Samuel Pepys

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The Restoration gave English literature a new kind of prose, different from that practiced by John Milton, John Donne, Sir Thomas Browne, and other great stylists of the Renaissance. New discoveries in science and mathematics during the late seventeenth century demanded a written discourse that was free of the elaborate flourishes and figurative language that had marked the work of earlier writers; what was required was a prose that was notable for its clarity. The Royal Society required that its members report the proceedings and activities of the society in the plain, utilitarian, natural prose style best suited to the dissemination of scientific truths; the very public nature of the age gave rise to a written language that closely approximated the clear, urbane, elegant conversations that became a hallmark of the Restoration and the eighteenth century.

Like the deliberately public writings of his contemporaries, The Diary of Samuel Pepys is a model of uncluttered, simple, lyrical prose writing. Further, because Pepys wrote in Thomas Shelton’s system of shorthand, he was able to record the events of his life without fear of discovery or exposure, and the result is an autobiographical account notable as a straightforward, unself-conscious, exceedingly detailed narrative that chronicles both the public and the private lives of its writer.

Pepys, like the early epic poets, delighted in catalogs and lists. His Diary delights readers with its insistence on detailed listings—of the notables present at a dinner or fete, of the specific foods Pepys consumed at a late-night supper, of the beautiful women he ogled at the theater, of the excessive and expensive purchases made by his wife at a bazaar, of the separate items of clothing that constitute an outfit that Pepys wore to a special occasion, of the emotions Pepys felt at having to end an affair. Pepys enumerates his household expenses, the plays he has seen, his sister’s faults, and the friends with whom he socializes. He carefully documents historical events and personal encounters, family squabbles and political confrontations, births and deaths. These details—appealing or crude, minute or expansive, personal or public, comic or serious—draw readers into Pepys’s world and into the mind and life of a late seventeenth century English citizen.

A theme that unifies the varied sections of the Diary is the importance of a life properly lived. The Diary is a constant reminder of the Puritan virtues, a compendium of examples of Pepys’s ongoing attempts to master his soul and order his existence. Pepys smugly records his successes at moderation and contritely details his little falls from grace. Concerned with accountability and almost obsessed with thrift, he agonizes over the price of the telescopes and microscopes that his fascination with science has led him to purchase, and he complains about his wife’s spending habits. Disturbed at having indulged in expensive dancing lessons, Pepys records his attempts to silence his conscience by dropping a gift of fifteen shillings into the nearest poor box. Many entries in the Diary reveal that Pepys spent much time dealing with his accounts and other business matters—in fact, his descriptions of daily activities are often couched in the language of accounting. Puritan at heart that he was, Pepys frequently wrote about his gratitude to God for various benefits that came his way, his recognition of his moral errancies, and his feelings of repentance and attempts to live a better life. Overindulgence appears to be one of Pepys’s most dominant faults; his diary records his vows to spend less, eat less, refrain from chasing women, and avoid wine and strong drink.

As an account of the first nine years of...

(This entire section contains 1753 words.)

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the reign of Charles II, Pepys’sDiary has no equal. Pepys was privileged to be on board the ship that brought Charles Stuart back to England as the nation’s first monarch after the Commonwealth, and the Diary provides eyewitness descriptions of the royal arrival and also of the splendid coronation ceremonies. Major historical events—Charles’s marriage to Catherine of Braganza, the Dutch Wars, the succession of short-lived Whig-dominated Parliaments—are all carefully inventoried by Pepys. The Diary years coincide with the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London, both events on which Pepys reflected at length with his characteristic combination of factual detail, moral analysis, and eager curiosity. That same combination colors Pepys’s frequent entries detailing visits to theatrical performances. Pepys the Puritan believed it sinful to attend plays; Pepys the bon vivant delighted in the tremendous variety of performances that crowded the English stage after Charles’s accession reopened the theaters; and Pepys the Restoration gallant reveled in the opportunities to ogle both the actresses and the women in the audience.

The appeal of the Diary lies in its richness of detail; in its tone of unalloyed enjoyment of life and experience; in its delighted chronicling of the everyday juxtaposed with the significant; and in its candid revelation of the mind of an indefatigable, curious, and intelligent English citizen of the late seventeenth century.

