Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self

by Claire Tomalin

  Seething Lane was not the only place where there were problems. Pepys was told that Lord Sandwich had lost £50 playing cards with the king at Lady Castlemaine’s; he was currently living in Chelsea, hoping to recover from a recurring fever in the country air. Lady Sandwich’s father Lord Crew complained to Pepys at length of the dissolute life of the court and about Lady Castlemaine keeping the king in thrall with erotic tricks. He had perhaps heard rumours of Sandwich also being ensnared by a girl in Chelsea, although they had not yet reached Pepys; in any case Crew had a good deal to say about sexual misbehaviour, and he quoted the Italian proverb Cazzo dritto non vuolt consiglio (‘You can’t argue with a standing cock’). That evening Pepys arrived home late and found Elizabeth and Pembleton alone upstairs, ‘not dancing but walking. Now, so deadly full of jealousy I am, that my heart and head did so cast about and fret, that I could not do any business possibly, but went out to my office.’ After fuming in the office for a while he returned home and tried to find out whether his wife had been wearing drawers.11

  Jealousy gripped him. He did his best to distract himself with work. He blamed himself, and attempted to control what he realized was a form of madness that threatened to render him ridiculous; but he was unable to prevent it. He ascertained that Pembleton was a married man, but that did not prevent the jealousy flaring up again and again, like a running fire that resists all attempts to stifle it. Anyone who has ever been jealous recognizes the horrible truth of his account. Pepys’s sense of the absurdity involved, his candour and insight into himself, make it appallingly entertaining, as good as scenes from Molière or Shakespeare. Pepys had seen and admired Othello and noticed a woman in the audience crying when Desdemona was smothered. Perhaps he thought of that now.12

  Making a noble effort, he invited Pembleton to join a family expedition to play ninepins on the south bank; the flames of jealousy leapt up again at the sight of his taking Elizabeth’s hand, even ‘in play’. They had reached the middle of May. The next provocation came when he found she had invited the dancing master to dine with her at home, without bothering even to mention the matter to her husband first. A suspicion arises in the reader at this point that Elizabeth was enjoying her power to upset him almost as much as she enjoyed the dancing. There was more that evening, and in the morning Pepys lamented that he could not ‘get up so early as I was wont, nor my mind to business as it should be and used to be before this dancing’.13

  An infection had taken over the household. More angry words were exchanged between husband and wife. He went into his study and made a vow to himself not to oppose her until the course of lessons was over, fixing a fine of two shillings and sixpence for himself every time he failed. Elizabeth raised the stakes. Pembleton was there again when Pepys arrived home, and at supper she quarrelled openly with him, using the word ‘Devil’ in front of Ashwell and the dancing master. Had they been alone, Pepys would have struck her.

  He calmed down listening to the nightingales as he walked with Creed from Greenwich to Woolwich, and at home to a caged blackbird with a fine song, given him by a Deptford carpenter. But not for long. At church on Sunday Pepys watched Pembleton ‘leer’ at his wife throughout the sermon and realized that she had become uncharacteristically eager to attend both services at St Olave’s. She was also asking for a second month of dancing lessons. ‘I am loath to think the worst; but yet… it makes me curse the time that I consented to her dancing,’ he wrote. Two days later he sat brooding at the office, went home and found Pembleton, now convinced ‘by many circumstances… that there is something more than ordinary between my wife and him; which doth so trouble me that I know not, at this very minute that I now write this almost, what either I write or am doing nor how to carry myself to my wife in it’. In the afternoon he discovered she had sent everyone in the house out and suspected her of summoning Pembleton. Suffering ‘a very hell in my mind’, he slipped home yet again and indeed found the two of them alone, ‘which made me almost mad’. ‘And Lord, to see how my jealousy wrought so far, that I went saftly up to see whether any of the beds were out of order or no.’14

