CHAPTER XXII

PEPYS AND EVELYN

SAMUEL PEPYS and John Evelyn lived and wrote their diaries contemporaneously. But while Pepys' diary only covers nine or ten years, Evelyn's, being autobiographical from 1620 to about 1641 and thereafter in the nature of a diary down to 1706, is of greater value historically.

Pepys will always be the more popular of the two writers, for he is an amusing gossip and his vanity is so ingenuous as to be engaging. But the reader, while much diverted, cannot avoid the conclusion that the droll fellow is not quite a gentleman.

No such misgiving attends the perusal of Evelyn's diary. It is in every line manifestly the work of a man of faultless taste and breeding, travelled and accomplished, the transmitter of fine traditions, the ruler of a home conducted with generosity, dignity, and loving-kindness.

Pepys constantly shows us the manners and habits of his time, and so illumines history with an allrevealing light.

Ordinary histories do not tell us intimately how people lived from day to day, and such information is often more interesting than the larger affairs of human destiny.

In 1669 Pepys tells us how the Archbishop of Canterbury lived at Lambeth :

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May 14th.-At noon to dinner with Mr Wren to Lambeth with the Archbishop of Canterbury 1; the first

1 Gilbert Sheldon.

time I was ever there, and I have long longed for it. Where a noble house, and well furnished with good pictures and furniture and noble attendance in good order, and a great deal of company though an ordinary day; and exceeding great cheer, no where better, or so much that ever I think I saw for an ordinary table; and the bishop mighty kind to me particularly, desiring my company another time when less company there.

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Most of the company gone, and I going, I heard by a gentleman of a sermon that was to be there; and so I staid to hear it thinking it serious, till by and by the gentleman told me it was a mockery by one Cornet Bolton, a very gentlemanlike man, that behind a chair did pray and preach like a Presbyter Scot, with all the possible imitation in grimaces and voice.

"And his text about the hanging up their harps upon the willows; and a serious good sermon too, exclaiming against bishops, and crying up of my Lord Eglington, till it made us all burst, but I did wonder to have the bishop at this time to make himself sport with things of this kind, but I perceive it was shewn him as a rarity.

And he took care to have the room door shut, but there were about twenty gentlemen there; and myself infinitely pleased with the novelty."

Just at this time Charles II. was magnanimously endeavouring to induce the House of Commons to put an end to the severities under which the Presbyterians and Nonconformists had for so long laboured.

In this laudable effort he had the support of Sir Matthew Hale, the Chief Justice. The answer of the Commons was to vote for a proclamation against conventicles. We can see from Pepys' description of Lambeth how the Archbishop's inclination lay!

And it is in this way that his diary is of value in throwing sidelights on the history of his day.

The diary is full of such little bits of talk as this:

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'Walked to my Lord Crewe, whom I have not seen since he was sick, which is eight months ago I think; and there dined with him. He is mightily broke. A stranger,

a country gentleman, was with him; and he, pleased with my discourse accidentally about the decay of gentlemen's families in the country, telling us that the old rule was, that a family might remain fifty miles from London one hundred years, one hundred miles from London two hundred years, and so farther or nearer London more or less. He also told us that he had heard his father say, that in his time it was so rare for a country gentleman to come to London, that when he did come, he used to make his will before he set out."

A Justice of the Peace, one Sir Edmund Bury Godfry, having arrested a person of quality for a debt to him of £30, the King had Sir Edmund locked up in the porter's lodge." Thereupon Pepys remarks:

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He lies now in the lodge justifying his act as grounded upon the opinion of several of the judges, and among them my Lord Chief Justice, which makes the King very angry with the Chief Justice as they say; and the Justice do lie and justify his act, and says he will suffer in the cause for the people, and do refuse to receive almost any nutriment. The effects of it may be bad to the court.'

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But Pepys records no forcible feeding of the sturdy Justice of the Peace.

Both these diaries lay unpublished for over a hundred years. Pepys' was first published in 1825, and Evelyn's in 1818.

It is pleasant to discover that an Evelyn still lives at Wotton, which was first acquired by the family in 1579.

