I have sketched in brief the external history of Pepys’s life, but you must not be under the impression that the whole, or even the larger part of his career, is covered by the voluminous Diary. This daily record comprises some ten years only, extending from 1st January, 1659-60, when the writer was nearly twenty-seven, to May, 1669, when he had recently completed his thirty-seventh year. Just how and why he came to open his secret chronicle, he nowhere tells us; but he makes it very clear that he closed it at length, not because he had grown weary of it, or ceased to find satisfaction in its composition, but simply on account of the failure of eyesight, above referred to. Very pathetic is the final entry:—
“And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my own eyes in the keeping of my journal, I not being able to do it any longer, having done now so long as to undo my eyes almost every time that I take a pen in my hand; and, therefore, whatever comes of it, I must forbear; and, therefore, resolve from this time forward to have it kept by my people in long-hand, and must be contented to set down no more than is fit for them and all the world to know; or if there be anything, I must endeavor to keep a margin in my book open, to add here and there a note in short-hand with my own hand. And so I betake myself to that course, which is almost as much as to see myself go into my grave; for which, and all the discomforts that will accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me.” May 31, 1669. S. P.
Few readers probably will rise from the perusal of the Diary, dismissing it with such an entry as this as the closing note, without regretting that the end should have come just when it did; for we would well have liked to know how Pepys responded to some of his later experiences, and especially in what spirit he accepted the tragic accidents which presently forced his manhood to the test. About these matters we can now only speculate, with the feeling that had the journal been continued for even a few years longer, we should perhaps have been brought into contact with a deeper, stronger, more earnest side of the writer’s character than actually makes itself apparent in the narrative. We little guess what resources of courage and power lie somewhere mysteriously stored up in men and women seemingly the least heroic, to be drawn upon only when the great and decisive moments of a lifetime come; and it might well give us, we fancy, a certain sense of satisfaction if we could follow the vain and garrulous Pepys through his season of growing wealth and prosperity onward to the time when he fell on evil days, and watch him in the enveloping darkness, bowing his head amid reverses of fortune, or standing face to face with death beside his wife’s open grave. But it is useless to indulge in hypothesis. We must accept the Diary as it is, and be thankful that the years covered by it were so full of matters of private interest and public importance.
And if we only think for a moment of all that happened in a public way during these ten critical years, and remember that Pepys, by virtue of his official position, was often drawn into very close relations with some of the moving forces and figures of the time—“names that in their motion were full-welling fountain-heads of change,”—we can realize at once that on the historical side this Diary has immense value. I do not dwell upon this side now, for time is limited, and there are other matters, not so frequently dealt with, to which I want to direct attention. Yet it is necessary just to say that, as documentary evidence concerning the inner life of the court and society, the inconceivable, the unutterable profligacy of the King and his followers, the irresponsibility of those in charge of public affairs, the complete demoralization of the upper classes during the early years of the Restoration, Pepys’s chronicle furnishes a record that we cannot afford to overlook. His simplicity, insouciance, and habitual self-possession are often more telling than the most eloquent descriptions of historians, the most fervid denunciations of moralists. An accidental word of his will often lay bare a condition of things which lengthy analysis, supported by innumerable references to authorities will hardly make us realize, a few passing sentences, penned au jour le jour, having frequently the power of throwing some circumstance, otherwise almost incredible, into sudden and lurid relief. Indeed, the mere fact that the temper of moral indignation is not one to which Pepys often or easily gives way, itself lends added force to all he writes, and intensifies the meaning of his rare exclamations of horror or protest. If Pepys had any political convictions at all, they were of the most flexible kind; he did not cultivate the sort of conscience which has the troublesome faculty of interfering at unexpected times with its owner’s chances of worldly advancement and success. Brought up under the Commonwealth, and, for a time at least, marked by Roundhead proclivities, he readily and rapidly transferred his allegiance to the new régime, his only anxiety being, it would seem, lest his earlier opinions should be resuscitated, with unpleasant practical results. Oddly enough, though the Diary opens in the midst of a great political crisis—when Monk was marching from Scotland, and English affairs were hanging poised in the balance of fate,—it nowhere contains any utterance of strong party feeling, any distinctly enunciated wish, either for the restoration of the Stuarts or for the preservation of the Commonwealth. When the Merry Monarch was settled upon the throne, Pepys quietly accepted the fact—along with the very desirable office in the Admiralty secured thereby. You say that the spirit thus shown is not a manly, not a noble one. Alas! no. Pepys, I am afraid, had but one firmly rooted political principle—the principle proverbially associated with the celebrated Vicar of Bray, of looking out for himself and his own welfare. Here, of course, we are strongly tempted to indulge by the way in a little conventional moralizing, and to congratulate ourselves that in our own days, in enlightened America, the low aims and sordid ambitions of poor old Pepys are quite unknown. But I restrain my eloquence, having other matters on hand. The point I want to dwell on for the moment is, that testimony to the political and social corruption following the Restoration, coming from such a man as this, is testimony of almost unique value, on account of the very character of the witness. To lead you through the miry places of the Diary is no part of my present plan; but let me just say that when such a man, albeit unused to the chiding mood, bursts out with the exclamation, “So they are all mad!—and thus the kingdom is governed!”—when, as sometimes happens, he speaks with genuine sorrow of what he has heard, or perhaps seen, in the high places of the land; when he scatters among his small talk and frivolous details sentences full of dismal apprehension concerning the country’s position and outlook,—then things must have come to a pretty pass indeed. Pepys was professionally committed to the Stuart dynasty; yet, as has been well said, a splendid eulogy of Cromwell could be gathered from the obiter dicta of his pages. Certainly, we need hardly travel outside the Diary itself, if we seek only to understand and estimate the iniquities and political short-sightedness of those who succeeded Cromwell in place and power.
