Washing seems to have been done with a thoroughness which makes up for its rarity. Washing day upsets the whole household and with it Mr. Pepys’s temper, because he had invited friends to dinner and did not see how preparations could possibly be made to receive them. Nevertheless, I imagine the guests were received, and had no suspicions. A good housewife can work those miracles. At another time he goes to bed late and leaves mistress and maids still washing, washing.
The lady was a cook, too, and no doubt a good one. Many a dinner of her getting is minutely detailed and many more of her supervising. As has happened to others, her new oven bakes too quickly and burns her tarts and pies, but she “knows how to do better another time.” And this is a little touch of character, is it not?
But the sweetest picture of Mrs. Pepys at work is drawn by her husband’s memory, as he looks back from growing fortune on cottage days and simple love. “Talking with pleasure with my poor wife, how she used to make coal fires, and wash my foul clothes with her own hand for me, poor wretch! in our little room at my Lord Sandwich’s; for which I ought for ever to love and admire her, and do; and persuade myself she would do the same thing again, if God should reduce us to it.”
Riches diminish some cares and swell others. In the little room at Lord Sandwich’s the servant problem was not serious. Afterwards it became so. A procession of sweet old English names, Nells and Janes and Nans and Debs, gleams and dances through the Diary, sometimes in tears, sometimes in laughter, sometimes trim, dainty, and coquettish, sometimes red-armed and tousle-headed. Some please master and mistress both, some please only the mistress, some, alas!—not the red arms and tousled heads—please only the master and fill that quaint and ancient Pepysian domesticity with tragedy and woe. Nothing, absolutely nothing, not even her children, tests a woman’s character so much as do her servants. From all that we read, it seems safe to assume that Mrs. Pepys showed judgment, common sense, and balance in the treatment of hers. If she flew out occasionally, we must remember that she was very young and that she lived with servants in very close intimacy. I fancy that her voice had deserved weight in the pretty little scene which took place in the garden and the moonlight. “Then it being fine moonshine with my wife an houre in the garden, talking of her clothes against Easter and about her mayds, Jane being to be gone, and the great dispute whether Besse, whom we both love, should be raised to be chamber-mayde or no. We have both a mind to it, but know not whether we should venture the making her proud and so make a bad chamber-mayde of a good-natured and sufficient cook-mayde.”
Probably the greatest wrecker of domestic peace is and always has been money. Was Mrs. Pepys a good economist? She was woman enough, human enough, to take delight in comfort and luxury. A new hanging, a new picture, a new bit of furniture enchanted her, as did a frock or a jewel. The purchase of the family coach was a matter of manifest rejoicing. Also, she was not perfect in her accounts, and when called to a stern audit by her source of supply, was forced to admit that she sometimes juggled with the figures, a confession truly horrible to one whose Philistine morality strained at a commercial gnat and swallowed a sexual camel. It “madded me and do still trouble me, for I fear she will forget by degrees the way of living cheap and under sense of want.” Nevertheless, her management is usually approved. After all, she costs less than other wives, a good many, and occasions of expense for her are not so frequent, all things considered. Even, in one felicitous instance, she receives praise, of that moderate sort which must often content the starved susceptibilities of matrimony. “She continuing with the same care and thrift and innocence, so long as I keep her from occasions of being otherwise, as ever she was in her life.”
One question that occurs frequently in regard to Mrs. Pepys is, had she friends? Apparently she had none. Perhaps her vague and troubled youth had kept her from contracting any of the rapturous intimacies of girlhood. If she had done so, they did not survive marriage. For Pepys was not the man to let his wife’s close companions pass without comment. He would have hated them—or loved them, and in either case made his house not over-pleasant to them. Perhaps he had done so before the Diary begins. At any rate, while Mrs. Pepys had many acquaintances, we do not see that she had one real confidante to whom she entrusted the many secrets that she obviously had to entrust. And in consequence she was lonely. The Diary shows it in touching fashion. Pepys recognizes it, but, with a certain cold-bloodedness, prefers having her lonely at home to having her dissipated abroad. So she is left to gossip and bicker with her maids, to pet her dogs and birds, and to quarrel with her husband. Even of her own family she sees little. Pepys did not seek their company, because they always wanted something. And they did not seek his, because they did not always get what they wanted, though with them, as with others, he was usually just and often generous.
