Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self

by Claire Tomalin

  5. Humfrey Wanley to T. Tanner, 16 Apr. 1695, Letters of Humfrey Wanley, Palaeographer, Anglo-Saxonist, Librarian 1672–1726, ed. P. L. Heyworth (1989), pp. 12, 13. Humfrey Wanley to Smith, 23 Apr. 1695, when he saw ‘Mr Pepyses noble Library’, p. 16.

  6. Humfrey Wanley to John Bagford, 24 May 1696, ibid., pp. 37–8.

  7. Humfrey Wanley to Pepys, 15 Apr. 1701, Letters and Second Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. R. G. Howarth, pp. 330–31.

  8. For Pepys’s and Sloane’s testimonials, Letters of Humfrey Wanley, ed. P. L. Heyworth, pp. 473–5. Sloane also offered £100 towards the funding; also Private Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys 1679–1703, ed. J. R. Tanner (1926), vol. I, pp. 366–7. In spite of all this, Wanley failed to persuade Oxford to back him.

  9. Sam Newton to Pepys, n.d. but 7 Aug. 1695, British Library Add MSS, 20,732, fol. 158.

  10. Pepys to Sam Newton, 8 Aug. 1695, ibid., fols. 158V., 159.

  11. Diary, 25 July 1663 , when Pepys and Will called on Gauden there. Pepys found ‘the house very regular and finely contrived, and the gardens and offices about it as convenient and as full of good variety as ever I saw in my life. It is true he hath been censured for laying out so much money.’ He called again 27 July 1665 and found the gardens ‘mighty pleasant’. In 1663 Clapham had 562 hearths (Victoria County History of Surrey, vol. IV, p. 37) and in 1664 there were 92 houses. Companion to Latham and Matthews’s edition of the Diary, p. 65.

  12. The verses he quotes from memory run, ‘When I see a Discontent/Sick of the faults of Government/Whose very Rest and Peace dis-ease him,/‘Cause giv’n by those that doe not please him/Mee thinks that Bedlam has noe Folly, “Like to the politick Mellancholly”’. Pepys evidently felt safe confiding his political feelings to Julia Shallcross.

  All that is known of this letter is given by G. de la Bédoyère, The Correspondence of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, p. 235, footnote. It is taken from the Rosenbach Company Catalogue, Philadelphia 1937, Item 287, p. 102. Bédoyère was unaware of the existence of Julia Shallcross when he published it. Later, in Aug. 1700, Pepys wrote to thank Dr George Stanhope for his attentions to ‘Mrs Shellcrosse and her party at Greenwich’. Stanhope was vicar at Tewin in Hertfordshire, close to Woodhall, and the home of Julia’s sister Isabel.

  13. He planned to visit the Houblon sons in the winter of 1700–1701, but it is not clear whether he managed to do so. Private Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys, ed. J. R. Tanner, vol. II, p. 124.

  14. There were to be another four bookcases. The ninth was installed by 1702, and the last three delivered after his death. The drawings were done by Sutton Nicholls, folded and preserved in the catalogue. David McKitterick, Catalogue of the Pepys Library vol. VII (1991), p. xxxiii.

  15. ‘The Miniature K: of France on horseback by Mr Skyner – in gilt frame’. The attribution comes from the Houghton Library Harvard inventory made in the early nineteenth century, a transcription of a lost original. ‘Mr Skyner’ is surely Mary, whom we know to have been an artist.

  16. Evelyn’s grandson’s poem is dated 12 July 1699 and printed in Private Conespondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys, ed. J. R. Tanner, vol. I, p. 179. Pepys to Sir Littleton Powys, 20 Jan. 1697, vol. II, p. 137. Tansy is a herb whose juice, yellow and bitter, was used to flavour puddings for Easter.

  17. P. P. Dégalénière to Pepys, 5 June 1701, ibid., vol. II, pp. 226–9, for reference to Mary being godmother to his daughter. Dr George Hickes to Pepys, 1 Sept. 1702, ibid., vol. II, p. 267. Humfrey Wanley to Pepys, 25 Sept. 1702, Letters of Humfrey Wanley, ed. P. L. Heyworth, pp. 193–4. For greetings from wives, Captain Charles Hatton to Pepys, 31 Aug. 1700, Private Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys, ed. J. R. Tanner, vol. II, p. 62, and Mrs Evelyn, 22 July 1700, Letters and Second Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. R. G. Howarth, p. 304.

  18. I am indebted to Charles Knighton for this information from the Magdalene College archives. It appears in a section covering the years 1690 and 1713, fol. 127. Pepys’s donation, entered on the immediately preceding fol. 1 26v., was made 18 June 1694, and is entered in his account with Hoare’s bank.