  They were not. But his jealousy does not seem unreasonable. Unlike Othello, even in his rage he never stopped wanting to believe in his wife’s innocence; but, while she was not going to bed with Pembleton, she was certainly flirting for all she was worth and deliberately provoking Pepys in the process. It looks like another campaign to keep the balance of power level between them, or even simply to attract his attention. He was always busy, rising at four in summer and often working at the office until midnight; he made frequent trips to Deptford, Woolwich and Chatham, and devoted most of his spare time to technical study of naval matters, learning arithmetic, sail-making, timber measurement, how to draw ships and going through the old records of the Navy Office. She had married at fourteen, she knew herself to be attractive, and she liked to be admired. Better perhaps a jealous husband who noticed her than one so absorbed in his duties and studies that he hardly did.

  That night, husband and wife talked and she accused him of his ‘old disease of Jealousy’. He countered by saying her behaviour was indiscreet. They argued for an hour, she cried and he caressed her; she remained upset. The 27th of May was the last day appointed for her lessons, and Pepys had not agreed to any extension. He invited the dancing master to supper and was polite to him; but in the course of the meal he became aware that Elizabeth had inflicted more humiliation on him by telling Pembleton about his jealousy.

  At least the lessons were now over. But at once Elizabeth’s jealousy of Ashwell flared up, and she complained that Pepys neglected her for the girl. He did his best to reassure her. At the end of May he expressed relief in the Diary that there was no more dancing – his Coranto was forgotten – and that he could fall to ‘quiet of mind and business again’. But it was too soon to relax. Elizabeth accused Ashwell of stealing a piece of ribbon. Pepys noticed Elizabeth putting on drawers before going out and suspected her of meeting Pembleton. She made it obvious that she no longer enjoyed Ashwell’s company, although the two of them were about to go to Brampton together. Shortly before they were due to leave, Pembleton called and the women went up to the dancing room with him. Pepys did not join them, but he could not help listening; he put his ear to the door and fretted when he could hear no sound of dancing.15

  On the day before the women were to leave for the country, he and Elizabeth stayed at home while everyone else went to church and had another serious talk. And while he inwardly cursed ever taking on Ashwell or agreeing to the dancing lessons, and greatly resented Elizabeth’s view of him as a jealous husband, they managed some sort of reconciliation, on the surface at least. She put on her riding suit and called on the Penns with him, and in the morning gave him her keys and set off for the coach while he was out on business; and he followed her to the coach and was there in time to kiss her often ‘and Ashwell once’.16

  He was invited that same day to a dinner at Trinity House, the shipmasters’ association. There the talk presently turned to pretty women, and Lord Sandwich asked Sir John Mennes what he thought of his neighbour’s wife, looking at Pepys as he did so: ‘Why, Sir John, do you not think that he hath a great beauty to his wife? Upon my word he hath.’ Pepys was proud to hear her praised, and it did not occur to him to feel jealous that Elizabeth should have caught his patron’s eye. In the evening he went into her closet and played his violin there, going to bed without any supper, missing her sadly and feeling that he loved her with all his heart in spite of everything that had happened.

  This was not the end of the drama. Pepys consoled himself for Elizabeth’s absence by meeting Betty Lane in a wine house, where they indulged in lobster and petting, and were observed through a window by a man who shouted and threw a stone; Pepys was so worried by this that they left through separate doors. He had another bad moment when he saw a man who looked like Pembleton, and even though he didn’t really think it was the dancing master, ‘my blood did rise in my face and I fa
ll into a sweat from my old Jealousy and hate, which I pray God remove from me’.17 On a happier day he saw the ladies of the court walking through Whitehall, laughing and trying on one another’s hats and feathers, on their way to attend the queen, and was so taken with them that he fancied himself sporting with the most beautiful, Frances Stuart, in his lonely bed that night. Two nights later he chose the queen as his dream bedmate.18 Captain Ferrer was quite ready to discuss the court ladies with him and, in the course of his gossip, revealed the real reason that kept Lord Sandwich at Mrs Becke’s house in Chelsea: ‘whether he means one of the daughters of the house or no, I know not; but hope the contrary’, wrote Pepys, but this was what Ferrer meant, and it was soon confirmed by another of Lord Sandwich’s servants. Will Howe knew that Lord Sandwich doted on Mrs Becke’s daughter Betty and spent his time and money upon her, and that she was a woman of bad reputation ‘and very impudent… And that the world doth take notice of it.’ This was why Sandwich was not at Hinchingbrooke for the summer: ‘in fine, I perceive my Lord is dabling with this wench, for which I am sorry; though I do not wonder at it, being a man amorous enough and now begins to allow himself the liberty that he sees everybody else at Court takes’, wrote Pepys. He was deeply shocked.19

