Jem (and Sam)

by Ferdinand Mount

  I was older than the young lords. They called me Uncle. I could not keep up with their giddy pranks and was ultimo glad to go back to the Metropole where I might retire to the solitude of a quiet tavern and catch my breath. And it was in Harpers (where we had clubbed as clerks in O.C.’s time) that I met by chance Will Symons, and learnt of Mr Pepys’s proceedings before the Brooke House Committee.

  You would not believe it, Jem, the fellow had the impudence to write what he called a full and sufficient Answer to the Commissioners’ charges, fifty folios of it, composed he said at enormous labour not only while other parts of His Majesty’s service called for his daily attendance but also during the sorrowful interruption lately given him by the sickness and death of his wife, when I saw him down in the Leg with Mrs Bagwell but three days after the funeral. But what was worse, when he had read his answer over to Brouncker and the Duke of York, he brought a fair copy of it over to me and said, Will, be a good fellow and tell your masters to trouble me no further with their vexatious inquiries, for I have better things to do with my time. But I saw that he had no notion of my true feelings towards him, for these men that are puffed up with themselves never pause to think what others may be thinking of them.

  We had the matter well prepared, but what I had not counted on was that the King himself would hear the case to support his little clerk throughout the proceedings, and oh how the little clerk repaid the favour.

  Thus when it was said that £514,000 which was to have been laid out on the Navy had been diverted to the private pleasures of His Majesty, Pepys declared that not only had the money gone to the Navy but the King had spent £300,000 of his own money on it besides. And nobody durst contradict him, the King sitting there in the Council Chamber.

  And so when Pepys said that in exchange for ten years’ service, and these the most valuable of his life, he found not his estate bettered by £1,000 from his employment – which was a foul lie, for he boasted to me last year he was worth £11,000 – again, they dare not speak against him.

  And then again, when Pepys was garrulous about his accounts so that Colonel Thomson was yawning and scratching his wooden leg and the other Commissioners were impatient, the King came in to say that he had it upon very good information that the expense of the Dutch in the late war had amounted to £11,000,000, whereas ours does not exceed £6,000,000. Which claim none of the Commissioners knew how to challenge.

  I do not say that Pepys himself was not a ready answerer. When old Thomson was accusing the Navy Office that they had used foreign plank to build their ships, Pepys replied that like Thomson he too had served in the Navy, and was as much in love with English plank as he, and would give him thanks to direct us where we might be furnished at this day with 2,000 loads of English plank, which struck Thomson dumb – although I know that Pepys preferred Gottenburg plank because he got 5 per cent more from the merchants.

  Yet still I placed my hope in the business of the tickets. There it was, in black and white – ‘paid to Mr Pepys’, and when Lord Brereton brought it out with a flourish, I thought we would win. Pepys spoke very high, said he defied mankind to prove that this or any other ticket was ever paid him. He would assert in defiance of the whole world that it was a lie, etc., etc. But he had no proof positive to offer.

  At last he was doomed. All the exits were locked, I was convinced of it. Alas, all the exits save one.

  For the King smiled and shook his head and said he thought it a vain thing to believe that one having so great trust should descend to so poor a thing as doing anything unfit in a matter of £7 10s. And that was finis. The Commissioners had no answer. The bystanders began to murmur against them. The King and the Duke took Pepys off to supper, and the Council never met again.

  So the King rescued him, I said. Who would have thought it, to trouble himself so much, only for Pepys.

  But look at it from the other side, Jem. Our little Sam rescued the King with his fervent protestations that all was done properly in the Navy Office and not a penny was wasted. Don’t you see? The Committee was after greater game. To catch a little Pepys with a seaman’s ticket is like snaring a rabbit. To prove that the King had spent the Navy’s money on Lady Castlemaine’s jewels, now that is a chase worthy of any high-spirited republican. Therefore the King sat there all day long day after day when he might have been at Newmarket or wenching, for though he seems an idle lover of pleasure, he can be as diligent as any man when he smells danger to himself.

