The author of this extraordinary book, despite some rather aristocratic connections, was the son of a not very successful tailor, and was born, perhaps in London, perhaps in Brampton, Huntingdonshire, (the point remains unsettled,) on 23d February, 1632. He seems to have been at one time at school in Huntingdon; but he afterwards entered regularly as a scholar of St. Paul’s, London, passing thence, in 1650, to the University of Cambridge. Of his college career we know little; but we have the record of one incident, interesting as foreshadowing the convivial tendencies which come out so often and so strongly in the pages of the Diary. In the Regents’ Book of Magdalene College appears the following highly suggestive entry:—
“Oct 21, 1653. Mem. That Peapys and Hind were solemnly admonished by myself and Mr. Hill for having been scandalously overserved with drink ye night before. This was done in the presence of all the fellows then resident, in Mr. Hill’s chamber.
“[Signed] John Wood, Registrar.”
Yet, notwithstanding this episode, and whatever it may be taken to stand for as an exemplification of Pepys’s way of life, as an undergraduate he became the good friend of some of the most industrious of his contemporaries, and, we have reason to believe, acquitted himself in his own studies, if not brilliantly, still with a very fair measure of success. At all events, he took his bachelor’s degree, in 1653—the very year, it will be observed, of his bacchanalian misadventure,—and received his mastership seven years later. Meanwhile, as we learn from a passing note in the Diary, made a long while after, he dabbled in literary composition to the extent of beginning a romance, called “Love a Cheat.” The manuscript of this he tore up and destroyed on 30th January, 1663, adding to his chronicle of the event: “I liked it very well, and wondered a little at myself, at my vein at that time, when I wrote it, doubting that I cannot do so well now if I would try.” Pepys may not have shown himself in every emergency of life a strong man or a brave; but thus to sacrifice the first heir of his invention, even on finding it, after all, rather better than he had imagined—let us recognize here resolution and courage not by any means to be sneered at.
Pepys was but twenty-three when he married Elizabeth St. Michel, an exceedingly pretty girl of fifteen, the daughter of a Huguenot who had come to England with Elizabeth Maria on her union with Charles the First. Of the relations of husband and wife we shall have something to say by and by. Poor St. Michel was a man of countless resources and infinite ingenuity, and in consequence was frequently both a burden to himself and a tax upon his friends. He had the genius for inventing things without, it would appear, the talent for turning his inventions to much practical account. He obtained a patent for curing smoky chimneys, and another for cleaning muddy pools; evolved plans for the raising of submerged ships; and in a moment of special illumination actually discovered the whereabouts of King Solomon’s gold and silver mines—in this respect anticipating the interesting performance of Mr. Rider Haggard. In view of these facts, it is hardly necessary to add that, Micawber-like, he was always in an impecunious condition, and, pending the establishment of the said mines on a modern working basis, was fain to support himself and wife on the offerings of his daughter’s husband, with an additional four shillings a week contributed out of the charitable fund of the French church in London. To one so keenly alive to the meaning and value of money, and so cautious and economical in the management of his own affairs, as Mr. Pepys, the visions and vagaries of such a father-in-law must have given constant cause for dissatisfaction and alarm.
Mrs. Pepys thus brought her husband no fortune but her beauty, and as, at the time of their marriage, Pepys himself had obtained no settled position, the early years of their wedded life were rendered picturesque (from an artistic point of view) by financial difficulties, and often harassed by the ancient problem of how to make one shilling do the work of two. The young couple, however, seem to have put a brave face on the matter, and to have kept faith in each other, and in the coming of better days. At this period, it must be remembered, the Diary had not been started, and direct information, therefore, fails us. But in after years, as wealth grew, and his prosperity became firmly established, Pepys would often cast a back-glance at these early times of anxiety and struggle, indulging, after his manner, in many quaint expressions of thankfulness to God over the change, and frequent prayers for strength and courage in case of sudden fall.
On the first page of his Diary he notes that, though “esteemed rich”, he was in reality “very poor,”—a combination of circumstances which is apt at times to be trying even to the most philosophical. His salary was then only fifty pounds a year, and the straitened character of his domestic conditions is shown by the fact that, when the curtain rises on the journal, we discover Mr. and Mrs. Pepys dining in the garret on the remains of a turkey—in the preparation of which, be it mentioned as matter of history, poor Mrs. Pepys burned her hand. But changes were pending. Chosen secretary to Sir Edward Montague on his taking command of the fleet sent to bring Charles the Second to England, Pepys was shortly afterwards made clerk to the King’s ships, a position in which, through his industry and astuteness, he was presently to be of great service to the country in very critical times. This appointment was not, however, secured without complications and difficulties. The actual incumbent of the coveted office—one Barlow—was a rival in the field, with personal prestige and influence strong enough to fill poor Pepys with dismal misgivings concerning his own chances of success. Matters at length were amicably settled between the candidates on the basis of a rather singular compromise. Pepys was inducted into the position on undertaking to pay the said Mr. Barlow fifty pounds a year so long as his (Pepys’s) salary was not increased, and one hundred pounds a year when it was raised to three hundred and fifty pounds or more. The tax seems a heavy one, but Pepys was willing to accept the responsibility on observing, as he duly notes in the Diary, that Mr. Barlow was “an old consumptive man,” and therefore, assumably, not one likely to call for many annual payments. The old consumptive man lived till 1665, and the entry made by Pepys on hearing of his decease is too characteristic not to be reproduced in full:—
“9 Feb., 1665. Sir William Petty tells me that Mr. Barlow is dead; for which, God knows my heart, I would be as sorry as it is possible for one to be for a stranger, by whose death he gets £100 per annum.”
While still a young man, Pepys was made Clerk of the Privy Seal, and a justice of the peace, the latter appointment “mightily” pleasing him, though he notes the somewhat unfortunate circumstance that he was “wholly ignorant” of the duties of the post. Little by little he rose to be the most important and influential of the naval officials, with a steadily improving financial condition, the record of which is given, year by year, in great detail in the Diary. Trouble came presently in the shape of failing eyesight, and by and by he lost his wife; but material fortune continued to attend him through years which were fraught, for the world of English politics, with vast fluctuation and change. At length reverses came. In 1679-80, he was imprisoned for alleged complicity in the famous Popish Plot. After his release he was made Secretary to the Admiralty, and was for two consecutive years President of the Royal Society. In 1690, he was again imprisoned, this time on the charge of Jacobinism. With this occurrence, Pepys’s active life may be said to have come to a close. His constitution had long been undermined by a malady which had been intensified by his sedentary existence, and in 1700 he was persuaded by his physicians to leave his house in York Buildings and take up his abode at the home of his old friend and servant, William Hewer, at Clapham. There he died on 26th May, 1703, having just passed the Scriptural term of life.
Pepys’s only acknowledged piece of literary work was “The Memoirs of the Royal Navy,” published in 1690, though a small volume entitled “Relation of the Troubles in the Court of Portugal.” and bearing the initials, S. P., is sometimes ascribed to him by bibliographers. Apart from the Diary, however,—the peculiar qualities of which, it will be understood, remove it altogether from the region of comparison—Pepys’s most useful and lasting achievement was the foundation of the famous library at Cambridge, which still bears his name—a collection of manuscript naval memoirs, prints, old English ballads, and curious miscellanea, which, by the judgment of high authorities, remains to-day one of the richest of its class. The visitor to Magdalene College, Cambridge, may still inspect this library as it stands in Pepys’s original book-presses; and if he be a student of the journal, and withal a man of any imaginative power, he will hardly fail to recall with what true bibliomaniac delight the old collector gathered these treasures about him in his own home, with what twinges of conscience he sometimes laid out larger sums than he felt he could well afford in their acquisition, with what enthusiasm he pored over their pages, with what satisfaction and pride he arranged and rearranged them on many a dull and tedious day.