  His news from Huntingdonshire was not encouraging. Elizabeth wrote of quarrels at Brampton between Pall, Ashwell, herself and her father-in-law. Then she described how she had boxed Ashwell’s ears for lying ‘to her teeth’, and Ashwell had struck her back; things were so bad that Pepys’s parents had talked to Lady Sandwich about the situation. After this his father wrote to say Elizabeth was returning to London early, and that they had all ‘lived very ill together’.20 He arrived in town at the same time but would not come to Seething Lane with her, choosing to stay with Tom instead. Pepys had to hear Elizabeth’s and Ashwell’s different versions of what had happened. He found Ashwell’s the convincing one, an exact listing of the angry words and blows she had received, and he did not believe Elizabeth’s denials; he was particularly ashamed that she should have made scenes at Hinchingbrooke, among my Lady’s people. When Ashwell had gone to bed, he told Elizabeth what he felt, soberly and quietly.21 Since Elizabeth could not control her fury against Ashwell, Pepys said he thought it best for her to leave, simply for the sake of peace. She agreed. Meeting him later in the street, Ashwell told him that Elizabeth had explained to her that it was his wish that she should leave, not hers – ‘which was not well’, as Pepys observed. Ashwell would go back to teaching, and for her last few days at Seething Lane she kept out of everyone’s way.

  The house was now nearly empty. Wayneman had run away and then been dismissed. The current cookmaid walked out on the day Ashwell was sacked, leaving no one to help them but a former maid, Susan. They had forgotten she was a drinker, and she made things still worse. On 19 August the Pepys household had a particularly difficult day. He had forgotten he had arranged for the joiners to start laying more new floors in the house, and they arrived first thing in the morning. He took himself to Hollier, his doctor, for some pills to treat a bad attack of wind. Elizabeth sacked Susan, who walked out leaving the house dirty and full of wet clothes. The Pepyses were reduced to a takeaway dinner (‘fetched from the Cookes’). Pembleton called, ‘which begun to make me sweat’; he was told that no more dancing lessons were wanted and took a short leave. And Pepys had two long talks with Lord Sandwich’s man of business, Henry Moore, and one with Will Howe, about their master’s folly at Chelsea: ‘I find that my Lord is wholly given up to this wench, who it seems hath been reputed a common Strumpett.’ Howe urged Pepys to speak to Sandwich, but Moore feared it would do no good and only harm Pepys, and for the moment he decided to ‘let it alone and let God do his Will’.22

  Ashwell left on 25 August. Things were not entirely restored to calm. Elizabeth accused Pepys of indulging in his perpetual building and works and interior decoration as a way of keeping her busy inside the house. Pepys went through more sweaty moments at sightings of Pembleton, each time suspecting him of plotting to call on Elizabeth while he was out. Pepys’s brother John came to stay and complained in strong terms of Elizabeth’s behaviour at Brampton and general rudeness towards her in-laws; Pepys made soothing replies. He was determined to keep her happy. He took her to Bartholomew Fair. He took her to dinner with Mr Povey in his magnificent house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He took her shopping to buy expensive chintz with which to line the walls of her room. When in September he had to go to Huntingdon to sort out some legal matters, he was inspired to invite her to join him with the gallant words, ‘Well, shall you and I never travell together again?’ and she agreed to ride with him. As soon as they arrived at Brampton, he took her to spend the day with Lady Sandwich.23 Later they rode into the woods to gather nuts, and he showed her the river – ‘the first and only hour of pleasure that ever I had in this estate’, wrote Pepys; and although this was not strictly true, it expressed his sense of the idyllic nature of their afternoon together in the autumn sunshine.24

