Sam's Rude Bits (Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self - Claire Tomalin)

Member Name: lynn_bex

Product:	Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self - Claire Tomalin
Date:	02/06/03 (504 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Beautifully written, Educational, Comical

Disadvantages: Rude bits...., might provide a little too much information

Already an acclaimed biographer, Claire Tomalin has excelled herself with this hugely entertaining and detailed biography of Samuel Pepys, the famous diarist and Naval Administrator who lived from 1633 to 1709.

This was the worthy winner of the Whitbread Book Of The Year Prize, but some months earlier, when my mother asked me what presents I would like for Christmas 2002, Tomalin’s book was high on my list.

“Ooooh,” Mum exclaimed, “Samuel Pepys! Have you gone all intellectual on us?”

-And I imagine this to be a common misconception although, in fact, the book is a more “popular” than “highbrow” read, and I really cannot recommend it highly enough.

Any casual browser will first see a portrait of the bewigged Samuel Pepys, but closer inspection will reveal Samuel’s wife, Elizabeth, who adorns the back cover in a rather comely fashion…

As for the story in between…

…Well, I am not one to gossip, so you will need to read the book to discover that Elizabeth’s portrait, painted by John Hayls in 1666, was cut into strips by an outraged Scotch nurse round about 1830, because she was shocked by the immodesty of Elizabeth’s dress! [Fortunately, the portrait survives insofar as it had previously been engraved for the First Edition of Samuel Pepys Diary.]

I have to say that my mother would probably NOT have bought this book for me, had she realised quite how much immodesty I would encounter within its pages…

[…And I would not have asked her to buy it, had I realised what a terrific but jaw-dropping read this was going to be… Frankly, I’m shocked… -that I asked my Mum to buy it for me, that is!]

~~
Interestingly, I have on my own bookshelf a copy of the Diary of Samuel Pepys, which was one of the Odhams Press Classics that my father collected long before I was born. F

rom time to time, I have consulted my “Pepys” for a contemporary report of, say, the Fire of London - and it had never crossed my mind that this version of “The Diary” might be incomplete…

Indeed, it says:
“THE DIARY AND CORRESPONDENCE of SAMUEL PEPYS, ESQ., FRS.,
SECRETARY TO THE ADMIRALTY IN THE REIGNS OF CHARLES II AND JAMES II, 1659 TO 1703.
Braybrooke Edition, complete.”

So far as I can see, there is no publication date, - but I would guess it to have been the 1930’s.
~~
From reading Claire Tomalin’s riveting book, I now know that following Pepys’s death, his Executors complied with his wishes, ensuring that his complete extensive library was given to Magdalene Library at Cambridge University, where it remains in its entirely “for the benefit of posterity.”

Included with the huge collection of books Pepys had built up during his lifetime were his original dairies, written in the shorthand of the day, but it was not until the 1800’s that the diaries were fully transcribed, when an undergraduate, John Smith, undertook the work for a flat fee of £200.00. The task took him three years (from 1819 until 1822) and his transcriptions of Pepys’s shorthand notes ultimately passed to one Richard Neville, soon to become Lord Braybrooke, who took the credit for Smith’s work!

Neville/Baybrooke apparently: “bowdlerized, cut the transcript by three quarters and rewrote substantial amounts in his own words, producing what its modern editor, Robert Latham, has called a travesty of the original…”

Although there were many more reprints and selections, IT WAS NOT UNTIL 1970 THAT THE WHOLE DIARY WAS PRINTED AS PEPYS HAD WRITTEN IT THREE HUNDERED YEARS BEFORE, AND AS HE LEFT IT TO THE WORLD…
~~
So, thanks to Claire Tomalin, I now know that my father’s “Baybrooke” version o
f the
original Diary is far from complete and, rather like a naughty schoolgirl, I am agog at the rude bits I have now discovered! [Having chosen those words carefully, I leave you to decide for yourselves whether or not there is a double entendre.)
~~
The book’s Prologue describes a scene where an argument between Pepys and his wife occurred, she becoming ever more distressed while he became increasingly enraged.

Elizabeth Pepys had told her husband that she was lonely and unhappy, reminding him that she had expressed her feelings in a letter some two months previously, but that he had destroyed it unread. She now announced that she had kept a copy of that letter, and began to read from it, impressing Pepys with what she had to say. Samuel noted that her letter was “picquant… and most of it true” but he also felt that it might reflect badly on him, so asked his wife to destroy it. She refused, whereupon Pepys snatched the letter, together with a bundle of other documents, his fury culminating in the destruction of many of Elizabeth’s personal papers, together with love letters he had written her, whilst she cried and begged to have them back.

