Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self

by Claire Tomalin

  Pepys’s lowly work continued meanwhile. He busied himself with dispatching goods, running errands to Lady Montagu’s family, the Crews, in Lincoln’s Inn and the management of servants in the Whitehall household. In December he was in trouble about a maid who had left to be married, without asking permission, to a fellow she had met at a cookhouse. Pepys, who had also omitted to ask permission for his marriage, defended himself from any complicity in her behaviour and claimed that he was never out at night himself except on Sundays, after dining at his father’s house. When immediate forgiveness was not forthcoming, he abased himself: ‘The losse of your Honours good word I am too sure will prove as much my undoing, as hitherto it hath beene my best friend.’35 He did not lose his position, but the gap between the situations of the two cousins remained wide and sometimes humiliating.

  One trouble improved before the end of the year, while another got worse. A bare mention of his housekeeping expenses in a December letter indicates that things were at least partly patched up between him and Elizabeth: ‘my selfe and my wife’ were spending four shillings a week on their food.36 He had at least come clean to his employer about being married. But he was hardly able to enjoy Elizabeth’s return, since the pain produced by the stone had become too bad to endure. The bitter cold of that winter aggravated it, and he took the decision to seek a surgeon. He saw it as his only hope of escaping from ‘a condition of constant and dangerous and most painful sickness and low condition and poverty’.37

  Surgery was not an easy choice. It was known to be a hideously unpleasant procedure and a gamble besides. ‘In this great and dangerous Operation, life and death doe so wrastle together, that no man can tell which will have the victory,’ warned one treatise for surgeons, and patients were recommended to make their peace with God before undergoing it.38 Yet, in spite of the risk, the operation was always in demand, because of the ‘scarce credible’ pain caused by the stone.39 Pepys chose as his surgeon Thomas Hollier of St Thomas’s and Bart’s, a staunch Cromwellian who had been operating for thirty years and had besides stitched up the wounds of many commonwealth fighters. The operation was not to take place in what was called the ‘cutting ward’ of the hospital, however. Pepys was to be a private patient and was happy enough to find himself an ideal arrangement. His cousin Jane, née Pepys and now Turner, his friend since the boyhood visits to her father at Ashtead, offered to nurse him in her house in Salisbury Court. Her husband was a successful lawyer, she had one or two small children, and she was an active, cheerful and generous woman. Unhesitatingly she put herself and her house at his disposal. Her offer meant he would be near his anxious parents. Pepys’s father went about mobilizing as many members of the family as he could to pray for Sam during his ordeal; the prayers of one maternal aunt, a ‘poor, religious, well-meaning, good humble soul’, ‘did do me good among the many good souls that did by my father’s desires pray for me when I was cut of the stone, and which God did hear’.40 No doubt Elizabeth prayed too; at least one hopes so.

  Patients were advised to have the operation in the spring. Both cold and heat were considered unfavourable, and the surgeon hoped to have bright sunlight to help him to see what he was doing. Pepys duly settled on the end of March. The preparations took some time. The sick person was advised to cultivate a calm frame of mind and to avoid anger or sadness; he should feel confidence in the surgeon, even affection (all this modern-sounding advice comes from contemporary manuals). And surgeons were encouraged to give their patients an honest account of what they were to undergo. Wine was not allowed during the preparatory weeks, only sweet drinks made from almond, cucumber and melon, and a diet of fresh meat, chicken, pigeon, eggs, butter, barley and water-gruel. In the days before the operation Pepys would have been given warm baths – possibly an unprecedented experience – and kept in a warm bed. His belly would be rubbed with unguents, he would be bled in the arm and given gentle purges, until the final day, when he was left in peace and simply served with a good meal.

