The Art of Letters | Page 3

kept secret from the world made it all the more
necessary for him to babble when alone. True, in the early days his
confidences are innocent enough. Pepys began to write in cipher some
time before there was any purpose in it save the common prudence of a
secretive man. Having built, however, this secret and solitary fastness,
he gradually became more daring. He had discovered a room to the
walls of which he dared speak aloud. Here we see the respectable man
liberated. He no longer needs to be on his official behaviour, but may
play the part of a small Nero, if he wishes, behind the safety of
shorthand. And how he takes advantage of his opportunities! He
remains to the end something of a Puritan in his standards and his
public carriage, but in his diary he reveals himself as a pig from the sty
of Epicurus, naked and only half-ashamed. He never, it must be
admitted, entirely shakes off his timidity. At a crisis he dare not confess
in English even in a cipher, but puts the worst in bad French with a
blush. In some instances the French may be for facetiousness rather
than concealment, as in the reference to the ladies of Rochester Castle
in 1665:
Thence to Rochester, walked to the Crowne, and while dinner was
getting ready, I did then walk to visit the old Castle ruines, which hath
been a noble place, and there going up I did upon the stairs overtake
three pretty mayds or women and took them up with me, and I did
baiser sur mouches et toucher leur mains and necks to my great
pleasure; but lord! to see what a dreadfull thing it is to look down the
precipices, for it did fright me mightily, and hinder me of much
pleasure which I would have made to myself in the company of these
three, if it had not been for that.
Even here, however, Mr. Pepys's French has a suggestion of evasion.

He always had a faint hope that his conscience would not understand
French.
Some people have written as though Mr. Pepys, in confessing himself
in his Diary, had confessed us all. They profess to see in the Diary
simply the image of Everyman in his bare skin. They think of Pepys as
an ordinary man who wrote an extraordinary book. To me it seems that
Pepys's Diary is not more extraordinary as a book than Pepys himself is
as a man. Taken separately, nine out of ten of his characteristics may
seem ordinary enough--his fears, his greeds, his vices, his utilitarian
repentances. They were compounded in him, however, in such
proportion as to produce an entirely new mixture--a character hardly
less original than Dr. Johnson or Charles Lamb. He had not any great
originality of virtue, as these others had, but he was immensely original
in his responsiveness--his capacity for being interested, tempted and
pleased. The voluptuous nature of the man may be seen in such a
passage as that in which, speaking of "the wind-musique when the
angel comes down" in The Virgin Martyr, he declares:
It ravished me, and indeed, in a word, did wrap up my soul so that it
made me really sick, just as I have formerly been when in love with my
wife.
Writing of Mrs. Knipp on another occasion, he says:
She and I singing, and God forgive me! I do still see that my nature is
not to be quite conquered, but will esteem pleasure above all things,
though yet in the middle of it, it has reluctances after my business,
which is neglected by my following my pleasure. However, musique
and women I cannot but give way to, whatever my business is.
Within a few weeks of this we find him writing again:
So abroad to my ruler's of my books, having, God forgive me! a mind
to see Nan there, which I did, and so back again, and then out again to
see Mrs. Bettons, who were looking out of the window as I came
through Fenchurch Streete. So that, indeed, I am not, as I ought to be,
able to command myself in the pleasures of my eye.

Though page after page of the Diary reveals Mr. Pepys as an
extravagant pleasure-lover, however, he differed from the majority of
pleasure-lovers in literature in not being a man of taste. He had a
rolling rather than a fastidious eye. He kissed promiscuously, and was
not aspiring in his lusts. He once held Lady Castlemaine in his arms,
indeed, but it was in a dream. He reflected, he tells us,
that since it was a dream, and that I took so much real pleasure in it,
what a happy thing it would be if when we are