The astonishing thing about this story is that it is a factual and very detailed record of what happened on that morning of Friday, 9 January 1663 – and we know it to be true, because Pepys himself recorded every detail, even to the detriment of himself.

Hundreds of years later, the words remain so vivid that we are almost bearing witness to this terrible argument between husband and wife. [The argument was made up that evening, but the marriage became increasingly stormy from this point until Elizabeth’s death in 1669, at the tragically young age of 29.]

As Claire Tomalin says:

“We know all this because he described it himself. …He watched himself just as he watched Elizabeth… …just as he wat
ched the p
layers and the audience in the theatre… His conflicting emotions – indignation and anger, pity for her and acknowledgement that she was justified in what she had done – make this as absorbing as a scene in a play or novel. It is life, but as he writes it down it becomes art; and it is the art of a diarist of genius, one who does not choose to give himself the “beau role”. …He struggles into his breeches, he behaves unjustly and cruelly, he offers no justification of any kind for his behaviour except his anger and fear of being blamed. This is what he had seen and what he had felt, transmuted into words.”

And my goodness, during the years that Pepys kept his diary, he recorded all manner of personal events and activities that would not be out of place in the memoir of a “(19) Sixties Boy” - never mind a 1660’s boy!

Tomalin’s book traces Pepys’s entire life (1633 – 1703) and provides much historical detail covering this dangerous and bloody period of English history - which included the Civil War, execution of Charles I, Black Plague, Great Fire of London and much, much more.

In fact, although the narrative stands alone as a thoroughly enjoyable read, I found myself using THREE bookmarks as I was drawn ever deeper into the story:
The first bookmark kept my place; the second allowed easy access to the detailed explanatory notes at the back of the book; and the third to enabled me to trace Samuel’s journeys and contacts, by use of the maps, family tree and “who’s who” of Principal Figures at the beginning of the book.
~~
Samuel Pepys was born above the shop where his father ran a tailoring business in Salisbury Court, just off of London’s Fleet Street and although comparatively poor, the family was not impoverished. Sam was the fifth of eleven children born to the family but, as most died in infancy
or early child
hood, in time he became the eldest.

He was also by far the cleverest and studied at St Paul’s School and Cambridge for, although neither of Samuel’s parents was scholarly or educated, there were other branches of the Pepys family sufficiently well-placed as to be able to help a bright lad such as Sam into higher education, and to thereafter groom him for the high position he would later hold.
~~

Claire Tomalin carefully interweaves snapshots of local, national and family history into this book. We read of the unrest, rioting and violence upon the streets in the build up to the civil war and learn that young Samuel, whose playground was the streets of London, would have borne witness much of this turmoil. City mobs would gather, baying for justice for popular heroes or howling for the blood of detested public figures.

Early in 1642, Charles I and his family fled London and the King was not seen in town again until his trial and execution in Whitehall, seven years later, when Pepys, by his own account, had a position within the crowd and was an approving observer of the execution.

As he was growing up, Samuel’s most influential benefactor was a cousin of sorts, Edward Montagu, whose mother had been a Pepys. Montagu was happily married to the former Jemima Crew, who had been born into a parliamentary and puritan family. Samuel respected both Montagues but was especially devoted to Jemima, referring to her throughout his diary as “My Lady”. [Montagu was to become the first Earl Sandwich, and Jemima his Lady.]

At the outset of the Civil War, Montagu broke with his Royalist father to become a valiant officer in Oliver Cromwell’s army for which, in the autumn of 1645 Colonel Edward Montagu, received the thanks of Parliament and was soon given a Seat in the House and a position on the Army Committee.

Although the war was effectively over by mid 164
6, the King continue
d to move (or be moved) around the country – sometimes threatening, sometimes threatened – and Royalists continued to press the King’s case, whilst exploiting the divisions between themselves and the Puritans. In fact, there were also divisions between the republicans – many of whom did not support the strict Puritan beliefs. In particular there were understandable republican doubts about the banning of established church services and the destruction of stained glass windows, statues and so forth. In addition to these divisions, there was considerable resentment by the general public of the Puritan enforcement of Sunday Observance, which included bans on simple pleasures such as children’s games.
[Outside London, in 1648 there was a riot about a maypole in Bury St Edmunds!]

Parliament was severely shaken by the unfolding events, and a substantial number of MPs hoped that a solution to the unrest could be found by virtue of on-going negotiations with the King. Staunch republicans, however, entered the House of Commons in December 1648, where they arrested 45 MPs and sent away another 186 whom they judged unlikely to support their plans for getting rid of King Charles. Edward Montagu was one of those purged MPs and, never enthusiastic about putting the King on trial, for the time being he quietly returned to his young wife and family life in the country.
~~
Immediately upon the execution of King Charles I, his son was proclaimed as Charles II in his exile in Holland and became the new focus for royalists everywhere.

