chart of Sheerness and the Medway? he broke in impatiently.

  Yes indeed I do, sir.

  He snatched it from me and took it over to his chart-table where he laid it beside an old chart, much cracked, brown and stained with sea-water. There was a dead silence in the cabin, I could hear the Admiral’s heavy breathing as he bent over the charts that he might compare them.

  Yes, he said, it is a passable copy, the printing is not so fine as de Blauw’s but it will do; I’ll take a dozen for my flag officers. Mr Fido will examine the rest of your stock and choose what else we might want. And, Fido, take his name, the boy’s a likely rogue and we may have need of him back on land.

  I thanked the Admiral warmly, being willing to overlook his accusations of knavery since I had a higher object in view. Mr Fido took three dozen more of my maps and congratulated me: General – I mean Admiral – Monck is likely to prove a powerful friend, you would do well to cling to his coat-tails. I thanked the fellow for his advice, which as you may imagine I had no need of.

  This proceeding was on the eve of that great battle in which the Dutch Admiral, that pirate Tromp, was killed and the sea ran red with blood. We English lost a thousand men but our landlubber Admiral came back home without a scratch on him to a hero’s welcome. A gold chain to the value of £300 was put upon his neck and a medal struck to commemorate the victory and there was a public thanksgiving ordered.

  He had indeed proved to be a powerful friend and I was resolved to be as faithful as Fido, losing no time in writing to remind the Admiral of our former acquaintance and trusting that I might wait upon him and serve him in whatever capacity he might, etc., etc. I wrote this letter in a fair hand, gave out that it came from my master’s shop, and sent it by the hand of my master’s boy.

  Imagine my rapture, my ecstasy, when a letter came back the next day, in the Admiral’s own hand, in truth, a scurvy hand with much misspelling and far out in its grammar. But the message was clear enough, viz. he well remembered your obedient servant and had much to thank me for, for he had beaten the Dutch off their own shore and with their own charts (this phrase he underlined with a thick nib). He was an enemy of pirates, but he would readily grant a pardon to those who pirated charts, for they had their uses. And the upshot of all was, he would see what he could do for me.

  This was glorious, but I had to keep my jubilation private, for I fancied that my master would not have approved. I had kept secret the exact number of charts I had sold to the Admiralty (some half of them I had not written down in the books) and had represented myself as the head and principal of the house. Indeed, Mr Fido had remarked that I was remarkably young to have acquired the dignity of a Stationer (though I am sure I was younger still than he thought me, for my stature and my black complexion aged me).

  At last the great day dawned. By luck I was looking out through the shop window and saw Mr Fido coming down the lane and had time to take off my printer’s apron and put on my fine blue coat that I might greet him at the door in my character of proprietor (though what was I to do if he asked to be shown the shop and I had to take him to my master’s room?). But I was in luck again. Mr Fido was in haste and he had scarcely breath to tell me that I was to be Under-Clerk to the Council and have £100 a year, and that I was to wait upon the General in the afternoon, for he was off to Scotland on the morrow to hunt down the last of the King’s men.

  I much looked forward to this reunion with my personal Protector, but when I came up the steps to his lodgings in Whitehall, I met only Fido again who told me that, alas, the General was much cumbered with business and begged me to accept his apologies (he said with an insolent expression, as though to say: what, apologies to a tradesman), but the appointment would be confirmed within the week.

  And so it was. Thus at the age of twenty-one, Jeremiah the yeoman’s son was made Under-Clerk to the Great Council and a gentleman. I had my foot upon the first step of that great staircase which leads to the topmost thrones and citadels of our kingdom, or rather, for we had no king at that juncture, of our glorious State and government. True it was, as Lord Bacon wrote in his Essays, that all rising to great place is by a winding stair, but I fancied that I was pretty well acquainted with the twists and turns of the business.

  At the Clerks’ chamber I met with Symons and Llewelyn and went with them to Mr Mount’s chamber at the Cockpit where we had some rare pot venison and ale to abundance till almost 12 at night; and after a song round, we went home.

  Diary of Samuel Pepys, 23 January 1660

  III

  The Palace

  THEN BEGAN THE days of my greatness, but to confess the truth I was in a whirl six days out of seven for fear that I should do the wrong thing and stumble back down that slippery staircase.

  The offices of the Clerks to the Council lay in that rabbit warren of rooms below the great Council Chamber which was named the Cockpit, for there was still a cockpit in the north-west quarter of it (though it had been closed by order of the Commonwealth). It was said the Palace had two thousand rooms, some were ancient already when Cardinal Wolsey had the Palace, some were modern-built, but all tacked on higgledy-piggledy in brick or stone or plaster without any arrangement as might suit the convenience of the fancy of the builder. In all my years there I never mastered the plan and knew but half a dozen rat-runs, viz, from my chamber to my master’s, from my master’s to the Council Chamber via the Privy Chamber (for I had the run of that route, unlike the vulgus who must come at it via the stairs from the Pebble Court). And if I had but imperfect knowledge of the topography, I also had much to learn about the business. When I began, I scarce knew the difference between a warrant and a patent, a writ and an instrument, and a hundred other such terms. All I knew was buying and selling. But I soon perceived that I was still in that same business, and if I struck a sharp bargain in the service of the State my share of the fee would be commensurate. In this delicate art my first tutor was one Will Symons, a lovely man and no flincher from the bottle, for his greatest legacy to me was: he taught me how to drink.

