Jem (and Sam)

by Ferdinand Mount

  He sat down. Captain Tatnell shouted: Well done, that was bravely rhymed, I’ll drink to that. But Will and I were struck dumb by this doggerel.

  When my verses are all complete, I mean to have them published under the title of Carcase’s Satires.

  Is that so? I said.

  There are not a hundred ships in the Navy, Tatnell said suddenly, be he never so bad, he could not have sunk a hundred.

  That is poetical licence, Captain, have you never heard of poetical licence?

  And ships-Pepys don’t rhyme.

  That, sir, is assonance.

  Is that so? Captain Tatnell grunted, but he went on muttering Pepys-ships into his glass.

  Satires won’t sink Pepys, Will said. We must have witnesses, clerks who will bring up a ticket that is made out for seven pounds ten shillings to Jack Tar but inscribed paid to Mr Pepys with Jack Tar to swear he had only four pounds.

  Tickets? I have dozens of tickets and men that will swear. There is John Capps of the Lion and his brother Thomas, and three men from the Flying Greyhound that will swear they were paid in Pepys’s own interest and his lord’s while the King’s sailors starved, and Endicott Jones from the Navy Office and his cousin who has a boxful of tickets that were broked, and Sir William Warren’s man Edward that knows the truth of the matter of the masts and the imprests for them but he has a defect in his speech and will do better with an affidavit.

  And so on, etc., etc. My head was aching with the wine and his voice was so low that I could not be sure of hearing it. Nevertheless his sour catalogue was music to my ears. There must have been thirty names on it, all prepared to swear that Pepys was a cheat whose frauds and ticket-brokings and bribe-takings had cost the King’s Navy dear and left her defenceless against the Dutch to the near-ruin of the nation, were it not for the heroism of one little old General and, whisper it not, his gentleman-usher that had first given the alarm to the ships in the Medway (we could forget about the rabbit-hole).

  I must have dozed, for when I came to my senses he was talking of other fantastical matters, of the Queen of Sheba and the Whore of Babylon and some mathematical calculations which he said would unlock the Great Riddle, by the which I saw that the man was as mad as a March hare and was no more use to our cause than a fart in a thunderstorm.

  Finally he too subsided and fell into a low babble and then into a profound sleep on Will’s lap, so that we sat with our two witnesses between us, each as dead to the world as the other.

  Will, you’re a fool, I said, we must have spent thirty shillings on these two tosspots.

  Don’t fret, amico mio, Will said. I shall have them rehearsed so that they are perfect when they come before the Committee. I am expert in these matters.

  But I was doubtful, and as the day approached I could not sleep for fear that they might miss their cues and confound their evidence.

  Yet to my astonishment Will was right. He kept both of them sober and then slipped them to the dogs and each ran a frisky course. Carcase had been the better, Will said, for he had all the facts at his fingers’ ends whereas the captain stopped and started. Yet both sounded like honest men and you would not have thought that Carcase was mad, for at an interview he was capable of rational conversation for half an hour at a stretch and, as luck would have it, Will said the Committee broke off to dine halfway through his evidence, so he was not taxed too hard.

  Thus when Pepys was to come before the Committee on the morning of 6 March, to defend the Navy Office and his own conduct, there was an abundant indictment against him. The only trouble for the members was where to begin. And to answer it all there was but one little clerk, for the great men of the Navy Office were all melted from the scene like snow in April (and Sir William Batten, one of the prime malefactors, was dead).

  It was a cold wet day, and I paced the streets like an author that has written a play but dare not put his head in at the door of the theatre to see how the audience like it. To warm myself, I went into the Dog and had half a pint of sack. Hargrave the vintner said:

  Your friend Pepys was in here but an hour ago, shaking like a leaf he was, pale as a ghost. Steadied himself with a pint then went off.

  Ah, I said.

  In the Hall, where I was to wait for Will to bring me news, I called at Mrs Howlett’s stall.

  My nephew Samuel was in here a quarter of an hour gone. Took a dram of brandy, for his nerve.