  The problem of Lord Sandwich remained. ‘I am ashamed to see my Lord so grossly play the beast and fool, to the flinging off of all Honour, friends, servants and every thing and person that is good, and only will have his private lust undisturbed with this common whore… his carrying her abroad and playing on his lute under her window, and forty other poor sordid things… but let him go on till God Almighty and his own conscience and thoughts of his Lady and family do it.’25 Pepys’s fine words lose a little of their force coming immediately after his own foray to find Betty Lane (‘God forgive me… but she was not there’), but in his mind his own case bore no relation to Sandwich’s. One was a small private transgression by a private man, the other a scandal involving a public figure whose behaviour was flagrant and causing widespread comment, and keeping him from his proper way of life and his home. And although Sandwich was at Hinchingbrooke briefly in September, where Pepys saw him, he was not his usual self, and Will Howe said he was hurrying back to Chelsea.

  In November Pepys decided he must speak to Lord Sandwich. He went to his lodgings and waited for him; but when he came in, Pepys lost his nerve. He feared Sandwich would not take it well; he did not seem in the mood to talk, his manner was odd: perhaps he sensed he was about to be read a lecture. Pepys withdrew and told Howe he would write a letter instead.26 It took him a few days to draft; among other distractions, Elizabeth was ill with her old complaint, the abscess on her vulva so bad now that it might require surgery. He read the draft of his letter to Moore, who approved it warmly. Pepys made two fair copies and gave one to Will Hewer to deliver personally into Lord Sandwich’s hand. The letter appears in full in the Diary.27 It is written with signal courtesy and tact, expresses Pepys’s sorrow at the talk in the City and the court and from people of all conditions about Sandwich’s absence from court and his failure to keep up his service to the king and the navy; goes on to mention his living in a house in which one of the daughters is known as ‘a common Courtizan’ and to say ‘how much her wantonness occasions (though unjustly) scandal to your Lordship’. It ends by saying he finds ‘a general coldness’ towards Sandwich, such as he has never known before; and assures him that no one else knows what he has written. Pepys took the trouble to enclose the letter in another asking his Lordship not to open it unless he were alone and at leisure.

  It was an extraordinarily bold move for Pepys to make. He was not Sandwich’s social equal; he was his junior by eight years; he had been his servant and owed his present position to him. True, they were related by blood and on friendly terms, but Pepys had never yet presumed even to invite Sandwich to his house. Sandwich had not raised the subject of the letter with Pepys or invited his opinion. The society in which they were living was one in which adulterous affairs were openly carried on by the highest in the land. What made Pepys, normally a cautious man, act as he did? He does not offer any explanation, and we are left to guess.

  He makes it clear that Moore, Howe and he were all straightforwardly
shocked by the change in their master and fearful of the resulting scandal getting worse, with consequences that might affect them all. But there was more to it than that. They had served him since the days when public men were not expected to behave licentiously. I believe Pepys was bitterly disappointed that Sandwich, who had represented the old cause and its values for so long, should be so easily corrupted by the new regime. The political change was one thing and might be justified in the light of all that had happened; Pepys himself had accepted and benefited by it. It was quite another to see the rot go right through the man, making him frivolous and self-indulgent, taking him away from his work, his duty and his home, neglecting and humiliating his innocent Lady. And all for a naughty Chelsea girl – it was not as though this were some great love. Until now Pepys had been unfailingly deferential towards Sandwich; but now his sense of family, and of what the members of a family owed to one another, became stronger than his deference.