Will walked with me to my chamber at the Cockpit. We bade farewell as confederates in I know not what conspiracy. Perhaps we felt ourselves but puppets of an uneasy time and wished ourselves returned to the days of blossom and country matters. Yet we had quarrelled as we parted.
Five pounds was too much. He wouldn’t have reported us, for he knew we would have denied it and it would have been the word of two honourable clerks against one scurvy waterman.
Mud sticks, Jem, and a scanty bribe is worse than none at all. But you need have no part in the matter, if you wish. It was my speech that was unguarded.
No, no, I’ll stand my share. We’re in this together.
O.C. removed to Hampton Court, although his mother and his wife thought the place was too big for them. Yet a palace will fill up like a water-butt in February, and it was not long before every lodging was taken and there was not an empty place at the long table on feast days, for O.C. was no fanatic for abstinence and men have been as merry at his table as at any cavalier’s. Although he preferred honest English dishes, he liked a good Haut-Brion or a Mosel to accompany sweetmeats.
While the household at Hampton Court swelled; there was no lessening in the establishment at Whitehall. From dawn to dusk there was the knocking of builders and the slap of the mason’s trowel, for there was always a new office to be converted or an old one demolished. My own little chamber was white with dust from plaster knocked off the walls of the great open tennis court that was taken down to make room for a garden for Mr Edward Mountagu being lately made President of the Council of State.
I had a longing to set eyes upon this gentleman, for he had won a rare reputation as a soldier. Aet. eighteen, he had raised a regiment and fought bravely at Marston Moor and Naseby, but then had retired to Huntingdon to manage his estates, whence he had but now returned to assist his old neighbour our lord and master.
A most affable fellow, Will reported. I would as lief be in his service as in any other Councillor’s. He knew my name though we had met but once and he showed a quick understanding of the Exchequer’s faults.
Would it be worth my while to –
No, no, he already has a creature, his cousin, a bright little fellow who is but a tailor’s son from Fleet Street.
His cousin, you say?
Yes, Jem, we are in England where a tailor may be brother to a countess. The fellow has a little chamber behind where the tennis court stood, opposite the dedans. You will see him soon enough, for he has a powerful thirst.
It was in a tavern that I first set eyes on him, the Leg in New Palace Yard (not the one in King Street where the beer was but dogs-piss).
He sat with Will at a table in the back, a little man with eyes like children’s marbles knocking together and a nose like a quill which he dipped into mine host’s ink with a quick sucking motion as though he wished to empty the tavern before he was emptied out of it. He was all motion like a turbulent sea, yet neat.
This, Jem, is Mr Pepys.
He took my hand with warmth and pressed it to him in a fashion which I thought forward, though we were both but young clerks and why should he not be eager to make friends. He wore a high-crowned felt hat over his long curled hair and a new doublet of brown stuff.
You are welcome to the great fraternity of clerks, I said.
I am most fortunate to have the place, sir. My cousin Mr Montagu has been very good to me. My friends shall be your friends, Samuel, he says to me. I have already met Mr Downing twice.
Mr Downing is a popinjay, Will said. I perceived that Will had been in the Leg for some time, for he spoke in a heavy voice and his tankard came down hard upon the table.
It’s said he may shortly be made Teller of the Receipt. I understand that’s a post of great sway within the Exchequer.
A pop-in-jay, Sam, a parrot that sticks his arse out like, like a parrot. He is a vain man, sir, your Lord Downing.
Surely he is not a lord.
He is lordly, he sways like a popinjay. Why is there no more ale in this tankard? It’s an empty tankard, a non-tankard, I hate it. Paulina, come and rescue me, I am dying of thirst.
Rescue me too, said the man with the bright marbles for eyes.
And within an instant he had become a toper like the rest of us. He spoke no more of the Exchequer and Mr Downing’s prospects, nor of his own, and devoted himself to pleasure. And he could carry the burden of a bawdy song as well as any of us. Was it ‘Sweet, do not stay’ that he sang that first night? He sang it many other times when we tumbled out into the smoky air to feel the frost. I give here the verse that is the most decent (if the hearer do not supply the verb that is missing):
Sweet, do not stay, but come away,
Stand a helpless maiden’s friend
That does you affection lend
And ready is, poor heart, to—
Come away, come away –
etc., etc. Well, that is the song he sang and we counted him an addition to our merry group. And it was not solely with his fellows that he was presumptuous. Paulina complained to Will that she could not pass his bench without his putting a hand upon her knee or fondling her behind. Upon Will saying that she was scarcely unused to such attentions, she was not working in a nunnery, she said yes but the other gentlemen were different, he was like that automaton Mr Evelyn spoke of, his hand went at her like a weaver’s shuttle. Only his hand? Will inquired and Paulina struck him and said he was not to make sport of her.
Pepys was a brisk, impatient man and before long Mr Mountagu’s service did not suffice for him and he was made clerk to George Downing that was now, as he had foretold, Teller of the Receipt in the Exchequer with another £50 a year supplemented by diverse fees and gratuities.
