Jem (and Sam)

by Ferdinand Mount

  Diary of Samuel Pepys, 20 November 1665

  Never was there a more dismal awakening. I could hear the rain beating down on the flags outside my chamber which was cold and dusty. My head ached. My friend lay dead. My timber was gone. All around me were houses shut up with the dead and dying. For all I knew, I myself had the infection already. Perhaps that headache – and my pulse seemed to flutter like a bird’s when it is caught in the hand. I lay in bed thinking on the merry days we had in Cromwell’s time – Peter and I and Will Symons and his wife, yes, and Samuel Pepys although he was a latecomer to our club and now they were all dead or disgraced, all save he who yet basked in the sunshine.

  As I lay there between the damp sheets, I began to compose a lament for my friend. It ran easily enough for the first few lines, thus:

  Elegy for Peter Llewelyn, Esq. lately perished of the Plague

  Farewell! Companion of my happy time,

  Who never slept before the midnight chime,

  Thou that ne’er felt the turbulence of sorrow,

  Bequeatheth us the dolour of the morrow.

  But then the task disgusted my palate, for true sorrow leaves no room for poetry. A man who can pen an epitaph is already half-recovered from his grief, and besides I began to think of my timber and to wonder whether it might not have been shifted to another yard because Sir William had not room for it, but Peter had not thought it worth the while to tell me. So I dressed, and went off down to Wapping yet again, though with small hope.

  After I had paid off the coachman, I trudged off down the same narrow lane by the wall and crossed the cut by the same plank – the Plank! When I had gone over the cut yesterday, I had crossed by a little bridge. I ran over to the other side to the back shed and there I saw the white label winking at me where I had seen it last, in the middle of the high masts with the compass timbers hung to the left. No jewelled parchment in the world could have been more precious. On my former journey, I had missed the little turning to the plank and taken the broader path that led over the bridge and to another yard where they knew nothing of Llewelyn’s timber. I clasped a stout Eastland mast to my bosom and wept again, but this time tears of joy, though my friend lay stiff and cold in the pit if the quick lime had not yet consumed him. All was well, my Investment was safe.

  But to make assurance double sure, I went afterwards to Mr Dering’s office, and to acquaint him with Peter’s death. He was standing ready to go out, a bustling red man (that was known as Red Ned to distinguish him from his half-brother the baronet who was also christened Edward).

  What, what, Llewelyn dead, oh that is miserable news. He was a good lad, I loved him, and a trustworthy lad. And he sat down heavily as though his legs had broken, and began to weep – which astonished me for I had pictured him a hard man of business, but Llewelyn had the power to melt hearts, I mean in particular the hearts of sober men that would shrink from living as he did but loved him for his excess.

  Oh dear, oh dear, this Dering went on clucking like an old woman, till I almost wished to tell him to recover himself that I might inquire about the timber.

  A joint venture, ah so you are the partner? That was a good Investment in truth, and you have come at the right time, for I have just had an Imprest from Mr Pepys though I had to give him another present for it, which disgusts me because he makes such a pretence of shrinking from the bribe. Oh poor Peter – and he sat down again – he was in Ireland with my brother who loved him too.

  Then he looked with another look and his face was as sharp as a fox’s. I could give you the money now, he said, but if you value my counsel, you will let the investment run.

  Run?

  Well, how much do you stand in for, three hundred pounds I fancy (all of a sudden he appeared to have a precise insight into my affairs). That timber will soon be worth a thousand pounds, and I will give you five hundred pounds for it here and now – and he slapped his empty hand down upon the table, as though he were putting the money down – but Peter’s death intricates the matter.

  How so?

  His will must be proved. We must respect the wishes of his heirs, he has a brother living, a father too perhaps. The law is a tortoise in these matters. It would be no light business to disentangle your half-share. And besides, you’d do better to let the Investment run, much better. With the Dutch on our shores, that timber will double again before next year is out. You leave your £500 with me, sir, and I guarantee you’ll not regret it.

  At what rate of interest?

  Interest, sir, I don’t trifle with interest. I deal in timber. When we sell your present parcel, we’ll buy another with it, and so you shall rise with me, sir. Here, here’s my note.

