Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self

by Claire Tomalin

  37. Diary, 19 Aug. 1668.

  38. Diary, 16 Sept. 1668.

  39. For little Susan, Diary, 6 Aug. 1665.

  40. Robert Hooke (1635–1703) was an outstandingly able experimental scientist and architect, son of a country clergyman and, as well as being almost of an age with Pepys, inhabited the same world, that of professional men working in London, with friends in common such as William Petty, Lord Brouncker and Evelyn (see Chapter 17 below). He was an official of the Royal Society, a book collector, interested in a universal language. He was not religious, and his diary suggests he never went to church. Compared with Pepys’s, Hooke’s diary is exiguous, often no more than a few words to a day. He was unmarried, regarded as eccentric, difficult and quarrelsome, partly because he was reluctant to publish his results and then bitter when others claimed to have reached them ahead of him. He also suffered from poor health. Pepys admired him greatly as a scientist, and he figures in the Diary in 1665, 1666, 1667 and 1668. Pepys is also mentioned in Hooke’s diary.

  41. Diary, 7, 8 Feb. 1669.

  42. Diary, 14 Mar. 1669.

  43. Elizabeth put up the blue hangings in 1666 (Diary, 26 Feb.) and the upholstery work was done 6–17 Nov. 1668.

  44. Diary, 22 Mar. 1669.

  45. Diary, 24 Mar. 1669.

  46. Diary, 12, 19, 30 Apr. 1669.

  47. National Maritime Museum, Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, LBΚ/8, p. 809.

  48. Information about Jane’s later years and her son from the Companion volume to Latham and Matthews’s edition of the Diary, text and notes, and from Private Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys 1679–1703, ed. J. R. Tanner (1926), vol. II, p. 315.

  17. The Secret Scientist

  1. The remark about Pepys’s lack of science is from A. Rupert Hall’s essay in the Companion volume to Latham and Matthews’s edition of the Diary, pp. 384–5.

  2. Jeremy Bernstein in Cranks, Quarks and Cosmos, pp. 162–3, citing Newton’s biographer Stukeley.

  3. Wren’s inaugural speech is quoted in Douglas McKie’s essay ‘The Origins and Foundations of the Royal Society’ in The Royal Society: Its Origins and Founders, ed. Sir Henry Hartley (1960).

  4. Pepys to Edward Montagu, 9 Dec. 1656, mentioning a visit they made together to see ‘Sir-W. P.’s magnetique experiments’, Letters and the Second Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. R. G. Howarth (1932), p. 4. See note 31 to Chapter 4.

  5. Diary, 16 May 1664.

  6. Diary, 27 Feb. 1663.

  7. Diary, 2 Apr. 1664.

  8. Diary, 27 Jan. 1664.

  9. For Creed’s introduction by Povey, Thomas Birch, History of the Royal Society (1756–7), vol. I, pp. 340, 342. For Creed’s scientific conversations with Pepys, Diary, 9 June 1663, 14 Apr. 1664.

  10. Goddard’s ‘Drops’ were made of spirits of hartshorn rectified with human bones well dried and broken into bits, together with two pounds of viper’s flesh. All this was distilled into spirit, oil and volatile salt, set in earth for three months, then the oil separated off and kept for use. The drops were used for faintings, apoplexies, sudden and alarming onsets and lethargies, 20 to 60 drops in a glass of canary. They continued to be used long after Dr Goddard’s death. Information from Douglas McKie’s essay cited above, p. 74.

  11. See E. S. de Beer’s essay ‘Charles II and the Royal Society’ in The Royal Society: Its Origins and Founders, ed. Sir Henry Hartley, pp. 39–47.

  12. Sir Robert Moray read Holmes’s report, ‘An Account of the Going of Two Watches at Sea from 28th April to 4th September 1663’ to the Royal Society on 21 Oct. Richard Ollard, Man of War: Sir Robert Holmes and the Restoration Navy (1969), p. 84, and the whole of his Chapter 7, ‘The Clash with Pepys’.

