had something like this: "What a strange thing is chance, how inscrutable is fate. Here am I placed in an office deemed of little worth, which turns out to be of value. I read not, enquire not, yet do I possess this office. How strange a thing is life. The earnest man laboring hard obtains but little; I ignorant and almost idle am set in the way of much profit." Written after this fashion the diary would appeal to a far greater number of readers who like the bread of life and literature well buttered with reflections and processes of thought. Samuel Pepys provides only bread, but what bread! On this matter of profit from his office, observe how clearly he puts the matter. August 16th, 1660, is the date of the following: "This morning my Lord (all things being ready) carried me by coach to Mr. Crew's, in the way talking how good he did hope my place would be to me, and in general speaking that it was not the salary of any place that did make a man rich, but the opportunity of getting money while he is in the place." Could anything be more admirably put? Could clearness of mind in regard to one's own iniquity go further? For although Pepys puts the axiom in "my Lord's" mouth, "my Lord" merely hinted it; it was Pepys who gave it the admirable expression just quoted; his unmistakable hallmark is on it. And why should he write it down with such placid lucidity of condemnation? It is so easy not to write, even to think, such things about oneself; yet the diary is full of them. If it be argued that the custom of the times gave countenance to this form of peculation and took the color of venality from it, there are abundant evidences to be found that Pepys himself did not think so. Take the following, for in stance; it will serve to illustrate other things besides: "This day was left at my house a very neat silver watch by one Briggs a scrivener and solicitor, at which I was very angry at my wife for receiving, or at least for opening the box wherein it was, and so far witnessing our receipt of it as to give the messenger five shillings for bringing it, but VOL. XII. 576 LIVING AGE. it can't be helped and I will endeavor to do the man a kindness, he being a friend of my uncle Wright's." There is a notable absence here of any hypocritical compounding with conscience. On the contrary, there is a beautiful fastidiousness of mere fact. The watch is "very neat;" notwithstanding his wife's technical fault in witnessing the receipt of it, he will keep it; not by any means will he send it back with protestations of wounded virtue, rather will he do the man a service (out of the public money), for, whatever Heaven may think of the transaction, the man was a friend of his uncle Wright's. It were much to be desired that the world had a quantity of personal memoirs written on this plan. They would most effectually clear our minds of cant. But, unfortunately, there has only been one Pepys, and it is a most fascinating puzzle how a man of his nature came by this splendid gift of plain, unflinching, perhaps unconscious, self-revelation. Here is an even better instance under date April 3rd, 1663: "Thence going out of White Hall, I met Captain Grove, who did give me a letter directed to myself from himself. I discerned money to be in it, and took it, knowing it to be, as I found it, the proceed of the place I have got him, the taking up of vessels for Tangier. But I did not open it till I came home to my office, and there I broke it open, not looking into it till all the money was out, that I might say I saw no money in the paper, if ever I should be questioned about it. There was a piece of gold and £4 in silver. So home to dinner with my father and wife . . ." When an ordinary man sets about a transaction of this sort he creates a cloud of dust for his conscience; he half shuts his mind's eye so that he may not observe, save in a dim unreal way, what he is doing; and when he has done it he tries to forget it, or feigns forgetfulness. Not so Mr. Pepys. He carefully sets it all down; sets it down so explicitly in a few incisive sentences, that you positively see him tumbling out the money, perpetrating the ruse on truth "that I might say I saw no money in the paper," and making, as if for the recording angel, an admirable précis of his own misdeeds. The amazing nature of the achievement is made very evident when one considers that the prin、 cipal condition precedent of remorse is a clear idea of wrong-doing; we repent when we see (usually by the aid of another's vision) the exact nature and conditions of our actions. Mr. Pepys does not repent; he merely records. Had he felt repentance he would have recorded that also. He does repent of various things in the course of his diary, but a few pages further on you will find he does them again. Most men in these circumstances would turn back and cancel the entry of repentance, or more probably would omit the instances of infraction. That seems the only selfrespecting way of keeping a diary of personal morals. Whatever Mr. Pepys's opinion of