  And with remarkable dexterity – and I could not but marvel how quickly these merchants wrote their receipts – he gave me a bill stating that he was indebted to me solus in the sum of £500 which he was to invest in prime timber on my behalf, in consideration of which I was to give him a note stating that I had received from him the sum of £500 in consideration of which he was to have my half-share of the timber now standing in Sir William Warren’s yard, labelled the property of Peter Llewelyn, Esq., now deceased.

  My head was spinning like a child’s top and I stumbled out of Red Ned’s office with my papers, knowing nothing but that I had received no money. Yet I was too proud to complain, for I could see that Mr Dering would have thought me a fool for signing the papers.

  My humour was not improved by Nan’s command that I should take back with me to New Hall all her dirty linen, for she did not trust the laundresses about her, believing that one of them had been carried off by the plague but they had hidden the intelligence from her. So I bumped about down the empty road amid great bundles of foul washing which was as likely infected as the laundresses.

  But no evil lasts for ever. In the end, the plague purged itself and those who escaped it needed no other physic, the running sores which were kept open by order of the physician having sufficiently cleansed them, and by degrees people came back to town and began to air their houses and sweeten them by burning incense, benjamin, rozin and even gunpowder to blast out the infection. I mean the poorer sort of people came back but the rich made no such haste. Many of them did not come up till the spring came on. The precious Kit and his poor nursemaid your servant were among the latter, by Nan’s order – although the plague was nearer New Hall than ever it had been, for it had broken out at Colchester, some said because of the wanderers such as we had met in the woods. But when Nan came down to see us, all thought of the plague had flitted from her mind.

  Oh he is not to go! he shall not go!

  Madam?

  He is not to go, I say! I am his wife, and he is an old man. And he’s no sailor. Why won’t they send that coward Mountagu? They are all cowards, those gentleman-captains with their feathers and ribands. Why will the King not send out the old plain sea-captains that he served with formerly, men that fight so their ships swim with blood, though they can’t play the gallant and make legs as captains nowadays can? Mr Pepys agrees with me, Jem, although he is Mountagu’s man.

  Madam, I care little what Mr Pepys thinks.

  Then you will be made to care, Jem, for he is a cunning little hedgehog. There he is snug in the Navy Office where all the bribes and presents come in to him like the tide, and there is his master Ambassador in Madrid enjoying all the ladies of Spain, while my poor husband who has the asthma and a severe complaint in the veins will be clinging to a mast in a storm as the Dutch pound at him day and night.

  He will beat the Dutch as he beat ’em before, I said.

  Oh I don’t doubt it but he will be carried back dead in a mizen shroud. And the nation will mourn and they’ll all tell me I must not sorrow but rejoice in his immortal greatness, but I don’t want him dead, Jem, I want him at my side, here, snuffling, grunting, drinking, even laughing at me which he does when I counsel him though he knows there is sense in what I tell him.

  And a great heaviness fell upon me bec
ause in her distress she had betrayed that she loved the old General, body and soul, and that consequently I was no more than a toy to her (one may be fond of a toy but it is a light fondness).

  That day, she wept as she unpacked the treasures she had brought back from London and I helped her disperse them about New Hall.

  These chairs I had of the Genoa merchants (sob). Is not the leatherwork fine? A little nearer the wall, I think, Jem (sob). There is a walnut table to come which will go well there that the Lord Mayor of Norwich is making for me, for he had one that I admired, oh Jem he will die. I wish ladies could go with their husbands on flagships as they may on merchantmen. Now I must dry my eyes, for Kit is to come and show us his uniform. He is to be a captain of a regiment, you know, although he is but thirteen. I wouldn’t have it so, but his father says he must though he promises he shan’t serve as a soldier nor see action till he is sixteen, but I mean to stretch out that time.

  And in came the Brat plump as a pigeon in his bright new uniform with his greasy black curls falling down over his cuirass.

  Is he not the image of his father?

  I did not say what was in my mind, that he was but a hideous parody, as an urchin may ape the dignity of a nobleman but only to mock it.