Soon after Michaelmas, I met him walking up Fish Street Hill with a pretty girl. She had a long neck and a sweet face like the portrait of the late Queen that used to hang in Mercers’ Hall, but her teeth stood forward.
This is my bride, Elizabeth. We’re to be married next month. She is French but a member of the true religion.
I wished them very well. As I was inquiring if I might kiss the bride as was our English custom, I saw how young she was and Pepys saw that I saw.
She is fifteen but has a mature mind and a ripe judgement.
The girl told him not to talk so about her but she did in truth seem well possessed of herself, although she was so pale and slight in body.
I heard that they were married by a magistrate at Westminster and they had plighted their troth at a service that was not lawful, though in which church I know not. But at any rate they were man and wife.
Will Symons also was married shortly thereafter to a fine woman, though quarrelsome. Thus I was the only bachelor left, at least until our trio became a quartetto. Little Peter Llewelyn looked barely older than Mrs Pepys. His head was fair and fluffy like a chick but three days old, and he squeaked when he was in his cups, and he had a body as scraggy as a chicken’s too. Yet he was the best sport of all, as amorous as a rabbit and could drink a yard of ale without pausing for breath. And when we went clubbing at Woods at the Pell-Mell which was our accustomed house, he would drink us all under the table.
We clerks were clubbers all and would meet at Woods on Wednesday to sing a catch and drown our business in ale, though I would not wish posterity to fancy that we talked nothing but bawdy, for we debated many high matters of science, philosophy and the arts of prophecy, ophthalmics, geography and music, etc. In music we were most excellent, for Peter Llewelyn played the viol and Pepys was an adeptus upon the flageolet and Will Symons had a strong melodious voice so that our corner of the tavern was dubbed Woods Nightingales and we sang serious songs, too, not fooleries, for example, Mr Gibbons’s ‘Silver Swan’ and the airs of Mr Lawes. When we were in good voice, the ladies would gather round our bench and we proved it oft that music was the veritable food of love.
When we met afterward, after the King came back, we talked of our old clubbing in Cromwell’s day and how we had sun
g this or that and drunk too much and how Paulina would or would not that night. And we swore that such days would not come again, our salad days days were over, and such lamentations as men make in middle age.
Yet in truth I would not wish those days returned again, for though we took our pleasure of them they were precarious also. No man could think himself safe in his place, for each turn in affairs might accelerate into a Revolution, and he who was a proper man yesterday might on the morrow be denounced and turned out as a traitor or a heretic or papist or whatever was not to the taste of the times. Each knock on the door might determine one’s fate, and Hodge, that pimply tosspot of a porter, might be the harbinger of doom.
Someone to see you, sir.
Not –
Not your mother, sir. This one’s a tall gentleman and he’s hard behind me for he would not be stayed either.
Nor was he, for the words were hardly out of Hodge’s mouth when I heard that marvellous bass-viol voice, resonant like my mother’s, but melodious as hers was not.
Greetings in the Lord, Jeremiah, you have not forgotten His Last Witness, I trust.
How could I?
But I had forgot how huge the Prophet was. His majesty seemd to fill my little office, his mane of red hair was as great as ever, though there was grey in it now.
And I do not forget my old friends who have stood by us in our most pressing hours.
I’m honoured by your presence, I said. It’s a wondrous thing that you should seek me out.
It was in truth a very untimely and awkward thing. O.C. was tolerant of many religions, but he had to draw a line and Muggletonians fell beyond the limit in that outer darkness peopled by other malcontents such as Ranters and Fifth Monarchy Men. For all that the Prophet preached quietude and submission to authority, his teaching was esteemed too eccentric to be tolerated. And it would certainly not be tolerable that a clerk in the very citadel of power should be one of his flock.
It is a warm day, the Prophet said, his eye wandering, like my mother’s, to the bottles Will kept upon the shelf.
Oh, I am most uncivil. May I press you to a glass?
We must not neglect the Lord’s creatures, Jeremiah, those that he blessed at Cana in Galilee and has empowered his Witnesses to redouble the blessing of.
He sank the first glass with a hearty tilt and was scarce slower with the second (though I should add that I never saw him so much as half-drunk).
There is much work afoot, Jeremiah. I am to publish my responses to Cromwell himself. There is great call for them, and some of our following will have them bound up for better keeping. But the expenses of printing such things mount ever higher and –
I should be honoured to be of some modest assistance in the matter, I said, fishing in my pocket and thanking Providence that I found no less than £6 there.
You are of a generous humour, Jeremiah. This is not the first time I have had cause to pour down blessings upon you. You are rewarded, sir, in God’s heart and in that of his Witness.
One thing I’d ask of you.
Anything, Jeremiah, anything that the Lord permits.
Since you’re to publish your responses to the Lord Protector, it would seem strange, wouldn’t it, if it were to be known that the printing –
– was paid for by one of his learned clerks? My dear sir, you may take my discretion as read. I would not breathe a word of it to any soul living or dead.
I had always known that the Prophet was of a quick understanding and, though I was glad to be rid of him, I could not deny that I felt the old power of his presence. He pressed me to attend his discourses which were held on Tuesdays in the Mitre in Turnagain Alley, but I could see he knew I would not come, for the State had agents everywhere.