  The operation was performed in the patient’s bedroom. On the day of the surgery a lightly boiled egg was recommended, and a talk with a religious adviser. For Sam, whether he ate the egg or spoke with a clergyman, the day was 26 March. He had a last bath, was dried, told to take a turn or two about the room and offered a specially prescribed drink made of liquorice, marshmallow, cinnamon, milk, rosewater and the whites of fifteen eggs – six ounces to be swallowed with an ounce of syrup of althea and other herbs, a large dose for a nervous man to swallow.41 After this he was asked to position himself on a table, possibly covered with a straw-filled bag into which he could be settled while the process of binding him up began. Some surgeons thought it wise to say a few reassuring words at this point, because the binding was terrifying to many patients. They were trussed like chickens, their legs up, a web of long linen strips wound round legs, neck and arms that was intended to hold them still and keep their limbs out of the surgeon’s way. The instructions for the binding alone take up several pages of one manual; and when it was done the patient was further bound to the table. He was shaved around his privy parts, and a number of strong men were positioned to hold him fast: ‘two whereof may hold him by the knees, and feet, and two by the Arme-holes, and hands… The hands are also sometimes tyed to the knees, with a particular rowler, or the knees by themselves, by the help of a pulley fastened into the table.’42 Meanwhile the surgeon lubricated his instruments with warm water and oil or milk of almonds: the catheter, the probe, the itinerarium, the specular, the pincers, small hooks and so forth; he also had powder to stop bleeding, sponges and cordial waters to hand. There were no anaesthetics, and alcohol was certainly not allowed to a patient undergoing surgery to the bladder.

  The surgeon got to work. First he inserted a thin silver instrument, the itinerarium, through the penis into the bladder to help position the stone. Then he made the incision, about three inches long and a finger’s breadth from the line running between scrotum and anus, and into the neck of the bladder, or just below it. The patient’s face was sponged as the incision was made. The stone was sought, found and grasped with pincers; the more speedily it could be got out the better. Once out, the wound was not stitched – it was thought best to let it drain and cicatrize itself – but simply washed and covered with a dressing, or even kept open at first with a small roll of soft cloth known as a tent, dipped in egg white. A plaster of egg yolk, rose vinegar and anointing oils was then applied.43

  Pepys, no doubt by now fainting with shock and pain, was unbound and moved to his warmed bed. A cold syrup of lemon juice, radishes and marshmallow was ready for him to drink.44 The first dressing was left for twelve hours, and the thighs were kept tied to help the wound heal naturally. There was no question of getting out of bed for a week. Broth, cinnamon water and soothing drinks were given during the first day of recovery, and when he felt like something more an austere vegetable diet of succory (chicory), endive and spinach was recommended. There was further anointing of his belly with oils; oil of earthworms was held in readiness against possible convulsions, and a purge given if necessary, but only after two weeks. Fever, insomnia and pain were all to be expected, and above all, you would think, acute anxiety. Was the bladder healing? How soon might he expect it to function normally again? If he moved, would he tear the just healing wound open? Had the surgeon missed the prostate, something the manual worried about? Pepys was the type of patient who is likely to have read it for himself. We know that he sought information and anatomical explanations from the doctors who attended him, as he recalled when he saw a corpse dissected at the Surgeons’ Hall in 1663, and took a particular interest in the bladder and kidneys.45

  Recovery, for those who did not succumb to secondary infection, was expected to take thirty to forty days. Pepys made it in thirty-five. It was a triumph. By his own account he was himself again by 1 May: exactly two years later he wrote in his Diary for 1 May 1660: ‘This day I do count myself to have had full two years of perfect cure for the stone.�
�� Hollier could be proud of his work, especially considering the size of Pepys’s stone, described as ‘very great’ by his medical colleagues; it was as big as a tennis ball, according to Evelyn, who saw it later. Real tennis, the only kind then played, uses very slightly smaller balls than modern lawn tennis, but still with a diameter of about 2¼inches; the stone must have been exceedingly awkward to get hold of and extract through a three-inch incision.46 Fortunately Hollier was at the height of his powers as a lithotomist; that year alone he operated successfully on thirty patients. The following year, 1659, was not so good; his first four died, presumably because his instruments had picked up some infectious matter that no warm water or milk of almonds could clear.

  Pepys’s joy was great, and he declared his intention of celebrating the anniversary of the operation with a dinner for the rest of his life, a plan that proved over-ambitious, but showed how seriously he felt that without the operation he could have expected nothing but sickness and poverty. He also preserved the stone carefully and, when he could afford it, had a special ‘Stone-case’ made for it, costing twenty-five shillings, in which he displayed it to others who might be considering the operation.47 His mother, who suffered from the same trouble, although less severely, was lucky enough to void a stone spontaneously two years later; she disposed of hers by tossing it into the fireplace.48 Nothing marks the difference in their characters more clearly: the tough old woman, incurious, sluttish even, and her neat, purposeful son, intent on understanding, mastering, classifying and teaching. For Sam, with his curiosity and optimism, his stone was something to be investigated, treated, boxed, labelled and shown to anyone interested, and doubtless to some who were not.