  Your nephew?

  Mr Pepys, that is Clerk to the Navy Office.

  Ah, I said.

  I took a glass of brandy with Mrs Howlett and then a turn about the Great Hall and thought how many chapters in our nation’s history had passed under that high roof and how today a fresh chapter was being written, namely, the downfall of the upstart Pepys that would be reckoned with the histories of the great impostors of our past: like Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Simnel, one that passed himself off as a loyal servant of the King, yet was no such thing, but a covetous, grasping, scheming rogue.

  As I passed down the Hall, I greeted Mrs Lane, a pretty woman with fine mamelles, that I had seen making an assignation with Pepys. I bowed low to her as though she were a great lady and not a clerk’s whore. She was white and barely nodded in reply. I dare say she was fond of the fellow, for though he was plain and warty, he was assiduous in his attentions to women, which is the first desideratum.

  After Pepys’s disgrace, there would be empty places at the Navy Office, for he would assuredly carry others down with him. I could surely prevail upon the General to instal me as Clerk, with Will Symons as my deputy. Thus would the Augean Stables be cleansed, and Englishmen be proud to serve the King at sea once more and not need to be pressed by drunken fools like Captain Tatnell.

  I must have passed nearer three hours than two in the Hall, drinking, discoursing with old friends and dreaming of the golden days that were to come. I cannot recall a more pleasant expectation in my whole life. To this day, I remember the cooing of the pigeons in the rafters, the hubbub of the shopkeepers in the aisle, the never-ceasing noise of footsteps upon the great stone floor, and the cold air that made them that passed breathe puffs of steam into the high vault.

  But the time began to drag its heels, and I to wonder what kept them. At length there was a huge commotion at the top of the stairs, and men poured forth from the lobby.

  Will was among the first half-dozen.

  Catastrophe, he said.

  And spilling down the steps behind him came a further multitude, of fops and clerks and Parliament men. And in their midst, all smiles, Mr Samuel Pepys.

  He wore a yellow vest and he looked like a canary-bird amidst a flock of starlings, a canary-bird that had fed on apricots.

  Up betimes, and with Sir D Gauden to Sir W Coventry’s chamber, where the first word he said was, ‘Good morrow Mr Pepys, that must be Speaker of the Parliament-House’ – and did protest I had got honour for ever in Parliament. He said that his brother that sat by him, admires me; and another gentleman said that I could not get less than 9000l a year if I would put on a gown and plead at the Chancery-bar. But what pleases me most, he tells me that the Solicitor General did protest that he thought I spoke the best of any man in England. After several talks with him alone touching his own businesses, he carried me to Whitehall and then parted; and I to the Duke of York’s lodging and find him going to the Park, it being a very fine morning; and I after him, and as soon as he saw me, he told me with great satisfaction that I had converted a great many yesterday, and did with great praise of me go on with the discourse with me. And by and by overtaking the King, the King and Duke of York came to me both and he said, ‘Mr Pepys, I am very glad of your success yesterday;’ and fell to talk of my well speaking.

  Diary of Samuel Pepys, 6 March 1668

  The old Duke was dying. All that year when I had been bent upon my own business, viz. the vain pursuit of S. Pepys, he had been sinking. His dropsy was a heavy burden to him, and he could not breathe for his asthma.

  Nan said, it wil
l not be long, then you and I must look after Kit.

  Day after day we sat at his bedside or rather by his chair, for his dropsy gave him discomfort and he could not abide to lie down.

  The Archbishop of Canterbury came to see him and left behind several sheets full of spiritual counsels to prepare him for death. The Grand Duke of Tuscany also came, being upon his Grand Tour. He was a person of exquisite manner and showed much respect not only to the General but to Nan, which pleased her mightily, since she said with an English duke you could always picture him saying to himself I’ll be damned if I’ll bow and scrape to a seamstress.

  These visits cheered the General, for he did not care to lie in a backwater but wished to be back in the swim. Otherwise for days upon end, he would sit by himself and grunt and stare into the air, taking little nourishment and less pleasure of our company.