  Oh Mamma, it is too tight, under the arms.

  Loosen the strings, Jem.

  They will go no looser, madam.

  You have fed him too many puddings, there is a tendency to corpulence in his blood and it must be resisted.

  Madam, I cannot keep him out of the kitchen.

  Mamma, the suit is ill-made, it is not my fault.

  Thus they went on, the distraught mother and her spoilt son, while the old Duke set off for his ship.

  Up, and walked to Whitehall, where we all met to present a letter to the Duke of York, complaining solemnly of the want of money. And that being done, I to and again up and down Westminster, thinking to have spent a little time with Sarah at the Swan, or Mrs Martin, but was disappointed in both, so walked the greatest part of the way home – where comes Mr Symons, my old acquaintance, to dine with me; and I made myself as good company as I could to him, but he was mighty impertinent methought too, yet; and thereby I see the difference between myself now and what it was heretofore, when I reckoned him a very brave fellow.

  Diary of Samuel Pepys, 13 May 1666

  Well, all the world knows what happened in the Four Days Fight, how the General and Prince Rupert set sail together to find the Dutch, and then it was rumoured that the French had sailed out of Gibraltar and were coming up the Channel, how it was accordingly resolved to divide the Fleet and send the Prince after the French with twenty ships, how then the Dutch put to sea and the King sent orders to call back the Prince but the order went in the night to my Lord Arlington’s who was asleep and his servant would not wake him, so that the Prince did not receive the order until the next day when the tide was out, and how the General was thereby left with fifty-five ships when de Ruyter had ninety and forced him back up the River, and he lost so many ships that there were two Dutchmen for every one of his and at last the Prince joined him and they beat off the Dutch, how the Royal Prince was stuck in the Galloper Sand and was burnt by the Dutch and the Royal Charles grounded too but got off, and how Master Sheffield spied the General charging a very little pistol and putting it in his pocket, for he would never be taken prisoner and would blow up the magazine if the Dutch boarded her, and how the General blamed the Captain saying that he never fought with worse officers in his life, not above twenty of them behaving themselves like men (for he hated a coward as ill as a toad), and the Captain blamed the General for dividing the fleet and when it turned out that the report of the French leaving port was false the Court blamed the General also, for the losses of ships and men were very great. But the common people still loved the General, because he had stood and fought. Even Mr Pepys rejoiced, though he tried to hide it, for he had no love for the General and his own lord was safe and sound in Spain.

  Out at New Hall we had heard the guns not fifteen miles away off the Gunfleet and I had to calm and cheer my lady, for each broadside that echoed across the river and along the long avenue might be her husband’s last. It was in the afternoon after Whitsunday that an old seaman was carried up the drive, his face covered with dirt and pitch and powder and his leg wrapped up in dirty cloths, it being broken. He had been set on shore from Harwich that morning with twenty more wounded men from the Royal Charles, with orders to tell Her Ladyship that the General was well, the battle was over and it was a great victory.

  It was no such thing, though the General always swore there had never been a greater fight against the odds and, if they had not fought, the Dutch would have been singing their hymns in Westminster Abbey.

  But my own heart was light, for surely my Investment would now come safely into harbour, as the call for timber was at the flood.

  No man ever lost money by taking counsel from Edward Dering. Your timber is worth twelve hundred pounds today if it is worth a penny, said the bristly red man and he lay back in his chair and laughed as I thanked him. You’ll have the cash by Michaelmas.

  No sooner? That is two months hence.

  Trust me, Jem. Wait for high water. When you see the merchandise, you will understand why it would be a crime to let it go too early.

  He took me across the little plank – that blessed plank which had proclaimed the safety of my fortune – to a different part of the yard. And there standing high and proud against the water was a veritable forest of masts, in comparison to the which my earlier store was but a little copse. And there was a ticket with my name on it and the sun shining on the river. I was a man of property. And Mr Dering, the great merchant, shook my hand and congratulated me.

  Then I swaggered with him to the Old Swan to christen our partnership in wine. As we came in, I saw a familiar face, as red and round as a dutch cheese, though I did not know him at first, for he used not to be so red, but it was Will Symons.