  19. Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 12 Feb. 1698, p. 88. ‘ Pass for Mr John Jackson, Mrs Julia Shallcrosse, Mrs Mary Skinner, Mrs Ann Cherritt and Alice Edmonds and Conrad Bechsteiner, their servants, to go to France.’

  20. Pepys to John Jackson, 19 Oct. 1699, Private Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys, ed. J. R. Tanner, vol. I, pp. 199–202.

  21. For Pepys’s remark about the pain of the stone in the coach, letter to John Jackson, 11 Nov. 1700, ibid., vol. II, pp. 123–4. Pepys to John Jackson (in Venice), 8 Apr. 1700, ibid., pp. 316–17. Tanner informs us that the letter begins in his own hand, Lorrain takes it up, and the postscript is in Mary’s hand; and that Pepys’s signature is ‘in a very trembling hand’.

  22. 23 Sept. 1700, The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. E. S. de Beer. Henry Hyde to Pepys, 1 July 1700, Private Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys, ed. J. R. Tanner, vol. II, p. 1.

  23. Dr John Shadwell to John Jackson, 20 May, 2 June, 8 July 1700, Private Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys, ed. J. R. Tanner, vol. I, PP. 343, 349, and vol. II, p. 10.

  24. Pepys to John Jackson, 13 June 1700, ibid., vol. I, pp. 358–9.

  25. Pepys to John Evelyn, 19 Sept. 1700. Bédoyère does not give passage about optics (pp. 282–3) but Howarth and Tanner do, noting that it is deleted – Pepys evidently cut the part of the letter that included an invitation to Evelyn’s grandson to come and see his experiment, perhaps because he no longer felt up to such a visit.

  26. Pepys to Charles Hatton, 19 Sept. 1700, Letters and Second Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. R. G. Howarth, p. 310. The weather records in Gordon Manley’s essay ‘Central England Temperatures: Monthly Means 1659 to 1973 ’ , Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, no. 100, 1974, pp. 389–405, indicate a warm July, August and September in 1700.

  27. Pepys to John Jackson, 8 Oct. 1700, Private Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys, ed. J. R. Tanner, vol. II, p. 87. Diary, 7 Sept. 1662, for Pepys’s remarks on the queen. John Jackson did not manage to deliver the message, but he did see the queen in Apr., after lingering in Madrid, where he was particularly keen to attend the ‘Bull-Feast’, ‘the diversion very well worth the seeing, once; the worst of it is its barbarity’.

  28. Pepys to Wynne Houblon, 30 Oct. 1700, ibid., vol. II, p. 105.

  29. Pepys to Dr Arthur Charlett about Dr Gregory’s educational proposals, 5 Nov. 1700, Letters and Second Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. R. G. Howarth, pp. 317–20.

  30. Pepys to his cousin Angier of Hawley, 14 Mar. 1695, British Museum Add. MSS, 20,732, fol. 85.

  31. The whole passage in Cicero’s ‘Scipio’s Dream’ (Book VI, On the Republic) from which the motto is taken talks about the division between the mortal body and the soul, which is not mortal. ‘Tu vero enitere; et sic habeto, non esse te mortalem, sed corpus hoc; nec enim tu is es, quem forma ista declarat, sed mens cuiusque is est quisque, non ea figura, quae digito demonstrari potest.’ Richard Ollard’s admirable translation reads, ‘Fight the good fight, and always call to mind that it is not you who are mortal, but this body. For your true being is not discerned by perceiving your physical appearance. But what a man’s mind is, that is what he is, not that individual human shape that we identify through our senses.’

  Pepys explained to Will Hewer that Cicero had derived the idea from Plato, and that Saint Paul had ‘wrought-upon’ it afterwards; this is one of his rare references to the Bible, and suggests he was more interested in it as he grew older. The English version of the motto also recalls Oliver Cromwell’s use of the phrase ‘The mind is the man’ in his speech to parliament in 1656, when he went on to say, ‘If that be kept pure, a man signifies somewhat; if not, I would very fain see what difference there is between him and a beast.’ For Cromwell’s speech of 17 Sept. 1656 see Speeches o
f Oliver Cromwell, ed. Ivan Roots (1989), p. 98. Pepys was working for Edward Montagu and wrote his earliest surviving letter to him, about Cromwell and the question of kingship, in November 1656, so it is possible he got to hear something of the speech and remembered it.

  32. Pepys’s ownership of a book on deism, William Stephen’s An Account of the Growth of Deism in England, published in 1696, still in the Pepys Library, is no evidence that he held deist ideas himself, but the simplicity of deist faith, and its emphasis on natural rather than revealed religion, does accord with his indifference to doctrinal questions. Deists believed in one God who requires worship, piety and virtue of mankind, forgives sins and punishes and rewards in the after-life; and that nothing more needs to be added. This is John Leland’s account of seventeenth-century deist tenets in his View of the Principal Deistical Writers that Have Appeared During the Last and Present Century, a hostile account published in 1754.

