Jem (and Sam)

by Ferdinand Mount

  He sat down on my bed like a sack of coals and I perceived the magnitude of his achievement, for he had drunk a great deal. Yet foxed though he was, he kept his wits and discoursed mightily of the great business he was upon.

  Enough of that, said little Peter Llewelyn, we must drink. He had found the cask in my pantry and was filling the bottle, which pained me since it was new Rhenish wine of the best quality which I had reserved for better purposes.

  Now then my comrades let us drink to our lawful sovereign. God bless King Charles the Second.

  I hear that they were making a bonfire at the Exchange, said Mr Pepys, and there was a man with a brush wiping out the inscription (only he said inshcrapshion) Exit Tyrannus and they were all crying God bless King Charles.

  The second, Sam. There must be no holding back. The second. We cannot disallow his father. Charles the Second.

  Well yes, the second it must be.

  But Pepys hesitated, and so did I, for I had grown up in O.C.’s time and served him and I had no ancient love for the Stuarts. No, I was not a giddy republican of Mr Milton’s stamp, but, if we were to be weathercocks, we should not swing round before we were sure the weather had changed.

  Come, Jem, God bless King Charles the Second.

  Little Llewelyn breathed his foul breath upon me again and my resistance expired, so with a great show of heartiness I roared:

  God bless King Charles the Second, during which ejaculation I stole a sidelong glance at Mr Pepys and saw that he liked the oath no better than I did and for the same reason: he was not contra the King, but he would prefer that Charles be king before confessing undying allegiance to him.

  It was past one o’clock before I was rid of them. They fell down the stairs on top of one another so hard that I thought Llewelyn had been suffocated which would have been no bad thing, for he shouted God bless King Charles the Second all the way across the Tiltyard and I could not imagine why the guards did not arrest him.

  After they had gone, I looked out of my window at the stars in the black sky and wondered what would become of me. I had survived that first purge of the clerks because I was the General’s man, but the new King would surely turn out all those who had served Cromwell – whom we must now surely call the Great Satan or Antichrist – and who would now protect the Protector’s men?

  In the morning, I went straight to Nan and came up the front stair, asking to be admitted to Her Highness’s presence without delay.

  Are you mad? she said. (Her hair was down, her toilet only half-made, for it was still early.) You know you are not to come without the signal.

  Madam, I said in high theatric style, Mr Pepys is gone to Holland to fetch the King.

  Mr Pepys, who is Mr Pepys? Oh I know, that little man who now waits upon Mr Mountagu. I don’t care for him, he is too busy.

  It is nothing to me whether you care for him or not, he is gone to fetch the King.

  Jem, do calm yourself. In any case, you should say Mr Mountagu is gone to Holland, it is he the Rump has appointed General-at-Sea and commissioned to parley with you-know-who. My brother, Dr Clarges, is also gone.

  You knew all this when I came to you last night?

  She laughed and began negligently to dress her hair, as though we were talking of some idle matter and not the future of our nation. I’m the General’s lady, am I not? she said. Don’t you think he would consult me upon affairs of state? And whether he like it or not, he never lacks the benefit of my advice, for after dinner I put on what I call my Treason Gown and say whatever has been burning in my mind. It has been evident to me ever since we came from Scotland that there’d be no end to this business unless the King came back, and I’ve told the General so many times, but he is a deep-revolving man and he takes his time.

  Why didn’t you tell me this last night?

  Because you wouldn’t listen. I offered you a secret and you refused it because I made sport of you. If you had asked prettily, I would have told you everything. And now you must go. No Clerk to the Council could have more than ten minutes’ business with me.

  Madam, I am here upon business, to beseech your favour, for I fear that if the King come back they will make a new purge of all those that served Cromwell, and the surviving clerks will be the first to feel the axe.

  Jem, Jem, don’t fret. The General will look after you, he will – and there she paused in mid-sentence, struck by a fresh stratagem.

  Jemmy, my love, she said, suppose you left the Council and joined our service?

  How, in what capacity?