  Then came to New Hall one Stothard that had served with him in Scotland and had won some reputation in the plague as a doctor, though he was but a quack. He told Nan that he had a sovereign remedy against the asthma which had proved of especial efficacity in cases of elderly gentlemen. It was a secret compound of many herbs which he would not reveal for fear of the receipt being pirated, but he would say that it was based upon the milk of gum ammoniac and syrup of squills and thus fitted to rarify and thin the viscid cohesions in the pulmonary vessels.

  I perceived that this was all sham but Nan was at her wits’ end and ready to try any remedy. She gave the General the pills and whether though some inspiration of faith or because nature had afforded him a respite, the next day he was somewhat recovered.

  London, he grunted, we’ll go to London.

  London? said Nan, but my chuck, you –

  London, the General said in a voice which was low yet had recovered something of its old command. We must marry the boy.

  Marry Kit? But he is barely sixteen.

  He has a seat in the Parliament House. He is old enough to marry. I cannot leave this earth unless he is married.

  I had forgot to say that the Brat had been furnished with a seat in the House of Commons, for his family’s native country of Devonshire. It was a horrid imposition upon that ancient and venerable House and I blushed to see the Brat sit alongside the great men of our country and tip his hat over his brow and laugh his strange corncrake’s laugh, but the Parliament men had been used to worse humiliation in their time and there was not much to be gained by treating the General’s son with disrespect.

  So to London we went. Each turn of the carriage wheel was a fresh torture to the patient and we must needs travel along the busy road at the pace of a snail, so slowly that some thought we were a funeral procession and took off their hats. It was autumn and the leaves muffled the road so that the noise of the hooves was faint. It was a sad journey and a silent one.

  The General continued much improved from Stothard’s pills and though he was fatigate when we came to the Cockpit, yet he lost no time, for he feared that he had not much time to lose.

  Where is Pierrepont? Has he the papers? We sent to Welbeck a week ago.

  I do not like the terms, Nan said, twenty thousand is a poor dowry for a duke’s granddaughter.

  He has other daughters to provide for, my dear.

  That may be so, but they may marry well and not need dowries.

  Kit will not be poor, the General said.

  No, but the thing looks bad, as though we should be grateful for twenty thousand.

  It is done, Nan, the General grunted. When will Pierrepont come?

  It was old Pierrepont’s granddaughter that was to be Kit’s bride, though in the antique fashion he had not met her yet. She was the Duke of Newcastle’s granddaughter too on her father’s side, but it was old Pierrepont, a friend of Cromwell’s and the General’s too, that had made the match.

  She is a quiet girl, they say, and has not been out of Nottinghamshire.

  Is she handsome? Kit asked.

  You’ve seen the miniature, his mother said.

  She has a thin look.

  That will do you no harm, for none of us is thin. She comes on Tuesday with Pierrepont and her mother.

  Tuesday? And for once the Brat shed his cock-a-hoop mien and looked like a frightened boy.

  It was a strange cold day, soon before Christmas, when Kit, and I too for that matter, first set eyes on Elizabeth Cavendish.

  She was thin indeed with a long face and a mouth that was puckered as though for a kiss and eyes that slanted like a Chinese, and seemed half-asleep. She was frightened, too, and gave her hand to Kit as if he might bite it off.

  We stood stiff as playing-cards in the narrow room where the General sat in his chair all day.

  Well, William, so this is the girl.

  Here she is, my pretty Betty.

  She is very welcome in our, in our – this was Nan who for the first time since I knew her was at a loss for words. She could not speak and must sit down. She had been pale for some weeks and I had thought that the fatigue of nursing her husband was injuring her health. Nor was the impending loss of her son at so young an age an easy thing to bear.

  You are not well, madam, were the first words I heard Elizabeth utter. She spoke in a reedy voice like the squeak of a carriage wheel that wants oiling.

  No, I am only a little tired. Then I saw for the first time clearly, as one does not notice gradual changes in one’s familiars, that she had grown grievous thin, thinner yet than her daughter-in-law that was to be.