himself in this respect may have been does not clearly appear; but one thing is past doubt, the materials he preserved for forming one are ample and true. There is nothing to show, however, that he had any such purpose; that is left for us who do not keep diaries. He simply records, passing quite placidly from peculation to "dinner with my father and wife." It seems a strange freak of the unseen to endow this unimaginative, unreflective man with the faculty of observing his proper self as a detached object, and of setting down his deeds and thoughts as if he, the writer, were not the doer. The more we read the more it looks like a practical joke on humanity, as if some coterie of spirits had conspired and said: Let us provide this man with the power of seeing himself precisely as he is, and the desire to write down what he sees. He will take it seriously, and it will be sport to observe the precision with which he will set forth what he believes he comprehends. Some such supposition seems necessary to account for the marvellous fidelity of the record and the absence of all sense of moral contrast or humor. Towards Christmas time of 1664 there comes bunched together a number of entries of such ludicrous incongruity that it does not appear possible a man could calmly write them, or allow them to remain. "Going to bed betimes last night we waked betimes and from our people's being forced to take the key to go out to light a candle, I was very angry and begun to find fault with my wife for not commanding her servants as she ought. Thereupon she giving me some cross answer I did strike her over her left eye such a blow as the poor wretch did cry out and was in great pain, but yet her spirit was such as to endeavor to bite and scratch me. But I coying with her made her cease crying, and sent for butter and parsley, and friends presently with one another, and I up, vexed at my heart to think what I had done, for she was forced to lay a poultice to her eye all day, and is black, and the people of the house observed it." What should impel a man to write out in full an incident like this is a mystery on any ordinary estimate of humanity; but when, having dealt so by his own wife, he proceeds to relate how later in the day he keeps a disgraceful tryst with the wife of one Bagwell, an underling in the Deptford yard, and how he fares therein, the reader is impelled to fall back on the assumption of the unseen powers. For there is, and can be, no reason why a man should wish to remember such things; if some jocular spirits did not impel him for their amusement to do so, it is clear he would choose to forget. But Samuel records faithfully. Next day (his wife's eye being bad, though she in good temper with him, poor thing!) he has further deeds of iniquity to record with Bagwell's wife. Looking out for the comet which was then surprising England, he reaches Christmas Day. "Up (my wife's eye being ill still of the blow I did in a passion give her on Monday last) to church alone, where Mr. Mills, a good sermon." After dinner, "To the French Church, but coming too late I returned, and to Mr. Rawlinson's church where I heard a good sermon of one that I remember was at Paul's with me, his name Maggett; and very great store of fine women there is in this church, more than I know anywhere else about us." There is really no conscious humor in the juxtaposition of sermons and fine women; it is merely the extraordinary man's way of recording what he saw, what appealed to him. He holds on his even path, impelled by the mysterious necessity of writing himself down until he comes to the last day of the year, when piety and precision dictate to him the following towards the solemn hour of midnight: "Well satisfied with my work, and above all, to find myself, by the great blessing of God, worth £1,349, by which, as I have spent very largely, so I have laid up above £500 this year above what I was worth this day twelve-month. The Lord make me forever thankful to his holy name for it!" Remember the methods by which Samuel Pepys accumulated this sum, how his wife's eye is still black from his cowardly blow, what other wrongs he has done to her, the fine women in church, and then ask by what strange freak he can add expressions of piety to such a jumble of living, and put the whole thing down in a diary in language of most admirable vividness, without the slightest sign of consciousness that he is doing anything unusual. The much-praised art of Fielding in painting a man, a whole man, is as nothing to this, for here we have Samuel Pepys painting himself in a way that makes Tom Jones pale by comparison. One glimpse of self, such as those one finds so plentifully strewn over the diary, drives many a man to abject remorse. Mr. Pepys the chronicler sits calm in the midst of it all, apparently quite heedless of the picture of Pepys the man. Nowhere else in literature will you find a man who to the same extent possessed the faculty to see what he lacked the faculty to appreciate, and from that point