  13. Thomas Birch, The History of the Royal Society, vol. II, pp. 21, 23, 24. Pepys was also asked to get hold of a diver from Deptford, which again goes unmentioned in the Diary.

  14. Evelyn is our informant here – on 7 Sept. 1665 he called and found the three scientists staying there. The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. E. S. de Beer (1955).

  15. Diary, 14, 16 Nov. 1666 for the dog; 21, 30 Nov. 1667 for the man.

  16. Diary, 22 Mar. 1665, and 3 May 1665. He is wrong about the spirit of salt, which is hydrochloric acid, and would have destroyed the foetus.

  17. Diary, 28 July, 7, 8 Aug. 1666.

  18. Diary, 30 Nov. 1667.

  19. For his reading of Hooke’s Micrographia, Diary, 21 Jan. 1665.

  20. Hooke’s diary for 28 Aug. 1676, ‘I was twice with Mr Pepys who was very civill and kind.’ Also for 3 June 1693, ‘I called at Mr Pepys very kind.’ Both examples quoted by A. N. Da C. Andrade’s paper on Pepys in Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, vol. 18, 1963, p. 86.

  21. On 8 Feb. 1699 the Society ordered the treasurer to give Pepys five guineas ‘to be distributed to the offices of the East India Company for the present lately received’, which suggests Pepys had something to do with it, no doubt through Hewer. Secretary’s minutes, MS at Royal Society, p. 145.

  22. Thomas Birch gives the dates in his History of the Royal Society, 15 Jan. 1680 and 17 July 1679.

  23. Information in this paragraph from Thomas Birch, The History of the Royal Society, vol. III, pp. 137, 178. Pepys volunteered to make his contribution on 14 and 28 Jan. 1675, came to one more meeting and then kept away for the rest of the year. He was elected to the council again in Nov. 1676.

  24. Secretary’s minutes, MS at Royal Society, 16 June 1686, p. 85.

  25. Thomas Birch gives this on 3 Mar. 1686, the orders for clerks on 27 Jan. 1686.

  26. For Halley’s exemption from the rule governing the clerks, secretary’s minutes, MS at Royal Society, 16 June 1686, p. 85. Pepys’s name appears on the title page of the first edition of Newton’s Principia,‘IMPRIMATUR/S. PEPYS, Reg. Soc. PRAES./Julii 5. 1686’, and below it the date at which it appeared, Anno MDCLXXXVII (1687). Sir Joseph Williamson, Sir John Hoskyns and Thomas Gale took the chair at the meetings he missed in 1686. Halley wrote to Newton on 22 May 1686, after a meeting of the Society on 19 May chaired by Williamson, telling him that the printing of the Principia would be at the charge of the Society. At a council meeting of 2 June, where Thomas Gale was in the chair, it was again ordered ‘that Mr Newton’s book be printed’, but instead of sanctioning the resolution of the general meeting that it should be printed at their charge, they added ‘that Mr Halley undertake the business of looking after it, and printing it at his own charge, which he engaged to do’. Halley explained the delay to Newton by saying it arose from ‘the president’s attendance on the king’ (James II was indeed absorbing Pepys’s time), but it may have been more to do with the bad financial state of the Society. Information from the Journal Book of the Royal Society, the secretary’s minutes and the detailed entry on Newton by Henry Taylor in the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

  27. Secretary’s MS minutes, for 21 Nov. 1694, P. 120.

  28. ibid., 8 Feb. 1699, p. 145: ‘It was ordered that five Guineas should be given to Mr Pepys by the Treasurer to be distributed to the officers of the East India Company for the present lately received.’

  29. ibid., 8 Mar. 1699, p. 148.

