Christmas being the topic, suppose we call upon Mr. Samuel Pepys for
testimony. The imperishable Diarist had as keen a faculty of enjoyment
as any man who ever lived. He wrote one of the world’s greatest love
stories--the story of his own zealous, inquisitive, jocund love of
life. Surely it is not amiss to inquire what record be left as to the
festival of cheer.
On seven of the nine Christmases in the Diary, Mr. Pepys went to
church--sometimes more than once, though when he went twice he admits
he fell asleep. The music and the ladies’ finery were undoubtedly
part of the attraction. “Very great store of fine women there is in
this church, more than I know anywhere else about us,” is his note for
Christmas, 1664. But in that generously mixed and volatile heart there
was a valve of honest aspiration and piety. One can imagine him sitting
in his pew (on Christmas, 1661, he nearly left the church in a huff
because the verger didn’t come forward to open the pew door for him),
his alert mind giving close attention to the sermon of his favourite
Mr. Mills, busy with sudden resolutions of virtue and industry, yet
happily conscious of any beauty within eyeshot.
The giving of presents was not a large part of Christmas in those
days. In 1662 Mr. Gauden gave Pepys “a great chine of beef and three
dozen of tongues,” but this had its drawbacks. Pepys had to give five
shillings to the man who brought it and also half a crown to the
porters. Drink and food were the important part of the festival. At
Christmas, 1660, Mr. and Mrs. Pepys, with Tom Pepys as guest, enjoyed
“a good shoulder of mutton and a chicken.” This was a brave Christmas
for Mrs. Pepys--she had “a new mantle.” We must remember that the fair
Elizabeth, though already married five years, was then only twenty
years old. Not all Mrs. Pepys’s Christmases were as merry as that, I
fear. On Christmas, 1663, she was troubled by anxious thoughts----
My wife began, I know not whether by design or chance, to
enquire what she should do, if I should by any accident die, to
which I did give her some slight answer, but shall make good
use of it to bring myself to some settlement for her sake.
Why haven’t the ingenious life insurance advertisers made use of this
telling bit of copy?
Christmas, 1668, seems to have been poor Mrs. Pepys’s worst Yule, but
perhaps it was only her natural feminine frivolity that caused the
sadness. Samuel says:
Dinner alone with my wife, who, poor wretch! sat undressed all
day, till 10 at night, altering and lacing of a noble petticoat.
This noble petticoat was perhaps to be worn at the play they attended
the next day, “Women Pleased.” What a pleasant Christmas card that
scene would make: Mrs. Pepys sitting, négligée, over the niceties of
her needlework, with Samuel beside her “making the boy read to me the
Life of Julius Cæsar.” But we do not “get” (as the current phrase is)
Mrs. Pepys at all if we think of her as merely the irresponsible girl.
For, at Christmas, ’66, we read:
Lay pretty long in bed, and then rose, leaving my wife desirous
to sleep, having sat up till 4 this morning seeing her maids
make mince-pies.
Ah, we have no such mince pies nowadays. Mrs. Pepys’s mince pies were
evidently worthy the tradition of that magnificent delicacy, for at
Christmas, 1662, when Elizabeth was ill abed, Samuel records--with an
evident touch of regret--that he had to “send abroad” for one.
* * * * *
Which brings us back to the Christmas viands. In 1662, besides the
mince pie from abroad, he “dined by my wife’s bedside with great
content, having a mess of brave plum-porridge and a roasted pullet.”
We are tempted to think 1666 was Samuel’s best Christmas. Parson Mills
made a good sermon. “Then home and dined well on some good ribs of beef
roasted and mince pies; only my wife, brother, and Barker, and plenty
of good wine of my own, and my heart full of true joy.” After dinner
they had a little music; and he spent the evening making a catalogue of
his books (“reducing the names of all my books to an alphabet”), which
is probably the happiest task a man of Pepys’s temperament could enjoy.
Christmas Eve, 1667, was evidently a cheerful evening. Mr. Pepys
stopped in at the Rose Tavern for some “burnt wine”; walked round
the city in the moonlight, and homeward early in the morning in such
content that “I dropped money in five or six places, which I was
the willinger to do, it being Christmas Day, and so home, and there
find my wife in bed, and Jane and the maid making pies.” The evening
of that Christmas Mrs. Pepys read aloud to him--_The History of the
Drummer of Mr. Mompesson_, apparently a kind of contemporary Phillips
Oppenheim--“a strange story of spies, and worth reading, indeed.” It
was only in 1660 that the Christmas cheer was a little too much for
our Diarist. December 27, 1660, “about the middle of the night I was
very ill--I think with eating and drinking too much--and so I was
forced to call the maid, who pleased my wife and I in her running up
and down so innocently in her smock.”
* * * * *
It is painful to this tracker of Mr. Pepys’s vestiges to note that on
Christmas Day, 1662, Bishop Morley at the Chapel Royal “made but a poor
sermon.” The Bishop apparently rebuked the levity of the Court. “It was
worth observing how far they are come from taking the reprehensions of
a Bishop seriously, that they all laugh in the chapel when he reflected
on their ill-actions and courses. He did much press us to joy in these
public days of joy, and to hospitality; but one that stood by whispered
in my ear that the Bishop do not spend one groat to the poor himself.”
In 1665 we fear that Samuel indulged himself in church with some rather
cynical thoughts:
Saw a wedding in the church, and the young people so merry one
with another; and strange to see what delight we married people
have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition, every
man and woman gazing and smiling at them.
One could continue for some space recounting the eupeptic Pepys in his
Christmas merriments--so large an edifice of pleasing conjecture can be
built upon even his slightest notes. One observes, for instance, that
on December 27, 1664, when “my wife and all her folks” came “to make
Christmas gambols,” Samuel left the party and went to bed. This was
very different from his usual habit when there was fun going. He was
annoyed also that on this occasion his wife revelled all night, not
coming to bed until 8 the next morning, “which vexed me a little, but I
believe there was no hurt in it at all, but only mirth.”
So we take leave of the Christmases of the Pepyses; 1668 is the last
one recorded--the time when Elizabeth stayed at home all day altering
her petticoat. After supper, the boy played some music on the lute, and
Samuel’s mind was “in mighty content.” Let us think kindly of the good
fellow; and not forget that he coined one of the enduring phrases of
English literature--a phrase that is no such ineffective summary of all
the lives of men--_And so to bed_.
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