To Evelyn we are indebted for one of the best and most moving descriptions of the wreckage of the great fire of London. He watched it from the Southwark side of the river when it was at its height on the 3rd of September 1666.

"Oh the miserable and calamitous spectacle," he writes, "such as haply the world had not seen since the

foundation of it, nor be outdone till the universal conflagration thereof. All the skie was of a fiery aspect, like the top of a burning oven, and the light seen above forty miles around for many nights.

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God grant mine eyes may never behold the like, who now saw above 10,000 houses all in one flame; the noise and cracking and thunder of the impetuous flames, ye shrieking of women and children, the hurry of people, the fall of towers, houses, and churches, was like an hideous storme, and the aire all about so hot and inflamed that at the last one was not able to approach it, so that they were forced to stand still and let ye flames burn on, which they did for neere two miles in length and one in breadth. The clouds also of smoke were dismall and reached upon computation neer fifty miles in length.

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Thus I left it this afternoon burning, a resemblance of Sodom, or the last day. It forcibly called to my mind that passage-non enim hic habemus stabilem civitatem: the ruins resembling the picture of Troy.

66 London was, but is no more.

This was on the 3rd, and on the 7th of September he started from Whitehall to see the devastation :

"I was infinitely concern'd to find that goodly Church St Paules now a sad ruine, and that beautifull portico (for structure comparable to any in Europe, as not long repaired by the late King) now rent in pieces, flakes of vast stone split asunder, and nothing remaining intire, but the inscription in the architrave, shewing by whom it was built, which had not one letter defac'd. It was astonishing to see what immense stones the heate had in a manner calcin'd so that all ye ornaments, columns, freezes, capitals, and projectures of mossie Portland stone flew off, even to ye very roofe, where a sheet of lead covering a great space (no less than six akers by measure) was totally mealted; the ruines of the vaulted roofe falling broke into St Faith's which being filled with the magazines of books belonging to ye Stationers, and carried thither for safety, they were all consumed, burning for a weeke following. It is also observable that the lead over the altar at ye east end was

The

untouch'd and among the divers monuments the body of one Bishop remain'd intire. Thus lay in ashes that most venerable church, one of the most antient pieces of early piety in ye Christian world, besides neere 100 more. lead, yron worke, bells, plate, etc., mealted; the exquisitely wrought Mercers Chapell, the sumptuous Exchange, ye august fabrig of Christ Church, all ye rest of ye Companies Halls, splendid buildings, arches, enteries, all in dust; the fountaines dried up and ruined whilst the very waters remain'd boiling; the voragos of subterranean cellars, wells, and dungeons formerly warehouses, still burning in stench and dark clowds of smoke, so that in five or six miles traversing about, I did not see one loade of timber unconsum'd, nor many stones but what were calcin'd white as snow. The people who now walked about ye ruines like men in some dismal desert, or rather in some greate citty laid waste by a cruel enemy; to which was added the stench that came from some poore creatures' bodies, beds, and other combustible goods. Sir Thomas Gresham's statue, though fallen from its niche in the Royal Exchange, remain❜d intire, when all these of ye Kings since ye Conquest were broken to pieces; also the standard in Cornehill and Queen Elizabeth's effegies with some armes on Ludgate, continued with but little detriment, whilst the vast yron chaines of the Citty streets, hinges, barrs, and gates of prisons were many of them mealted and reduced to cinders in ye vehement heate. Nor was I yet able to pass through any of the narrower streetes, but kept the widest; the ground and air, smoake and fiery vapour continu'd so intense that my haire was almost sing'd and my feete unsufferably surbated. The bye lanes and narrower streetes were quite filled up with rubbish, nor could one have possibly knowne where he was but by ye ruines of some church or hall, that had some remarkable tower or pinnacle remaining. I then went towards Islington and Highgate, where one might have seen 200,000 people of all ranks and degrees dispers'd and lying along by their heapes of what they could save from the fire, deploring their losse, and tho' ready to perish for hunger and destitution, yet not asking one penny for reliefe, which to me appeared a stranger sight than any I had yet beheld. His Majesty and Council indeed tooke all imaginable care for their