  30. Thomas Sprat’s History of the Royal Society of 1667 reports this recommendation from the committee of 1664.

  18. Speeches and Stories

  1. Diary, 27 Jan. 1667.

  2. Diary, 5 Dec. 1665.

  3. Diary, 29, 30 July 1667.

  4. Diary, 27 Feb. 1667.

  5. Diary, 12 Apr. 1665.

  6. Diary, 8 May 1662, 14 Aug. 1665.

  7. Diary, 12 Aug. 1664.

  8. Diary, 9 Dec. 1665.

  9. Diary, 19 July 1667.

  10. Diary, 29 June 1663.

  11. Diary, 13 Sept. 1667.

  12. Diary, 13 June 1666.

  13. Diary, 13 Dec. 1663.

  14. Diary, 2 Jan. 1668.

  15. Diary, 17 June 1667. Batten’s contempt for the swaggering captain, courtier and friend of the duke of Buckingha
m and critic of the Navy Board, is not entirely fair: he had lost an arm in the Four Days’ Battle in June 1666, and he was to die in the battle of Sole Bay in 1672.

  16. Diary, 13 July 1664.

  17. Diary, 18 Feb. 1668.

  18. Diary, 24 June 1663.

  19. Diary, 2 Sept. 1667.

  20. Diary, 15 June 1663.

  21. Diary, 5 Nov. 1665.

  22. Diary, 15 May 1668.

  23. Diary, 4 July 1663.

  24. Diary, 12 Feb. 1664.

  25. Diary, 14 July 1667.

  26. Diary, 18 Mar. 1664.

  27. Diary, 11 Jan. 1664, 11 Apr. 1661.

  28. Diary, 21 Feb., 5 Mar. 1665.

  29. Diary, 19 Nov. 1668.

  30. Diary, 13 Sept. 1663.

  31. Diary, 14 July 1664.

  32. Diary, 12 July 1667, Pepys setting down the words as Cholmley (reporting Clarendon) repeated them, fresh from the meeting at which they were spoken.

  33. Diary, 14 May 1667.

  34. Diary, 2 Nov. 1663, 6 Mar. 1668.

  35. Diary, 13 June 1666.

  36. Diary, 3 Apr. 1667.

  37. Diary, 18 May 1667.

  38. Diary, 27 Apr. 1665.

  39. Diary, 1 Nov. 1667.

  40. Diary, 23 June 1666.

  41. Diary, 15 Nov. 1667.

  42. Diary, 5 Jan. 1666.

  43. Diary, 28 Feb. 1666.

  44. Diary, 14 Mar. 1667.

  45. Diary, 31 Oct. 1666.

  46. Diary, 23 Apr. 1661.

  47. Diary, 15 May 1665.

  48. Diary, 19 Mar. 1667.

  49. Diary, 25 May 1668.

  50. Diary, 10 Oct. 1665.

  51. Diary, 9 Feb. 1668.

  52. Diary, 24 Nov. 1665.

  53. Diary, 1, 2 Mar. 1666.

  54. Diary, 13 June 1668 – during a period in which Pepys entered unfinished notes in the Diary while he was travelling. The laborious draft is all the more interesting in that the letter is not an official one but for a personal friend, Thomas Hill.

  19. Surprise and Disorder

  1. Diary, 30 Sept. 1667.

  2. Diary, 12 Oct. 1667.

  3. Diary, 11 Jan. 1668.

  4. 31 Mar. 1668.

  5. Diary, 6 Aug. 1668.

  6. Diary, 25 Oct. 1668.

  7. Diary, 12 Jan. 1669.

  8. Diary, 12 Mar. 1669.

  9. Diary, 15 Apr. 1669.

  10. 10. Diary, 9 Apr., 12 May 1669, for Betty Lane; 19 Apr. 1669 for Doll; 31 May 1669, for Betty Michell; 4, 29 Mar. 15 Apr. 1669, for Mrs Bagwell; for Mrs Tooker’s daughters, 24 Mar. 1669, also dance with Rebecca Jowle, née Allen; for fantasy about new maid Matt, 29 Mar. 1669.