  But if the King protects him, then Pepys is safe for ever, ad saecula saeculorum.

  Hmm, Will mused, looking deep into his tankard bottom, we must divide the fleet. We must sow suspicions, we must make the King think that . . .

  But I could see he had no notion what the King was to think, for Pepys had floored us and rode high in his gilded coach with the black horses and cared not whom his wheels plashed. Some of us were on the pavement, some of us were in the gutter, some of us were in the grave. And he cared not a fig for any of us, nor for humankind entire with the exception of Samuel Pepys, esquire. For he was self-centred and his motto was solus ego. And I resolved to think no more of him and to leave Will to his plots and stratagems, while I removed to pastures new. But there still lingered in my mind what the King had said about the ticket, viz. that Pepys was dealing in contracts that might bring him £100 or £1,000, whether honestly or otherwise, so why should he trouble himself for £7 10s. Though it is true that great thieves must begin with small thefts, yet I pondered whether there might be some other explanation. Then I recalled that in his cups (when was he ever out of them?) Mr Carcase had boasted that he was not only a scholar and a gentleman but he was also an excellent penman, nay a Calligrapher, which he told us as though we were turnips was derived from the Greek kalli meaning beautiful and graphia meaning writing. Might not a calligrapher as well be a forger of evidence where true evidence were deficient?

  Leave your brown study, Jem, my master interrupted me. Remember, tonight we are to become learned lawyers.

  I’m sick, mayn’t I cry off?

  No, Jem, we’re to be admitted members of the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn, it will be a great feast, the King will be there, and the Duke of York, and other gallants.

  But I’m not to be admitted. I shall not be missed.

  You will miss the revels. A glass or two of the Benchers’ wine will mend your humour. I command you to come.

  As Your Grace wishes.

  No but do it gracefully, Jem, you must surrender gracefully.

  His voice had a whining tone like that of a keen wind through a keyhole. He wished to be thought well of, yet he behaved so ill that none could honestly approve him, and so we his servants caught his grudging manner as though it were an infectious disease.

  In truth, I had no more than a chill, but it was the last night of February and raw wet weather and I had supped my fill of banquets and balls. There was to be a grand ball at Whitehall two nights later and I hoped to be recovered in time to step it there with my new lady, whom I had met with at Newmarket, a widow only a year older than myself and well provided for.

  But off to Lincoln’s Inn we must go and drink deep into the night while the lawyers regaled us with their venisons and oysters which were excellent and their discourse which was dry and spiced only with stale lecheries, for it seems a rule established by divine ordinance that every lawyer believes two things of himself, first, that he is the cleverest man in England, and, second, that his lewd stories are the wittiest and most original when they are for the most part second-hand goods.

  Thus I sat glum while some Justice of the Queen’s Bench told me of the infallible manner by which one may tell whether a woman be virgin or not by the use of an orange, which I had heard a hundred times before, when Kit slapped me on the back.

  Come, Jem, the King is gone. We must be off, the chase is up.

  I think I’ll go to bed, sir.

  No, Jem, you will not. I would not pardon myself if I let you go to bed without s
eeing Dolly. It would be a sin, wouldn’t it, my lord?

  A very grave sin, Your Grace, the old judge replied, toppling off the bench and catching my arm to steady himself. She is, she is . . . Dolly, in short, is . . . she is in Whetstone Park.

  There you see, Jem, come along.

  So I stumbled off out of the hall in the wake of the soused crew. I can still hear their cries calling to one another to try the echo as we meandered through the old pillars of the crypt.

  This Whetstone Park was then (is now for that matter) no Park but a foul alley behind Lincoln’s Inn which is convenient for the baser sort of lawyer who cannot afford to keep a mistress and is too idle to traipse as far as Covent Garden for his pleasure. He may slip out for ten minutes between one brief and the next and his clerk not know he be gone.

  Where’s Dolly? Come out, Dolly! Dolly, there are three handsome dukes come to see you. No, there are three handsome pricks to . . . No, no, three handsome dukes with three handsome pricks . . . Dolly, where are you? You needn’t be shy.