  It was then, and not before, that I saw how vain my dream had been, that the old General would die and she would take me to her husband and I would be raised up, to a barony it might be, or a knighthood at the least, and people would overlook the difference in our years, for nobility is a great leveller in that sense. Now I saw she would not outlive him by much, and all her old strength and liveliness were gone from her. She looked on me kindly yet and would stroke me now and then but was absent, as one may stroke a spaniel while thinking of some other matter. Her affection for me was not gone, I was sure of that, but it was hollowed out by her weakness, it no longer had the carnal bloom upon it. I could scarce recognise in her the hoyden who had tumbled me amid the bolts of cloth.

  The next day she could not rise from her bed, nor the day after that, nor ever again. The canker that she had was slow-growing, the doctor said, and only at the last pulled her down.

  For those days I was glad to do the office of her usher and move her in her bed when she ached and change her linen, for thin as she was the maids could not lift her.

  It’s ironical, Jemmy, that now you can come and go freely in my chamber when there’s nothing left to come for. Look at my sticks of legs now.

  You’ll soon be plump as a turkey again.

  I think not. Shall I outlast the General, do you think?

  Don’t ask me such questions.

  I don’t wish to outlast him, Jem. You don’t mind me saying so?

  No, no.

  I don’t wish to leave you either but our wishes on these matters are not generally respected. She lay quiet for a minute, then –

  Jem, I can’t find the keys, they were under my pillow but half an hour ago.

  Here they are, in the same place still.

  You will not let the girl have them, will you, Jem, none but Kit is to have the keys to my jewel cabinet, do you understand?

  Yes, Nan, I understand.

  Again and again, she came back to that great tortoiseshell cabinet that stood beside her bed and seemed more precious to her than her son’s happiness.

  They grew weaker together, she and the General, so that sometimes I thought his grunting was an answer to her groans, though it was but coincidence.

  It was five days after Christmas that the handfasting was set for (the settlement had been signed a week before). So the two young persons stood before Monck, Kit dark and squat, Elizabeth slender and fair, and the old General gave her away though in law she was not his to give, but her father Lord Ogle was not there. />
  Nan could not rise for the ceremony, but they had to go into her chamber afterwards and receive her blessing.

  After the wedding, the General’s old officers came to stand watch by him as though he were already dead. They did not have long to wait. Three days later, at about nine in the morning, he gave out a quiet groan and died, with the utmost discretion as he had lived.

  We were called in to see him sitting there with his officers beside him. He was already waxen as an effigy and the old frown had gone from his face.

  He is like an antique Roman, is he not? said Dr Gumble who was on hand to speed his passage to Heaven.

  He is like an Englishman, I said and wept, for though he had said scarcely more than two dozen words to me in our years together, yet I felt secure in his affections and comfortable in his silences, for such is true friendship in men of our race that we do not need to prate of it.

  I passed next door to tell the melancholy news to Nan, but she said only in a low voice:

  I know already. I felt the moment. I shall not be long now.

  I sat outside her chamber on a little folding chair like a guard-dog. In the great passage beyond, the preparations were made for the General’s lying-in-state at Somerset House, but I took little part in such obsequies being abandoned to my own private grief, and was much astonished to hear from Nan’s waiting-woman, Mrs Lascelles, that the sorrowing people were not to be admitted to see the corpse.

  Why not?

  Because there is no black velvet to hang the walls of the state rooms.

  But the King has promised to take care of the funeral.

  There is no velvet and they are ashamed to let the people see the poverty of the King’s promise.

  So the old General’s body lay mouldering, that had saved the King and the country and was now forgot by both. And I dozed on in my folding chair.

  My good sir.

  Yes – I was half-asleep – ah, my lady. It was Lady Ogle, Elizabeth’s mother.

  My daughter the Duchess, that is the new Duchess, wants the keys to the jewel cabinet. The Duke is to have his father’s Garter and my daughter must have something to wear on her black satin gown. Mourning is a fine garb, but it needs tricking out.