  Well, I would like you to be very close to me so that we might . . . converse when we wished. How would it be if you were to be my gentleman-usher?

  Madam, to serve a woman in that fashion would be unmanly.

  Don’t madam me, Jem, remember the Three Gypsies, and consider, the proximity would afford you the opportunity to serve me in any manly style you can summon to your fancy. At the same time, you would be close to the General, you could be charged with important missions, missions to foreign courts perhaps, a species of ambassador. If you had been in that post last week, it might be you and not my brother that was going to fetch the King, for Thomas often has the seasickness. Though he be an apothecary, he has no medicine that will protect him. And there might be other offices that would spring from this beginning. For my Thomas is already appointed Commissioner-General of the Musters and Clerk of the Hanaper, although to be candid he has hitherto but served as Monck’s messenger and he is only a blacksmith’s son.

  And your brother.

  But you are my friend, and what blossoms may not drop from friendship’s garland?

  Garlands may wither.

  You’re surly this morning, Jem. I declare I never saw such a morose man.

  My future is at the stake. I must be serious.

  Well then, I have made you a serious offer. Most young men would thank heaven fasting for such a post.

  I am not most young men.

  But though I was reserved and hesitant of manner, I began to see the advantages of her proposal. General Monck was the first man in the kingdom, and if the King came back, he would owe it all to Monck. To be at Monck’s right hand, to sit at his table, to make a threesome with his lady in their closet, that would be the high road to preferment. Mr Pepys would doff his beaver to me.

  Seeing that I was beginning to yield, Nan pressed home her suit.

  You shall be our Lord Chamberlain. Any man would be proud to have the place. You’ll be sitting in the sunshine. The Council of State is a fine thing and in those former days it was the engine of the nation. But who knows how the King may dispose of the Council? He may explode it utterly, fearing it to be a nest of traitors. Then you would be cast out in the cold. But with us . . .

  And she pressed my hand and bussed me on the side of my neck, and I was won over.

  Thus I exchanged the service of the State for the service of General G. Monck and his lady. I exchanged public employment for the private and £100 a year for £200 ditto and a mulberry uniform. It was a fated step.

  At first it seemed like the high summer of my days. My lady busied herself in propria persona for my translation. She found fresh linen from that store where we had fumbled, and she measured me with the old tape that she had had at the Three Gypsies and, when the tailor’s man did not come to make the alterations, she herself sewed in a strip of cloth to make the waist easier.

  Jem, you are waxing as fat as a turkey. You want exercise, and I shall provide you with an abundance of it.

  Then she gave me a fine walking-stick chased with silver and surmounted by a Negro’s head in black wood and told me that was to be my staff of office. I said the stick was too short, but she said that this was to be the new fashion, for she was setting the mode now.

  I was apprehensive how the General would receive my employment. But it was neatly done the next morning while he was eating his breakfast in the little parlour.

  My chuck, this is –

  I know wh
o it is. Said we would meet again, didn’t I? By God, you do look like a Stuart. Perhaps we need not trouble to send to Holland.

  He gnawed his chop, pressed my hand in his (which was greasy) and welcomed me aboard.

  Revolving times, he said. We must slow down. Had enough of the whirligig.

  I was proud to be a little ship in Monck’s swelling armada, and when I told Llewelyn and Symons of my place, they paid for two glasses of canary at the Sugar Loaf by Temple Bar. I did not tell them the precise nature of my employment, for I was not sure of it myself. If there was no one else by, the General would tell me to take a message, or he would dictate a letter walking up and down the chamber with his short steps and his grunts in between each sentence. It was more often Nan who gave me instructions.

  It was 23 May when Nan came to me flushed and out of breath as though she had just risen from my side in bed (although I had not visited that abode of delight for three days past).

  We are off to Canterbury instantly. Put on your mulberry suit, for we must be splendid.

  To Canterbury?

