It was an unusual age known as the restoration period in British history following the long fight between Parliament and monarchy, the beheading of king Charles-I and the puritanical autocracy of Oliver Cromwell. The reigning king was the merry-monarch Charles-II who had a host of mistresses and acknowledged no fewer than 16 illegitimate children. The diary is considered a most reliable document on contemporary British politics and London social life in addition to being a literary work in its own right.
A man of great abilities especially as an administrator, Pepys is considered to have played a key role in laying the foundation of Britain's subsequent naval supremacy. He was greatly interested in books, theater and music. He had a weakness for wine, women and everything that was new and interesting. His sensibilities were queer. When spat upon by a lady sitting in front of him in a theater, Pepys took it merrily as the lady was very pretty. We find him regularly giving a feast on the anniversary of a surgery performed on him earlier for removal of kidney stone. The stone itself, the size of a tennis ball, he preserved in a special casket. One entry shows the same Pepys in a more exotic plane, discussing with his fellows whether there was any real difference between the states of waking and dreaming. However, after seeing Romeo and Juliet the first time it was ever acted, Pepys called the play the worst that he ever saw. Midsummer Night's Dream too was rated the most insipid ridiculous play and we have on record Pepys' resolution never to see it again. But Pepys is not all against the Bard, for he "saw Macbeth most excellently acted, and a most excellent play for variety". We also find him enjoying Ben Johnson's play Every Man in His Humor.
The diary has Pepys reading and greatly liking Robert Hooke's book of microscopical observations. Another day, we find him reading Ovid's Metamorphosis to his wife. Want to know how to silence a quarreling spouse? Well, Boyle's Hydrostatics was read aloud to silence a nagging Elizabeth Pepys! Some books are less serious. A roguish and lewd French romance was burned immediately after reading. The same Pepys also go looking for that most serious political treatise, Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan which stood banned in Britain at that time. When Pepys is annoyed with a book, the comment can be quite devastating: "Descartes' book of music, I understand not, nor think he did that writ it, though a most learned man".
The diary shows the same Pepys who witnessed the beheading of King Charles-I witnessing the posthumous execution(!!) of Oliver Cromwell and other regicides. One ordinary day we find the writer going to his office after sending his wife to his Aunt Wight's (house) to get a place to see Col. James Turner, convicted for robbery, hanged.
The diary's importance is greatly enhanced by its description of two major tragedies - the bubonic plague of 1665 and the great London fire of 1666. We see the plague coming in the entry dated September 24 1664, about a Dutch ship cast ashore at Gottenburgh with all men dead of plague. Remember the Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, Love in the Time of Cholera? Imagine Love in the Time of Plague! On 1st June 1665 Pepys went to Westminster Hall and "took the fairest flower ....and does as much as is safe with the flower". But soon on 7 June he saw three houses marked with red cross upon doors and "Lord have mercy upon us" written on them. Reminded of his own mortality, Pepys decided to set his affairs in order and wrote his Will bequeathing everything equally between his wife and father.
But concupiscence was not away for long. This time it was of the meanest kind. There was a strange meeting on 11 August. A desperate father brought his married daughter to Pepys, requesting him to spare her husband from being sent to the ongoing naval war with the Dutch. According to the coded entry in the diary, Pepys only kissed the woman and did nothing else. But after the pair left, he regretted missing his chance and send a messenger after them to get the girl back. When the messenger missed them, Pepys was disappointed. This, when death was dancing all around! On 31st August, 1665 he give us the official weeks' casualty of Plague at 6102 with the hint that the actual tally would be around ten thousand. We also find him worrying what the fashion of wigs would be after the plague as nobody will dare to buy any hair for fear that the hair had been cut from the heads of the victims of plague.
There is a theory that the great fire of 1666 effectively ended the bubonic plague by destroying rats and fleas. The description of the fire is graphic. I liked this the best: "And among other things, the poor pigeons, loathe to leave their houses, hovered about the windows and balconys till some of them burned their wings and fell down". Nostradamus might or might not have prophesied the London fire. But I found this story in the diary about Nostradamus very interesting. "At his death, he made the town [where he was buried] swear that his tomb should never be opened. But they did after sixty years do it and upon his breast found a plate of brass, saying what a wicked and unfaithful people they were, who after so many wows should disturb and open him such a day and year and hour'.According to the diary, the dying words of Samuel Pepys' mother was "God Bless My Poor Sam". But Sam was a very naughty boy. Read the entry dated 18 August, 1667 on what he did in a crowded church: "Heard an able sermon and stood by a pretty, modest maid, whom I did labor to take by the hand and the body; 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". Any other man would give up, but not Sam whose "gaze fell on another pretty maid in a pew close by..." etc and he directed his labors to her.
On 15 January, 1665, he was apparently better behaved in the church and heard a most insipid young coxcomb preach. On other occasions too, we find him hearing a parson speaking excellently on the justice of God in punishing men for the sins of their ancestors or another preacher playing the fool upon the doctrine of the purgatory.
Towards the end of the diary, we find Pepys marriage in deep trouble over his amours with other women, especially with Deb Willet, the family's maidservant of seventeen with whom his wife caught him red-handed in a clinch. A patch-up was arranged to save Pepys' reputation as, otherwise Elizabeth Pepys threatened to go public with the story. The diary ends when the patch up was in place. In any case, Elizabeth did not long survive it. The last diary entry is dated May 31, 1669 and Elizabeth died the same year in September. Historians have recently unearthed evidence showing Pepys assisting Deb's husband to get a job as Chaplain in a ship and concluded that the relationship with Deb would have continued long after the end of the diary.
What is a fair assessment of this unusual work? Well, all entries considered, Sam did a splendid job! Far greater writers than Pepys, like Augustine and Rousseau, have written their Confessions. But the so-called Confessions, with all their self flagellation, are written with the aim of self-justification. This cannot be said about the Diary. It faithfully mirrors a typical individual of the time with no attempt to cover the complexity of his character. While the diary was not written for publication, Pepys would easily have foreseen somebody finding it interesting and did apparently not mind its getting published after his time. It is noteworthy that he destroyed some of his books and papers which he did not want to be seen by others. We even have an entry showing him destroying a romance under the title Love a Cheate written by him while in Cambridge. However, the diary was carefully catalogued and passed on to his college along with his other books. We should be thankful to poor Sam for that. Well, it would have been better if he had spared the product of his adolescent romantic imagination also.
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