  There was not a tavern within two miles of Whitehall we had not desiccated. When we were pressed for time, we drank sack at the Leg in New Palace Yard or at the Dog in that same yard – both large and commodious taverns which were also suppliers of venison, carp and other delicacies to us Clerks when we entertained in our chambers. But if we had time to spare, we would go for a frisk down Fleet Street to the Devil, where Mr Ben Jonson the poet was formerly wont to keep the table on a roar, or to Hercules’ Pillars on the south side, where you might meet with a sot or a lord or a philosopher or a whore. Or if we had a taste for Hock or Mosel, we might go to the Rhenish winehouses in Wise’s Alley, or to Mr Prior’s in Common Row; his cousin the poet I heard it said, later lived on tick at his cousin’s tavern, and I can well believe it, for poets are powerful drinkers but generally lack the means to gratify their thirst.

  In bawdy talk Will Symons was a veritable virtuoso. And his anecdotes were not those second-hand tales which the timid tell who will report with much sniggering how such-and-such a gentleman did this or that to such-and-such a lady and what were the consequences. Will spoke always of his own trials with the softer sex, and he reported failure and success alike with the same grave and reverend demeanour as though he had been rehearsing a sermon he had just heard. Thus: Jem, you know that fair girl Paulina at the Leg, the one who serves at table? I had no luck in that siege until I discovered she was Scottish, and when I put my hand up her skirts I began to talk of Arthur’s Seat and the Tolbooth and the fine society that was to be had
up there and her resistance began to weaken, and she took my other hand, etc., etc. But he was no tedious braggart, for he was just as content to describe how his engine had failed him when he and Mrs Bracewell had been in a rowing-boat at Chelsea Stairs, a full moon and she willing. His impotence had made her angry and she compelled him to row her up to Hammersmith against the tide. He had attempted a song to lighten her, but she interrupted him: You can’t row, Will Symons, now I know you can’t sing, so I’m not surprised that you can’t do the other thing. But it was the gloomy parson’s voice he had that made me laugh, all on one solemn note, not like a wag who overcooks his jests.

  Will’s other art was he knew how to survive. He told me later that he had made shift to keep in employment in eight governments in one year and was only turned out along with Peter Llewelyn (who had formerly had my apartment at the Cockpit) and the other clerks when the King came in. He was a master at his craft which was to be at the head of the regiment when places were given out for the service of a new committee.

  And those years of O.C. (amongst ourselves we never called him Lord Protector or any such highflown title, for he was but a Huntingdonshire squire and a heavy man) were also the great years of committee. The Palace of Whitehall stood as deep in committees as corn in August. There was the Obstruction Committee (which Will accounted a redundancy, for what was any committee but an Obstruction), and the Scandalous Ministers Committee, and the Propagation Committee and the Indemnity Commission, and the Law Reform Committee, and the Plundered Ministers Committee, and the Compounding Committee that was at Goldsmiths Hall, and a dozen more, each with its own burrow in that great warren.

  When they were all going to their work on a winter’s day, the chimney smoke over the Palace was so thick that an eagle or a lark in the air above must have supposed some great disaster had afflicted London, a comet exploding or the like. The stench was so terrible that Mr John Evelyn in that rare work Fumifugium claimed that the prevalence of consumption and other pulmonic troubles was caused by Newcastle coal. Certain it is true that, though I was young, I was never free of coughs and spitting fits for so long as I worked in that place. Yet the College of Physicians esteemed the smoke rather a protection against infections, although one half of them who perish in London die of pulmonic distempers, and some parts of France, in the south-west of that realm, complained that the smoke from England was injuring their vines.

  It was a year less a month when the doorkeeper Hodge came in to tell me I had a visitor at the King’s Gate.

  Who is it?

  A woman.

  A woman? Ah.

  Yes, sir, a tall black woman.

  Oh. Not one that looks like me?

  Why, sir, so she does.

  You must tell her I am greatly occupied.

  But it was too late, for as he turned to take my message back to the gate, he met my mother coming in at the door.

  I am not to be kept drumming my heels at a draughty gate. You must tell your fellow to be more civil.

  Oh Mother. I came forward to embrace her because I thought Hodge would think it right, not out of love, but Hodge had already taken his leave with a smirk on his face, and she slipped out of my arms as though she were an eel, and began looking about her.

  So this is your office, Jeremiah?

  I share it with Mr Symons. He is my fellow Under-Clerk, though he is my senior.

  I trust he is a sober influence upon you?

  Oh exceedingly sober.