It must not, however, be supposed that Mrs. Pepys was a Cinderella, or that the maids in the kitchen were her sole society. Pepys was proud of her, proud of his house, proud of his hospitality, which enlarged as riches came. He took her about with him often to the houses of his friends. Now and again they made a journey together with great peace of mind and curious content. Also, few weeks passed that he did not bring some one home with him, for dancing, or music, or general merriment, and in all these doings Mrs. Pepys’s share was greater or less. I think we can easily surmise her hand in that royal and triumphant festivity, the mere narrative of which breeds joy as well as laughter in any well-tempered disposition. “We fell to dancing, and continued, only with intermission for a good supper, till two in the morning, the music being Greeting, and another most excellent violin, and theorbo, the best in town. And so with mighty mirth, and pleased with their dancing of jigs afterwards several of them, and among others, Betty Turner, who did it mighty prettily; and, lastly, W. Batelier’s ‘Blackmore and Blackmore Mad’; and then to a country-dance again, and so broke up with extraordinary pleasure, as being one of the days and nights of my life spent with the greatest content; and that which I can but hope to repeat again a few times in my whole life. This done, we parted, the strangers home, and I did lodge my cozen Pepys and his wife in our blue chamber. My cozen Turner, her sister, and The., in our best chamber; Bab., Betty, and Betty Turner in our own chamber; and myself and my wife in the maid’s bed, which is very good. Our maids in the coachman’s bed; the coachman with the boy in his settle-bed, and Tom where he uses to lie. And so I did, to my great content, lodge at once in my house, with the greatest ease, fifteen, and eight of them strangers of quality.” And surely Mrs. Pepys was the queen of the feast, even though her name is but once mentioned.
Moreover, she had the social instinct, and gave her husband advice as to his conduct in the world, which he himself recognizes as excellent, and resolves to follow it. “I told all this day’s passages, and she to give me very good and rational advice how to behave myself to my Lord and his family, by slighting everybody but my Lord and Lady, and not to seem to have the least society or fellowship with them, which I am resolved to do, knowing that it is my high carriage that must do me good there, and to appear in good clothes and garbe.”
In one of Pepys’s diversions, which meant more to him than any except, perhaps, music, Mrs. Pepys was allowed to share to a considerable extent, and that was theatre-going. It would seem that she entered into it almost as heartily as did her husband and with quite as intelligent criticism. In one of his delightful spells of conscience-ache, he reproaches himself for going to a play alone, after swearing to his wife that he would go no more without her. But he sometimes permits her to go alone and very often enjoys her company and her enthusiasm. Occasionally she differs from him without shaking his judgment. But they agree entirely in their delight in Massinger’s “Bondman” and as entirely in their contempt for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
When one considers the frailties that resulted from Pepys’s social relations, one is tempted to ask how Mrs. Pepys was affected in this regard. So far as we can judge, it was not an age of very nice morality, at any rate among the upper classes. Wives as fair and as respectable as Pepys’s seem to have entertained the addresses of lovers more or less numerous. But I think we may assume that the lady we are concerned with was all that a wife should be. Pepys himself was undoubtedly of that opinion and he was an acute and a by no means partial judge. He does, indeed, have tempestuous bursts of jealousy. There was a certain dancing master, Pembleton by name, who caused a great deal of uneasiness. It is pretty evident that Mrs. Pepys coquetted with him, perhaps intentionally, and drove her husband at times to the verge of frenzy, perhaps intentionally. It “do so trouble me that I know not at this very minute that I now write this almost what either I write or am doing.” But it blows over with the clear admission that the parties had been nothing more than indiscreet.