of view he remains a puzzle. Shakespeare himself has left nothing which can compare in truth and vividness with the revelation of the jealousy caused to Pepys by the dancing-master's attendances on his wife. It is a comedy of the highest order, every touch perfect and convincing. Pepys himself surpasses it in the tragi-comedy of his relations with Deb, his wife's maid. Here is no invention, no labored ingenuity, but a succession of scenes of absolute truth, set forth in language of remarkable force, wherein there is not a superfluous phrase. Pepys does not speak with great appreciation of such of Shakespeare's plays as he saw performed; but it is almost certain that could Shakespeare have seen this diary he would have paid it the true tribute of dramatizing portions of it, taking from it, as he never scrupled to do where his source was worthy, expressions which he could not hope to improve. Of such it is a rich mine. The simple directness which the translators of the English Bible wielded to so glorious purpose hangs about it. "After we had filled our bellies with cream we took our leaves and away," he says of a country feast. A friend invites him to dinner, which he enjoys, "only the venison pasty was palpable beef, which was not handsome." He can sketch a country idyll in a few words: "To-day I received a letter from my uncle to beg an old fiddle of me for my cousin Perkin, the miller, whose mill the wind hath lately broke down, and now he hath nothing to live by but fiddling, and he must needs have it against Whitsuntide to play to the country girls." We seem to have lost this delightful knack of language nowadays; it is as rhythmic as a song, and as sufficient. What follows is pure Pepys: "But it vexed me to see how my uncle writes to me, as if he were not able to send him one. But I intend to-morrow to send him one." "Put in at my Lord's lodgings where we stayed late, eating of part of his turkey-pie and reading of Quarles's 'Emblems.'" There you have Mr. Pepys in short, the proportion being seven parts pie to one part Emblems. He imbibed enough of Em-blems and divinity to enable him to moralize a little, as when he says: "So I see that religion, be it what it will, is but a humor, and so the esteem of it passeth as other things do;" where the beauty of the language seems to convey a deeper sense than was in his mind. This is a rare mood with him, however, and never in the least diverts him from his mysterious task of laying bare himself. Of a certain Captain Holmes he says he is "a cunning fellow, and one (by his own confession to me) that can put on two several faces, and look his enemies in the face with as much love as his friends. But, good God! what an age is this! that a man cannot live without playing the knave and dissimulation." The age was not peculiar in respect of this fancied necessity to dissimulate; so many mere tricks in personal morality are put down to the When Mr. compulsion of the age. Pepys dons his heaven-sent diarist's robe and takes himself in hand, he shows with his customary clearness exactly how the matter stands, age or no age: "I told him (Mr. Starling) how I would have him speak to my uncle Robert, when he comes thither concerning my buying of land, that I could pay ready money £600 and the rest by £150 per annum, to make up as much as will buy £50 per annum, which I do, although I not worth above £500 ready money, that he may think me to be a greater saver than I am." And again: "It is a great pleasure to me to talk with persons of quality and to be in command (at his office), and I give it out among them that the estate left me is £200 a year in land, besides moneys, because I would put an esteem upon myself." He succeeded to admiration in creating an esteem for himself; he even acquired a reputation as a highly respectable, pious, and God-fearing man; but he also kept a diary in a way absolutely inimical to this repute, and yet never once will you detect any evidence of his tongue being in his cheek. Was he morally blind? Mentally blind he was not; rather in this respect he had one of the most splendid gifts of vision man was ever dowered with. The mere external aspect of a thing or act appealed to him in his fullest extent; but of moral vision, contrast, perspective, in a word, humor, he appears to have had nought. Possessing all the follies of a Falstaff, he sees them as facts merely. They have no color either of heaven or earth in them. There they are, preserved in spirits of wine, with labels on the bottles. A word suffices him often for his effects, as when after a hot dispute with relatives over money matters, he adds: "and with great seeming love parted." Or a phrase thus: "And I would fain have stolen a pretty dog that followed me, but I could not; which troubled me." When he does steal he says so plainly: "So I to the Park, and there walk an hour or two; and in the king's garden, and saw the queen and ladies walk; and I did steal some apples off the trees." He might have "take," or amplified it into, said “thought