Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self Read online

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  SAMUEL PEPYS

  Book of the Year Choices:

  ‘Brings her subject as vividly to life as his diaries brought to life the world he chronicled’ Matthew Parris, Mail on Sunday

  ‘A triumph. Beautifully structured’ Roy Jenkins, Sunday Telegraph

  ‘Hard to stop reading. Captures the stink and bustle of mid seventeenth-century London’ Ian McEwan, Guardian

  ‘A masterpiece of insight, empathy and concision’ Andrew Roberts, Evening Standard

  ‘A marvellously fresh account of the most neglected of great English writers, stripping away centuries of accumulated varnish and showing the human, silly, intensely lovable face beneath’ Philip Hensher, Observer

  ‘Outstanding. Simultaneously informative and entertaining’ Roy Hattersley, Observer

  ‘The best biography I’ve come across for ages. Tomalin’s description of Pepys’s early life is the best there is’ Colin Barrow, Evening Standard

  ‘A convincing and memorable picture of Pepys’s world; this is the best of introductions to the incomparable diary’ Miranda Seymour, Sunday Times

  ‘An unrivalled analysis of a marriage is distinguished above all by her wisdom, compassion and humanity’ Frank McLynn, Independent

  ‘A model of industry and research, beautifully written’ Anthony Howard, New Statesman

  ‘A happily illustrated, well-written, exhaustively researched and splendidly produced book. I enjoyed it greatly’ Colin Dexter, Oldie

  ‘Takes the laurels for biography this year. Tomalin give a gripping account of non-diary Pepys. A thoughtful and eloquent study’ Claire Harman, Evening Standard

  ‘Marvellous. Reveals the diarist and civil servant as never before’ Charles Guthrie, Sunday Telegraph

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Claire Tomalin has worked in publishing and journalism all her life. She was literary editor first of the New Statesman and then of the Sunday Times, which she left in 1986. She is the author of The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft, which won the Whitbread First Book Prize for 1974; Shelley and His World (reissued by Penguin in 1992); Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life (1988), a biography of the modernist writer on whom she also based her 1991 play The Winter Wife; the highly acclaimed The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Teman and Charles Dickens, which won the 1990 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography, the NCR Book Award in 1991, as well as the Hawthornden Prize; Mrs Jordan’s Profession (1995), a study of the Regency actress; Jane Austen: A Life (1998); a collection of her literary journalism entitled Several Strangers: Writing from Three Decades (1999); and Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, which won the Whitbread Biography Award and which went on to win the Whitbread Book of the Year Award for 2002. All her books are published by Penguin.

  Samuel Pepys

  The Unequalled Self

  CLAIRE TOMALIN

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  First published by Viking 2002

  Published in Penguin Books 2003

  20

  Copyright © Claire Tomalin, 2002

  Maps copyright © Andrew Farmer, 2002

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  The acknowledgements on pp. 470–72 constitute an extension of this copyright page

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  978-0-14-191031-4

  The whole book, if you will but look at it in that way, is seen to be a work of art to Pepys’s own address. Here, then, we have the key to that remarkable attitude preserved by him throughout his diary, to that unflinching – I had almost said, that unintelligent – sincerity which makes it a miracle among human books… Whether he did ill or well, he was still his own unequalled self; still that entrancing ego of whom alone he cared to write.

  – Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘Samuel Pepys’

  Un livre est le produit d’un autre moi que celui que nous manifestons dans nos habitudes, dans la société, dans nos vices.

  – Marcel Proust, Contre Sainte-Beuve

  [There is] in every one, two men, the wise and the foolish, and… each of them must be allowed his turn. If you would have the wise, the grave, the serious, always to rule and have sway, the fool would grow so peevish and troublesome, that he would put the wise man out of order, and make him fit for nothing: he must have his times of being let loose to follow his fancies, and play his gambols, if you would have your business go on smoothly.

  – Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Shaftesbury, to John Locke

  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  Acknowledgements

  Pepys Family Tree

  Map 1: The London Dwellings of Samuel Pepys

  Map 2: Huntingdon, Hinchingbrooke and Brampton

  List of Principal Figures

  Prologue

  Part One 1633-1660

  1 The Elected Son

  2 A Schoolboy's War: Huntingdon and St Paul’s

  3 Cambridge and Clerking

  4 Love and Pain

  5 A House in Axe Yard

  6 A Diary

  Part Two 1660-1669

  7 Changing Sides

  8 Families

  9 Work

  10 Jealousy

  11 Death and Plague

  12 War

  13 Marriage

  14 The King

  15 The Fire

  16 Three Janes

  17 The Secret Scientist

  18 Speeches and Stories

  19 Surprise and Disorder

  Part Three 1669-1703

  20 After the Diary

  21 Public and Private Life

  22 Plots

  23 Travels for the Stuarts

  24 Whirligigs

  25 The Jacobite

  26 A Journey to be Made

  Epilogue

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Text and Illustrations Permissions

  Index

  List of Illustrations

  1. Distant view of St Paul’s and the City from rural Islington, where Pepys’s father took his children for outings (Hollar, 1665). From Pepys’s own collection of prints.

  2. Detail of Milford Stairs on the Thames (Hollar, 1640s). From Pepys’s own collection.

  3. Durdans in Surrey, where Pepys’s uncle John Pepys served Sir Robert and Lady Theophila Coke, and where he took Samuel as a child (Jacob Knyff, 1673).

  4. Destruction of Cheapside Cross by puritan zealots (1643). From Pepys’s own collection.

>   5. North-east view of Hinchingbrooke House outside Huntingdon, home of Edward and Jemima Montagu.

  6. Jemima Montagu, wife of Edward Montagu and mistress of Hinchingbrooke. Early miniature (c. 1646).

  7. Edward Montagu, Pepys’s cousin, benefactor and patron (Peter Lely, c. 1646).

  8. The house at Brampton, near Hinchingbrooke, which belonged to Pepys’s uncle Robert, bailiff to the Montagus.

  9. Execution of the earl of Strafford on Tower Hill, 12 May 1641 (Hollar). From Pepys’s own collection.

  10. A print of Cromwell from Pepys’s own collection.

  11. Execution of Charles I outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall, 3o January 1649.

  12. New Palace Yard, looking towards Whitehall Palace, showing Westminster Hall and the Clock Tower (1664).

  13. Samuel Morland, Pepys’s tutor at Magdalene College, Cambridge (Peter Lely, 1659).

  14. George Downing MP, diplomat and Pepys’s employer at the Exchequer.

  15. David Loggan’s print of Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1690, showing the new building that later housed Pepys’s library.

  16. Pepys’s signed list of household items, made while he was servant to the Montagus in the late 1650s.

  17. Frontispiece of Edward Phillips’s The Misteries of Love and Eloquence: The Arts of Wooing and Complementing (1658), a book of advice on love for young men of the commonwealth period, by Milton’s nephew.

  18. Operation for removal of a bladder stone, from the 1683 English edition of François Tolet’s surgical text Traité de la Lithotomie.

  *

  19. Elizabeth Pepys (engraving by T. Thomson, after Hayls’s lost portrait of 1666).

  20. John Hayls’s 1666 portrait of Samuel Pepys.

  21. The first page of Pepys’s Diary as he wrote it, 1659/60.

  22. Will Hewer, Pepys’s clerk, who became his closest associate and friend. Engraving made for the first edition of Pepys’s Diary, 1825, from a portrait of 1689, when Kneller painted both Pepys and Hewer as a pair, to celebrate their friendship.

  23. Chalk drawing by Charles Beale of the family maid, Susan Gill, from his 1670 sketchbook.

  24. Admiral Sir William Penn, Pepys’s colleague at the Navy Office (Peter Lely).

  25. Thomas Povey of the Tangier Committee (J.M. Wright).

  26. Sir William Coventry, secretary to the duke of York and friend to Pepys at the Navy Board (John Riley).

  27. John Ogilby presenting to King Charles II and Queen Catherine the list of subscribers to the map he and William Morgan were preparing (1682).