  I have seen that fellow here before, Dering said, he is always half-cut.

  He served with me under Oliver, I said, we are old comrades, but he lost his place.

  I don’t wonder at it, said Dering (for though he was red in the face too, and had a red pimple on the end of his nose the size of a billiard ball, he was a prim and sober man).

  Jem, Jem, my old friend. Will came up and embraced me as though we were lovers though I could not have loved a woman who stank as he did. Yet I loved him, we being the last of the old brigade.

  We are the last of the old brigade, I said. Llewelyn gone, your wife gone and –

  And Pepys gone too, he interjected, to Hell, for all I care. You must know he spoke to me like a servant and when I rehearsed a tale or two of the old days he pretended that he remembered nothing of it and told me not to vex him with such impertinent stuff.

  Pepys? said Mr Dering. Now there’s a sharp fellow, he feels the pulse of the times. You know Mr Pepys?

  He was lately a colleague of ours in the Great Council, a junior, said Will with his old dignity that would have graced a lord mayor.

  Well, he’s overtaken you now. I tell you, gentlemen, there have been times when he’s outdone me, or come close to it. There was a parcel of Gutenberg timber, once, he was nearly too quick for me. Oh that Mr Pepys – and he chuckled at the recollection, whilst Will and I sat with faces of stone.

  I fancy he is not quite so nimble as you think, said Will, speaking somewhat slowly as though to an imbecile, by which I saw that he was drunk.

  No? How so?

  That business of the East-Indiamen last summer did for his master, he had to go and hide his face in Spain.

  Well, that’s all water under the bridge.

  Pepys was in with Cocke the hemp merchant and they had a thousand pounds’ worth of the captain’s share of the goods – mace, nutmegs, cinnamon and cloves, silks and indigo and I don’t know what else. And they had no right to it, he abused a physician of trust.

  A
physician?

  A physician. He must be impeached. And I shall be the one.

  You?

  Your servant, sir, the very same. Will made an attempt to rise but knocked his knees against the table and spilled the wine upon Mr Dering’s russet silk coat (though he was an ill-looking man, Dering was also vain and took much thought that the colour of his clothes should sort with his beard, which made him look like a fox that had fed upon half a dozen chickens).

  Mr Dering shook off the wine and laughed. You won’t harm a hair of his head.

  We have papers, Will said.

  Oh if papers are your weapons, you are done, he is a virtuoso with papers.

  Parliament will not be so indulgent, Will persisted. Parliament will look at the state of our ships that could not catch the Dutch, and they will look at men like Pepys with their thousand pounds’ worth of nutmeg and calico, and they will say these men are thieves, these men have betrayed us, these men –

  Mr Dering cut short Will’s peroration: I thought that Mr Pepys had sold his share to Captain Cocke, that he was out of the business.

  Ah, so you know the facts, sir, said Will, you shall be a witness. We’ll have a cloud of witnesses as thick as seagulls on a rubbish heap.

  I fear I’ll be unable to oblige you, said Dering gathering up his gloves, I’ve an appointment. I wish you good-day. And he was gone as quick as a fox to its earth.

  There you see, Jem, they all take fright because they know that a great scandal is brewing, for there is never a great defeat without a great scandal and we shall be in at the death. There will be a committee and we shall be on it, it will be like the old days. Do you think your purse might accommodate a little more wine?

  I filled his glass and we drank to our success and disgrace to S. Pepys, but I must confess (though I did not say so) that I had little faith in our conspiracy. Will seemed too much decayed to carry it off and Pepys was too strongly entrenched for us to dislodge him.

  Yet it was upon that hot August day that I not only became a man of property pro tempore but also embarked upon the prosecution of Samuel Pepys. My fellow prosecutor dragged me along in the business. Every week, whether we were at New Hall or the Cockpit, came fresh news from Will about the progress of the affair: ‘I have an affidavit from Captain Cuttance that sold the goods’, or ‘A serving woman will swear that she heard SP and Cocke discourse of prize goods in her back room’, or ‘I have two members that will vote for a committee and promise to bring a dozen more with them’.