no harm in plucking;" but no; he did steal them, therefore "steal" is the word. How absolute the knave is! He is capable of a little complex reflection now and again, as witness his way of painting a Mr. Povy, whom he found it necessary, or politic, to oppose. "For of all the men in the world, I never knew any man in his degree so great a coxcomb in such employments. I see I have lost him forever, but I value it not; for he is a coxcomb, and, I doubt, not over honest, by some things which I see; and yet, for all his folly, he hath the good luck, now and then, to speak his follies in as good words, and with as good a show, as if it were reason, and to the purpose, which is really one of the wonders of my life." This is most admirably expressed, but in writing it Mr. Pepys does not seem to have thought he was describing himself. What a subject for an Imaginary Conversation, Shakespeare and Samuel Pepys! To Shakespeare the world was men and "full of strange noises;" women were on a journey from eternity to eternity, and their loves and hates, ambitions and failures were imbued with the enchantment of destiny, so that, while all they do or say seems proper to them as individuals, it is but the manifestation of a power or process of which they are the unwitting mediums. To Pepys they are comprehensible men and women, with no other matter of destiny about them than birth and death. These mysteries he makes branch, so that the wood was rotten; no pretence to solve, or dilate upon; and not more than five feet from the they are mere memoranda for him, like ground, so that I could watch them the pickled herrings he dines off at easily. Of course, I had to widen the Greenwich. The world for Pepys is orifice before I could remove the most effectually real; he has an unyoungster. The snake-like twist they hesitating persuasion of himself and can give to their neck, and their why he exists; and in this diary he reverses the Eastern magic that made snake-like hiss, make them rather uncanny birds, and may account for a genius spread cloud-like out of an urn, by industriously stuffing a genius into their use in divination by Greek wizope. In his observation of the crude ards. They were spread-eagled on a matter that makes up living, the wheel, and turned, or perhaps whirled, succedaneum of spirit, he reveals an round. Simætha, in Theocritus, uses unmatchable exactitude. Page after such a wheel to charm back her faithpage is blindly filled with the stuff of less lover, Delphis. The poor birds comedy, lying there as mere facts, must have rejoiced at the advent of dockets of the conveyance of existence Christianity, modern Christian witches from the Eternal lessor to Samuel preferring to conjure with robins and Pepys, tenant for life. other birds of bright plumage. He lived to the age of seventy, and an after-death examination revealed a nest of seven stones in one of his kid: neys, any one of which might have proved mortal to an ordinary man. But they were Pepysian stones, and had arranged themselves so conveniently as not seriously to derange his bodily functions. The State owed him £48,000 which it never paid, in which counterpoise of dishonesty the operation of moral justice may be visible. Pepys's observation on the point is necessarily wanting; he had gone where diaries were no longer requisite; and yet, but for irreverence, one might imagine him calmly resuming his notes in Eternity: "This day did blow the last trump. Gabriel a fine figure. The trumpet somewhat out of tune." From The Cornhill Magazine. PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY. July 1st.-The young wrynecks, alas! are dead, no doubt killed by their parents through my folly in taking one out of the nest. They are very uncommon birds in the neighborhood, hence my wish to examine them. They dug their hole in an old appletree just below where it had lost a 2nd.-The Agricultural Rating Bill passed its third reading by two county Radical votes over the government majority. The committee debates have slowly exhibited, or perhaps evolved, the government position, at last clearly stated by Mr. Balfour in his concluding speech, that the bill is meant not only to relieve a greatly distressed industry in redemption of election pledges, but also as a contribution towards remedying the present monstrous injustice in the assessment to local rates. The Spectator deserves much credit for keeping this side of the question uppermost. It is to be hoped that the government will sooner or later overhaul the whole bad business, but not without more deliberation than they thought necessary before overhauling our educational system. The Janus-faced contention of the Opposition that the proposed relief is, as regards the landowners, an enormous subsidy, but as regards the agricultural interest generally a drop in the bucket, reminds me of an ancient story about a little girl and a piece of cake: Little girl: Is that large piece of cake for grandfather? Mamma: No, dear, for you. Little girl: What a small piece of cake! |