But soon those agents had themselves to make shift, for the Revolutions followed so swift upon each other that only the most wide-awake could know for sure in what cause he was spying and to whom he was to make his report. The sudden death of O.C. set the whirligig spinning, the brief reign of Tumbledown Dick, his son, failed to halt it, and after he abdicated we were all spinning like tops to stay in the same place.
Then to me one thing above all strange and wonderful happened, or so it seemed at the time. The consequences of that thing were to cast a long shadow upon my life, but then it seemed like a miracle to rescue me from the drudgery of my clerkly existence.
My General was coming south from Scotland. ‘Monck is coming’ was all the word in Whitehall, on the Exchange. Across the water, the boatmen were holloaing it. In the dockyards, the merchants and the mariners were telling one another, each claiming to have the latest intelligence. He’s at Newcastle, no, he’s at Mansfield, no no, he’s returned to Scotland. He has declared for the King, no, for the Republic, no, for himself. King George will not decline as King Oliver did. You’re mistaken, he is a soldier, only a soldier.
Nobody knew what he wanted, nobody knew what he intended. Slowly south he came. We watched like schoolboys in a tedious lesson watching a fly crawling across a window pane. So slowly. He would pause, and take counsel, or send a letter, then wait for the answer or pretend so to do even though he knew it already. Never in all history was there a waiting game played with more delicate patience. So slowly – I believe never a man had an intellect more detached from his passions. How cold his brain was. When all the fiery republicans and the proud cavaliers had spouted their whirlwinds, he had barely opened his mouth.
Tomorrow he’ll be at Westminster, he was at Barnet last night, Llewelyn told me in the tennis-court garden. We shall catch him in the Strand, he must march that way if he is to quarter his troops in the Park. And so we waited in the Cock alehouse at Temple Bar and consumed a deal of sack. When we heard the commotion, we tumbled out into the street and shouted Huzza Monck for ever (which I shouted with much sincerity, for I hoped that he might get me a better place). Although one or two did cry for a new parliament, it was the noise of the hooves and the marching feet that filled our ears, for the people, fearful or confused, were silent.
There he was, my landlubber Admiral, a squat low man jogging along on his old rusty charger, black in the face, a grim look upon him as he always had, as though he were going to his execution. Never has a conquering hero seemed to take less pleasure in his triumph. He kept tugging at the reins in order that his horse might not trample upon the men in front, for the horse seemed as ill at ease with the ceremony as its master.
And then: behind him came an old travelling coach with mud up to the tops of its wheels and the filth of the Scotch weather still upon its roof, a lumbering old thing that swung about on its springs as though it were about to topple into the ditch. And leaning out of the window with her white arm waving was Nan, my Nan, my long-lost gaoler’s seamstress.
Nan, Nan, I cried reckless of who might hear.
He’s crying to the General’s whore.
No, no, the General’s wife. He married her, you know.
I know that well enough, but a whore she was and a whore –
I turned to find the abuser and strangle him, but I could not be sure which of the fellows it was, and by the time I turned back, the coach had gone on.
But did I not know that Nan had married the General, that it had been he whom she had waited on in the Tower? Surely all the world knew that George Monck had married the daughter of one of the women-barbers of Drury Lane. So they did, and so did I, but I had had to keep the intelligence to myself, for the General was known to be a jealous man and I owed my place to him and so I fancied it politic to suppress my connection. Indeed, I wished I had not shouted out in the crowd at Temple Bar and I swear I would have held my tongue had it not been for the sack.
But those who are reading this story, the audience of my own biography, should I not have told them earlier of my noble connection? Well, I have often read a story in which the author keeps the secret to himself until it shall make a grander effect upon his readers and I do not see why I should not perform the same service upon you.
He’s a black monk and I can’t see through him, I heard one of the Council say. No one knew which way he would jump: for a Parliament, for the King, for himself. And none of us were any the wiser after he had spoken before the Parliament. They had prepared a Chair of State for him at the Bar, exceeding ornate with silver tassels and red velvet, but he would not sit in it, saying he was but their servant. He took their thanks for his services with humility, which he did most naturally, for he was such a low plump inconspicuous man that you would pass him in the street and not take any notice of him.
Then he spoke, most nonchalantly, leaning on the back of the chair as though he were casually conversing with old companions. He told them to look after the army and let the soldiers keep their lands in Ireland, and he delivered himself of some proposals for the moderate governing of Scotland, for he said nothing was more dreadful to the Scots than to be overrun with fanatic notions.
But he did not say straight out what he meant, and what everyone in England meant, that this Rump Parliament had been too long sitting and it must be dissolved and new members elected who truly spoke for the people. And as for the Parliament, none of them complained that the General would not renew his oath against the Stuarts. Thus – as is our English way – no person spoke of what was in his mind, yet all claimed to be most content with the conversation.
Afterwards the members and their ladies repaired to the Prince’s lodgings in Whitehall where the General had taken his residence and there were royally entertained to venison and carp and a hundred other costly dishes.
That, I believe, is Mrs Monck, though she looks like a servingwoman. She is homely certainly.
Jem (and Sam) Page 8