The Diary of Samuel Pepys

First published: 1825

Type of work: Autobiography

A middle-class English civil servant records the events of his life in a cultural and historical context from 1660 to 1669.

The Diaryof Samuel Pepys opens with an entry dated January 1, 1660. The author was twenty-seven years old and already well on his way to a lucrative career in the service of the English crown. “Blessed be God,” begins the entry, “ . . . I was in very good health.” Pepys continues with a brief description of his household—himself, his wife, Elizabeth, and a servant named Jane—and then goes on to note “the condition of the State.” These opening sentences are significant in that they contain many of the distinctive subjects discussed in the Diary. Pepys was clearly a moral and religious man—in a very general and philosophical way; his journal entries often begin with an invocation to God, and he records a considerable amount of soul-searching coupled with resolutions to live a better life. Almost as important to Pepys as his religion was his health, which is mentioned, discussed, and analyzed at regular intervals. The early trouble with his bladder left Pepys with an obsessive consciousness of the workings of his body, and his concern with various ailments is a notable feature of the Diary. Other topics of major interest to Pepys were his wife and their ongoing servant problems and the affairs of the government, to which he devoted so much of his time and energy.

The opening lines of the Diary are important not only for their content but also for their tone and language and for the order in which Pepys—a very methodical man—arranged the details he included. Pepys’s tone throughout the Diary is always calm and matter-of-fact, even when he reports unsettling or disturbing events. Thus it is that in a time of great political and social upheaval, he records dryly, “The officers of the army all forced to yield,” in reference to the fact that General George Monck, one of the architects of the Restoration process, was marching south with his men to take Whitehall from the Parliamentary generals. Yet the concise sentences do not make for dull reading. On the contrary, because Pepys so carefully chooses his words, the details that he records stand out in clear and precise relief against the urbane but utilitarian prose that he employs. The Diary reflects the importance to Pepys of certain aspects of his life, mentioned in order of significance—God, health, family and household, politics. Pepys was, of course, vastly interested in a number of other subjects, but those five mentioned early are the topics to which he returns over and over in his narrative.

Through the Diary, modern readers enter the life and mind of one of the most remarkable Englishmen of all time, a man typical of his era and representative of it in both his virtues and his flaws, a man who lived a recognizably and humanly average life during a century that history recognizes as one of England’s most turbulent. Therein lies one of the paradoxes of the Diary. Pepys records meals, sleepless nights, marital spats, lazy servants, colds and fevers, a pet dog, a sulking sister, new gloves and shoes, even (infrequent) baths as notable elements of a life that also included visits to the royal apartments, suppers with the aristocracy, speeches before Parliament, promotions and appointments to desirable posts, and friendships with the rich and famous. Pepys the private soul-searcher is also Pepys the avid theatergoer, Pepys the jealous husband is Pepys the philanderer, and Pepys the recorder of ailments is the same as Pepys the Royal Society man. Again and again, the Diary reveals the extent to which the private and the public met during the Restoration.

The Diary is especially valuable to historians for its evocative and vivid accounts of some of the most important events of the 1660’s: the return of Charles Stuart to England, his coronation as King Charles II, the Great Plague of 1665, and the Great Fire of London in 1666, among others. Also of historical and literary importance are Pepys’s descriptions of theatrical performances. He comments on the architecture of the theaters, on the new practice of casting women in female roles, on stage machinery, on specific plays, on actors and actresses in various roles, on the audience. Although theater historians have long recognized Pepys’s Diary as a valuable source of information on the Restoration theater, social historians also owe Pepys a great debt. The Diary is a prime source of information on the elements of Restoration society and culture, music (one of Pepys’s passions), the decorative arts (furniture, silver, and china), architecture, painting, science and medicine, clothing, and books. Unlike Jonathan Swift’s fictional Gulliver, Pepys was not a naïve observer, and his Diary reveals his opinions, his preferences, his biases, and his analyses of his own actions as well as those of others.

In 1669, Pepys began to fear that he might go blind. He had long had trouble with his eyesight, possibly the result of close scrutiny of naval documents and accounts and even household records; he even records that the candlelight in the theaters “did almost kill” him. On May 31, 1669, Pepys penned the last entry in the Diary, remarking in his characteristic plain style his readiness for possible loss of sight, “for which . . . the good God prepare me!” The Diary ends as it begins—quietly, calmly, concisely.