  He came out of his ordeal with a revival of confidence and energy, and set about putting his life on a new footing. He had kept his two jobs, and both his employers were in high favour, which promised well for his own future. They were also out of town, conveniently enough, while he was recovering and re-establishing himself. Downing was in the Hague as Cromwell’s ambassador and part of his intelligence service, and Montagu was at sea, blockading Dunkirk in alliance with the French. While there Montagu invited Cardinal Mazarin to a magnificent banquet aboard the Naseby and gave him a tour of the ship. Mazarin was delighted and impressed not only by the ship but also by the young English general, and in particular by his personal devotion to Cromwell; he described him as ‘un des gentilhommes du monde le plus franc et mieux intentionné et le plus attaché à la personne de M. le Protecteur’. His attachment was well known; it was also mutual. Cromwell signed himself to Montagu, ‘your very affectionate friend Oliver P’.49 Cromwell’s power had never seemed stronger or more stable. The latest royalist conspiracies had been put down and punished, and his name was respected and feared all over Europe. Pepys knew he was serving men close to the very centre of this power. He saw old acquaintances from Cambridge improving their situations in its orbit. One of them, John Dryden, arrived in town and was found some clerking to do for his cousin Pickering, lord chamberlain to Cromwell’s household. Another was Pepys’s one-time tutor, Samuel Morland, who got himself a place in the intelligence service. Pepys himself needed to shake off the condition of a living-in servant and find a house of his own; and this he set about doing.

  5. A House in Axe Yard

  Pepys could afford to rent only half a house – ‘my poor little house’ he still called it after he’d taken over the other half later – but he had an eye for where to live, and perhaps a helping hand from one or the other of his powerful employers, and it was as well placed as could be. Axe Yard was a cul-de-sac in the heart of Westminster. Today government buildings cover the whole area, leaving no trace of the old street pattern, but in 1658 there were twenty-five houses along the length of the Yard, the larger ones inhabited by rich and well-connected families.1 Its narrow entrance in King Street, where the Axe tavern stood, was only a step away from the King Street gate into Whitehall Palace; and the Yard ran to the edge of St James’s Park, giving the houses at that end airy views over the green space.

  Whitehall, although it was called a palace, was really nothing more than a vast jumble of houses jostled together between the Thames and St James’s Park and cut across by the main road from Charing Cross to Westminster; its most modern building was Inigo Jones’s Banqueting House, built for James I and the scene of Charles I’s execution. The old buildings were said to consist of something like two thousand rooms, some done up as residences for the ruler – currently Cromwell – and his family; otherwise apartments were awarded to the most favoured servants of the state, Edward Montagu among them. As in the college courtyards of Cambridge or Oxford, you reached people’s rooms through a multitude of separate doorways and stairs. There were three acres of garden and two of bowling green – an orchard in Henry VIII’s time – as well as a great hall, a council chamber, a chapel, guard rooms and several long galleries used for exercise and conversation; and there was a wharf, since provisions came mostly by water, and several sets of stairs to the river.

  If you turned right where Axe Yard joined King Street you were soon at Westminster Palace, another jumble of buildings, halls and chapels in which parliament sat, both commons and lords, as well as various courts of law. The Painted Chamber was here, and the Great Hall, where booksellers and other shopkeepers put up their stalls; it opened on to New Palace Yard. The offices of the Exchequer were also housed in Westminster Palace, which made Axe Yard especially convenient for an Exchequer clerk; and in fact Pepys’s boss George Downing had a house of his own in Axe Yard, in which Pepys’s colleague and friend John Hawley was currently living. To Downing he was ‘my clerk and servant’, to Pepys ‘my brother Hawley’.2

  So, to the right the Exchequer, the Great Hall with its friendly shopkeepers, and parliament; to the left the gate into Whitehall in which the Montagu lodgings were situated, where Pepys lived until he acquired his Axe Yard house and still thought of as a second home, because some of his books remained there in 1660.3 It can have taken no more than a hand cart to bring his few other belongings across from his room. He and Elizabeth had something like twenty shillings a week to live on, out of which there was the rent and taxes to pay, and he expected her to keep daily accounts ‘even to a bunch of carrot and a ball of whiteing’.4 At this stage they could have owned little more by way of furniture than a table and a few chairs, a bed big enough for the two of them and a small bed for the maid, because, in shaking off the condition of living-in servant himself, Pepys had become for the first time the employer of a servant of his own.

