Evelyn longed for settlement in England, because he saw that the Royalist cause was hopelessly lost for the time being. His father-in-law’s estate of Sayes Court had been seized and sold by the rebels, but ‘by the advice and endeavour of my friends I was advis’d to reside in it, and compound with the soldiers. This I was besides authoriz’d by his Majesty to do, and encourag’d with promise that what was in lease from the Crowne, if ever it pleased God to restore him, he would secure to us in fee-ferme.[xxxi:1] I had also addresses and cyfers to correspond with his Majesty and Ministers abroad: upon all which inducements I was persuaded to settle henceforth in England, having now run about the world, most part out of my owne country, neere ten yeares. I therefore now likewise meditated sending over for my Wife, whom as yet I had left at Paris.’ She arrived on 11th. June with her Mother; and as small-pox was then raging in and about London they sojourned for some time at Tunbridge Wells, drinking the waters. About the end of that month Evelyn went to Sayes Court to prepare for their reception, but was waylaid by footpads near Bromley and came near meeting his death from them. Fortunately, however, ‘did God deliver me from these villains, and not onely so, but restor’d what they tooke, as twice before he had graciously don, both at sea and land;... for which, and many signal preservations, I am extreamly oblig’d to give thanks to God my Saviour.’
On 24th July, 1652, Mrs. Evelyn presented her husband with their first child, their son, John, who predeceased his father in 1698. He now busied himself in acquiring full possession of his father-in-law’s and the rebels’ interests in Sayes Court, which he effected at a cost of £3,500 early in 1653.
Then he began gardening and planting on a large scale, transforming the almost bare fields around the house into fine specimens of the art of horticulture, as then practised. Sayes Court was afterwards the temporary residence of Peter the Great, who committed great havoc in the gardens and hedges during his rough orgies. Here Evelyn lived quietly till the time of the Restoration, spending his days in gardening and in cultivating the acquaintance of men of cultured tastes like his own, with occasional journeys to different parts of England. Thus he visited Windsor, Marlborough, Bath, Oxford, Salisbury, Devizes, Gloucester, Worcester, Warwick, Leicester, Doncaster, York, Cambridge, and many other places, so that he probably saw a great deal more of England than the majority of men in his position. Thus, too, he learned much about the country and about all branches of rural economy. He had not yet seriously given himself to literature, although his third work was published in 1656, An Essay on the First Book of T. Lucretius Cerus de Rerum Natura. Interpreted and made English Verse.
In January, 1658, heavy sorrow fell upon Evelyn by the death of his younger son, an infant prodigy, and a sad and wonderful example of a young brain being terribly overtaxed. ‘After six fits of a quartan ague with which it pleased God to visite him, died my dear Son Richard, to our inexpressible grief and affliction, 5 yeares and 3 days old onely, but at that tender age a prodigy for witt and understanding; for beauty of body a very angel; for endowment of mind of incredible and rare hopes. To give onely a little taste of them, and thereby glory to God, he had learn’d all this catechisme who out of the mouths of babes and infants does sometimes perfect his praises: at 2 years and a halfe old he could perfectly read any of ye English, Latine, French, or Gothic letters, pronouncing the first three languages exactly. He had before the 5th yeare, or in that yeare, not onely skill to reade most written hands, but to decline all the nouns, conjugate the verbs regular, and most of ye irregular; learn’d out “Puerilis,” got by heart almost ye entire vocabularie of Latine and French primitives and words, could make congruous syntax, turne English into Latine, and vice versâ, construe and prove what he read, and did the government and use of relatives, verbs, substantives, elipses, and many figures and tropes, and made a considerable progress in Comenius’s Janua; began himselfe to write legibly, and had a stronge passion for Greeke. The number of verses he could recite was prodigious, and what he remembered of the parts of playes, which he would also act; and when seeing a Plautus in one’s hand, he ask’d what booke it was, and being told it was comedy, and too difficult for him, he wept for sorrow. Strange was his apt and ingenious application of fables and morals, for he had read Æsop; he had a wonderful disposition to mathematics, having by heart divers propositions of Euclid that were read to him in play, and he would make lines and demonstrate them. As to his piety, astonishing were his applications of Scripture upon occasion, and thus early, he understood ye historical part of ye Bible and New Testament to a wonder, how Christ came to redeeme mankind, and how comprehending these necessarys himselfe, his godfathers were discharg’d of their promise. These and like illuminations, far exceeding his age and experience, considering the prettinesse of his adresse and behaviour, cannot but leave impressions in me at the memory of him. When one told him how many days a Quaker had fasted, he replied that was no wonder, for Christ had said that man should not live by bread alone, but by ye Word of God. He would of himselfe select ye most pathetic psalms, and chapters out of Job, to reade to his mayde during his sicknesse, telling her when she pitied him, that all God’s children must suffer affliction. He declaim’d against ye vanities of the world before he had seene any...... How thankfully would he receive admonition, how soone be reconciled! how indifferent, yet continually chereful! He would give grave advice to his Brother John, beare with his impertinencies, and say he was but a child!’ Even allowing for Evelyn’s tendency to exaggeration, this is surely one of the very saddest stories about a child of tender years, reared in a wrong manner, that has ever been written in the English language. This loss was no doubt the occasion of his writing his fourth work, The Golden Book of St. John Chrysostom, concerning the Education of Children. Translated out of the Greek, which was published in September, 1658. A further relief from grief was also found in the translation of The French Gardiner: instructing how to cultivate all sorts of Fruit-trees and Herbs for the Garden; together with directions to dry and conserve them in their natural; six times printed in France and once in Holland. An accomplished piece, first written by N. de Bonnefons, and now transplanted into English by Philocepos.
