Pepys spent part of a certain winter Sunday, when he had taken physic,
composing "a song in praise of a liberal genius (such as I take my own
to be) to all studies and pleasures." The song was unsuccessful, but the
Diary is, in a sense, the very song that he was seeking; and his
portrait by Hales, so admirably reproduced in Mynors Bright's edition,
is a confirmation of the Diary. Hales, it would appear, had known his
business; and though he put his sitter to a deal of trouble, almost
breaking his neck "to have the portrait full of shadows," and draping
him in an Indian gown hired expressly for the purpose, he was
preoccupied about no merely picturesque effects, but to portray the
essence of the man. Whether we read the picture by the Diary or the
Diary by the picture, we shall at least agree that Hales was among the
number of those who can "surprise the manners in the face." Here we have
a mouth pouting, moist with desires; eyes greedy, protuberant, and yet
apt for weeping too; a nose great alike in character and dimensions; and
altogether a most fleshy, melting countenance. The face is attractive by
its promise of reciprocity. I have used the word _greedy_, but the
reader must not suppose that he can change it for that closely kindred
one of _hungry_, for there is here no aspiration, no waiting for better
things, but an animal joy in all that comes. It could never be the face
of an artist; it is the face of a _viveur_--kindly, pleased and
pleasing, protected from excess and upheld in contentment by the
shifting versatility of his desires. For a single desire is more rightly
to be called a lust; but there is health in a variety, where one may
balance and control another.
The whole world, town or country, was to Pepys a garden of Armida.
Wherever he went, his steps were winged with the most eager expectation;
whatever he did, it was done with the most lively pleasure. An
insatiable curiosity in all the shows of the world and all the secrets
of knowledge filled him brimful of the longing to travel, and supported
him in the toils of study. Rome was the dream of his life; he was never
happier than when he read or talked of the Eternal City. When he was in
Holland he was "with child" to see any strange thing. Meeting some
friends and singing with them in a palace near the Hague, his pen fails
him to express his passion of delight, "the more so because in a heaven
of pleasure and in a strange country." He must go to see all famous
executions. He must needs visit the body of a murdered man, defaced
"with a broad wound," he says, "that makes my hand now shake to write of
it." He learned to dance, and was "like to make a dancer." He learned to
sing, and walked about Gray's Inn Fields "humming to myself (which is
now my constant practice) the trillo." He learned to play the lute, the
flute, the flageolet, and the theorbo, and it was not the fault of his
intention if he did not learn the harpsichord or the spinet. He learned
to compose songs, and burned to give forth "a scheme and theory of music
not yet ever made in the world." When he heard "a fellow whistle like a
bird exceeding well," he promised to return another day and give an
angel for a lesson in the art. Once, he writes, "I took the Bezan back
with me, and with a brave gale and tide reached up that night to the
Hope, taking great pleasure in learning the seamen's manner of singing
when they sound the depths." If he found himself rusty in his Latin
grammar, he must fall to it like a schoolboy. He was a member of
Harrington's Club till its dissolution, and of the Royal Society before
it had received the name. Boyle's "Hydrostatics" was "of infinite
delight" to him, walking in Barnes Elms. We find him comparing Bible
concordances, a captious judge of sermons, deep in Descartes and
Aristotle. We find him, in a single year, studying timber and the
measurement of timber; tar and oil, hemp, and the process of preparing
cordage; mathematics and accounting; the hull and the rigging of ships
from a model; and "looking and informing himself of the (naval) stores
with"--hark to the fellow!--"great delight." His familiar spirit of
delight was not the same with Shelley's; but how true it was to him
through life! He is only copying something, and behold, he "takes great
pleasure to rule the lines, and have the capital words wrote with red
ink"; he has only had his coal-cellar emptied and cleaned, and behold,
"it do please him exceedingly." A hog's harslett is "a piece of meat he
loves." He cannot ride home in my Lord Sandwich's coach, but he must
exclaim, with breathless gusto, "his noble, rich coach." When he is
bound for a supper-party, he anticipates a "glut of pleasure." When he
has a new watch, "to see my childishness," says he, "I could not forbear
carrying it in my hand and seeing what o'clock it was an hundred times."
To go to Vauxhall, he says, and "to hear the nightingales and other
birds, hear fiddles, and there a harp and here a Jew's trump, and here
laughing, and there fine people walking, is mighty divertising." And the
nightingales, I take it, were particularly dear to him; and it was again
"with great pleasure" that he paused to hear them as he walked to
Woolwich, while the fog was rising and the April sun broke through.