  Then those must be your wine bottles that I see upon the shelf.

  Ah, no, well, I believe Mr Symons is keeping them for his brother who is to take them down to Harwich.

  My mother made that strange noise I knew so well, not quite a snort, nor yet a sniff, but somewhere between the two. And of a sudden I felt myself to be ten years old again, hesitating upon the threshold that I might detect whether her temper was out, and if I heard the snort-sniff I would creep off into the yard again.

  And what do you here, Jeremiah?

  We make out warrants and patents as we are instructed and deliver them to those they are made out to, and writs and instruments and summonses we make out also and deliver them to those they are made out against.

  It seems light work.

  But it is well paid, a hundred pounds a year. I told you, did I not, in my letter? (Which was the only letter I had written.)

  So you did, she said. It is too much.

  But it’s a good place and since I’m at the hub of affairs I have reason to hope I may find a better one yet.

  Your father rises at dawn and labours eighteen hours a day for less. (It was the first time I had ever heard her pray her husband in aid as an example of virtue unrewarded.)

  I cannot help that, Mother.

  She stood silent in her long dress of brown stuff, a hard look in her eye. Yet she was handsome.

  You will come to no good, she said. You think you’re so clever, but it will all tumble down around your ears.

  You had best go now if that is how you think.

  I am going. I would not outstay my welcome had there been any welcome.

  Again the sniff-snort, and this time it pierced my heart and I wished that I were half her height again and could clasp her by the legs and hide my head in her skirts and she would pretend to search for bugs in my hair and call me Jemmy Junket, but those days were long gone.

  I hope Mr Symons’s brother will not forget to take his bottles, she said and went out without another word. Indeed, I remember those words very well because they were the last she ever spoke to me.

  Now in recollection I am full of repentance and wish we had made up our differences, but at the time of our division, my resolution was as adamantine as hers. Neither of us would bend or break, and I plunged into the ocean of Whitehall in Will’s wake without a backward glance.

  Will found his first lodging in this great spider-web as Under-Clerk to the Scandalous Ministers Committee, but so diligent was he that within a month he was promoted Upper Clerk, and made me his underling, for which I was heartily grateful because there were fine pickings in this field and every cowpat brought up a mushroom. We would make a visit upon some suspect priest early in the morning while the dew was still upon his glebe and examine him thus: We have information that your wife is a Catholic. Not so, it is false, she is a proper woman who worships each Sunday at my church. You will swear an affidavit to that effect? Certainly, and so will she. That will be fourpence for her affidavit and fourpence for your affidavit and five pounds for the expenses of the examination. And then, and here Will would look at the ceiling as though to commune with a higher power, you would surely wish to give us something for our labour, that we may further the work of true religion in this country? Another five pounds. Or if he would not we would report to our masters in Whitehall that Mr G— in the parish of P— was widely supposed to be a delinquent priest and that his wife was said to be a Catholic, though for our part, we had no conclusive evidence for these rumours, but we thought it our duty to report them. This was usually sufficient for the man to lose his place to a minister of stout Presbyterian tendencies who had been recommended by the Plundered Ministers Committee. As for my former employment, I had now no leisure to trudge on scurvy wharves and solicit gruff sea-captains. Besides, who would labour at his own little pump when he might manage the great sluice-engines of State? Moreover, the King’s coming in was soon to spoil the market for lewd books, there being so many published that a rare volume that had formerly cost ten shillings might be had for half-a-crown.

  Will saw that it would be a great thing to be Clerk also to the Plundered Ministers Committee, since he would then have both sides of the balance in his hands: the minister that feared to be put out would pay to be recommended, and so would the minister that had cast covetous eyes on the parish.

  Alas, the fellow that was Clerk to the Plundered Ministers Committee would not yield his place, nor would he appoint an Under-Clerk, for he preferred to keep all the fees for him
self. And even the Scandalous Ministers Committee came to an end, when the desire for vengeance had run its course, and O.C. determined that reconciliation and tolerance should be his orders of the day.

  O.C. is right as usual, we had squeezed that orange dry, said Will as he puffed at his pipe, for he imitated our master in such little things. He claimed that he had chanced upon our lord taking the air upon the bowling-green at the back of the Cockpit, and O.C. had congratulated Will upon the exquisite aroma of his tobacco.

  Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new, in the words of Master Milton, said Will, and added: Whom I do not greatly care for, being a sour and extreme fellow, but he enjoys O.C.’s favour and therefore I have conned a bushel or two of his verses. He’s not made for this trade, Jem, he won’t bend and besides his eyes are as dim as a mole’s. I have seen him scrabbling around for a sixpence on the pavement when it was winking up at him bright as the moon.

  What fresh pastures have you in mind? I inquired.

  Wait and the glory shall be revealed unto thee, Will said, it is such work in the service of the State as never was undertaken before, a most peculiar commission. Come with me up the river at the week’s end and we shall make our first reconnaissance – a word which he pronounced in a frenchified fashion and explained that it was a military term for seeking out the lie of the ground.