  33. Pepys to John Evelyn, 7 Aug. 1700, Evelyn to Pepys, 9 Aug. 1700, The Correspondence of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, ed. G. de la Bédoyère.

  34. Pepys to Matthews, extract of unpublished letter printed from MS in Sotheby’s Sale Catalogue of 1931, p. 24.

  35. Mary mentions her portrait by Godfrey Kneller in her will; Kneller himself mentions ‘Mrs Skinner’s picture’ in a letter to Pepys, 29 July 1702, saying it is ‘lokt up with others by my brother’, but this is ambiguous. Private Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys, ed. J. R. Tanner, vol. II, p. 265. Manuscript records of Pepys’s account at Hoare’s Bank, Fleet Street.

  36. Pepys to Matthews, 21 Apr. 1702, Sotheby’s Sale Catalogue of 1931, p. 25.

  37. See description in diary of William Nicolson, Bishop of Carlisle, 17 June 1702, referred to below and printed in Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, vol. ii, 1902, p. 155.

  38. Pepys to Henry Hyde, 4 Aug. 1702, Private Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys, ed. J. R. Tanner, vol. II, p. 266.

  39. Pepys to John Evelyn, 19 Sept. 1700, The Correspondence of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, ed. G. de la Bédoyère. Pepys to Dr Arthur Charlett, 14 Nov. 1702, Private Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys, ed. J. R. Tanner, vol. II, p. 286.

  40. For Nicolson’s borrowings from Pepys’s library, 14 June 1700, and receipts Dec. 1700 and Jan. 1701, Private Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys, ed. J. R. Tanner, vol. I, pp. 362–3.

  41. Nicolson’s description of the library as it appeared at Clapham is unique. He had been advised to keep a diary by Sir Joseph Williamson when he travelled to Germany as a young man and kept up the habit; but, while it is a document of some social and considerable political interest – he became a hard-working member of the House of Lords – it has none of Pepys’s genius, either in the writing or in the presentation of himself. The small version of the Verrio painting at Christ’s Hospital is presumably the one sold in the sale at Sotheby’s in 1931, described as ‘watercolour sketch by Verrio’, 17 ⅜x 93 ¾ inches in size; its present whereabouts unknown to me.

  42. I have been able to trace wills by Mrs Frances Skinner and by two Skinner daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, but none by Daniel Skinner Snr or any of the sons; the women appear to have been dominant in the Skinner family.

  43. J. Glasier to Pepys, Dec. 1702, Private Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys, ed. J. R. Tanner, vol. II, p. 288.

  44. Will of Frances Skinner in PRO, PROB, 11/467.

  45. Mary Ballard to Pepys, 1 Mar. 1703, Private Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys, ed. J. R. Tanner, vol. II, p. 302. The Ballards appear to be related to Mary Skinner, who made a legacy of £10 to her ‘cousin Samuel Ballard’ in her will, presumably their son. Both Ballards received rings at Pepys’s funeral, listed among ‘Former Servants and Dependants’, but the category was a broad one, including his physicians and surgeons and Sir Littleton Powys, a judge of the Queen’s Bench.

  46. Pepys to Sir George Rooke, Apr. 1703, Letters and Second Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. R.G. Howarth, pp. 373–4.

  47. John Jackson to Will Hewer, 20 Apr. 1703, printed in ibid., vol. II, pp. 309–10.

  48. It seems likely that Pepys had heard from Wanley of similar ones set up by Archbishop Matthew Parker in 1575 for his valuable library at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge and taken them partly as a model in order to safeguard his own in the future. Humfrey Wanley worked at the Parker Library in 1699 and was aware of the restrictions Parker set in forbidding the removal of the books, as he makes clear in a letter to Arthur Charlett (also Pepys’s friend) dated 17 Sept. 1699 from Cambridge, in which he says he can borrow what books he pleases, ‘excepting those of Bennet College’ (Bennet College being another name for Corpus Christi – Letters of Humfrey Wanley, ed. P. L. Heyworth, p. 138). Parker had left elaborate instructions to ensure that the books should not be removed. He also provided that, should Corpus Christi be negligent, the library must pass to Caius, and should Caius also fail, on to Trinity Hall. Parker was markedly successful in achieving his aims for his library. (So was Pepys.)

  Pepys was also aware of the troubled situation of Sir John Cotton’s library. In 1701, when Sir John’s death seemed imminent, Wanley asked Pepys to support his application to become librarian; Pepys, after consulting with Dr Thomas Smith, the current librarian, who feared losing his position because he was a nonjuror, explained to Wanley that he felt he should support Smith. The Trustees of the library were too busy to meet, and Pepys died before they managed to do so; meanwhile the library was kept locked up and inaccessible to those who wished to consult it. See P. L. Heyworth’s article in the TLS, 31 Aug. 1962, p. 660. Pepys may have wanted to avoid similar problems.