  Well, there were three dukes, none of them yet twenty, but only one was handsome, and that was Jemmy Monmouth, with his noble brow and his bright eyes, he was like a spoiled angel and even when he was standing there, three-quarters cut, in the wet street with the rain streaming down his cheeks and bawling for this poor whore that was too frightened to come out, even then he had a noble aspect. Beside him my master looked like a sweaty bumble-bee.

  Dolly, where are you, Dolly my darling, don’t be frightened, for we are loving lords.

  Then two men came out of a dark alley with long staves and began to belabour Albemarle (who was the smallest of the dukes) about the head. The other two and their hangers-on came to his aid. I saw the flash of someone’s blade. And still they cried Dolly, Dolly, as though it were some sacred battle-cry though none of them, I dare say, had ever set eyes on the girl.

  Then together with Dolly, Dolly, they mingled in the cry ‘slit his nose, slit his nose’ – for this was the cry of the moment among silly young gents, and every one such as claimed to be of the bolder sort would boast of having slit the nose of some inferior who had offended him, videlicet an impudent coachman, or a moneylender who was proving troublesome – although I cannot recall ever having seen anyone with a nose thus slit.

  Roused by the clamour, men were now pouring out of the dark doors and alleys, waving sticks and holding up lanterns that they might see who the miscreants were.

  Then from the far end by the turnstile came a little man with a bigger lantern crying peace, peace, I am the beadle.

  Slit his nose, slit the beadle’s nose came the roar back from our party.

  I did not see what happened, for I was stricken with a sudden fit of giddiness (the wine had sorted badly with my chill) and I sat down upon a mounting block and thought I was about to vomit – which I then did.

  And it was only after I had done so that I heard the terrible cry of the beadle. It was a great groan, like the cry of some far-off bird.

  For a moment, there was silence. Then a voice (I thought it was Kit’s) shouted: He’s down. And then another voice said, not so loud, no, he’s dead.

  There was a clattering of heels as some of the rioters ran to the end of the alley, but the beadle had locked the turnstile. By his final act, he at least ensured that his murderers’ names were recorded.

  The three silly young lords and their fellows stood, quite crest-fallen in the gutter that ran down the middle of the alley, with the rain running down their clothes, the fine lace and silks all sodden now, while the beadle’s assistant took their names, and his neighbours held up their lanterns that there might be no prospect of concealment or escape.

  How young they looked, these murderous innocents, with scarcely a word to say between them, their beautiful tresses straggling down their backs like wild animals that had been trapped and skinned and were worn home as trophies of the chase.

  The beadle lay a few yards from them, a fair man though he had not much hair and what he had was muddied in the gutter. His face had no hatred on it, only surprise. He looked like poor Llewelyn, who had also met an untimely end. One of the men took off his cloak and wrapped the beadle and carried him off to his house. I wondered that they did not fall upon the murderers and take swift revenge, but they stayed quiet as though they had been standing at a peaceful deathbed.

  But why were they in that place? the young Duchess asked.

  Madam, it is just by Lincoln’s Inn, not two hundred yards away.

  But they had their carriages at the gate, they had no need to walk anywhere.

  I fancy they wished to stretch their legs and clear their heads of wine.

  You think I’m a fool, Jem. I know what Whetstone Park is. It’s a dreadful place, the resort of putanas.

  Well then, madam, if you knew, why did you ask?

  I wanted to test you, Jem, to see how you would lie for him. Will they hang, do you think?

  She asked the question as calmly as though she were asking whether it would rain tomorrow. She had a capricious humour. You could not tell what she was thinking. And the expression of her face was no sure guide to her heart. She would wear a bright smile when she was accusing me (which she did often) and then look grave when she paid me a compliment which she did less often and when I least looked for one. She seemed to look sidelong at me with her Chinese eyes.

  Oh no, madam, I said, surely not. They were heated with wine. It was a brawl, there was no purpose to it.