  28. St Olave’s Church, Hart Street, London, where the Navy Office went to Church, view taken c. 1670.

  29. The view from Greenwich hill (Hendrick Danckerts, mid 1670s).

  30. Panoramic painting of the Great Fire of London (1666).

  31. Memorial bust of Elizabeth Pepys in St Olave’s Church (attributed to John Bushnell, c. 1670).

  *

  32. Jemima Montagu, first countess of Sandwich.

  33. Edward Montagu, first earl of Sandwich (Peter Lely, c. 1670).

  34. James Houblon, a member of the wealthy Huguenot merchant family that settled in the City, whose friendship with Pepys lasted from the mid 1660s to the end of his life.

  35. Sarah Houblon, née Wynne, wife of James.

  36. This portrait, described as ‘Mrs Pepys’, surfaced in 1931 at the time of a Sotheby’s sale of Pepys material, but was withdrawn; it has not been seen since.

  37. Anthony Ashley Cooper, first earl of Shaftesbury, founder of the Whig Party and persecutor of Pepys (c. 1672 – 3).

  38. James, duke of York, as lord high admiral (Henri Gascar, c. 1675).

  39. Pepys’s print of John Evelyn, diarist (from the Kneller portrait, c. 1689).

  40. William Petty, anatomist, economist, social theorist (Isaac Fuller, c. 1640 – 51).

  41. Bust of Isaac Newton by Roubiliac.

  42. Bust of Sir Christopher Wren by Edward Pierce.

  43 and 44. Pepys’s Library in Buckingham Street, the view from each end.

  45. The IOU letter presented by Pepys to James II and signed by James on 17 November 1688.

  46. Lines from Pepys’s account with Hoare’s Bank, 1701.

  47. John Jackson, Pepys’s nephew and principal heir (from the first edition of Pepys’s Diary, 1825).

  48. John Closterman’s portrait of Pepys as an old man.

  49. Ivory medallion of Pepys (Jean Cavalier, 1688).

  50. The first page of John Smith’s transcription of the Diary, begun in 1819.

  Acknowledgements

  My first thanks go to the master and fellows of Magdalene College, Cambridge, for their hospitality and for allowing me the privilege of working in the Pepys Library. Richard Luckett, Pepys librarian, encouraged me from the start. Mrs Aude Fitzsimons, assistant librarian, has borne with my many prolonged visits and given me every sort of assistance; I have profited greatly by her kindness, and by the good advice and help of Dr Charles S. Knighton, deputy editor of the Pepys Library Catalogue.

  Thanks to the Earl and Countess of Sandwich for support, help and encouragement; and to Brian Crichton for his generosity.

  I am grateful to Robin Harcourt Williams, archivist at Hatfield House, for sparing a day to give me his advice and taking me on an instructive and enjoyable tour of the Woodhall area; also to Mrs Sally Timson of the Cottage, Woodhall Farm, Hatfield, for showing me her house; and to Mr H. W. Gray for answering my queries about St Etheldreda’s, Hatfield.

  Lady McAlpine was good enough to allow me to visit the present house at Durdans, where Ray Rudman went to considerable trouble to give me information about the history of the place and previous houses there.

  Hoare’s Bank kindly allowed me to examine and photocopy their records of Pepys’s account with them.

  Thanks to John Cronin, curator of Hinchingbrooke School, Huntingdon, for taking me over the building and the grounds, and to Mr and Mrs Julian Curtis for showing me the Pepys house at Brampton. Also to J. H. L. Puxley for showing me his family portraits and allowing them to be photographed.