  49. The verbal bequest appears at the end of the list of mourning rings bequeathed by Pepys, printed in Private Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys, ed. J. R. Tanner, vol. II, p. 318.

  50. This was in 1705, the reason given by Evelyn that he was unable to make a large enough settlement on his granddaughter. It is possible too that he did not want Jackson on other grounds such as his humble origins or his character.

  51. John Jackson’s account is in Private Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys, ed. J. R. Tanner, vol. II, pp. 312–14.

  Epilogue

  1. The autopsy is printed in Private Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys 1679–1703, ed. J. R. Tanner (1926), vol. II, pp. 311–12. Jackson’s letter to Evelyn is in the introduction to Wheatley’s edition of the Diary, pp. xliii–xliv. Latham and Matthews’s edition of the Diary suggests (vol. X, pp. 172–6) that Pepys was suffering from brain damage produced by high blood pressure secondary to the destruction of his left kidney. Milo Keynes’s article in the Journal of Medical Biography, vol. v, Feb. 1997, pp. 25–9, corrects this: ‘From the emaciation and post-mortem findings, the likely cause of death was from toxaemia secondary to intra-abominal sepsis’ – which seems right, given that Pepys, though weak, showed no sign of brain damage.

  2. From Post Boy, 5 June 1703, no. 1,257, given in Braybrooke’s sixth edition of the Diary, p. xxxviii.

  3. Dame Elizabeth Boteler’s bequest of £ 1,000 to Mary Skinner was secured upon ‘a mortgage of certain Lands of Sr Thomas Littleton Baronet in the County of Essex’. There were two Sir Thomas Littletons, father and son, and this was probably the younger (1647–1710), speaker of the House 1698–1700 and treasurer of the navy at the time of Pepys’s death. James Vernon, principal secretary of state 1698–1702 (who had an eye on Pepys in Aug. 1698, see note 14 to Chapter 25), was married to Mary Buck, daughter of Sir John Buck, Bart., and sister of Sir William, who married ‘Frances Skinner, daughter of Daniel Skinner, Merchant’, and sister of Mary Skinner – see Burke’s Extinct Baronetages.

  4. Dr George Hickes to Dr Arthur Charlett, 5 June 1703, printed in Wheatley’s introduction to the Diary, pp. xlv–xlvi.

  5. According to Zach Conrad von Uffenbach, who visite
d Magdalene in 1710, London in 1710 (1934); J. E. B. Mayor, Cambridge under Queen Anne (1911), P. 139.

  6. Her will, from which this information comes, reads, ‘my owne Picture and my Neice Hores picture both drawn by Sir Godfrey Kneller’. The reference to her ‘Neice Hores’ is probably to Mary Buck, who married a Hoar.

  7. For instance, she gave to John Jackson, executor, £30 ‘to make with the gilt cup and cover and salver which I took for £20 though value of £50 which I received in plate of his late uncle Samuel Pepys Esquire deceased which cup and cover and salver I have lately given to my God daughter Paulina Jackson daughter of the said John Jackson.’ And, ‘Whereas the said Mr Pepys made me a present of the Gold medall of the French King, the clock in my chamber, the great skreen of six leaves Indian all of which I give to Mr John Jackson and also my picture of his uncle’s head which he desired me to give him, also I give to the said Mr Jackson my three books the Heathen Gods, the description of the Castle and Water Works of Versailles and a little French book of heraldry called Jendarinorer [? Gens d’honneur] all colored by myself. To Mr Jackson’s wife she that was Mrs Anne Edgley my diamond heart ring it being a mourning ring which I made for her husband’s uncle.’

  8. Unfortunately her grave cannot be located now, and the Boteler gravestones are concealed under carpet in the church. Information about burial entry at St Etheldreda’s from Henry W. Gray.

  9. Hewer’s cousin Blackborne, who kept a diary, went to Doctors’ Commons in Feb. 1716 to read the wills of ‘Mr Hewer, Mr Pepys and Mrs Skinner’. This entry in his diary appears in the Sotheby’s Sale Catalogue of 1931.

  10. The house at Clapham, which is thought to have been on the north side of the common, near what is now Victoria Road, was pulled down about 1760. In 1774 the old church was also taken down, but Clapham remained rural until the nineteenth century (Victoria County History of Suney, vol. IV, p. 37). Samuel Pepys Cockerell, John Jackson’s grandson, built himself a house at 29 Northside, Clapham Common, in the late eighteenth century.