  And then to Dover. The King has set sail. We heard it from Mr Downing, who took an earlier ship but went on board to see the King first and was knighted and looks like the cat that’s swallowed the cream, and told me I must call him Sir George now. He is in the Naseby, the King is, only now it is to be the Charles, for all the ships are to have new names which wipe out the old times. Make haste, for it will be hard riding if we are to be there in time to greet His Majesty.

  Within the hour Nan had taken her place in the old Scotch coach with her mewling brat, for her fine new chariot was still building down at Deptford. And I was on my new horse which was more mettlesome than I liked and off we rode up King Street to Charing Cross, for the coach was too heavy to go by the Horse-ferry and we must cross by London Bridge.

  As we rode down the Kent Road on that glorious day, Nan called from the coach: We are like the pilgrims going to Canterbury, are we not?

  But I was thinking of my earlier travels along that road, how first I had come to London full of hope and ambition and how then I had retreated cast down when I had lost Nan and how now all was restored both to the nation and to me. It was my intention to communicate the story of my pilgrimage to my dear Nan, but just then the General came by grunting and bumping along on his old nag.

  Come on, come on. We’ve another dozen miles to Rochester yet.

  I shall remember that journey along the old Roman road as my happiest yet, for the birds were singing and nesting in the greenwood and we were feathering our nests as well as they.

  We slept the night at Canterbury, at the Mitre where I had thrown cherry stones down upon the people when I was in my uncle’s service, and I laughed to think how I had risen since those prentice days. The next morning we took horse for Dover early. There was already a great crowd upon the road going to see the King and I had to go on ahead shouting out loud: Make way for His Highness the General. The people cheered, but for one disagreeable fellow who cried out some nonsense about me looking like a sugar plum on a stick.

  Then we came down over the downs to Dover and got to the harbour under the white cliffs. We could already see the Charles lying out to sea and a barge coming away from it, for we were only just in time. The Mayor of Dover made haste to greet us and invited us under a blue canopy (in case it should rain, but the weather was fair). I hit my head on the roof of the canopy, at which the General said: You’ve made the canopy too low, my lord Mayor, for the King is taller than my boy. They say he’s above two yards.

  It was not until then that I remembered that General Monck had not seen the King for ten years, and the Mayor who was making ready to welcome him had never seen him in his life.

  Longer posts were fetched and nailed up against the old ones, which answered well enough, although the canopy swung to and fro as though it was at sea.

  But we did not mind it, for now we could see the barge coming closer to shore. As soon as they spied the King and his brother, the people began to cheer and huzza. I have never heard such shouting and joy. It would have moved the heart of the sourest Diogenes.

  I cheered, too, when the King stepped out of his barge. He was tall and black as they had said. I was much pleased when General Monck murmured to me low, so that the other courtiers might not hear:

  Could be your elder brother, Jem, couldn’t he?

  For that comparison I forgave the General for calling me his boy.

  My heart was full of joy that, after all the travail, our nation was to enjoy peace at last. My joy was all the fuller that I did not see Mr Pepys among the great men surrounding the King, for I feared that he might have employed the voyage to some effect and insinuated himself into the King’s counsels.

  Therefore was my joy somewhat marred when I perceived another boat come in at the same time as the barge, with some footmen carrying little dogs, a personage I did not know – and Mr Pepys. Nor was I better pleased when he hopped out of the footmen’s boat and scuttled across the beach like a little brown crab to step into the barge which I saw by the standard was his lord’s.

  For my own part, I was pressed to the back of the crowd so that I glimpsed only the black top of the King’s head, and I could not see him receive from the Mayor that very rich Bible which he said was the book that he loved above all things in the world (I did not believe it but knew the words were the counterpart to the Protestant Henry of Navarre saying it was well worth a Mass to have Paris). Nor did I hear him thank my General for all the service he had done him (nor saw him knighted at Canterbury that same night).

  But my spirits rose again when I saw a lady speak to Mr Pepys in their barge and hand him over a small boy about twelve years old. The boy did not wish to be entrusted to Mr Pepys and escaped his grasp, and climbed down the ladder on to the shore. Pepys gave chase and fell into the sand and the seamen laughed. The boy came back and wiped the sand off Mr Pepys’s coat and led him back into the barge as though he were the tutor and Sam the naughty pupil.