  Part Three: 1669–1703

  20. After the Diary

  1. Diary, 19 Feb. 1663.

  2. A clear account is given by Milo Keynes in his paper ‘Why Samuel Pepys Stopped Writing His Diary: His Dimming Eyesight and Ill-health’, Journal of Medical Biography, vol. V, Feb. 1997, pp. 25–9.

  3. Pepys to Captain Elliot at Aldeburgh, 19 Aug. 1669, Further Correspondence of Samuel Pepys 1662–1679, ed. J. R. Tanner (1929), pp. 256–7.

  4. Pepys to Charles II, 8 Jan. 1670, a letter in which he refers to this. The ‘Navy White Book’ in Samuel Pepys and the Second Dutch War, ed. Robert Latham, transcribed by Charles Knighton and by William Matthews (1995), pp. 330–32. And Pepys to John Evelyn, 24 Dec. 1701, Private Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys 1679–1703, ed. J. R. Tanner (1926), vol. II, p. 242, for his recollection of going ‘through Holland and Flanders to Paris and so home’.

  5. John Evelyn to Samuel Pepys, 21 Aug. 1669, Particular Friends: The Correspondence of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, ed. G. de la Bédoyère (1997).

  6. The precious stones and embroidery wools are mentioned in a letter of 26 Oct. 1669, M. Peletyer, merchant of Paris, to Elizabeth, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS, A 174, fol. 335. Pepys refers to his attempt to buy a history of Paris that was reprinting when he was last there, in a letter to Mr Brisbane in Paris dated 12 Mar. 1675, National Maritime Museum, Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, LBK /8, p. 705.

  7. Pepys referred to a portrait of Elizabeth by ‘Lombard’ when he was describing his closet under questioning in the House of Commons in Feb. 1674. Pierre Lombart (1620–81), known for his female portraits in the style of Van Dyck, worked in England under the commonwealth but was in Paris in the 1660s.

  Pepys to Captain Elliot, 3 Mar. 1670, Letters and the Second Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. R. G. Howarth (1932), p. 37.

  8. Marie Legendre to Elizabeth, n.d. but with letters in ‘Private Papers’ bundle dated late Oct., early Nov. 1669, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS, A 174, fol. 341.

  9. See Pepys’s ‘Brooke House Journal’ in ‘The Brooke House Papers’, part of Samuel Pepys and the Second Dutch War, ed. Robert Latham, p. 334, where he gives this date.

  10. Pepys to John Evelyn, 2 Nov. 1669, The Correspondence of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, ed. G. de la Bédoyère. Tuke was Evelyn’s cousin.

  11. Diary, 19 Oct. 1663, for the remedies used for Queen Catherine.

  12. Elizabeth talked of ‘being and resolving to die a Catholique’ on 20 Mar. 1664, a few days after the death of Tom. She repeated this sentiment on 25 Oct. 1668, the day she found Pepys with Deb Willet. It was a Sunday, and she also said she had received the Holy Sacrament.

  13. For a time the French Church gave them support, see Pepys’s report in Diary, 29 Mar. 1667. They moved to Paris later in 1667 but were back in England in 1668, living in Deptford with their son.

  14. By then not only old Mr Pepys but also his younger son John were living with the Jacksons. Pall’s first child, Samuel, was born late in 1669, followed by a second son, John, who died in 1673, and a third son, another John, born in December 1673 . There was another child who died, leaving her with two sons, Sam and John Jackson.

  15. The magnificent larger than life statues of Charles I, Charles II and Gresham are now installed inside the Old Bailey building, well cared for but not seen to as much advantage as they might be. Another of Bushnell’s memorials, done in 1675, shows Lord Ashburnham grieving for his wife and has been praised by Pevsner for ‘new compositional freedom and a new possibility of inventiveness’. Dame Mary May, done in 1681 at Lavant, shows the dead woman ‘apparently pock-marked as in life’, ‘capricious, but the portrait exact, and the execution good’. Bushnell is on record as having asked for pictures of his memorial subjects.

  16. In 1970 the National Portrait Gallery had a cast made for its Pepys exhibition, and, although it is not on display as I write in 2001, it may well be shown to the public again.