It must have gratified his royalist feelings when, on 22 Oct. 1658, he ‘saw ye superb funerall of ye Protector.’ He remarks that ‘it was the joyfullest funerall I ever saw, for there were none that cried but dogs, which the soldiers hooted away with a barbarous noise, drinking and taking tobacco in the streets as they went.’ Not long after this, on 25 April 1659, he notices ‘a wonderfull and suddaine change in ye face of ye publiq: ye new Protector Richard slighted, several pretenders and parties strive for the government: all anarchy and confusion; Lord have mercy on us!’ For six months things drifted on, till on 11 Oct. ‘the Armie now turn’d out the Parliament. We had now no government in the nation; all in confusion; no magistrate either own’d or pretended, but ye soldiers, and they not agreed. God almighty have mercy on and settle us!’
Evelyn apparently now thought the time ripe for him to venture; hence, during 1659, he published A Character of England as it was lately presented in a Letter to a Noble Man of France, and also An Apology for the Royal Party, written in a Letter to a person of the late Council of State, by a Lover of Peace and of his Country. With a Touch at the Pretended “Plea for the Army.” Of the latter he remarks in his Diary: ‘Nov. 7th. was publish’d my bold “Apoligie for the King” in this time of danger, when it was capital to speake or write in favour of him. It was twice printed, so universaly it took.’ Encouraged by the success of this work, he began to intrigue with Colonel Morley, Lieutenant of the Tower, and Fay, Governor of Portsmouth, in the interest of the exiled Charles; but Morley shrank from declaring for the King, and General Monk returning from Scotland to London, broke down the gates of the city, ‘marches to White-hall, dissipates that nest of robbers, and convenes the old Parliament, the Rump Parliament (so called as retaining some few rotten members of ye other) being dissolv’d; and for joy whereoff were many thousands of rumps roasted publiqly in ye streets at the bonfires this night, with ringing of bells and universal jubilee. This was the first good omen.’
From the February till the April following thereon Evelyn was confined to bed with ague and its after effects, but found strength to write and publish a pamphlet, The late News from Brussels unmasked, and His Majesty vindicated from the base calumny and scandal therein fixed on him, ‘in defence of his Majesty, against a wicked forg’d paper, pretended to be sent from Bruxells to defame his Majesties person and vertues, and render him odious, now when everybody was in hope and expectation of the General and Parliament recalling him, and establishing ye government on its antient and right basis.’ Early in May came the tidings that the King’s application for restoration had been accepted and acknowledged by the Parliament ‘after a most bloudy and unreasonable rebellion of neare 20 years,’ and before the end of the month Evelyn was an eye-witness of the triumphal entry of the new king into his capital. ‘29th. This day his Majestie Charles the Second came to London after a sad and long exile and calamitous suffering both of the King and Church, being 17 years. This was also his birthday, and with a triumph of above 20,000 horse and foote, brandishing their swords and shouting with inexpressible joy; the wayes strew’d with flowers, the bells ringing, the streets hung with tapissry, fountaines running with wine; the Maior, Aldermen, and all the Companies in their liveries, chaines of gold, and banners; Lords and Nobles clad in cloth of silver, gold, and velvet; the windowes and balconies all set with ladies; trumpets, music, and myriads of people flocking, even so far as from Rochester, so as they were seven houres in passing the citty, even from 2 in ye afternoone till 9 at night. I stood in the Strand and beheld it, and bless’d God. And all this was don without one drop of bloud shed, and by that very army which rebell’d against him; but it was ye Lord’s doing, for such a restoration was never mention’d in any history antient or modern, since the returne of the Jews from the Babylonish captivity; nor so joyfull a day and so bright ever seene in this nation, this hapning when to expect or effect it was past all human policy.’
Despite his dilettantism and dabbling in science, philosophy and letters, Evelyn had for years past felt the desirability of having some sort of fixed employment. Previous to this, during 1659, he had communicated to the Hon. Robert Boyle, son of the Earl of Cork, a scheme for founding a philosophic and mathematical college or fraternity, and had even arranged with his wife that they should live asunder, in two separate apartments. The Restoration, however, put a stop to this scheme, which then evolved itself, soon afterwards, into the foundation of the Royal Society, Boyle and Evelyn being two of the most prominent original Fellows.
V
Evelyn’s Career after the Restoration. (1660-1685).
Evelyn was about forty years of age when the Restoration changed the whole prospects of his still long life. He had been a devoted Royalist, though it can not be denied that his zeal in this respect was ever tempered with a vast amount of caution and prudence. In addition to what interest he had earned by his own actions, he had the far more powerful influence of his father-in-law who had, like Charles himself, been exiled for nineteen years. Mrs. Evelyn was promised the appointment of lady of the jewels to the future Queen, which she never received; and Evelyn might have had the honour of knighthood of the Bath, but declined it. He was present at the Coronation in Westminster Abbey on St. George’s Day, 1661, and had prepared and printed a Panegyric poem on the occasion, a screed of bombastic doggerel in fulsome praise of the King. He was a frequent visitor at the Court, and loved to sun himself in the royal presence. One of the finest examples of this feature of Evelyn’s character is his Fumifugium, published in 1661, which will be more particularly referred to later on, a work which marks the real commencement of his literary career.