Cromwell went on to subdue Ireland, crush the new young King and his army - forcing him to flee abroad again - and defeat the Dutch in a trade war fought at sea. He also dissolved parliament.

Edward Montagu took no part in these events, and continued to live quietly in the country throughout this period, but returned to London in 1653. Cromwell quickly i
nvited Colonel Montagu to
sit on his Council of State and within months he had also been made a Commissioner of the Treasury.

At the age of 28, Montagu had become a very great and influential man and, as he now needed trustworthy clerks and assistants, he was in a position to employ his intelligent young cousin, Samuel, albeit it in a lowly position. Soon, Samuel obtained a second and more formal job, working for George Downing, MP for Edinburgh, who had been appointed to the Department of the Exchequer.

In 1655, when he was 22, Pepys fell in love with a young French girl now living with her parents in London. Elizabeth Marchant de St Michel was 14 years old when Samuel wooed her with great passion and they were married at St Margaret’s, Westminster on 1 December 1655. Religious ceremonies had been declared invalid since August 1653 but churches were used for the civil ceremonies that replaced them. It seems, however, that an unrecorded private ceremony had taken place on 10 October 1655 – because this was the date upon which the bride and groom celebrated their anniversary - which means that Elizabeth was married two weeks before her fifteenth birthday. [the legal age for a girl’s marriage was 12 at that time]

Pepys must have loved Elizabeth with an overriding passion, because he could have advanced his career greatly by making a wiser choice. Instead, the young couple struggled through the early months of their marriage, living in one room up many stairs, in what Pepys described as his “turret” within Montagu’s household, where Elizabeth had to make coal fires and wash clothes in the one room.

Being adolescent and with a head full of the French romantic novels she enjoyed reading, Elizabeth would weep, scold and storm. It cannot have helped that Samuel was in poor health at this time and it also appears that the Montagu had neither been told of, nor approved, the marriage. Even
tually, Elizabeth walked out &
#8211; indicating to Pepys that he had failed.

This separation lasted for some months before Samuel and Elizabeth resolved their differences and later Pepys destroyed all letters and papers relating to this episode. As the one member of his family to have made a success of his life, he was unused to failure and in later years resented any mention of the separation, whereas Elizabeth was only too pleased to use it as a weapon against her husband!

Pepys suffered from bladder stones and the complications resulting from them throughout his life, but in 1657 his health was so poor that he had no alternative but to seek medical intervention and submit to a hideous operation with an appallingly low survival rate. Fortunate to survive the successful removal of a stone some two-and-a-quarter inches in diameter, Pepys was inclined to celebrate the anniversary date of his operation for the rest of his life, and he now had a revival of confidence and energy.

Both of his employers were in high favour with Cromwell, which boded well for Samuel’s own future, but since both were out of the country as he recovered his health, Pepys had the opportunity to renew acquaintances with some of his old contacts from Cambridge and elsewhere, subsequently obtaining extra work and prestige, so that by 1658, Samuel and Elizabeth Pepys were able to move into their own home, where they became a family of three – by virtue of the addition of their first servant, the fourteen year old Jane Birch.

Elizabeth Pepys, the mistress of the house, was now 17, and with Pepys recovered from his life threatening illness, this seems to have been a happy period in their lives. Samuel’s old “Clubbing Friends” from his bachelor days were much in evidence and they talked, drank, sang, swapped rude stories, and played cards in the taverns. There was also much music-making, which would have delighted Pepys, w
ho had grown up in a musical househ
old.
[The Pepys children had been expected to learn at least one musical instrument, and Samuel was an enthusiastic fiddle-player.]

Soon after the move, and while the Pepyses were enjoying their new position, Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector, succumbed to a sudden but fatal illness and was succeeded by his son, Richard. From loyalty to Cromwell, Montagu was supportive of the new leader and was soon rewarded with a new appointment, which enabled him, in turn, to promote Samuel. This was Pepy’s first direct example of how government funds were distributed by a system of patronage; a lesson that he learned well, and remembered all his life.

Edward Montagu was now General At Sea, commanding a fleet and protecting the interests of his Country and its leader, but Richard Cromwell was a weak leader and the country was again slipping into anarchy. During this period Pepys served as a messenger, and carried private papers between England and the Baltic, where Montagu was serving, and it seems probable that sensitive information was being passed between Montagu and others who were disillusioned by the unrest in the country.

Richard Cromwell formally abdicated in June 1659 and until that time the disillusioned but cautious Montagu remained loyal to him.