But now we will descend from the dignity of history—if these things belong to the dignity of history—to the plane of common every-day life. Abandoning our quest for edification, we will wander for a little while about the Diary, for no other purpose than that of deriving what amusement we may from its personal banalities and social tittle-tattle. Pepys tempts us to be as unsystematic and inconsequential as himself. We will assume, therefore, the privilege which, according to Hazlitt, Coleridge so constantly abused in his conversational monologues—that of beginning nowhere in particular, and ending, if we see fit, in the same place.
It has been said that in Pepys’s ten years’ record there are more than five hundred references to dress and personal decoration. I have not checked the statement, but I can easily believe it. This gives, roughly speaking, an average of one such notice to each week covered by the journal. Dress and the affairs of the toilet were indeed for Pepys always matters of serious importance, not to be disregarded in the midst of the greatest strain of public events. We learn that at times Mrs. Pepys’s feminine desire for a new gown or some expensive bit of finery gave rise to domestic bickering and husbandly reproof, and that the money laid out on tailoring and haberdashery occasionally caused an uneasy hour. Yet, with all his thrift, Pepys seems to have had a remarkably free hand when questions of this kind stood in the way. He reports, without remorse, the payment of twenty-four pounds for a single suit—the best, he adds, “that I ever wore in my life”; and later on, notes the spending of eighty pounds for a necklace for his wife—though in this case he has misgivings. It is sad to relate that, on the whole, our diarist was much less concerned about his own personal extravagances than about the extravagances of his better-half—a fact which shows us that husbands, like other conveniences of life, have been improved by the course of civilization. At any rate, once noting, to his great sorrow and alarm, a month’s outlay of seventy-seven pounds on dress and its accompaniments, he adds that about twelve pounds of this had gone for his wife, and the small remaining balance—some fifty-five pounds—for himself. Charity begins at home; but economy, like justice, often starts next door. Pepys’s marital parsimoniousness frequently manifests itself in very petty ways; as when, for example, under date 14th February, 1666-7, he writes—“I am also this year my wife’s valentine, and it will cost me £5; but that I must have laid out if we had not been valentines.”
Once upon a time, Mr. and Mrs. Pepys went to the theatre together, and there they saw “Mrs. Stewart, very fine, with her locks done up with puffs, as my wife calls them, and several other great ladies had their hair so, though I do not like it; but my wife do mightily; but it is only because she sees it is the fashion.” This is all very well as a piece of superior masculine judgment; but unfortunately our moralist betrays no such scruples when social opinion prescribes a new departure in his own accoutrement. We notice with interest in the jottings of the journal the first appearance, or early reappearance, of several curious customs in dress. Patches were used by Mrs. Pepys, for the first time “since we were married,” on 30th August, 1660; and on 12th June, 1663, after observing the growth of the practice then indulged in by ladies, of wearing vizards, or masks, at the theatre—a practice we can understand better as we come to know more of the character of the performances given on the Restoration stage,—Mr. Pepys goes forthwith to the Exchange “to buy things with my wife; among others, a vizard for herself.” On 3d November, in this same year, he reports the adoption by himself of the new mode of wearing a periwig in place of the natural hair. It went a little to his heart, we find, to part with his own head-gear. However, he was somewhat reassured when, causing all his maids to look upon him, he observed their satisfaction with the result; though he notes intense self-consciousness and some embarrassment when, the next day, he went abroad for the first time in his new guise. About the same period he begins to shave himself—a performance which pleases him “mightily,” as promising to save both time and money. “Up betimes and shaved myself,” so runs a later entry, “after a week’s growth; but Lord! how ugly I was yesterday, and how fine to-day.”
One is sorely tempted here to reproduce a few of the many passages in which the vain old chronicler gloats over his handsome clothing, and the imposing figure cut by him at the theatre, or on the promenade, or in church. But one or two must suffice as specimens:—