  As I was laughing, Nan came away from the crowd that was around the King and said, quick, Jem, we must be off. You must keep charge of Kit, for there is no room for him in the coach. And Dr Gumble is wanted at Canterbury (a sycophant that was with the General in Scotland). Behind her came Dr Gumble with the squalling brat who did not like being with me any more than I liked being with him.

  I want to go with Mam, I want to see the King.

  You can’t, Kit, there’s no room.

  Yes there’s room, etc., etc.

  By this time the great crowd had dispersed. The King and the General and their ladies were gone to Canterbury and had taken all the horses, for we had not thought to bring enough horses for the King’s men.

  So Kit and I must trudge back into the town and find lodging, which there was none because so many people had come to see the King. By an ill stroke of Providence, as I was turning away from the last inn with Kit (I’m hungry, I’m cold, etc.), we ran into my old uncle, now much decayed and withered.

  Greetings, Jeremiah, the old scoundrel said, is that thy bastard then?

  No, Uncle, not so, it’s the son of His Highness the General, in whose service I have the great honour to be.

  Highness, Highness, my uncle harrumphed, there is no lower man in the kingdom, for he has betrayed the good old cause and brought back Antichrist that he may reign in blood over God’s anointed people. Thou shalt curse the day thou ever took his shilling, etc., etc.

  I’m hungry, Kit began again. And I saw an evil calculating look come over my uncle’s rheumy old eyes. He bethought himself that if he showed us some favour he might be appointed bookseller to the Parliament or some other such office.

  Thou knowest, Nephew, how I cannot afford to keep high state in these tumbledown days, but I have a few poor victuals and my lodgings are always open to my fellows in Christ.

  And so it was that I spent the first night of the glorious new era in that draughty hovel with this dismal hypocrite o
f an uncle whom I had thought to have escaped forever. Meanwhile, Mr Pepys rode in state on my lord’s barge and, while his lord’s boy might have led him a dance, he had at least approached the age of reason, while my grizzling infant was far off it.

  I parted from my uncle with an ill grace since I was angry that I had missed the King. Who knows what place I might have got had I been by the General’s side at his landing while Samuel Pepys was holding hard on to his lord’s coat-tails? Nor were my gloomy prophecies baseless. Before the month was out, Mr Mountagu was become Earl of Sandwich, Viscount Hinchingbrooke and Baron of St Neots, and Mr Pepys was made Clerk of the Acts and had a suit of velvet from Pimm’s the tailor and another of silk, the first that ever he wore in his life. He was so besieged by suitors that he might have eaten like a king without ever stirring from his office. One night that summer when he came with me and Llewelyn to the Bull Head, he told us that he had that same day received a vessel of Northdown ale from Mr Pierce the purser, a fine Turkey carpet and a jar of olives from Captain Cuttance and a pair of turtle doves for his wife, all in a day’s space, that Mr Pepys might smile upon them and do their business.

  My Nan was busy too. For the General was made Duke of Albemarle and Lord General of the Army, Master of the Horse, Knight of the Garter, etc., etc. and his whining brat Christopher was my lord of Torrington in Devon, and his Duchess lost no time in squeezing the juice out of the orange, a trade at which I knew she was no novice. In her greatness she sold places as merrily as ever she sold wash-balls and silks and linens at the Three Gypsies. A coachman in the Leg told me that she asked him £200 for the place he had held since the former times, telling him that now the King was restored they must start with a Clean Slate. I do not know how many doorkeepers and chamberlains and housekeepers and grooms of the wardrobe she did ask money from, but I know they all paid, for they were fearful of her tongue which was sharp and of her husband’s power which was omnipotent.

  I began to weary of this usurious coming and going, and asked her plain:

  Nan, what favour have you stored up for me? Am I not your first suitor and ought I not to be first in the line?