The following month, Charles II sent his own messenger to Montagu offering great rewards in exchange for his and the fleet’s support, but Montagu replied that the time was not ripe. Indeed, the lack of provisions and sickness among the men made him determined to take the fleet home, and this he did. Upon his return to England, Montagu’s caution in respect of the King’s approach proved well founded, as he was suspected of plotting to bring Charles II back from his exile, though no evidence of this could be produced.

Again, Montagu returned to his wife and family in the country, whilst Pepys served as his eye
s and ears in London, sending detailed r
eports of the unrest on the streets – where the scenes he describes are horribly familiar:-

[On 5 December 1659 there was a “fray”]

“boys flung stones, tiles, turnips etc…some they disarmed and kicked, others abused the horses with stones and rubbish they flung at them…in some placed the apprentices would get a football (it being a hard frost) and drive it among the soldiers on purpose, and they either darst not (or prudently would not) interrupt them; in fine, many soldiers were hurt with stones, and one I see was very near having his brains knocked out with a brickbat flung from the top of an house at him. On the other side, the soldiers proclaimed the proclamation against any subscriptions, which the boys shouted at in contempt, which some could not bear but let fly their muskets and killed in several places (whereof I see one in Cornhill shot through the head…)”

As Tomalin tells us, Pepys’s is the first eyewitness account of an urban riot, where young people are clashing with armed solders. Some of those soldiers were unable to bear the contempt of the boys, and so shot them dead.
~~
On 1 January 1660, Pepys began the famous diary that he was to keep for the next ten years, and which would become his lasting legacy to the world. The Diary opens optimistically, with Samuel thankful for the good health he has enjoyed since his operation. He is appreciative of being master of his own house, and hopeful that his wife may be pregnant. [In fact, Elizabeth was not pregnant and the Pepyses remained childless.]

Despite his past republican leanings, Pepys noted that he had “great hopes of the King’s coming again,” and soon after Edward Montagu, his star again in its ascendancy, was instructed by Parliament to sail for Holland and in due course to bring the king home. As Montagu’s most trusted assistan
t, Pepys accompanied his master on this missi
on and was present when the Royal Party came aboard Montagu’s ship, which had been renamed the ROYAL CHARLES in honour of the occasion. On board, Pepys was within earshot as Charles II gave an account of the hardship he had endured during his years of exile, a summary of which Pepys later noted down.
[After the Royal Party left the ship at Dover, Pepys also noted his pleasure at the behaviour of the king’s pet dog, “which shit in the boat, which made us laugh…” !]

Pepys remained loyal to Charles II throughout his 25 year reign and thereafter supported his younger brother and successor, James II , but he was not a natural royalist. He disapproved of Charles II’s disregard of parliamentary processes and, in particular, his reluctance to properly fund the navy.
[Pepys was by temperament and upbringing, a natural parliamentarian, and for a time served as an elected Member of Parliament, which makes his loyalty to the crown all the more honourable. Indeed, when the Catholic James II lost the throne to his protestant cousins “William and Mary” (William of Orange) Pepys was for a time imprisoned in the Tower of London, and thereafter retired from public life]
~~
Tomalin’s book, interweaving Pepys’s diary entries with information garnered elsewhere, provides an in-depth picture of Samuel Pepys himself, set against an historical back-drop, and I recommend it as a useful tool to any student researching this period of English history.

As for myself…

I found this book a cracking read, and especially recommend the accounts of some of the rude, lewd and ludicrous background activities that take place as the sometimes-pompous Samuel Pepys conducts his official naval business. …I was also hugely entertained by the reported behaviour of Pepys’s many embarrassing relatives, who became increasingly dependent up
on him as his wealth increased!

I have de
cided NOT to lower the tone by making specific reference to Pepys’s many adulterous relationships and fumblings, (only one of which became known to Elizabeth, his wife – whereupon the fur flew!)

In any event, thoroughly recommend this book…

The broad minded will find it hugely entertaining and, at times, hysterically funny…

Whereas prudes will discover that their disapproval is best part of 400 years too late!

Tell you what, though:

Samuel Pepys, personally flawed as he might have been, has become a hero of mine…

-He made a difference… And what more can one person do?

GRACIOUS, it’s June already… …Nearly time to check out the bandstand in Victoria Embankment Gardens…

Oh! Did I mention that Pepys, when at the height of his powers, lived beside the Thames in Buckingham Street and “commuted” up and down the river? His boat would be moored beside Buckingham Gate – these days well and truly land-locked within Victoria Embankment Gardens, following the Embankment of the Thames…

[Guess where I’m going, tomorrow lunchtime? !!!]

Lynn


SAMUEL PEPYS The Unequalled Self - Claire Tomalin

First Published 2002 - VIKING an imprint of Penguin Books

Paperback Edition Now Available - 2003

Summary: