Certainly no man ever wrote himself "down" more honestly than Pepys. Arnold Bennett was only speaking the bare truth when he said that none of us would ever have the pluck to lock ourselves in a room and commit to paper exactly what we have said or done or felt during the whole of one day, even if we knew that no eyes but our own should ever scan the page and that the manuscript should be burnt as soon as it was written. Compromise is an essential concomitant of civilisation: perfect sincerity even with ourselves is impossible. This explains at once the irresistible fascination of Pepys: here is a man who has actually achieved the impossible. Nine-tenths of our staple food in conversation is gossip, not only in suburban drawing-rooms and London clubs, but in every department of life. Scandal-mongering is as much a part and parcel of our life as it was in Lady Sneerwell's day.
These peeps behind the scenes in a man's private life make us much more lenient in our judgment of our own peccadilloes: thousands of men have, we feel, acted as he did and we have done, but only Pepys has had the temerity to confess: there is no entertainment so diverting as that of watching a man give himself away. Pepys does it on every page with an unconscious humour which adds a thousandfold to our enjoyment:
"To the Strand, to my booksellers, and there bought an idle, rogueish French book, which I have bought in plain binding, avoiding the buying of it better bound, because I resolve, as soon as I have read it, to burn it, that it may not stand in the list of books, nor among them, to disgrace them if it should be found." ... "This day, not for want, but for good husbandry, I sent my father, by his desire, six pair of my old shoes, which fit him, and are good."
"To St Dunstan's church where ... I stood by a pretty, modest maid, whom I did labour to take by the hand; but she would not, but got further and further from me; and at last, I could perceive her to take pins out of her pocket to prick me if I should touch her again—which, seeing, I did forbear, and was glad I did spy her design. And then I fell to gaze upon another pretty maid, in a pew close to me, and she on me; and I did go about to take her by the hand, which she suffered a little, and then withdrew."
Pretty good, this, for the Secretary to the Admiralty! We feel ourselves mighty superior fellows when we read confessions like this, don't we?
"My wife being dressed this day in fair hair, did make me so mad, that I spoke not one word to her, though I was ready to burst with anger ... in my way home discovered my trouble to my wife, swearing several times, which I pray God forgive me for, and bending my fist, that I would not endure it. She, poor wretch, was surprised with it, and made me no answer all the way home; but there we parted, and I to the office late, and then home, and without supper to bed, vexed ... up (next day) and by-and-by down comes my wife ... she promising to wear white locks no more in my sight, which I, like a severe fool, thinking not enough, begun to except against, and made her fly out to very high terms and cry, and in her heat, told me of (my) keeping company with Mrs Knipp (the actress), saying, that if I would never see her more—of whom she hath more reason to suspect than I had heretofore of Pembleton—she would never wear white locks more. This vexed me ... but to think never to see this woman—at least, to have her here more; and so all very good friends as ever."
"'And so to bed,' writes Mr Secretary Pepys a hundred times in his diary, and we may be sure that each time he joined Mrs Pepys beneath the coverlet he felt that the moment which marked the end of his wonderful day was one deserving careful record." So writes "W. N. P. Barbellion," the only modern diarist possessed in any degree of Pepys' complete self-candour, and, it is worthy of notice, the passage occurs in a book called Enjoying Life.