  It was murder, Jem. And she said ‘murder’ with a strange relish.

  I don’t think so. And besides, the King’s son . . .

  We’ve executed kings before now, haven’t we, Jem? And for less cause. Tell me, who struck the blow, was it Kit?

  That I cannot say, madam. I was . . . otherwise occupied at the time.

  Oh yes, Kit told me, you were vomiting like a dog. Let us hope you were observed, for that will prove you innocent.

  Until that moment, it had not struck my mind that I too might be indicted for the crime, but now I saw that it might as well be me as another.

  But her mind had passed to other matters.

  They have put off the ball, you know. That is a tragedy. My new gown is ready at last, the one of sea-blue silk with the silvered lace here – and she caressed her bosom – I was to have looked like Venus arising from the foam, Madame des Grieux said. And now nobody is to see me, isn’t that a tragedy, Jem?

  There’ll be other balls.

  Yes, but not before the spring, and one does starve of pleasure in these dreary months. I had thought to go skating, but the ice is all melted. What are we to do, Jem?

  Then again she said:

  Will he hang, do you think?

  But he did not hang, not he, nor any of his fellows. Nor did they go to gaol or even come before a court. For the King loved his son and he loved Kit, and there had been executions enough. And so he pardoned the lot of them. They were none of them to suffer punishment for all assaults, woundings, crimes, misdemeanours, trespasses and forfeitures whatsoever committed alone or with any other person from 28 February to 14 March, whether the assaulted or wounded person shall die or not.

  March the fourteenth, do you see that, Jem? They could have gone on murdering for another fortnight and not be punished for it. The King is very kind, isn’t he, Jem?

  Very kind, madam.

  It is a fine thing this pardon, I shall put it in a gilt frame and hang it where my friends may see it, that they not forget how close my Kit came to hanging with a silken cord. Or would he have been executed like a traitor? I know so little of the law. Now will you show me your pardon, Jem?

  I have none, madam.

  No pardon? But Mr Savage and Mr Fenwick have pardons, and Mr Griffen too, I think. The gentlemen are to be forgiven along with the dukes.

  My name has not been mentioned thus far.

  Well then, I do earnestly hope there was some witness to your vomit. It would be a tragedy to me if you alone were to
hang.

  I am grateful for your solicitude.

  Are you, Jem? How grateful?

  And she smiled at me in a dark way that was near a scowl.

  There was a ballad written upon the affair, some say by Mr Marvell, though the verses were too lumpish for his pen. I tried to keep the ballad from my lady, but one of the waiting-women brought her a copy and she read it out to me trippingly.

  Listen to this, Jem.

  ’Tis strange (but sure they thought not on’t before)

  Three bastard dukes should come to undo one whore.’

  Three? Is Somerset a bastard then? Not that I believe the tale about Kit, for his mother swore with her last breath she would show me the register.

  ‘Then fell the Beadle by a ducal hand

  For daring to pronounce the saucy stand.’

  Saucy stand? These are weak verses, Jem, very weak. But let us persevere.

  ‘This silly fellow’s death puts off the Ball

  And disappoints the Queen, poor little chuck

  I warrant ’twould have danced it like a Duck.’

  Duck, for mercy’s sake, he was short of a rhyme there. Still, it’s true, the Queen was disappointed.

  ‘Near t’other Path there stands an aged tree

  As fit as if ’twere made in the nonce for Three;

  Where that no ceremony may be lost,

  Each Duke for State may have a several Post.’

  —Oh, he wants them all hanged, but only the dukes, not Mr Griffen and Mr Savage, and not you, Jem, for you were otherwise engaged, were you not?

  Madam, enough of this, I pleaded.

  Do you think so? There are but two more lines:

  ‘What storms may rise out of so black a Cause

  If such turd-flies shall break through Cobweb Laws?’

  Turd-flies is not kind. I don’t think Kit resembles a turd-fly, do you, Jem? Or perhaps he is only a little like.