  Thanks to Sir Oliver Millar, GCVO, FBA, FSA, for help in tracking down portraits; to Dr Frances Harris for general guidance and especially for talking to me about John Evelyn; to Simon May, archivist at St Paul’s School, for his help; to Nicolas Barker; to Mrs Rhona Mitchell, archivist of Christ’s Hospital; to Julian Mitchell,who sent me his paper on John Creed’s brother Richard; to Robin Hyman for checking my account of the publishing history of the Diary, and for allowing plates from his Braybrooke edition to be photographed; to David Wickham, archivist of the Clothworkers’ Company; to Canon Graham Corneck of St Nicholas, Deptford; to Revd John Cowling of St Olave, Hart Street; to Nicholas Monck for making a new translation of Daniel Skinner’s Latin letter to Pepys; to Sheila Russell for information about Impington Manor; to Mrs Dagtoglou for sending me G. R. Balleine’s account of Sir George Carteret; to Robin Gibson for lending me his copy of the catalogue to the National Portrait Gallery’s Pepys exhibition of 1970; to Ruth Eldridge and Ron Vernon at Chiddingstone Castle for their kind help in checking the details of the manuscript of Pepys’s IOU to James II; and to Andrew Howard for showing me over 12 Buckingham Street.

  Also to Professor Gordon Campbell, to Dr Timothy Graham, to Professor R. I. Page, to Christopher de Hamel and to Professor B. S. Capp, all of whom gave me advice and suggestions for further reading; and to Professor John Bossy for his elucidation of the topography of Salisbury Court.

  On medical questions I have been advised by Dr Patrick French, FRCP, consultant in genito-urinary medicine, Mortimer Market Centre, London; also by Milo Keynes, who sent me his paper on Pepys’s health; R. Goodwin, MA, Msc, FRCS, and H. N. Whitfield; and by the Real Tennis Club of Cambridge, where I was given the dimensions of the real tennis ball, which the stone removed from Pepys equalled in size.

  I am grateful to the staff of the following libraries for their assistance: the Wellcome Library of Medical History, th
e Library of the Royal Society of London, the British Library, the London Library, the Bodleian Library, the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, the Public Record Office, the Guildhall Library, the National Portrait Gallery archives, the Liddle Hart archives held at King’s College, the London National Meteorological Library and in particular Ian MacGregor, library and archives services manager, who sent me Gordon Manley’s weather charts for the seventeenth century; the Huntingdon County Record Office and Public Library, and the Hertfordshire Record Office.

  As always, particular thanks to Tony Lacey, Charles Elliot and Donna Poppy for their questions, suggestions and help; also to Keith Taylor, Dinah Drazin, and to Diana Lecore, who made the index.

  And finally to my husband, who first went to Huntingdon and Brampton with me, who has walked from Bermondsey to Greenwich and from Fleet Street to the Tower and back with me on a number of occasions, and who put up with my virtual disappearance into the seventeenth century for several years with patience and good humour.

  List of Principal Figures

  SP stands for Samuel Pepys; EP for Elizabeth Pepys.

  Albemarle, duke of, see George Monck.

  Mary Ashwell, teacher in girls’ school before becoming EP’s companion; skilful singer, dancer and card-player.

  William Bagwell, ship’s carpenter at Deptford, encouraged wife to offer herself to SP, which she did, in order to win promotion. Her first name is unknown.

  Sir John Banks, financier; SP on friendly terms with his family in 1670s; he testified before the House of Commons that SP was not a Catholic.

  Sir William Batten, West Country sea captain of humble origins who rose to be surveyor of the navy before the civil war and, despite shifts of allegiance, was reappointed to the Navy Board in 1660, becoming SP’s colleague and neighbour.

  Thomas Betterton, actor – manager, the greatest of his time, much admired by SP.

  Jane Birch, SP’s first and favourite maid, worked for him on and off from the age of fourteen, married his clerk Tom Edwards, helped by SP when widowed. Her younger brother, Wayneman Birch, worked for SP, sacked by him for bad behaviour and sent to the plantations.