  In August 1658 he accordingly installed his ‘family’ of three, himself, his wife, who had reached the mature age of seventeen, and their servant, Jane Birch: a trio where they had been a duet, and perhaps the trio form suited them better. They had five rooms and a yard in which they bred pigeons. It was a great deal more spacious than the single room he and Elizabeth had shared at the start of their marriage; but still, when master, mistress and maid were together in half a small house with its rooms opening straight into each other, it meant that a bad mood, an illness or a hangover headache was likely to involve all three of them. And since tact was not the foremost quality of either Sam or Elizabeth, much was expected of Jane.

  She was fourteen. Her job was to make the fires and clean the grates, sweep and wash the floors, fetch water and empty slops, do much of the family laundry – sometimes rising at two in the morning to get started on it – shop for provisions, give a hand with cooking and clear and clean up after meals. Beyond this, she must help in keeping the peace. We know from Pepys that she turned out good cakes and refused point blank to kill a turkey, or chickens or pigeons. She seems to have been able to read, because she owned a book, something unusual for a country girl, as Jane was.5 In the country she had left behind a mother, to whom she was attached, and a small brother, Wayneman; and she had an elder one already settled in London as a groom, and married. Pepys paid her about £2 year. He felt free to beat her with a broom when he
was displeased, although this was not often.6 Intelligent, merry and discreet, she was destined to play a long and important part in his life, and he in hers.

  A web of friends and colleagues surrounded the Pepyses in their new home. Recovered from his operation, he had taken up with his old clubbing set again; they talked, they drank, they sang and swapped rude stories and played cards in the taverns. Harper’s was close to the Axe Yard, and Wilkinson’s Cookshop, also in King Street, served food and drink. The names of the friends with whom he passed the time of day and night crop up in the early pages of the diary: Dick Scobell, Will Symons, Peter Luellin, James Chetwynd, Tom Doling, Matthew and Tom Lea, Sam Samford, the Ashwell cousins, George and Dick Vines, Sam Hartlib, Robin Shaw, Jack Spicer, John Hawley, Will Bowyer. These are the clerks of Cromwell’s London, and we can imagine them busy at their office desks, standing in doorways, hurrying through the streets, worrying about their lodgings, some idling, some joking, some lazy, some ambitious, rising or at least hopeful young men in the great man’s administration, proud to be where the action was, their jobs mostly secured through family connections and recommendations. Will Bowyer was only a doorkeeper, but his father Robert was an usher at the Exchequer, and he prided himself on keeping a paternal eye on the clerks and often invited them home to his houseful of daughters in Westminster, and sometimes to his country place in Buckinghamshire. He and his wife made friends with Elizabeth, and Sam sometimes called him ‘father Bowyer’. The Vines household was another hospitable place, also headed by a long-established Exchequer officer living in New Palace Yard; the sons were musical, and Sam could take his fiddle round to play with them in the evening. There was more music to be had in Axe Yard, at the house of Mrs Crisp, a friend of the Montagus who played the harpsichord and was teaching her son Laud to sing; her house was large and grandly furnished. The house next to hers belonged to Samuel Hartlib, scholar and refugee from Prussia and a close friend of John Milton, now quite blind and living near Cripple-gate in the City; young Hartlib was a government clerk and one of Pepys’s circle. Sir Edward Widdrington, related both to the speaker of the House and the public orator at Cambridge, was another Axe Yard resident; so was Thomas Wade, a naval administrator. Other neighbours who quickly became friends were John and Elizabeth Hunt, young like the Pepyses and still without children; they came from East Anglia, and she had a family connection with the Cromwells that may have helped her husband to his job with the Excise Office.