  17. The phrase is from the only such letter to survive among Pepys’s private papers, from M. Legendre in Rouen. Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS, A 174, fol. 331. See his letter to his brother John dated 26 Mar. 1670, Bodleian, Rawlinson MSS, A 182, fol. 475, which is sealed with black.

  18. See entry in Pepys’s ‘Navy White Book’, Samuel Pepys and the Second Dutch War, ed. Robert Latham, pp. 250–52.

  19. Document in Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS, A 174, fol. 446.

  20. Pepys’s note for 3 Jan. 1670 in ‘Brooke House Papers’, Samuel Pepys and the Second Dutch War, ed. Robert Latham, p. 336.

  21. Entry for 7 Jan. 1670 in Pepys’s ‘Brooke House Papers’, Samuel Pepys and the Second Dutch War, ed. Robert Latham, p. 341.

  22. Pepys noted the king’s remark and his own supporting addition on 24 Jan. 1670, Samuel Pepys and the Second Dutch War, ed. Robert Latham, p. 371.

  23. 6 Jan. 1670, in Samuel Pepys and the Second Dutch War, ed. Robert Latham, p. 340.

  24. For the expenses, see the ‘Brooke House Papers’ in Samuel Pepys and the Second Dutch War, ed. Robert Latham, p. 329.

  25. Arthur Bryant, The Years of Peril (1935), p. 25.

  26. He makes this claim in his letter to the Brooke House commissioners, 6 Jan. 1670, Samuel Pepys and the Second Dutch War, ed. Robert Latham, p. 326.

  27. Words from final paragraph of Pepys’s
report, Samuel Pepys and the Second Dutch War, ed. Robert Latham, pp. 434–5.

  28. For Richard Gibson’s reference to Donne, his letter to Pepys, 17 Aug. 1671, after he had gone to serve with the Mediterranean fleet. He invokes Donne’s sermon in which he says the goodness of God is seen not so much in our creation as in our redemption, ‘nor so much that we are his, as that nothing can take us out of his hands. In return of which I wish no longer to live than the Impress of your Favours may remain in my Heart.’ Rawlinson MSS, A 174, fol. 372. Flowery language but suggests real affection. In a later letter he sends respects to Pepys’s father and brother, and love to Mr Hayter, Mr Hewer and Mr Edwards.

  29. Pepys to Sir Richard Browne, Letters and Second Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. R. G. Howarth, pp. 38–9. H. T. Heath gives references for other letters of recommendation, footnote 1, p. 16, The Letters of Samuel Pepys and His Family Circle (1955)·

  30. The tobacco and wine bills are among Pepys’s miscellaneous papers in the Bodleian. The gifts are mentioned in a letter from Pall to John, 5 Mar. 1672; from John to his father, 12 Mar. 1674, and from John Pepys Snr to his son, 18 July 1676, all printed in The Letters of Samuel Pepys and His Family Circle, ed. H. T. Heath, pp. 17, 29, 41.

  31. The memo is printed in the ‘Navy White Book’, Samuel Pepys and the Second Dutch War, ed. Robert Latham, p. 196.

  32. Paper by Pepys dated 9 May 1670, Further Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, ed. J. R. Tanner, pp. 266–7.

  33. It was £426,886. Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS, A 174, fol. 181.

  34. Diary, 30 July 1666.

  35. John Shadwell, Pepys’s godson, born in 1671, grew up to become a successful physician (see Chapter 26), and also published an edition of his father’s plays. Thomas Shadwell produced adaptations of Molière and Shakespeare and comedies mocking the manners of the court and City, including Epsom Wells (1672). He was a friend of Charles Sedley, whose wit Pepys admired in the Diary.

  36. Information from Charles Knighton, who has kindly let me see his article on Creed for the new DNB, and from my own inspection of Creed’s tomb, put up by his widow, in Titchmarsh Church.

  37. Diary, 5 Mar. 1666.