He must always be doing something agreeable, and, by preference, two
agreeable things at once. In his house he had a box of carpenter's
tools, two dogs, an eagle, a canary, and a blackbird that whistled
tunes, lest, even in that full life, he should chance upon an empty
moment. If he had to wait for a dish of poached eggs, he must put in the
time by playing on the flageolet; if a sermon were dull, he must read in
the book of Tobit or divert his mind with sly advances on the nearest
women. When he walked, it must be with a book in his pocket to beguile
the way in case the nightingales were silent; and even along the streets
of London, with so many pretty faces to be spied for and dignitaries to
be saluted, his trail was marked by little debts "for wine, pictures,
etc.," the true headmark of a life intolerant of any joyless passage.
He had a kind of idealism in pleasure; like the princess in the fairy
story, he was conscious of a rose-leaf out of place. Dearly as he loved
to talk, he could not enjoy nor shine in a conversation when he thought
himself unsuitably dressed. Dearly as he loved eating, he "knew not how
to eat alone"; pleasure for him must heighten pleasure; and the eye and
ear must be flattered like the palate ere he avow himself content. He
had no zest in a good dinner when it fell to be eaten "in a bad street
and in a periwig-maker's house"; and a collation was spoiled for him by
indifferent music. His body was indefatigable, doing him yeoman's
service in this breathless chase of pleasures. On April 11, 1662, he
mentions that he went to bed "weary, _which I seldom am_"; and already
over thirty, he would sit up all night cheerfully to see a comet. But it
is never pleasure that exhausts the pleasure-seeker; for in that career,
as in all others, it is failure that kills. The man who enjoys so
wholly, and bears so impatiently the slightest widowhood from joy, is
just the man to lose a night's rest over some paltry question of his
right to fiddle on the leads, or to be "vexed to the blood" by a
solecism in his wife's attire; and we find in consequence that he was
always peevish when he was hungry, and that his head "aked mightily"
after a dispute. But nothing could divert him from his aim in life; his
remedy in care was the same as his delight in prosperity: it was with
pleasure, and with pleasure only, that he sought to drive out sorrow;
and, whether he was jealous of his wife or skulking from a bailiff, he
would equally take refuge in a theatre. There, if the house be full and
the company noble, if the songs be tunable, the actors perfect, and the
play diverting, this odd hero of the secret Diary, this private
self-adorer, will speedily be healed of his distresses.
Equally pleased with a watch, a coach, a piece of meat, a tune upon the
fiddle, or a fact in hydrostatics, Pepys was pleased yet more by the
beauty, the worth, the mirth, or the mere scenic attitude in life of his
fellow-creatures. He shows himself throughout a sterling humanist.
Indeed, he who loves himself, not in idle vanity, but with a plenitude
of knowledge, is the best equipped of all to love his neighbours. And
perhaps it is in this sense that charity may be most properly said to
begin at home. It does not matter what quality a person has: Pepys can
appreciate and love him for it. He "fills his eyes" with the beauty of
Lady Castlemaine; indeed, he may be said to dote upon the thought of her
for years; if a woman be good-looking and not painted, he will walk
miles to have another sight of her; and even when a lady by a mischance
spat upon his clothes, he was immediately consoled when he had observed
that she was pretty. But, on the other hand, he is delighted to see Mrs.
Pett upon her knees, and speaks thus of his Aunt James: "a poor,
religious, well-meaning, good soul, talking of nothing but God Almighty,
and that with so much innocence that mightily pleased me." He is taken
with Pen's merriment and loose songs, but not less taken with the
sterling worth of Coventry. He is jolly with a drunken sailor, but
listens with interest and patience, as he rides the Essex roads, to the
story of a Quaker's spiritual trials and convictions. He lends a
critical ear to the discourse of kings and royal dukes. He spends an
evening at Vauxhall with "Killigrew and young Newport--loose company,"
says he, "but worth a man's being in for once, to know the nature of it,
and their manner of talk and lives." And when a rag-boy lights him home,
he examines him about his business and other ways of livelihood for
destitute children. This is almost half-way to the beginning of
philanthropy; had it only been the fashion, as it is at present, Pepys
had perhaps been a man famous for good deeds. And it is through this
quality that he rises, at times, superior to his surprising egotism; his
interest in the love affairs of others is, indeed, impersonal; he is
filled with concern for my Lady Castlemaine, whom he only knows by
sight, shares in her very jealousies, joys with her in her successes;
and it is not untrue, however strange it seems in his abrupt
presentment, that he loved his maid Jane because she was in love with
his man Tom.
Let us hear him, for once, at length: "So the women and W. Hewer and I
walked upon the Downes, where a flock of sheep was; and the most
pleasant and innocent sight that ever I saw in my life. We found a
shepherd and his little boy reading, far from any houses or sight of
people, the Bible to him; so I made the boy read to me, which he did
with the forced tone that children do usually read, that was mighty
pretty; and then I did give him something, and went to the father, and
talked with him. He did content himself mightily in my liking his boy's
reading, and did bless God for him, the most like one of the old
patriarchs that ever I saw in my life, and it brought those thoughts of
the old age of the world in my mind for two or three days after. We took
notice of his woolen knit stockings of two colours mixed, and of his
shoes shod with iron, both at the toe and heels, and with great nails in
the soles of his feet, which was mighty pretty; and taking notice of
them, 'Why,' says the poor man, 'the downes, you see, are full of
stones, and we are faine to shoe ourselves thus; and these,' says he,
'will make the stones fly till they ring before me.' I did give the poor
man something, for which he was mighty thankful, and I tried to cast
stones with his horne crooke. He values his dog mightily, that would
turn a sheep any way which he would have him, when he goes to fold them;
told me there was about eighteen score sheep in his flock, and that he
hath four shillings a week the year round for keeping of them; and Mrs.
Turner, in the common fields here, did gather one of the prettiest
nosegays that ever I saw in my life."
And so the story rambles on to the end of that day's pleasuring; with
cups of milk, and glowworms, and people walking at sundown with their
wives and children, and all the way home Pepys still dreaming "of the
old age of the world" and the early innocence of man. This was how he
walked through life, his eyes and ears wide open, and his hand, you will
observe, not shut; and thus he observed the lives, the speech, and the
manners of his fellow-men, with prose fidelity of detail and yet a
lingering glamour of romance.
It was "two or three days after" that he extended this passage in the
pages of his Journal, and the style has thus the benefit of some
reflection. It is generally supposed that, as a writer, Pepys must rank
at the bottom of the scale of merit. But a style which is indefatigably
lively, telling, and picturesque through six large volumes of everyday
experience, which deals with the whole matter of a life, and yet is
rarely wearisome, which condescends to the most fastidious particulars,
and yet sweeps all away in the forthright current of the
narrative,--such a style may be ungrammatical, it may be inelegant, it
may be one tissue of mistakes, but it can never be devoid of merit. The
first and the true function of the writer has been thoroughly performed
throughout; and though the manner of his utterance may be childishly
awkward, the matter has been transformed and assimilated by his
unfeigned interest and delight. The gusto of the man speaks out fierily
after all these years. For the difference between Pepys and Shelley, to
return to that half-whimsical approximation, is one of quality but not
one of degree; in his sphere, Pepys felt as keenly, and his is the true
prose of poetry--prose because the spirit of the man was narrow and
earthly, but poetry because he was delightedly alive. Hence, in such a
passage as this about the Epsom shepherd, the result upon the reader's
mind is entire conviction and unmingled pleasure. So, you feel, the
thing fell out, not otherwise; and you would no more change it than you
would change a sublimity of Shakespeare's, a homely touch of Bunyan's,
or a favoured reminiscence of your own.
There never was a man nearer being an artist, who yet was not one. The
tang was in the family; while he was writing the journal for our
enjoyment in his comely house in Navy Gardens, no fewer than two of his
cousins were tramping the fens, kit under arm, to make music to the
country girls. But he himself, though he could play so many instruments,
and pass judgment in so many fields of art, remained an amateur. It is
not given to any one so keenly to enjoy, without some greater power to
understand. That he did not like Shakespeare as an artist for the stage
may be a fault, but it is not without either parallel or excuse. He
certainly admired him as a poet; he was the first beyond mere actors on
the rolls of that innumerable army who have got "To be or not to be" by
heart. Nor was he content with that; it haunted his mind; he quoted it
to himself in the pages of the Diary, and, rushing in where angels fear
to tread, he set it to music. Nothing, indeed, is more notable than the
heroic quality of the verses that our little sensualist in a periwig
chose out to marry with his own mortal strains. Some gust from brave
Elizabethan times must have warmed his spirit, as he sat tuning his
sublime theorbo. "To be or not to be. Whether 'tis nobler"--"Beauty
retire, thou dost my pity move"--"It is decreed, nor shall thy fate, O
Rome";--open and dignified in the sound, various and majestic in the
sentiment, it was no inapt, as it was certainly no timid, spirit that
selected such a range of themes. Of "Gaze not on Swans," I know no more
than these four words; yet that also seems to promise well. It was,
however, on a probable suspicion, the work of his master, Mr.
Berkenshaw--as the drawings that figure at the breaking up of a young
ladies' seminary are the work of the professor attached to the
establishment. Mr. Berkenshaw was not altogether happy in his pupil. The
amateur cannot usually rise into the artist, some leaven of the world
still clogging him; and we find Pepys behaving like a pickthank to the
man who taught him composition. In relation to the stage, which he so
warmly loved and understood, he was not only more hearty but more
generous to others. Thus he encounters Colonel Reames, "a man," says
he, "who understands and loves a play as well as I, and I love him for
it." And again, when he and his wife had seen a most ridiculous insipid
piece, "Glad we were," he writes, "that Betterton had no part in it." It
is by such a zeal and loyalty to those who labour for his delight that
the amateur grows worthy of the artist. And it should be kept in mind
that, not only in art, but in morals, Pepys rejoiced to recognise his
betters. There was not one speck of envy in the whole human-hearted
egotist.